Brightest and Best

Last night I prepared an arrangement of Star of the East from The Southern Harmony for my choir's rehearsal tonight, and which we shall sing this Sunday morning.  Because that's how we roll.

I also composed my allotted ten measures' worth of Clarinet Sonata today.  A triumph, all around, although this post to the blog is most brief.

Movements five

More work on the bus ride this morning. Having a lot of fun writing this one.

Originally, I was thinking three movements, but in the back of my mind this began to seem template-ish. I quickly moved (a day or two ago) to thoughts of four movements. This morning, as I was toweling off after the morning ablutions, the thought flitted through my sleepy neurons, Viola Sonata . . . Clarinet Sonata . . . what instrument next? Va Sta in three movements, Cl Sta in four . . . five movements for the third?

And then I thought, No - I'll cast the Clarinet Sonata in five movements, with a short clarinet unaccompanied mvt, and the three middle movements attacca (or does that just make it three big movements?)

I was also originally thinking that the whole piece would run half an hour, but as I start taping out the five movements, we just may run the clock to 40 minutes, if we can make it worth the audience's time.

i. Another Think Coming [ Allegro ]
ii. Boulez est mort [ Adagio ]
iii. Ambiguity & Overlap (Something or other, if not something else entirely) [ Vivo ]
iv. Unanticipated Serenity [ Allegretto grazioso ]
v. After a reading of "The Mysterious Stranger" [ Andante - Vivace assai - Andante ]

Just checking in

Logging today's progress on the Op.136.

Stealth Sonata

In writing the Viola Sonata for Dana, there was a deadline, which I met in good time by determining to get some work done on the piece every day, composing at least 10 measures every day.

Maybe that sounds as though the process is "forced," that there would be days where I write measures which aren't good enough and need to be replaced, thrown out.  But in fact, the consistent activity means that my mind is attuned to the piece;  so that the work was in fact quite apt, and of sustainedly good quality.  In practice, I often wrote a good deal more than the 10 measures "required";  so the "hum of productivity" kept me buoyed.

I have no such deadline for the Clarinet Sonata, but I am adopting the same method.  What is different now is, that the decision to write the piece was whimsical, so that before I started work yesterday, there was no "pre-compositional planning" . . . I just hurled noteheads onto the page.  Pretty much did the same today;  but after a few days, a plan will have begun to form;  and then, as I wrap up the first movement, ideas will gel in the back of my musical mind for the remaining movements.

So now, there is a full 30 seconds of Allegro music of the piece.

And tomorrow is another day.

Another Think Coming

More than five years have passed since I wrote my Viola Sonata for Dana Huyge.

Today (and even though, no, I do not necessarily know a pianist who would play it with me) I have begun work on the Clarinet Sonata, whose first movement is titled Another Think Coming.

More Bliss

Here on Ye Blog, I reported yesterday that I finished the quartet for clarinet, two guitars and double-bass called Things Like Bliss; just an interlude, really, a bit more than four minutes in duration. I was listening to the MIDI in Media Monkey (part of my QC testing process), and somehow I had left Media Monkey set on continuous play, so that at the end of the piece, it just started right back up. And I thought, in the case of this piece, that da capo actually works reasonably well.

At first, I really was thinking of a straightforward Da capo marking, and then a "second ending"; but I felt that instead I did want to have a (gently) through-composed repeat. As a result the new version is actually a tad more than twice the duration of the original, about nine minutes long. And then, too, I felt that after all, I had no quarrel with the initial four-minute version of the piece, and decided that I did not need to choose between the two versions, but could let them happily coexist.

New Year's adventure

On my first walk of 2016, I took a path I had never walked before.  It led me something of a merry chase, as I was sure I should make my way back to a path I knew, but the new path twisted, and rose up a ridge, and there were forking paths, and daylight was fading.  I met some three or four rabbits on my way, but fortunately none of the coyotes for which the area is rather known after dark.

The quartet for clarinet, two guitars and double-bass which I began so well on Hallowe'en, Things Like Bliss, lay practically untouched all the while since.  I took it back up today, and I think it is probably finished.  Only probably, as the guitarists need to confirm that some of the repeated notes are manageable at the tempo indicated.  It is only a modest piece, a mere interlude, but getting to the final double-bar of a piece how humble soever is the right way to bring in the new year.