Jeu d'esprit

In the first place, no: I am not exactly sure why.

I had other (and soberer) music which I needed to write, and instead I dedicated the laborious portion of a (mostly relaxing) Sunday afternoon (ye gods, such profanation on the Sabbath Day!) to this rather absurd item.  I do not believe I had ever before considered a stylish re-scoring of the Pachelbel Canon, and why this particular thought careened through my brain at this particular time baffles me.

It must have been the money.

The parameters were simple:  (a) I wanted my own ear to be engaged and amused by the unfolding textures; (b) I limited myself to those instruments which sound reasonably good "out of the box" in the Sibelius sound library;  and (c) since this was purely a matter of generating a sound-file, and not any practical matter of assembling actual musicians, I just chose sounds as they occurred to and pleased me, not worrying about logistics of transporting instruments or hiring players.

If it takes on, though, an actual score could be produced . . . .

Uncondemned

Yesterday a message came from Orlando, a message not only approving warmly of the Op.132, but with the sound suggestion of placing the two flutists a bit apart on stage, to bring out the score's antiphonal aspects.  We may have a performance as soon as September.

This past weekend, then, a message came from the much-esteemed and always-celebrated Peter H. Bloom, asking on behalf of his cousin if I might make (an easy switch in Sibelius) a version of The Crystalline Ship for voice & euphonium, for Joe Broom (now a student at the University of Michigan).  I then was prompted to ask Joe if he might have use for pieces with piano.  I was actually thinking of adapting the Little Suite, Op.127 (and indeed, I shall likely act on that thought);  but, my eye fell first upon the folder with ... illa existimans quia hortulanus esset ...., and I thought of how I've scarcely heard anything from Kirstin on it.  Thus I found myself adapting the Op.121 for euphonium, first.

Today is the deadline for putting our hats in the ring for conducting duties for the fall's Triad concert.  Will report when the assignments are finalized.

From the Archives: After a concert at Jordan Hall

[ 14 Mar 2002 ]

The Symphonies of Wind Instruments was even better than fond memory led me to expect. In other recordings (none of which have I heard especially recently, but the latest I remember being a Dutoit effort), sadly, some of the strongest "retention" was the impression of screechy clarinets in the block which opens (and, since it comes back, with this timbral barbarity, gave the impression of the Unwelcome Guest who didn't know enough to stay away ...

... but even this block sounded balanced and warm. The whole piece was a joy to hear ringing in Jordan Hall. The alto flute did an awful lot of swaying, but if that's her mode, let her at it; she played fine (and the alto flute always gives me the impression of requiring more air than a tuba). The alto flute and alto clarinet duet has to be experienced to be believed; and, having once experienced it, it is impossible to believe that Stravinsky himself would give that up in a revision. It is a fact that he did, but it is a sonically impossible fact.

The closing Meno mosso (Tempo primo) section was astoundingly beautiful; I don't know when I've heard three trumpets play with such sensitive intonation, and indeed with such timbral sympathy that they sounded like a single trumpet. When the flutes and clarinets were added for the last page, the effect was magical, not as though new color were being added, but as though a highlight was cast on the color already on the canvas.

They played the Ives very well, too. Indeed (at once to paraphrase a hobbit, and subvert his meaning) I almost felt I liked Ives, while they were playing. They did a terrific job. The test of a wind transcription is, not wishing that there were the original strings, instead (but maybe there weren't original strings ... the program notes hinted at a band version of a [no longer extant] organ piece .. so maybe the strings were added by Ives).

But at the last, I was forcefully reminded of a complaint I have brought to Ives' door before -- for as I walked from Jordan Hall to the T stop, what was sounding in my inner ear was the march tune. And when Ives writes in a way that you remember a ta-da-da-taaa tune that he "quotes" and not Ives, well, you ain't remembering Ives, are you?

The surprise quiet coda, while theoretically the point, doesn't stay with you; the boorish blat of the brass band has had too heavy a sonic footprint.

The NEC Jazz Composers Orchestra (somebody help me but, decent ensemble though they were, this is an abuse of the word orchestra) had opened the program with a tune called Dreams. It was all right, without striking me as anything special. The trumpets/flugelhorns could have benefited from contemplating the wonderful intonation evidenced in the Stravinsky performance. I have a hard time taking seriously any clarinetist who plays with puffy cheeks. I mean, if he sounded like he had control, puffy cheeks notwithstanding, I could handle that.

But these clarinets sounded every bit like the cheeks were puffy.

There was a bass clarinet, but the way the "head" was written, you didn't care. Another sharp contrast with the Stravinsky, in which, while the alto clarinet was expected to have fully the facility of a soprano clarinetist, the part was brilliantly written with the registral characteristics of the alto in mind.

A most enjoyable evening at the hall.

Drone addendum

By seeming chance, there is fresh word today from Scott, from hospital, where he was admitted 4 August for (his third bout with) meningitis. Lift him in prayer.

Droning on

Addendum to yesterday's post: Scott presently resides (and we hope he's doing ever better) in Lima, Perú.

Although date(s) & venue(s) are yet t/b/d, the next Triad concert will be in November, and we shall sing Nuhro. So my thoughts have turned to what I should tell the crew about the piece, as we begin rehearsing.

The Kronos string quartet played a concert in Tallinn while I was there, and of course, I had the nerve to go backstage afterwards and introduce myself to them. As you can judge by the fact that they've never played my music, I did not reap beneficial fruits from my exercise of impertinence. Or, perhaps I did, at that ....

Most members of the quartet brushed me off (not rudely, just with unfeigned disinterest) with some dispatch. It was the violist, John Sherba, who drew the short straw, and I enjoyed a few minutes' conversation with him. Since the group (a) play very well, and (b) play music written by the living, unsolicited scores inundate them. This was the time of the first crest of the "World Music" rage-wave, and Mr Sherba, with only a hint of well-earned annoyance, gave me to understand that in perhaps 67% of the scores they read, there would be a drone; and that roughly 115% of these would assign the drone to the viola. So that reading prospective scores was not always a gratifying prospect for the violist.

For the player: what a hell of a time, being a world-class performer, and you read a score where you sustain an E for five minutes. For the composer: what lack of imagination, to have so enviable a resource as an outstanding string player, only to have him sustain an E for five minutes.

Back in Tallinn, I told Mr Sherba that, if I send a new string quartet to Kronos (— he did not hold out any great hope, so I assumed none —) it would without fail include a passage marked, The John Sherba Memorial Drone.

The lesson I took from this tale of mind-numbing horror was: yes, drones can be a beautiful, even a powerful musical effect; but the composer still has responsibilities both to the health and wellness of the performer, and the sonic stimulation of the listener.

As I worked on Nuhro with its drones, pedal-tones (or pedal-intervals), and unhurried tread, I paid close attention to the pacing, I made a point in the unfolding design of varying both textures, and centers of registral gravity. I labored over it all the more, as the pitch-center is relatively constant through the piece (one of the factors of relative stasis). I wanted the piece to be beautiful, and I was eager that it should in no way be dull.

When at last, I reached the end, and I thought and reconsidered and wondered if it really were done, if there really remained nothing which I ought in good musical conscience to adjust or improve, it was August, and my wife asked me if I did not want to go to the beach. I certainly did. The final stage of composing Nuhro, of weighing the question whether it really were done, was the composer wading out calmly into the surf, and replaying the nascent piece in his inner ear, and feeling a profound harmony between his outer and interior experiences.

It was on the sands of Cape Anne, that I knew I had written what was probably the best music I had made to that point.

The Groove in Perú

It was not exactly what I had in view, either as part of musical activities yesterday, nor as the piece upon which to perform this operation, but I've now adapted ... illa existimans quia hortulanus esset .... for euphonium. More on that afterwards.

What I did mean to do yesterday, was continue work on From the Pit of a Cave in the Cloud; and I did manage to make some progress. I was mildly mired in consideration that I want this to be a 12-minute piece, and the Adagio opening runs almost a full minute, but addresses only the slightest fraction of the text. But, then, we always wanted to up the tempo for much of the work. More on this, too, afterwards.

An old Buffalo mate of mine, Scott Tinney, surfaced on Facebook, and in June he called generally for any and all composer friends to write him 15-second pieces. I think that, just at the time I saw his call, I was puttering yet with the audition portion of a piece for double quintet (m. on that a.) So the weekend of 27/28 June I wrote one 15-second piece. Over the course of the first week in July, I wrote the second, third, and fourth pieces; and I already knew that I was not just going to write four of them. I quickly (or quickly-ish) decided on a set of 20 in emulation of Prokofiev's early (and, no argument, more substantial) set, which gave me a title:

Visions fugitives de nouveau, Op.131

№ 1: One Leaf
№ 2: Versuch eines Milonga
№ 3: Beneath the Clear Sky
№ 4: That Tickles!
№ 5: Stephen Goes to California
№ 6: Kay's Blue Crabs
№ 7: Questionable Insistence
№ 8: Morning Prayer
№ 9: Bunny Keeping Still
№ 10: Gamboling Squirrels
№ 11: The Street Musician
№ 12: The Shade of an Oak
№ 13: "Could you change one more thing?"
№ 14: Waiting
№ 15: Bicycling in Boston Common
№ 16: Mist on the Harbor
№ 17: Peter Moves to Montréal
№ 18: Seeing a Long-Since-Cancelled Stamp
№ 19: ... but his mind is elsewhere
№ 20: Starless Summer Night

The set was done by 11 July.

Post-hiatus

The blog has been idle, but the composer has not.  Gentle Reader, I shall not try thy patience by catching everything up in this post.

Night before last, I finished (at last) a flute duo for Orlando Cela.  (How I came to write the duo is a mildly amusing story.)  I then allowed that last draft to "cure" ... the novelty for me in the process of this piece, is related to typographic concerns. There is an idea I had for the final section, which I have probably thrown out. (Really, I reserve it for yet fuller execution in the new Schulte setting.) So, Friday evening I made my way to a provisionally final double-bar. I then began the trying phase: stress-testing the draught, deciding on places where (1) I might wish to make an adjustment, and (2) where my gut felt strongly I must make an adjustment.

The novelty, though, is that I regulated both (1) and (2) by the consideration of parts layout. All this while working on the piece, I wondered if I should "cheat" by just ("just"!) having the two players read from score together. At heart, I knew I must not settle for that cheat. So I checked the parts each time I made an adjustment. Perhaps inevitably, I began to devise adjustments specifically to yield a page turn here (for Flute 1) and there (for Flute 2).

So, yesterday morning, I reached the point where, now that changes are in place so that both players have convenient page-turns (itself, a perfectly reasonable and practical consideration), I wanted to make sure the piece works and flows as well as I felt it did before I began a-tampering.

And I find that these mundanely-driven alterations to the piece in no way impair the composition.  And thus, Neither do I condemn thee, Op.132 for two flutes, is now finished.

Downside: No idea when it may be performed.

Upside: I know three flutists (including the commissioner) who will take an active interest in the piece, and I am sure they will all like it.

Downstream upside: Will be eminently marketable at the annual flutey-toot conventions.

Why-didn't-I-think-of-this-before? Upside:  In November I made the acquaintance of a flutist in the ASO, whom we may interest in the piece, too.