Symphony, first movement: how to proceed?

(As posted to Facebook 12 October)

"Though we seemed dead, we did but sleep...."
~ French herald in Henry V

(Symphony Update)

While no more notes have landed on the page since Sunday's session, there has been (in a musically pertinent sense) mental activity. Partly, I've thought of events/passages to follow (setting many of them temporarily aside, as not The Right Thing for measure # 58, where the score of the first movement presently stops); partly, I've been digesting the musical Stuff of what is presently composed.

This last may sound odd. "He wrote it; doesn't he himself GET it?" But recall that my goal this weekend past was a musical object possessed of a certain sufficiency, to serve as a lump of workable sonic clay. It was the result of musical caprice, an impromptu. In a word, I thought it sounded fairly good, and that it would be something to work with; yet the creation was, I won't say a speedy affair, but the idea was, do first, and reflect after. (There are many situations in Life where that is NOT the way to proceed, but I've found I can compose like this to no one's hurt.)

So one of the things I've done is, study my own score, reduce the pitch material to a compact phrase, the clearer to make further use of what is already in the piece, so that the composition contains, among other things, ample self-reference and musical affirmations.

That done ... I now go to paper. Just regular, blank paper, to sketch, arrange, fiddle with verbal and graphic scribblings with which my inner ear will associate a variety of musical elements and ideas, some of them more or less specific, some of them vague but nevertheless real. The broad idea is a kind of blueprint, although I caution you from considering it as anything as fixed as an architect's blueprint must perforce be. The arrangement, ratios, and content of these visual blocks will quite probably alter over time as I work on the piece; since of course what ultimately matters is the success of the sound of the music.

This sort of sketch is a kind of "pre-compositional" activity which I've used in the past, although by now, in quite the distant past. It is an ancillary process which was very helpful earlier in my composing, and which I largely internalized. It's kind of a fun "back to basics" activity which, I think, helps me to ritualize and affirm this formal embarkation upon the composing of a symphony.

So that's the tale for today.