Truisms for 7-7-17

Not necessarily the harsh sort of irony:  in the empty-ish cubicle of a former co-worker, I find the hand-written exhortation, “You have to accept your journey!” (Including the exclamation point.)

Possibly to be interpreted as contradicting that, and similarly hand-written (so that I cannot supply the source of the Statement of Disinterest):  “I have no interest in being a skydiver who’s successful 95% of the time.”

Separately, in his remarks while accepting the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award, director Frank Capra offered:  “Only the valiant can create.”

For my own part, I consider the work on the ballet thus far, from the oldest numbers which I composed in 2003, to this very week’s labors, entirely successful, musically. The ballet has been an unusual and protracted journey, and I have always accepted that. I formally renew acceptance of the journey, today. There was never any occasion to apologize for “delays” (—not delays: the journey!—) because there was no second party to whom a score or set of parts was due on any date; the only person to whom I have been responsible for the course of the project has always been, myself.  I have had the desire to bring the piece to a conclusion, and I have also trusted both my Muse, and the Time. I have only waited.

Working on Scene 9 this evening.

The Outline, evolving and expanding

The illustration is from the first full outline of the ballet, which probably dates from 2003.  The bracketed “[ sc. vii ]” and “[ sc. viii ]” were added later (I cannot hazard any good guess when), in different ink.  What on this page is “Scene vii / II.iv” – and because it is [complex] and (episodic) – I later unpacked into:

• Scene 7: Nastenka’s Story Begun
• Scene 8: At the Opera, and
• Scene 9: Nastenka’s Story Concluded

. . . the whole sequence being a nested narrative, Nastenka telling the Dreamer her life’s story . . . and then Night the Second concludes with a return to ‘the present,’ Nastenka speaking to the Dreamer.

My initial 2003 guess that this sequence (Scenes 7-9) would run 20 minutes, is not too bad.  The outline as later modified already expanded that slightly;  and as I get to actual composition, the music’s duration is shaping up to perhaps 26 minutes or so.  Assuming that Scene 9 does not get out of hand . . . .

2008 Outline

Nine years and five days later, I look closer at some papers in my White Nights folder, and lo! we see the note: Rossiniana; find sketches.

(These notes pre-date the blog, incidentally.)

Stay of Execution, or, The Piece It Took Me 14 Years to Write

The ballet after White Nights lay dormant many years, Gentle Reader:  I started it in 2003, worked at it in fits, got about 90 minutes of the music written, and then I stalled.

I don’t mean that my composing stalled, for I have written much music else, most of it with more immediate prospects for performance than a big ol’ ballet in which the composer (nearly alone) took any interest.  Still, Scene 8 of the ballet has been my closest encounter with Writer’s Block.  I never actually gave voice to the rhetorical question, Rossini, que me veux-tu?, but at times, it was a near thing.

Getting the Symphony chopped out in good order, though, has helped me get over whatever the block was.  And now the Clarinet Sonata is done, I’m bearing down on White Nights until it is absolutely done, by year’s end.

The scene which I had not written over all the long years is an adaptation of Rossini. In the novella, a young man lodging with Nastenka and her Granny takes them to the opera to see the Barber of Seville. My plan from the beginning was for this scene, musically, to be an extended splice of the Overtures to the Barber, and La gazza ladra. Because the piece would invoke familiar source material, I wanted to be sure to do it just right (by my own lights, granted).

Completing this scene has been my own private Philosopher’s Stone.  In 2014, the summer of recreating the already-composed numbers of White Nights as Sibelius files, I returned to the scene, in brief earnest, composing a one-minute introduction which stands pat still.

As of today, Independence Day 2017, I have at long last finished composing Scene 8: At the Opera, and my heart exults that I have written it just as I have always wished I might write it.  No, even better, I swear.  It is A. recognizably Rossini;  B. recognizably Henning;  and C. belongs to the White Nights.

There will be challenges to arranging a performance (even a concert performance) of the entire ballet. (And I am writing the music so that it will make an engaging experience even in concert.)  Why, there have been challenges to arranging performances of any of the music from the ballet.  This is not a complaint—I am writing the piece because I want to write the piece.  And I’m in it for the long game.

(There is one Scene from Night the Second which I arranged for an ad hoc instance of The k a rl h e nn i ng Ensemble, which we performed in Woburn perhaps eight years ago.)

I have been thinking of the thin edge of the wedge.  I used to think that the Overture might serve (and it may yet in future, perhaps).  But I have now fancied that the present scene, under the alternate title of Il barbiere ladro, may be more readily saleable. The novel approach to / use of music already familiar to the average concert-goer, and its suitability (I think) for either regular season or Pops festival use should be an argument in its favor.

But, for now, enough speculation about where the piece may or may not go:  today I rejoice that the piece is done, and that it is everything, musically, which I could have wished of it.  Everything, and more.

henningmusick: Accelerando al fine

henningmusick: Accelerando al fine



Three years ago, I was making progress with new Sibelius files of all the numbers already composed for White Nights.  This was all a refamiliarization process, whose goal eventually was the composition of Scene 8 (and then, the remainder of the ballet).


Here this year, Scene 8 is tonight in the first phase of Being Done;  that is, I have found my way to the final double-bar. I am still stress-testing all the joins, and confirming the pacing.  And I need to go through the horn and trombone lines and add some material. So it will very possibly be completely done tomorrow. Which of itself, is a huge step for this composer, and for the ballet.

Can just about taste it

Well then Fido got up off the floor an’ he rolled over, an’ he looked me straight in the eye, an’ you know what he said? “Once upon a time, somebody say to me,” (this is a dog talkin’ now) “What is your Conceptual Continuity?”

For a while (and yet, unless I am mistaken, not before 2017—so it may be an argument for not having finished the scene sooner) I realized that I wanted to bind this apparently independent excursion into Rossiniana to the ballet as a whole, by alluding to the opening of the Overture.  It works very easily in terms of instrumentation, adding only the harp to the Rossini orchestra (allowing for a slight revoicing of the initial trichord—in the Overture, three flutes, here readily recast for picc/fl/cl 1).

The incredibly wonderful idea (as I see it) which came to me only yesterday is, to take what in the Overture is apparently a digressive rhythmic invention (a passage I have always loved, and would never have considered alteration or withdrawing) after rehearsal letter S, and likewise plugging it in as an episode other than Rossini, and which likewise strengthens the ties to the ballet.  (Lest a hostile critic—and face it:  If you build it, the hostile critics will come—dismiss the Scene as mere pastiche.)

So my work this morning was essentially to realize this vision, and holy cats, I love it;  I think it one of the most perfect musical touches I’ve brushed onto a musical canvas.

There is nothing second-rate about this belated return to the completion of the ballet;  it will be (as I have always hoped and meant for it to be) one of the works of which I can be proudest.

The most important “repair” I am going to need to apply is:  All of my work this year has assumed (you all probably know the joke) two horns.  (Which was a coin toss:  there are four horns in the Ov. to La gazza ladra, two in the Ov. to Il barbiere.)  Today, as I (ahem) look at the first page of the number (i.e., the introduction which I composed three years ago) I see that, in fact, I was writing for four horns.  It is not going to be a terrible lot of work to give some employment to another pair of horns.

In my old outline (the picture featured on this post) I tentatively set down 8 minutes as the proposed duration of Scene 8;  the number presently clocks in at 08:10, and is rounding into the home stretch.  I have done working for today, will mull overnight, and between tomorrow evening and Independence Day, we will find the final double-bar

In other news, I had a nice chat with Peter H. Bloom Friday, and he is excited to have a flute version of the two movements from the Clarinet Sonata.  Also, we may have a performance of Oxygen Footprint in Vermont this August.

From the Archive, Canada Day Division

[ 1 July 2010 ]

Some more work on the viola sonata yesterday morning, evening, and this morning. The three movements will bear the titles:

i. Fair Warning
ii. Suspension Bridge
iii. Tango in Boston

In those freewheeling early days, I did not yet realize that the Bridge resided in Dave’s Shed.