No Particular Place to Go (or, The Up Side of Vexation)

What if the Think Tanks were Thin Tanks?
Cathartic Karaoke
Boomerang meringue
Facebook is offering to translate "hiya" for me.

– Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail

Bugs Bunny, voiced by Mel Blanc: “Aren't you ashamed of yourself?!—roasting children!”
Witch Hazel, voiced by June Foray (coyly): “Call it a weakness.”

I noted yesterday that I have a current work-in-progress for the Henning Ensemble, Dark Side of the Sun. But what you do not yet know, Gentle Reader, since my blogging has been so unreliable and desultory, is that this is now the second work-in-progress presently on my desk. Back in September I began a new chamber orchestra piece, O singer, bashful and tender, I hear your tender notes. My first piece for chamber orchestra, For You, Fuchsia, having as yet gone nowhere, I thought I’d add a companion for the portfolio. Why? Well, that’s undeniably a question, and a q. with as yet more substance, almost, than the piece. I wrote a kind of beginning, and I've also written some material for somewhere in the middle. But the piece has suffered from the author’s as yet insufficient investment in where it ought to go, and what its character ought to be. The good news is that Dark Side does not labor under these deficiencies. Either that, or it matters less in this case that the question dangles. I seem to see myself applying myself further to Dark Side next week. If I should, you’ll read about it here.

One peculiar wrinkle in my present experience is that, having expressed here how little compositional motivation 2024 has seen, compared to the past, I allowed a call for pieces for low clarinet choir and brass choir to provoke me to write two short, punchy pieces, both of which I like a great deal: Crazy in a Bottle, Op. 194 and Lord of the Things, Op. 195. Crazy in a Bottle was born out of a very slight disappointment. I had seen a call for pieces for clarinet choir, and my first thought was: "Great, now I’ve somewhere to send Misapprehension." But then, looking closer at the call, the scoring (Basset Horn, Alto Clarinet, Bass Clarinet [up to 8 separate parts] Contralto clarinet, Contrabass clarinet) was completely incompatible with Misapprehension. Out of the annoyance that there was still no home for the Opus 112, I set to writing something new. Some material from C. in a B. may just find its way into Dark Side, and why not? Also, it is not strictly true to suggest that Fuchsia has as yet gone nowhere, since we have presented Fuchsia Minor at King’s.

@karl-henning-1