Towards a Lecturette

...and wouldn’t it be my luck

To be caught without a ticket

And be discovered beneath a truck.

Time will tell just who has fell

And who’s been left behind,

When you go your way and I go mine.

— Bob Dylan né Robt Zimmerman

[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,

nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.

His only competition was with himself.

— Françoise Gilot

Weeks remain to me for the figuring out, but figure out what to say to an audience, about my composition, before they listen to it, I must. Highly encouraging is the report of an excellent rehearsal of the Op.116.

High-level points (in the parlance of our times):

1. A composer is possibly just like anyone else, only he wants to bring into the world new sounds, not just the sounds that we all already know, much of which we already love.
2. I am not only a composer, but a performer. I am never remote from the audience.
3. While it is not a question of musical talent per se, many of us, on first listening to a piece which is new to us, have the experience, not of being puzzled by what may at first sound unusual, but of finding the sounds, the content, engaging and even attractive--whether we “completely understand” it, or not.
4. If I baked you a chocolate cake, my intention would be that you enjoy it, not that you “understand” it.
5. The very first time that we heard the Beethoven Fifth Symphony: did we completely “understand” it?
6. What have I done, in this piece?

Maybe I won’t use all of this. Maybe I shall.

Three days to the Ear Buds decision.