07 June 2018

Time enough to represent the composer well

Good progress on both dances.  Choir rehearsal tonight, so the work today and tomorrow is more of (alternately) the preparatory and the refining sort.

Weeks before The Event, I considered taking a couple of days off from the day job, so as to have more days than just the Saturdays and Sundays when I might devote The Whole Day to composing.

But I considered too (or, instead) how perfectly content I am with both Deep Breath and The Nerves, two recent scores which I wrote without drawing down my PTO balance at the office – I did the work around the day job (as I do most of the year), and it is music whose integrity and quality are such to make the composer proud.

So I decided I would not take any time off from work.  That I would not set my unknown competitors at such a disadvantage . . . .

The church is now the grateful recipient of a “Used – Like New” upright piano from a gracious and generous donor.  The instrument has only today been brought into the sanctuary, and so it needs to settle before it can be tuned.  But later this month, its voice will impress the whole congregation as being a signal improvement upon the rather sorry instrument we have had until today.

There is another call for orchestral scores, for which the deadline is Monday the 11th.  I was thinking of adapting Ear Buds for that occasion;  but since I did not address that proposed task sooner, there is now no time.  And that’s fine.  Also – it is not as if my work has met with any success, on earlier calls from that organization.  Sure, I’ll try again at some future date;  but there is no need to complicate my life this week over so slender a chance.

All my chances, it may be, are of the slender variety.  Nevertheless, I do take them.


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