20 May 2010

Carrying on

A friend who came to the King’s Chapel concert day before yesterday had some suggestions about the piece on the program which I have been apt to refer to as a daft experiment.

My catalogue has accumulated items enough of (what I am content to imagine is) musical weight, that I felt at perfect ease writing a daft experiment, a piece which is under no great burden for repeated programming. That said, my fellow performer and I were both surprised on the upside (in the parlance of our times), and even considering it for an odd, one-off work, I like it quite well as it is.

My aforementioned friend offered suggestions which he himself pointed out essentially amounted to how he would write the piece. I think I surprised him by having no great quarrel with that (he joked to the effect of, “Now you can beat the stuffing out of me”).

Last night, I attended a concert devoted nearly exclusively to music of Larry Bell; all of it very well and musically performed, none of it less than very good, and three of the pieces I liked a great deal indeed. Now, in considering the pieces upon which my momentary, instantaneous affection did not fix quite so keenly—what was “wrong” with them? Nothing which would not boil down simply to how I might have worked matters otherwise. And there is no reason why any other composer should go about his business just the way I do.

Fact is, the fewer composers there are who operate like Karl Henning, the better Karl Henning likes it.

Carry on.

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