... sore labour's bath ...

In time, you will find everything.  If only you recollect where last you set it down.

No matter how good your work, no matter how strong and sustained your work ethic, or how hard soever you may strive–your efforts may not, in fact, ever be rewarded.  Nor can you expect any other body to give much of a damn.

– Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

Well, I didn’t get here by being smart.

– Nick Danger (the late, great Phil Austin) in Bride of Firesign

The agony of his countenance, the convulsive struggle of his frame, gave evidence of superhuman exertion:  but no sound, save a solitary shriek, escaped from his lacerated lips, which were bitten through and through in the intensity of terror.

– Edgar Allan Poe, “Metzengerstein”

“It’s human life, Washington–just an epitome of human ambition, and struggle, and the outcome:  you aim for the palace and get drowned in the sewer.”

– Mark Twain, “The American Claimant”

Now, I have a clear idea of how I want to “let out seams,” and expand the fixed media for A Heart So White.  Also, I have a fair idea of how I want to write for the live winds (no clarinet–I am fairly certain I shall need to conduct).

But perhaps there is no need to let out any seams–the fixed media as I first fixed it (as it were) in April runs about ten minutes.  As I ‘speak’ the scene, in what feels a fair, dramatic pace, it clocks in at less than five minutes.  Singing (and minimal employment of ‘musical’ cæsuræ) expands it a bit beyond six minutes.  Allowing for introduction, for some instrumental participation, for extended pauses at key points in the scene . . . extending the piece to twelve minutes may not be crazy.

Or . . . maybe just leave the fixed media as is.  More research is indicated.