14 July 2014

II.vii progress report (3)

Partly because Scene 7 is shorter than Scene 5 (10 minutes VS. 13 minutes), partly because the tempo is generally slower and the texture generally lighter, partly because, even where the textures are rich, there is a periodicity which helps simplify the task in Sibelius: I finished Scene 7 last night.

Is it really done? I'm in a peculiar bit of fog with this scene; maybe it's the interval since I last worked on it; maybe it was rounding up to the end of the quasi-Marathon of re-doing the existing numbers; maybe it's a disruptive self-second-guessing; or some unseemly blend of the lot. Perhaps, too, it is just being "spooked" by a comment ("Add anything here?") I had left myself in a text box in the Finale file . . . and at a passage similar to a string choir passage in Scene 1: as I was plugging that number into Sibelius, I found myself nagged with the question, "Is enough 'Happening' here?"

Most of the music in this Scene, I've never suffered any doubt about. To both this passage, and the earlier one in Scene 1, I made some light-handed additions. But then ... my mind soon settled down viz. Scene 1. The additions which I made (arguably, a little impulsively) do not mar the piece at all, so I leave them . . . but now the passage does not bother me, and I question whether the additions were genuinely necessary. I am close to just such a "ruling" on the questionable passage of Scene 7. There's now a new "punctuation" of the horns at [Q], and I am toying with the idea of having that repeat a few measures later. Basically, the horns, trombones, tuba, bass drum and timpani between [P] and [R] are all new to the piece. Maybe that addition was "just right," the slight addition which is gradually dispelling any doubt I have of that bit.

My feeling last night was, maybe there is nothing "wrong" with the piece; and even if there may be, there is no need to "fix" it this week.

This morning, I think it may just be fine. So: keep still another 24 hours, and see what I think tomorrow morning.

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