Update and Latest

Many a fad have I seen fade.

– Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail

I thought thou wert good: but I said, and wept:
Can I have dreamed who have not slept?

— Geo. MacDonald, Phantastes

Gentle Reader, this is but my third blog post of the year, which must of itself be an indicator. I seem to be asking myself What is different now, and how do I proceed? Before my stroke, a few things were true (as probably evidenced on this blog. I had a lot of steam for composing, notwithstanding what we might call limited professional encouragement. I have likely mentioned before that a friend of mine told me he only composes when commissioned to. I am enormously pleased for him. For my part, I simply don't see how that happens: if I composed only to commission, I should by this point have written hardly anything at all. Particularly as regards orchestral music, I should have written only The Wind, the Sky, and the Wheeling Stars, an experience for which I remain grateful to Yoichi Udagawa and the Quincy Symphony. Likewise, I Sang to the Sky, and Day Broke, thanks to Andrew Levin and the Clemson University Orchestra. Knowing (as I do now) the challenges a Music Director faces in "selling" music by a living composer to the board of a community orchestra, it's something of a marvel that I enjoyed the performance in Quincy. The practical takeaway, in a sense: Not much ever resulted from either performance, in terms of either more orchestras playing either piece, nor of further orchestral commissions. Setting aside the question of why I even bothered, all the orchestral music I’ve composed since has been on spec, and to date has gotten nowhere. Nevertheless, my present point is simply that prior to my stroke, I was not stingy with my compositional energies. Another thing which was true earlier is, I would typically be at work on more than one piece at a time. I was eager, I suppose that there would be more music of mine in the universe.

When I was first discharged from rehab after the stroke, I was eager to resume composing. I even managed to complete at long last that flagship of Henningmusick for which the world appears to have no use, the ballet White Nights. One thing which is unavoidably true of my life in recovery from the stroke is: I have less energy than I used to have. I wonder if what also may be true is, that I feel less ability to combat the cumulative disappointments.

My post today is not to etch anything definitive in stone, but to reflect on what I feel and think, I suppose.

possibly as early as late April, I made a start on the eleventh organ solo piece of the Opus 169 set, for Mark Frazier, and based (per Mark’s request) on the tune Mit Freuden Zart. For some time, the piece was stalled at fewer than ten measures. Last week,  I worked on it a bit. I was unsure that I liked it, really, and wondered if I might just need to throw it out and start afresh. The really important thing about last week, though, is that I determined to return to the minimal discipline of composing even just a little every day.  I came to feel that my earlier dissatisfaction with the start of the grateful song my voice unwearied raises (a title which nearly acquired ironic undertones, as it did not much reflect my experience these days) was not with the material itself, but with not knowing where I was going, and wondering if, in fact, I was going nowhere. I suppressed what a friend has cited as “Impostor Syndrome,” and entertained the hypothesis that the piece was workable/redeemable. And I did, in fact, finish it yesterday.

In the course of a conversation with Orlando Cela this spring, I suggested that I might write a new flute duet for him and his partner, Wei Zhao. And on 27 June, I did make a start on Music for the Un-Hip Hop. In the spirit of my multi-tasking erewhile, I alternated between work on the flute duo and the organ piece. The former is now not quite a minute long, so the work is inching along, but some work is work, eh?

In some ways, the biggest job I have undertaken this year has been my review of the box of  Dimitri Mitropoulos reissues from Sony.