Cello on, cello on in majesty

Sara Crigger, the cellist for whom I wrote Nicodemus... will be playing it tomorrow evening, and advises me that there will be video.

And the piece has impressed her teacher, who has asked for more Henningmusick with cello . . . so there may be hope for It's all in your head (not that that's a bad place for everything to be) after all!

And some more

Today was a bit of a blur . . . rehearsal with the handbells ran late, so I wound up arriving at the Rivers School Conservatory after the concert had begun, but (happily) well before my Cello Sonatina, which young Celeste McGinty played bravely and beautifully.

Today was the day, too, when (quite possibly) Paul Cienniwa, in the interests of building a sense of ensemble among the ladies' chorus who will sing along with the New Bedford Symphony for Holst's The Planets, may have had them start to read the 3-part women's choir version of the Alleluia in D.

This may have been the morning when my music was sung at King's Chapel . . . or it may be this Sunday coming.  Word will come, I doubt not, in season.

Big Henningmusick weekend

I have heard the recording of last night's performance, and Kirstin Seitz Peltz and Vytas Baksys gave an exquisite performance of Nicodemus brings myrrh & aloes for the burial of the Christ.  Tomorrow, one of Kirstin's cello students, Celeste McGinty, will play the première of the Cello Sonatina at one o'clock.

And The Mystic Trumpeter calls to me now and again . . . so I have petitioned a soprano to have a look.  Of course, it may not suit her voice (or, she may simply not care for the piece).  But we shall see.

Tomorrow morning, my choir will sing my arrangement of the Maronite chant of Psalm 91.

My choir

Just had a lovely (if hard-working) rehearsal.  Love working with these folks. Good night!

Apropos of nothing in particular

I don't know if fortune-cookie fortunes are the same all over;  certainly, these fortunes are different than I remember from my boyhood.  But at this time, and in the Boston area, at any rate, on one side there is a fortune, on the other, a word or phrase to learn in Chinese.

Quite amusingly, on the reverse of this serene fortune...is the Chinese for headache.

No foolin'

Thank you all!

What words of encouragement or advice can I offer, from my privileged vantage as a reasonably famous composer, and celebrated by peers the world over? First off, it's absolutely true, what you've heard all this time: music is a business, one more of a number of industries, and your work will mean nothing if you cannot create music with a market; your greatest priority is to learn to market yourself, no other skill really matters. One used to hear objections on the order of "but music is an art"; the bottom line, though, is that art is goods, and goods can be marketed and sold. If the art is not goods, what good can it be? "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money," wrote Samuel Johnson, and Lord knows he was paid to write it.

Knowing that the saleability of your music is its raison d'être, for what higher inspiration could the composer ask than the check? Well, perhaps an even higher inspiration in our days of more advanced technology: the direct deposit! A more satisfying reason to get writing could not be desired.

Some envious souls have criticized my music for (as in the darkness of their minds they are fond to snipe) supposed limitations of expression, for using and re-using a handful of musical devices. The first answer to this is: if it is good enough for the institutions who repeatedly commission me to write the music, isn't their money endorsement enough? The second answer is a related point: the audience bought 300,000 copies of the compact disc with the first piece, so we know those musical ideas sell, there is a market! I am proud to say that, having found a sound with a ready market of CD-buyers, and therefore a marketing agent who sees the opportunity to furnish more iterations of similar product, because its marketability is proven. I am gratified to observe simply that, if anyone cavils that twenty notes in my latest piece are pretty much the same 20 notes as can be found in another piece or two from earlier seasons, they sell no less well, because the listeners know they are notes they like.

There are set-backs, to be sure. Soon after his appointment here at the Boston Symphony Orchestra, maestro Andris Nelsons contacted me, eager to commission a new work. "Andris-baby," I firmly insisted, "you know my terms: if you cannot guarantee me at least three sarrusophones, and a section of handcrafted Malawi nose-flutes played by properly trained players, you deny me the most basic of compositional freedoms. Get back to me when you're ready to talk nose-flute."

What of the future? Now that the ballet White Nights has at last been finished, dance companies in New York, Chicago, Lyons, Genoa, Karachi and St Petersburg are eager to mount productions, and the question really is, which of them is hungry enough for the honor of the première?