27 May 2018

Half Done

If, that is, the process of writing the movement conforms to the original intention, and The Nerves has a final run time of seven minutes, then, after today’s work, ’tis half done, the first movement of Karl’s Big (But Happily Incomplete) Map to the Body.

I reached a point where I was thinking of bringing back the beginning.  And I did paste in the opening accented chord—but I immediately felt that to bring back the beginning would be Business As Usual, and not The Right Thing.  What I did feel I wanted, and right there, was a brief unpitched percussion ensemble interlude.  The first 15 seconds are percussion alone;  and then, when I start a varied repetition, I decided that was just the right moment for a duet, piccolo and baritone saxophone.  I continued to sculpt time with “non-static clusters” set against a fourth-ey monody;  and this section’s two parts bleed into one another with a Sibelian scoring trick.

So, just having good fun with the process, and with the result.


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