The known, the likely anticipatable, and the unexpected

Like clockwork, I see a call for scores for Band of Brothers (the names have been changed, because we're all of us mostly innocent). They're going to get half a metric tonne of submissions, and (no more than earlier occasions) no piece of mine will ring their bell. But I should submit something, anyway.  If you don't play, you certainly don't win.

On a different kind of playing, I am thinking of kind-of-joining a wind band. Depends on if they'll have me, in the first place, and perhaps if they mind if (purely for reasons of my own schedule) I go easy, on a concert-by-concert basis. Obviously, if I'm in for (say) the first concert in the fall, I'd take the obligation seriously.

At the end of 2009 (!) I sent a message to a local conductor. I don't know that he ever saw the message. No matter, such messages can be a surprisingly frail, unreliable medium.  On the near relative to a whim, I reached out afresh, and we connected. Without making any promise too large, he has allowed me to send a score. We shall see. Sometimes, I am pleased simply that there has been a conversation.

It is a rare thing, truly, for any musical benefit to be harvested from social media. For that reason, it is a great jubilation to report that we sold a copy of the Op.34 organ pieces. Grateful that the music is part of the Lux Nova Press catalogue, and grateful to the organist to whom I was probably completely unknown before I supplied the link to the Lux Nova Press webstore page.

Zwischen Kino und Konzert

At the start of Zwischen Kino und Konzert, a nearly 50-minute documentary about Nino Rota – I went back and watched it in its entirety, and enjoyed it very much – the narrator warms up with explaining that Rota and Fellini enjoyed a long collaboration, and that Rota’s music helped to impart to Fellini’s films a characteristic aura.

And I am sure that is perfectly true.  The slight irony (very slight, and no discredit to anyone, I trust) is that this documentary is an extra on the Criterion edition of 8 ½  (and fitting, as the opening footage for the Rota documentary appears to be the gala opening of 8 ½), and after minutes and minutes of silence (sometimes sound effects) and dialogue, the first music employed in the film is Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries.  And then Rossini’s Barber of Seville Overture.  And then Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers.

Staggeringly impressive that he scored (per the documentary) 145 films, including a period (1952-54) in which he scored 12+ films a year.  Funny story about his being denied the Academy Award for The Godfather because he had adapted a tune from 1958’s Fortunella.  With self-effacing understatement, Rota described it as simply taking the “ironic march” he composed for the earlier movie, and “slowing it down” so that its character became romantic.  The adaptation was much more involved than that description lets on.

Meanwhile, in Boston:  Seven days more until we should hear about the Doom upon Ear Buds.

The text and what-have-you

In November, our Mara wrote:

In an effort to delay bedtime, Emma sat down with her ukulele and improvised a song. She legit made up these lyrics on the spot. #deep #epicbedtimeshenanigans

It’s all right, you’ll feel better soon.

I don’t care if you get a little wound.

It’s okay, I still love you,

Even if I don’t care.

But it’s a good thing to not care,

It’s not our business.

But sometimes it is us.

I don’t care but where I’m going,

It might be just a little trust.

I need to stay my own way,

When I find what I do,

And who might tell me to.

I need to go to my own way,

It might happen today.

I don’t care what I do,

Who tells me to?

It is us who doesn’t care,

And it’s us who does care

If you give your business.

It’s all right to share,

It’s all right to share,

When we’re tired,

It’s all right to share.

Following up in late December, I sent to Mara:

Psst, I really do mean to set Emma’s “It’s all right to share” to my own music, if she will permit.

And her reply:

That’s great!  I asked her about it, and she said yes!

The last word of the second line can be made to rhyme either with ‘crowned’ or with ‘crooned’;  maybe it should be the latter, echoing the vowel of ‘soon’ – or maybe no rhyme is meant.  Back when I first thought about the text, I was planning to use that stanza twice, and use both pronunciations.  However, as the music flowed forth, there was no space (or, need) for the duplication . . . so I have reached out to the author’s mum, to ascertain the intended reading.

Musically, I do think it is done.  I am proofing the score, mostly for the odd beaming tweak.  I expect a piano reduction will be a good idea (though the men of Triad would manage just fine without).

Once I set to work on the setting, I (perhaps arbitrarily) aimed for a 5-minute piece.  Before I had a solid sense of the rate at which the text would play out in the setting, I drew up a scheme for stanzas to bring back after the end of the text as received (including the alternate “I don’t care if you get a little wound”).  It turned out that there was no need for the extra repetition, and all I ‘added’ at the end were the lines (as they appeared on my penciled ‘expansion’:

I need to go to my own way,

It might happen today.

It Might Be . . . done

This morning, made good progress on It Might Be Today, even as I needed to mind the clock. Went to Danvers for rehearsals at church after the service—our first go at Five Smooth Stones From the Wadi.  We are to play it—we shall play it—in the service next week, and it will go very nicely;  given my quirky rhythmic sense, the first rehearsal is perforce an exercise partly in our finding our mutual footing.  A good rehearsal, and good to have gotten it out of the way a week ahead of “show time.”

This afternoon, I may well have finished It Might Be Today.  As there is no rush, I am letting it rest overnight, and shall try the question further in the morning.

Four years ago today, I was mulling the remaining movements of the Mass.  Apart from the general fact that (apart from the Kyrie long ago) all the performances of movements of the Mass have been sung by Triad . . . it rather puzzles me that the Sanctus has not yet been sung.

About time to set in to serious work on A Heart So White.

Eight days more until we should hear about the Doom upon Ear Buds.

There are Valkyries, and then there are Valkyries

Also, this movie [Repo Man] features the most wonderful adaptation I have yet heard of the Ride of the Valkyries in cinema.

When I wrote this, on Independence Day, I had clean forgot the use of the Wagner near the start of Fellini's Otto e mezzo, where (indeed) it is the first music of any sort to be heard in the film.  I suppose I can let the remark stand, and distinguish between its use in the Fellini film, and the creative adaptation in Repo Man.

And It Might

The undeniable beauty of Liszt’s work arises, I believe, from the fact that his love of music excluded every other kind of emotion.  If sometimes he gets on easy terms with it and frankly takes it on his knee, this is surely no worse than the stilted manner of those who behave as if they were being introduced to it for the very first time;  very polite, but rather dull.  Liszt’s genius is often disordered and feverish, but that is better than rigid perfection, even in white gloves.
 — Debussy, writing as “Monsieur Croche”

My mind reaches back, for some mysterious reason, to Buffalo, when I wrote a trio for clarinet, soprano & tenor saxophones, The Improbable Harmonica.  Or, no, for quite a specific reason, but let me give some of the background.

The then-Chairman of the Music Dept grew suddenly and inexplicably hostile to my work, and informed me that he had written to the Graduate Committee recommending that my teaching assistantship be removed from me — to be reallocated, I suppose, to someone whose work pleased him better (the Graduate Committee declined to do so).

If you ask me, there is no feeling in the world quite like knowing that the Chairman of your Department makes free to use his power in efforts towards your removal from study.

I began writing The Improbable Harmonica.  It was at once both an act of artistic defiance (“See if any of your pets can write something this good”) and a resolve to keep on with my work, the way I wanted to do the work.  I was then studying with Charles Wuorinen, and although Charles at times might have preferred that I make other artistic choices, and he freely offered his opinion and observations, he stopped well short of telling me what I had to write.  So as to the Chairman, I was less than ever of any mind to reshape my musical work to suit a self-appointed cultural despot.

On a much lighter plane, one member of the trio (itself, a subset of The Fires of Tonawanda), fellow composer-performer Gary Barwin, amiably complained that I had written, for the soprano sax, a clarinet part.  And as I work, today, on It Might Be Today, I think I may be at it again, writing clarinet parts for a men’s choir.

And, Gentle Reader, you are wondering what It Might Be Today is.

There was a time when it might have been a piece for women’s choir.  Back in November, quite possibly right after the Triad concerts on which we had sung the Gloria, I started to take thought for what I wanted Triad to sing next, whether something already in my catalogue (the Magnificat would be nice) or something new.  I immediately tabled the Magnificat, so that I should not seem to sink into a rut of Liturgical music (and all the more the right decision, as we revived the Agnus Dei for the spring concerts).  As a change of pace for my own work, I was thinking of a piece for women’s choir, and keeping an open mind for what text might suit, suit and inspire.

A dear old friend from the St Paul’s choir days, Mara, posted on Facebook that her daughter, Emma, in a creative strategy to resist being sent to bed, had improvised a song, and posted the lyrics to boot.  I wrote to Mara asking if Emma would permit me to set the words to my own music, and permission was granted.  I did not act on this at the time (chances are, I had gotten a start on The Nerves about then).

It was not until the conclusion of the Triad season that I returned in earnest thought to the project, and when I did, I knew that I wanted to have the fun of singing in the piece, myself, and so I shifted from women’s to men’s choir.  As recorded here, I set to work on Tuesday the 26^th of June;  and the piece sat around as a 55-second start for a week.  I had an idea for a contrasting section, but I also felt that we did not want the contrast so soon.  Worked on it very well this morning, and (given that the piece is a kind of part-song) chances are strong that I basically have all the material needed to finish sculpting the piece.  I think when completed it may be around five minutes;  and as of this morning, two minutes and a half are composed . . . and what is there strikes me as practically finished.

What am I listening to, as I work on this piece?  The 16^th-century choral polyphony of the Leiden Choirbooks, some JS Bach Cantatas, Wuorinen’s Brokeback Mountain.  None of this, probably, has any direct bearing on the work I am doing, but . . . it is what I am listening to.

To boldly have things happen to you

I got counterpoint of my own, I said, and you can’t help me out.
So take your meditations and your modulations and ram it up your snout . . . .

– Who am I jivin’ with this Not Actually “Cosmik Débris”?

Monitors three,

Let her be.

It is one thing, to get caught out in the rain in July.  Quite another, in November.

– Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

Last night I watched “Return to Tomorrow” from Season 2 of Star Trek (first broadcast 16 Feb 1968).  Spoilers Follow.

And, by the by, file this squarely in the My Quibbles Notwithstanding, a Thoroughly Enjoyable Show file.

It is not merely that the screenplay is another Deus ex machina deal, but that all the action is on the part of the aliens, which is to say that the screenwriter’s marionette strings may not be showing, but you know they’re in the background through the whole show.  All of the ‘activity’ of the crew of the Enterprise is passive, because all the power is in alien hands.  Kirk gives a stirring speech asking for the crew’s assent at one point (and, nice writing, too).  But since our understanding is, they’re in the alien’s hands, whether they like it or not, Kirk’s rousing speech amounts to a plea that everybody just like it, to the degree they can (“Bones” to a somewhat lesser degree than everyone else).  Because both Kirk and Spock are going down to the planet, Kirk doffs the con to Sulu – which has enormous dramatic potential for Geo. Takei, only not so much, as they’re in the alien’s hands (see above).  The episode is also a vehicle for having Kirk smooch an attractive female crewmember while physically controlled by an alien, and then being sheepishly not-quite-embarrassed when he “comes to.”  The drama of the story winds up coming from disunity among the aliens;  and one of the aliens dies – and the crew of the Enterprise are doomed as a result, only – surprise! he’s not really dead.

One of the undoubted pluses to the episode, however, is in giving Leonard Nimoy some more range with Spock, as the Science Officer is a vessel for the Wicked Alien.

End of the Spoiler Zone

A few hours prior to watching me some Star Trek, I took, what I seldom do take, a draught I.P.A., and in excellent company.  Regardless of what some may suppose, it is not every day that I enjoy a Goose Island I.P.A. at the Hub Pub, and in the company of someone who – right there in sight of a puzzled bartender – mimes scraping reeds, but whose miming is jolly convincing.  Now if only Meredith can get Dan to do the work on the reeds, now that he has the imitation down so pat.

(We don’t really hold much of any hope, there.)