Symphony: Not Influences?

October 24th, 2025

Rehearsal Update:

Monday was our third-to-last rehearsal, and things are going well. Over the last two weeks, I’ve chosen two movements to rehearse and two to run-through: I firmly believe that a once-a-week group like ours needs to play most of the notes at every rehearsal whenever possible. The first movement is by far the toughest, and for us would be a challenging piece if it weren’t followed by four more. I feel like the fourth movement has gotten short shrift: maybe it can get a little love in our last two rehearsals… but we also have other priorities to get ready for the concert, so time will be of the essence.

I also came to the realization that we will likely need to run if not the whole piece, large swathes of it in our warm-up rehearsal on the day of. This is a little daunting, as endurance for all of us is a concern. Hopefully those who need to can mark a little.

The Not Influences?

Looking over my two posts on the influences on my symphony, I noticed some prominent names and pieces left off. That’s not to say that these composers and works haven’t been important to me at some point in the past, or that they didn’t influence me subconsciously, but they didn’t come to mind when I made my list the first time.

Haydn and Mozart

I mean, sure, the symphony as a genre exists in large part because these two got ahold of it and began to write pieces (sometimes) that would transcend mere entertainment. But were they at the forefront of my mind during this process? No. That said, the first time I tried to analyze an entire symphony movement, it was the first movement of Mozart’s 40th (and it was mostly Roman numeral analysis, which probably missed the point entirely). Haydn is even less on my radar, although his 88th symphony has long been my go-to “listen to a whole symphony” in music appreciation class (although, to be fair, I haven’t done that activity in few years). This was less because I was inspired by the piece than because it was part of the textbook I was using two textbooks ago (I still haven’t found a music appreciation book that I’m completely satisfied with, which could be the subject of a different post).

It’s hard to find anything to argue about with the symphonies of Haydn and Mozart, which I suppose is a good thing in some ways, but any message they hope to communicate doesn’t seem to come through. It may be the historical distance, which in turn is a philosophical distance.

Tchaikovsky

Tchaikovsky’s Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Symphonies are absolute warhorses, and of course I’m familiar with them. Tchaikovsky’s Fourth was one of the first orchestral scores I ever studied beyond excerpts in orchestration books, back in high school when I was writing my first orchestral piece, the trombone concerto with string orchestra that was my senior thesis (interesting story that one). His Fifth was one of the first symphonies I got to play, during my year in the Columbus Symphony Youth Orchestra, and the Sixth… well, I have yet to dig into the Sixth. I also conducted Tchaikovsky’s Second with Lakeland back in 2017, although we ended up cutting the scherzo, because the piece was just too much to squeeze into the rehearsal time for one of our spring semester concerts–I learned from that experience and programmed my symphony in the fall, when we have only one on-campus concert and so more rehearsal to devote to it.

I certainly could have listed Tchaikovsky among my influences, most evident in parts of the last movement that may seem to borrow in approach from the last movement of the Fifth, but his work was simply not at the front of my mind as I worked. Where Copland’s Third was a “time to beat,” that simply wasn’t the case here.

Bruckner

My first encounter with Bruckner was in recordings from the public library as a high school student, particularly a sprawling performance of the Eighth Symphony that stretched across two CDs. I remember playing the finale before school one morning, and having those pounding rhythms following me around from class to class all day. In college, I had to prepare the Fourth for ensemble auditions one year, but other than transcriptions of the Adagio of the Seventh, I’ve never performed Bruckner’s music. I first heard his work live in a performance of the Seventh by the Cincinnati Symphony which also happened to be my brother’s first non-young-people’s orchestra concert. His response was, “It was awesome, but I had no idea it would be so long.” For a time in my mid-20s, I was most enamored with Bruckner’s Fifth, and in my early 30s made a transcription for concert band of his motet Locus Iste that worked musically, but had to abandon the composer’s dynamic plan.

Which about sums it up. Like Tchaikovsky, there is probably some un-spoken influence on my work, but no conscious imitation or inspiration. I didn’t imitate Bruckner’s scoring (soooo much tremolo strings!) or his grandiose architecture (the cliche of the cathedral should go here), but the spinning out of the melody in the first movement of my symphony has something Brucknerian about it.

Mahler

I admire Mahler; I appreciate him; I struggle to understand his work; but I am not a “Mahler nut.” I’ve spent time with his music, but only once as a performer: when I led the Lakeland Civic Orchestra in the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. As a trombonist, I wrestled with the solo from the Third Symphony, and studied the Fifth Symphony in preparation for auditions. The symphonies do not reward the casual sort of listening that I did as a beginning classical music fan: lots of listening to CDs while I did homework, or catching things on the radio in the car. Despite my best efforts, I have yet to hear the Eighth or Ninth in concert, but my checklist is otherwise complete, at least for the completed works. I also wrote a paper on the Tenth and its process of completion after the composer’s death that was, for me at least, enlightening about the process of writing pieces: Mahler’s short-score to full-score approach is essentially my own. Then, of course, in the early days of this blog, I worked my way through the nine completed symphonies, analyzing them for form and orchestration, and writing about them movement by movement. This was a follow-up to a similar project for Beethoven’s piano sonatas that I settled on as a project that would be a bridge between graduate school and whatever would come next: if I had ended up working at Starbucks, I would at least have a reason to keep my head in music.

But direct influence of Mahler on my work? Perhaps in the finale, when I bring in the flugelhorn, and certainly there has to be some connection between my sense of orchestration and Mahler’s. And then, the significance of the chorale–the basis for the entire piece, the masked versions of it that appear from time to time, and complete statement of it. In the second movement, there is the self-quotation that we find so often in Mahler as well. But again, my goal wasn’t the same as Mahler’s: he means the symphony to contain the world, and I don’t see that as a meaningful or even possible outcome. There is a statement in my piece, but it doesn’t wrap around all of existence.

Shostakovich

My first encounter with Shostakovich was, as is so often the case, with his Fifth, famously played ridiculously fast by Leonard Bernstein to fit onto an LP. Next came the Seventh, with its paralyzingly long march, and luckily, when I heard Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra for the first time, I got the joke. Then, in the summer before college, I got to know the First as I prepared for seating auditions. The Cincinnati Symphony played Shostakovich well and often when I was there–the Fifth, the Sixth, the Eighth–but he wasn’t a regular in Columbus when I lived there, and I’ve only heard the Eighth here in Cleveland. Has he perhaps fallen out of favor in this country?

That said, the influence of Shostakovich in my music is fairly clear even if I didn’t specifically have his work in mind as I wrote. But, there is a scale in his music that I don’t come to, and of course, like Mahler, I have much less of the tension of being an outsider or a dissident in my life and thus in my work. I want to make a statement, but I don’t intend to shock or to hide my intentions. To the extent that there is a hidden idea, it is more like Elgar’s Enigma: can the listener find the chorale that they know is supposed to be there (or, for the listener who doesn’t know the idea behind the work coming in, would it be evident and would the statement of the chorale seem inevitable)?

Maslanka

Other than conducting Rollo Takes a Walk many years ago as a band director, I have very little experience of the music of David Maslanka, something I mean to rectify. Maslanka was mostly a band composer, and mostly wrote pieces that require a strong college-level band or wind ensemble. I listened to the retirement concert of Dr. Mallory Thompson last year. I never worked closely with Dr. Thompson, but she spent a year at CCM when I was there, and I played in Michael Colgrass’ Winds of Nagual under her baton, which was a formative experience in important ways. Dr. Thompson had a strong connection with Maslanka’s music, and included the Fourth Symphony in her final concert as director of bands at Northwestern University. I enjoyed listening to the piece, and was then surprised to hear “Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow” in a complete statement, right in the middle. I wasn’t stealing Maslanka’s idea–but I knew that I couldn’t possibly be the first person to incorporate “my hymn” into a larger instrumental piece. That said, I think it works pretty well.

Come to the concert on November 9, and see how you think my approach stands up.

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Symphony: Premiere Week Schedule

October 10th, 2025

It’s worth putting the schedule for the week of the premiere up:

Sunday, November 2:

I don’t play a lot of trombone gigs, but the Euclid Symphony Orchestra came calling, and I answered. I’m glad to get to play with one of our closest neighbors, and actually their home is closer to my home than Lakeland is. Repertoire is fun, including a flute transcription of feline-favorite composer Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto.

Monday, November 3:

Our dress rehearsal, including soloists on the Kieffer and Vivaldi. They always say rough dress, good concert. Not open to the public, but thoughts, prayers, and good vibes appreciated.

Wednesday, November 5:

At 12:30, in Room C-1078 at Lakeland Community College, I’ll present a talk entitled “How Do You Write a Symphony?” for students, colleagues, and any interested members of the public. I’ll walk you through my process of creating this symphony, sharing drafts and sketches, with, if all goes well, a few previews. The talk is going to be filmed for later release on YouTube.

Thursday, November 6:

For the 2024-2025 season, I began giving pre-concert talks the week before Lakeland Civic Orchestra concerts, as part of the Willoughby-Eastlake Public Libraries event series. It was a lot of fun, and I decided to keep doing it. I’ll discuss all the music on the program, and all in attendance get a free ticket to the concert. The talk for this concert is Thursday, November 6 at 6:30pm at the Willoughby Hills Public Library, 35400 Chardon Rd, Willoughby Hills, OH 44094. Free registration is recommended but not required, more information here.

Sunday, November 9:

The big day, only 30 days from the posting of this blog entry! I still can’t quite believe that it’s here, and I’m starting to be very excited (and I think the members of the Lakeland Civic Orchestra share this sentiment). It is truly a blessing to be a part of even what has already happened, and the finish is yet to come. We will have a run-through rehearsal in the early afternoon, and the concert is at 4:00pm in the Wayne Rodehorst Performing Arts Center on the campus of Lakeland Community College. Tickets are available in advance online or at the box office on the day of the concert: $10 for adults, $8 for veterans, seniors, and Lakeland alumni, and $2 for students. We are also offering a season pass for all three of our ticketed concerts at Lakeland for $22. In addition to the symphony, we will perform Olivia Kieffer‘s The Talking Beasts and Vivaldi’s “Winter” from The Four Seasons.

I’ve been speaking with friends and family, and at least a few are planning to attend the concert, some from out of town. Olivia Kieffer will be attending to hear her work, and I suppose mine, and one of my oldest friends, Matt Specter, is coming up from Cincinnati. My parents have expressed interest in driving up from Columbus, but they don’t travel as well as they used to, so we’ll have to see. We’ll be recording the dress rehearsal and performance, so hopefully there will be a good version among those that I can swap out for the MIDI transcription.

After that, the inevitable letdown, I suppose, although there are a few symphony-related tasks, such as getting videos posted, sharing with those I’ve promised to share with, and correcting the fair number of errata in the score and parts (along with a couple of changes that I made during rehearsals). It has been an incredible journey over the last six years and especially the last nine months to get this work in shape, and as we head into the premiere, I am hopeful, grateful, and just trying to enjoy the ride.

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Symphony: Second Run-Through

October 7th, 2025

Last night’s rehearsal started with a run-through of the entire piece, which I recorded, meaning that there’s plenty of work for me to do this week to be ready for next week.

It went well, given the number of rehearsals we’ve had (six), the number remaining (four, plus the concert), and the length and difficulty of the work. We had to stop and regroup three times, and the places most in need of attention remain the first movement (the hardest) and the fourth (the one we’ve spent the least time on in rehearsal). We had a debrief after, where I probably talked too much (I always hear Dr. Rene Boyer-White’s voice from my elementary general music methods class: “Too much talk!”), but really dug into what I’m trying to accomplish with the controlled aleatory section in the second movement.

In the first movement, three apothegms:

  1. When a note is tied across the barline or to the next beat to an eighth note, don’t try to play the eighth note: lift and prepare the next note.
  2. Keep the quarter note in a 5/8 or 7/8 bar separated.
  3. Count rests and come in decisively when they are done.

I may have exhorted the musicians to tattoo these onto their sleeves.

That said, I’m optimistic. One musician told me that he can tell it’s coming together because we are learning how to get lost and find our place. A useful skill to have both for making music and for life.

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The Symphony: Influences (2)

October 5th, 2025

I’m in the midst of a series of posts about my Symphony in G, “Doxology,” in the lead up to its premiere by the Lakeland Civic Orchestra on November 9, 2025 at 4pm. Information on that concert here. Additionally, I will be giving a pre-concert talk at 6:30pm on Thursday, November 6 at the Willoughby Hills Branch of the Willoughby-Eastlake Public Library. Pre-registration is encouraged, but not required, and all in attendance will receive a free ticket to the concert. I’m also planning to give a more in-depth talk at Lakeland Community College sometime the week before the concert, focusing more on the writing process and my approach to this form. Watch for details!

I had a lot to say about the influences on my Symphony in G, “Doxology” in my previous post, leading me to realize that it really needed to be two posts–I’ve been thinking about the genre of the symphony for a long time, and I have Ideas.

Phillip Glass: Low Symphony

I discovered this piece, my first encounter with Glass’ music, at Mediaplay, a big box record and video store that had a location on West Broad Street in Columbus across from the now-demolished Westland Mall. I think it was the first record store I had been to with listening stations, and I slipped on headphones to hear this music around 1993, when the first recording of the piece by Dennis Russell Davies and the Brooklyn Philharmonic was new. I think I probably borrowed the CD from the public library, but ended up returning to Mediaplay to buy it.

Later renamed as Glass’ Symphony No. 1, Low proved to be the first in an epic and, at the time, surprising love affair with the genre for its composer. The first of three symphonies “from the music of David Bowie and Brian Eno,” it gave me the idea that the symphonic form could rewrite and retell an existing piece of music. Glass was in his late 50s at the time, so I suppose I’ve beaten him to the punch, but of course, I didn’t take time to write Einstein on the Beach or collaborate with Twyla Tharp, either.

Low was very slick and cool, a meeting point aesthetically between Vangelis, Mannheim Steamroller, and the radio show Music From the Hearts of Space, and the kind of concert music that I was more specifically interested in.

In outsourcing a fair amount of his melodic work to Bowie and Eno, Glass was also able to focus on form and structure, which, in the end, I think has always been the focus of his minimalism. I’m not a minimalist myself, but like anyone of my generation, I can’t help but be influenced by it. The “maximalist minimalism” implied by much of Glass’ work draws in the listener who is accustomed to the world of popular and film music–including me–in a way that many concert hall composers might consider: consonance, clarity of form, tunefulness, and rhythmic energy are not pandering or retrogressive.

I also just have always liked this piece: it’s striking, and energetic in the way that was really appealing to a high school composer who loved marching band and jazz ensemble and rock’n’roll.

Witold Lutoslawski: Symphony No. 3

As an undergraduate at the University of Cincinnati, I spent a lot of time during my first two years ensconced in the listening lab in the Gorno Music Library, where the staff would pull your selection and pipe it into headphones in a carrell. I remember having seen a list of orchestral excerpts for a flute audition that mentioned Lutoslawski’s Third, and added it to my list to check out. I didn’t really know anything about the composer, but I found the work in the online catalog (in those days, through an old green-text terminal) and got myself set up. From the first four notes–staccato, forte trumpets and trombones–I knew there was something to consider here. Across the hall, in the stacks, I was able to check out the score. It was my first experience with both the cutaway score layout and with Lutoslawski’s controlled aleatory.

To me, the notation was strikingly intuitive. I’ve used the cutaway score design only once: in my work It Is Enough for clarinet quartet and eight trombones, which is in many ways inspired by Lutoslawski’s approach. I’ve always considered It Is Enough to be a successful experiment. Composed during my graduate studies at Ohio State with Jan Radzynski, I was anticipating my work later with electronic music and wanted to think outside the grid of staves and barlines of the full score. The cutaway score is difficult to create, though, in my chosen notation program, Sibelius (although, not so much difficult as time-consuming). It requires lots of staff type changes and close attention to subverting the details of layout that Sibelius is carefully programmed to make easier for a traditional score.

It Is Enough also makes use of the controlled aleatory technique, which I’ve always liked, but again, have only used infrequently. I love the idea that some textures are complex enough that a little chaos is baked in, and trying to hardwire them is in a sense futile. There’s a trust for the musicians that should exist between composer and performer that the technique requires be made explicit–that things will happen when they make sense, and this isn’t always predictable in a rigid sort of way.

I think the main reason I didn’t pursue this language more fully is that there is a certain impracticality to it: it requires a confidence on the part of the performer that, in my work with student and community musicians, isn’t always available. I should perhaps return to it and trust my musicians with more.

The second movement of my symphony uses more non-conventional sounds than the rest of the work, including a passage of controlled aleatory in the strings: just two gestures, but I think a significant moment. In his Third Symphony, Lutoslawksi uses the technique liberally, but certainly not exclusively, and to great effect, and in combination with unmeasured stretches.

There is also a philosophical gauntlet thrown down here. Lutoslawski’s Second Symphony is a sprawling work for chorus and orchestra, so large and complex that the score is in separate volumes for the two required conductors. The composer seems to have changed his mind about this: while the Third lasts a half hour, Lutoslawski makes clear that it is meant to be a unified whole. He is not the first to attempt the one-movement symphony, but he states in his liner note that the four-movement plan–he singles out Brahms specifically–is too much for the mind to bear in a single sitting; that a single movement with a single meaning is in some way superior to four movements with four meanings. I don’t know that I would take this as an absolute, or even that I would agree with his interpretation of Brahms and musical (or other) meaning, but it does support my thinking that part of the symphonic concept is that the entire work needs to hold together in some way: more integrated than a suite.

All my years of thinking about writing a symphony, I have always cast about for designs and methods of making it cohesive and orderly. In this case, I’ve fallen to some of the tried-and-true approaches that Lutoslawski eschews, but my desire for unity is partly due to Lutoslawski’s call to rein in ambition. Unlike Mahler, this symphony does not–cannot–try to contain the world.

Antonin Dvorak, Symphony No. 9

I first encountered this work in a serious way in my junior year of high school, when I wanted a recording of Sibelius’ Second Symphony (see below), and purchased a CD that contained Paul Paray and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra conducting both that work and Dvorak’s New World Symphony. Being a completist, and not having a lot of money for new CDs, I listened repeatedly to both pieces. While Sibelius always holds pride of place for me, I got to know the New World as well, and it certainly had an influence on my thinking. Dvorak’s use of orchestral color, of cyclic approaches, and of course his astounding melodic gifts were both inspiring and daunting. I’ve since heard the work in performance several times, although never played or conducted it (I played second trombone for Dvorak’s 8th in my one-term stint in the Ohio State University Symphony Orchestra, and I’ve conducted several of his Slavonic Dances with the Lakeland Civic Orchestra, along with some other of his works). It’s also been present in my teaching: when I taught middle school general music, I would spend an entire class period listening to the work, with a set of cue cards to help the students follow along; it’s also featured in my current music appreciation class, alongside Amy Beach’s Gaelic Symphony as we consider music and identity: two composers telling turn-of-the-century America what it’s music should sound like (with America resoundingly finding its own direction).

If my idea was to write an American symphony, or the Great American Symphony, Dvorak seems to point that direction (as a non-American, of course, he couldn’t do it himself). I don’t know exactly what might be “American” about my piece, except that it has no other possible identity. Most of these influences are not American, and I have spent much of my musical career thinking about non-American music, looking in from the outside, perhaps as Dvorak did as well.

Jean Sibelius: Symphony No. 2

Now, to the piece that started it all. In 1992, I auditioned for the Ohio Music Educators Association South-Central Regional Orchestra and got in. I had played in our school orchestra the year before and enjoyed the experience, so a weekend of playing that music seemed fun. I got in. The rehearsals and concert were at Gahanna Lincoln High School, and the clinician was Dr. Emily Freeman Brown, orchestra director from Bowling Green State University. We played a number of pieces I still consider dear to me: a Dvorak Slavonic Dance, Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld Overture, Morton Gould’s American Salute, and the second movement of Howard Hanson’s Symphony No. 2. A (not-so) surprising number of these have made it onto Lakeland Civic Orchestra concerts over the last thirteen years (we will be playing the Gould again in April).

But our concert closer was the piece that really hit home: the last movement of Sibelius’ Second Symphony.

Flashing further back a year, when I took British Literature for a semester, I remember jumping ahead to the science fiction stories in our anthology, which included Arthur C. Clarke’s “History Lesson,” which mentioned “the score to Sibelius’ Seventh Symphony” among the artifacts left by a dying humanity to be found by future visitors to Earth. I didn’t know Sibelius’ music at all in 1991, but I imagined what it might be like.

A year later, in that one-weekend orchestra, I found out that my imagination had been satisfyingly close to reality, and I was intrigued and gratified.

We didn’t play the complete movement: we started at the recapitulation, which was enough for the limited rehearsal time and a suitable end to the concert, and more than enough to snare the attention of a trombonist in the process of discovering that classical music just might be the thing he chose to pursue for a long time. The chorale in the coda was my first first-hand experience with what the trombone could be to the rest of the orchestra, and I was hooked. When the cassette containing the recording of the concert arrived in the mail a few weeks later, I wore it out.

It was around this time that I began my semiweekly visits to the Upper Arlington Public Library to get four CDs of classical music at a time, but I didn’t think to look for Sibelius Second. It wasn’t until a few months later, in the desperate moments after a breakup (my first) that I thought to head to a record score and buy a recording for myself. I didn’t know what to pick up, or what the differences might be between different recordings, and knowing myself, I probably decided based on price: a re-release of Paul Paray’s 1959 recording of the piece on Mercury with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, paired with the recording that would become my introduction to Dvorak’s New World (see above). Hearing the whole piece–even the whole last movement–was a revelation. If the music had been on an LP, I would have worn it out over the next year.

For a couple of years, Sibelius’ Second was around: Peter Stafford Wilson led us in the whole piece on the last concert I played with the Columbus Symphony Youth Orchestra in 1994, and in the summer of 1995, I played the last movement again when I was at Brevard Music Center. I got to know the work more intimately then, but not being an orchestral trombonist (not for lack of trying), I didn’t come back to it. I don’t think I’ve actually ever heard it performed live, either. Maybe it has a “youth orchestra” stigma, or maybe audiences have tired of it, though I can’t imagine why.

I actually heard most of Sibelius’ Second today on the radio–I parked in the driveway for a moment to hear the end. It’s wonderfully familiar: I don’t listen to it often, but I think about it, and keep the score on my piano. From the repeated notes in the strings that begin the first movement, gradually becoming more complex and turning into a theme, through to the obsessive ostinato that bursts into triumph in the finale, this is a piece that couldn’t not be an influence on my own symphonic writing. Today in the car, I heard just how much Sibelius is in my solution to the symphony problem, and I’m not ashamed or sorry for it, because to me Sibelius’ various solutions to that problem will always have a certain rightness.

I leave my influences here, then. I could probably find others (Hanson’s Second? Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements) or dive into influences from other genres (Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra? Holst’s The Planets?). Fascinatingly, there are the notable omissions, Mahler, whom I have studied intensely, being right at the top of that list. I leave them for another consideration, though.

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Follow-Up to “Bump in the Road”

October 4th, 2025

Just to follow up, we had a much stronger rehearsal last Monday–in retrospect, the “bump” seems to have been nothing more than a regular fluctuation, not a pattern. More score study this week, so I’m holding up my end of the bargain.

I also came to the realization that there really needs to be a little more of what I call “shameless self-promotion” on my part, too. It’s time for it!

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A Bump in the Road

September 28th, 2025

We had the inevitable rough rehearsal on Monday night.

The symphony is the bulk of the concert (36 minutes of music over a combined 15 for the other two pieces), so it’s been getting the bulk of the rehearsal. We started with the third movement, which we hadn’t played since our first rehearsal last month. It went well in August, and it went well on Monday: it isn’t going to require the same amount of work. Next, the second movement, which is also coming together nicely. I’m still looking forward to hear the ending with all the low brass–I auditioned a new player last week for the third trombone part, and I think she’s going to fit in well.

Then we went back to the first movement, our biggest challenge. It really is the toughest for everyone: the fastest, the most moving notes, the most meter changes. It’s sprawling in a way that the other movements aren’t. Six years ago, at the end of drafting the second movement, I wrote about being “in a stall,” and in some ways it was going back to hear the draft of the first movement that put me there, leading to the big gap in work on the piece.

My idea was to run through the movement before moving on to other music: about an hour into a two-hour rehearsal. Since we only meet once a week, I like to play through as much of our music as possible every week, which I think helps compensate for absences and just generally keep things at the top of everyone’s mind. It’s more satisfying, too, and helps us focus on the big picture.

I don’t know if we were tired (I was), if we were depressed by the rain (our first in weeks), or feeling the absence of the right combination of players, but it wasn’t a smooth run. We had to stop in places I had thought were resolved, and sections were getting lost for lack of cues. Fingers–and the baton–just didn’t seem to go in the places they need to be when they need to be there, and the stylistic quirks of my writing were holding us back.

I still feel like there is a mismatch between my rhythmic concept in the movement and what the musicians are giving back. It’s going to take some more work on both parts.

I ended with a bleak little speech that acknowledged the difficulties and the quirkiness, but didn’t really have any positive message.

In the end, the challenge of writing music for live musicians is not only crafting a score that fulfills my vision as a composer, but also sharing that vision with the people involved and with whom I am, in the end, reliant on to bring that vision to reality.

In other words, you have to work with people.

To me, sharing the vision and bringing the music to collaborators is the reward, the payoff: it’s the execution of a campaign long-planned and carefully thought out. It’s why I write for human performers instead of electronic ones. But all the planning commits a lot of people to a lot of hard work in this case: we aren’t a professional orchestra that deals with the music for two rehearsals and two concerts over the course of a week–this is occupying us for a good chunk of our season, and even a sizable slice of that chunk, since it’s the biggest thing on the concert.

The members of the Lakeland Civic Orchestra have been, over the years, enthusiastic if sometimes skeptical collaborators. I’ve tried to build their trust and to give them what they need from the podium every time I step up to the podium. They have, in turn, consistently given their honest best effort as amateurs–lovers of the art–amidst our crazy world of work, family, illness, and every other concern.

It would be the composer’s dream, perhaps, to complete the score to a major work and then hand it off to a conductor and ensemble who put it together, mostly without your help, and deliver a polished performance to bold applause, with the composer flying in for the last rehearsal and the concert and accepting the composer’s bow from the stage. I’ve done this, and it is in many ways gratifying, but it is also in some ways hollow.

I’m reminded again of Dave Hurwitz’ recounting of Einojuhani Rautavaara saying that most of the time a composer sends their work out into the world to be performed and never hears it–even a successful work might only be heard once or twice by its composer. Or as Arthur C. Clarke wrote in Childhood’s End, our children are only ours for a short time.

I am privileged to spend this time with my work, and with my collaborators: some composers don’t get to do this, or for some reason don’t want to do this. They seem to be happy or content (or resigned) to live that composer’s dream and accept the accolades on concert day while skipping the living-in that has to happen to an extent with any new piece.

But people are hard, and sometimes the hardest person to work with is yourself. I feel that over these six years I’ve been fighting myself to an extent on this piece. From the decision to start it in the first place, to the stall, to the extended time in a holding pattern, just getting it written took far longer than it should have: I should have become a symphonist–when? in 2007? in 1996? I certainly have had the ambition that long. And now, I find myself apologizing for the work, putting it on the back burner, not claiming the space that I believe that it deserves in my life or in the discourse; not wanting to seem egotistical, despite the supreme act of selfishness it is, in the end, to program a work longer than almost anything the Civic Orchestra has done, and to insist on it, and to rely on the work and effort of so many people, and in the end to demand that an audience appear to listen to it.

A few weeks ago, I caught myself in this mode: as the first rehearsal approached, I was skipping days of score study, putting off what I knew needed to happen in the name of needing to accomplish other things. In the end, I called it what it was: self-sabotage, in the form of my old enemy, procrastination. With a long-treasured goal in sight, I was letting fear have a say. Shame was having a say. Guilt was having a say. And I was trying to convince myself that it wouldn’t work, that I should pull out another piece for the November concert. I put off telling people about it until I had to, just in case.

So, who is to blame for Monday night? September has been a stressful month at our house, and I know that I went into rehearsal tired, after a morning of meetings and grading, and an afternoon of teaching trombone lessons. I’ve been difficult and grumpy around the house; and Becky called me on it last weekend (when I spent a lot of time getting caught up on grading). Late September feels like this: the newness of the school year has rubbed off, and the things you committed to with joy in August are all showing just how much commitment they are going to require.

So now, this week, I have recommitted to the orchestra, and to this piece, and to really learning the first movement, and getting insights into what it is that this composer demands, and what the shape of the thing really is. With six weeks to go–it will all be over at 6pm on November 9!–there remains work, but it will get done, and in the end, the reward will have been received not in the result but in the time and effort spent to get there, the lives that we will have lived.

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The Symphony: Influences (1)

September 13th, 2025

This post is one of a series explaining and exploring the process and documenting the premiere of my Symphony in G, “Doxology.” My influences have been many and wide-ranging, so there will be two posts about them.

No creative work springs ex nihilo from a human mind, and for thirty-odd years, since my days exploring classical music four CDs at a time from the public library, I have been thinking about the genre of the symphony, listening to its most famous examples (and some less-famous), talking about it with people interested and not, and pondering what my contribution to the genre might be.

To say that I, like Newton, have stood on the shoulders of giants is an understatement, and while this new work is in many ways the finest I have been able to make in the times and circumstances I have lived, there are also many works that it fails to compare to. I don’t know that I can say that this is a work, or that I am a composer, that pushes the art form forward: it pushes my art forward in important ways, but I don’t expect to be included in future music appreciation courses.

Nonetheless, the symphonist must decide just what a symphony is, and what it means to write one. My solution is certainly not the only answer, or necessarily a correct answer in everyone’s eyes. It is, of course, shaped by my decades of listening, analysis, and conducting, and often by the music that I considered during the six years my symphony was a work-in-progress.

What follows, then, is a shortlist of symphonies–and symphonists–that were in my mind before and during those years. The creative DNA of my symphony can be found in these works.

Brahms

The four symphonies of Johannes Brahms loom large over any latter-day symphonist, or should. In the early days of this blog, I spent eighteen months working through Mahler’s nine numbered symphonies, and while I learned a great deal from the experience, Brahms’ works have been and remain more foundational. As sprawling and wonderful as Mahler’s works are, they aren’t on this list of significant influences, and I will have to think more about why that is: I suspect it is because of their deeply personal language that demands public expression of what for me is a more private experience.

Brahms’ First Symphony was one of the first symphonies that I played, with Peter Wilson and the Columbus Symphony Youth Orchestra. The trombone part is crucial, but limited to the final movement, but even so, I relished exploring this work–when we began it, I hadn’t even realized that Brahms wrote symphonies, only that he was The Lullaby Guy. I’ve always felt a kinship with Brahms’ process of this piece, which gestated over a long time–decades–as the composer worried about how he would stack up to what came before.

In preparation for that youth orchestra audition, I purchased a CD reissue of George Szell’s 1966 recording of Brahms’ First with the Cleveland Orchestra. I first heard it live in 1993 in Youth Orchestra rehearsal and the same year as an audience member at a concert of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra: I remember Alessandro Sicilliani’s shockingly fast opening tempo in the first movement, which was unconventional, but I rather liked it.

Later, Brahms’ Second Symphony was the audition repertoire for my first year of college, and I discovered its finale, one of my favorite symphonic movements. The Third and Fourth are just as wonderful in their own ways, as well. I often tell my music appreciation students to take a rainy afternoon and listen to all four Brahms symphonies and know that they will have spent their time wisely.

Beethoven

Like Brahms, I too have had to consider the legacy of Beethoven as I have considered the symphony. As a trombonist, I’m sidelined from six of Beethoven’s nine symphonies, but as a conductor, I have been able to lead the Lakeland Civic Orchestra in four of them: the Fifth, Eighth, First, and Second. I’m not completely sure which of the bunch I heard first in performance–I think it was probably the Fourth and the Seventh with the Dresden Staatskapelle, on tour in Columbus under Giuseppe Sinopoli in 1993 or 1994. By that point, I had become obsessed with Toscanini’s renderings of the cycle with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, which to this day are my go-to recordings, in the rerelease by RCA Victor on CD. I remember a few weeks in the winter of my first year of college when I would slip up to my dorm room after lunch for a daily dose of Beethoven. I would put one of those five CDs in my player and hear a movement or so.

My symphony, of course, takes the four-movement plan that Beethoven (mostly) followed. He didn’t invent that plan, but the influence of his works makes anything else seem a little bit suspect (although the symphony-in-one-movement has enormous appeal for me as well). Like Brahms, the centrality of motivic development–and the ability to leave that technique aside at times–is important in my work. I often turn to George Grove’s book on Beethoven’s symphonies, and I remember my first reading of it realizing that Beethoven’s obsession with fugato technique was perhaps not to my liking: I once used it quite a bit in my work, but it came to seem obvious.

And then there’s that First Symphony, the harbinger of great things to come. Grove points out that, while it is good enough, if it were from the pen of a composer who didn’t go on to bigger and better things, it would be completely forgotten. We only know it because it’s by Beethoven. But in 2006, when I was thirty, I made one of my more serious abortive attempts at writing a symphony because that’s how old Beethoven was when he wrote his first–I figured it might be time, but, of course, it wasn’t.

Aaron Copland: Symphony No. 3

On the day I finished creating the instrumental parts for my symphony, July 4, 2025, Becky and I got in the car to pick up Noah and Melia from church camp. The local classical radio station, WCLV, was playing American music as befit the day, and the second movement of Aaron Copland’s Third Symphony came on. I said to Becky that this was music that I had considered a “mark to beat” as I composed, and if any one composition deserves that distinction, it is this. My professional bio for a long time said that I wanted to compose the Great American Symphony, but with his Third, Copland beat me to it by seventy-five years. The recording you’ll find in my collection is on a 1996 Chandos disc featuring Neeme Jarvi leading the Detroit Symphony Orchestra–an ensemble that looms large in my understanding of the symphony. I first heard the piece live in a 2013 performance by Marin Alsop with the Cleveland Orchestra. Copland’s Third is broad, accessible, and unapologetic. It articulates and sums up, to me, much of what audiences have come to love about its composer’s music: lyricism, thrilling scoring, rhythmic vitality. I admire the work’s honesty and its direct appeal. As I wrote a piece about faith, based on a call to praise that is also a statement of faith, Copland’s Third stood as a model for the kind of community truth-telling and celebration that the Doxology also represents. The Fanfare for the Common Man, the basis for the fourth movement of Copland’s piece, appears in a guise and fashion that in some ways supersedes the original–although that piece has been a personal touchstone longer than I have been interested in the form of the symphony as well. My own quotation of Old Hundredth in the fourth movement of my symphony, while different in execution, is inspired by Copland’s self-quotation.

Andrzej Panufnik: Sinfonia Votiva (Symphony No. 8)

Back when I was an avid purchaser of CDs through the mail via the BMG Record Club, a recording of Roger Sessions’ Concerto for Orchestra caught my eye, and on the same disc was this symphony by a Polish composer I had never heard of. I can’t say that I was particularly struck by the music or that it became something I listened to regularly, or that I was inspired to listen to the rest of Panufnik’s oeuvre. But something that did stick with me was the diagram plotting out the entire structure of the 22-minute work, included in the liner notes (and pictured in the video linked above). I was a graduate student in composition at the time, and I was struggling with how to develop larger forms. As tempting as it was to sit down at the computer and begin putting notes in to the score, I was coming to see that, as with writing words, pre-writing is an essential part of composition. Fifteen and twenty years later, I would develop my own diagrams for my Symphony in G, and take a single page–in this case, an existing hymn–as my overarching structure.

The result is, I think, as with Panufnik, a work that balances expression with structure, which is something that I find particularly symphonic. While some composers aspire to formal or structural freedom, and many listeners claim to relish it, the truth is that the vast majority of successful works are built around relatively simple approaches and structures. I’ve referred elsewhere in this blog to my favor for Nico Muhly’s “one-page sketch” for a work, and now I realize that Panufnik’s work led me to this idea several years earlier than Muhly’s music even appeared on my radar (I completed graduate school around the time Muhly started to develop an international reputation).

I’m also intrigued that the Boston Symphony Orchestra commissioned this work for its centennial in 1982. I’ve always had an interest in these big anniversary celebrations, both because I was born in the midst of one (the United States Bicentennial) and, musically, because I attended the premieres of many of the fanfares written for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra for their centennial in 1994-1995. I love the idea of marking these milestones, especially with music. I wrote my own piece, The Lovely Soul of Lakeland, for the Lakeland Civic Orchestra to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of our sponsoring institution, Lakeland Community College in 2017, and I can only hope that I will be around for the 100th birthday of the Lakeland Civic Orchestra in the late 2030s.

Alan Hovhaness: Symphony No. 2, Op. 132, “Mysterious Mountain”

I first encountered the music of Alan Hovhaness driving myself home from high school one afternoon, when WOSU (89.7FM) would usually play a symphonic work during the 3pm hour. The choice that day was Hovhaness’ Symphony No. 50, “Mt. St. Helens,” and as I drove, the still, quiet second movement, describing Spirit Lake before the eruption gave way to the final movement, “Volcano,” with its two sharp bass drum strokes exploding into chaos. I was fascinated by the topic of this symphony: although I was young, I was fascinated by the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens that inspired Hovhaness when it happened, which led to my parents subscribing to National Geographic, whose 1981 issue with the volcano on the cover I thoroughly wore out. This was the 1993 recording by Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony.

I explored Hovhaness and his music more deeply through the 1990s and into the 2000s. In college, I studied his Symphony No. 4, written for winds, and looked into his other band music while also keeping an eye out for those elusive recordings–there are many released originally on LP that hadn’t been re-released on CD, and many works that have never been recorded at all from this prolific composer. When I was a high school band director, I programmed The Prayer of St. Gregory the year Hovhaness died, 2000. My first suite for string orchestra was an homage to three composers whose music was an inspiration to me in my early years: in between movements celebrating Philip Glass and Jean Sibelius is a Meditation in Memoriam Maestro Hovhaness. I haven’t had a chance to return to his music as a conductor, but if I did, it would likely be his Symphony No. 2.

I first heard “Mysterious Mountain” in the 1990s, on a concert with the Cincinnati Symphony. It didn’t make the same immediate impression that “Mt. St. Helens” made–it’s just a different kind of piece, and really, more in line with the composer’s personality. On repeated listening, my esteem for the work grew, and I now think it one of the finest American symphonies. I admire its sincerity, its craft, and its succinctness.

There is the first group of my symphonic influences. Look for a second post shortly, along with more updates on the rehearsal process in the run-up to the premiere of my Symphony in G, “Doxology” with the Lakeland Civic Orchestra on Sunday, November 9 at Lakeland Community College in Kirtland, Ohio. Information and tickets here.

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Symphony: The First Rehearsal

August 26th, 2025

An old piece of advice given to composers is to not attend the first rehearsal of your piece. I think I first heard this in graduate school, when I had written Five Rhythmic Etudes for The Ohio State University Symphony Orchestra, and Dr. Marshall Haddock was fairly clear that coming to the first rehearsal–as I gladly would have–would be a bad idea.

The performers and conductor just need a chance to figure out the big questions, to answer those questions in their own way, and to, honestly, make a mess. Composers can be insecure, and might panic at the sound of musicians–even good ones–sight-reading their way through the music that the composer has labored over, seemingly ignoring the details painstakingly put into the score one at a time, but also at the same time missing the very obvious big picture.

So, I suppose one drawback of writing a symphony for the orchestra that you conduct is that you must, of course, be present at the first rehearsal.

For my Symphony in G, “Doxology,” that was yesterday evening. Over the summer months, as it got closer, I became anxious about putting this music before a group–the Lakeland Civic Orchestra–that has grown to be my most cherished musical collaboration over the last thirteen years. We have come a long way, and had some great moments, and they have been patient with me as I’ve grown as a conductor and musician, forgiving my missteps and tolerating my preferences and foibles. I, in return, have tried to give them the experience they are looking for: meaningful music, played as well as we can, with opportunities for growth, and for community.

Putting this work in front of them was an exercise in mutual trust: I trust the orchestra to do their best with what I’m offering, and the orchestra trusts to put them in a situation in which they can be proud of the result.

It was the first rehearsal of the semester, so we began with a fair amount of housekeeping and preliminaries: announcements, passing out music, collecting information. It was like any other first rehearsal of the term. By 7:50, it was time to make music, and we turned to the first movement.

I had long thought about how to start this rehearsal. For better or worse, I decided that the orchestra should hear it as our audience will hear it: from start to finish, and so we began at the beginning. With a word to the violins about performing their natural harmonics, we dove in. We had a few absences last night, but a satisfying chunk of the orchestra was present, and reading overall went very well.

I think the first movement is far and away the most challenging–we took the faster sections under tempo, and it will take some work, but the music was, to my ear, mostly recognizable, and for large stretches, we stayed together. It still took about 25 minutes to get through the movement (about double the calculated time), after some starting and stopping, but I’m confident that it will arrive if not at my marked tempi, at least close. I will admit to being one of the weak links: the changing meter at this speed is going to be something that I need practice with before I can truly lead it with confidence.

We continued through the next three movements, with the members of the orchestra surprising me with their persistence, diligence, and willingness to go forward: again, this is trust between us, and it is working. Whatever concerns I might have had about a disastrous first rehearsal proved unfounded: we moved slowly, and at times haltingly, but no more than with any other reading session. I tried not to get bogged down in explanations, although the aleatoric section in the second movement took some time, but with positive results. All told, it was a successful and satisfying hour spent getting a first overview of the piece: I didn’t stop to rehearse or correct; only when necessary to regroup. I have my marching orders for the next few weeks of rehearsals, skipping next Monday for Labor Day.

My overwhelming emotion about last night is gratitude. I’ve asked 50 people to volunteer to follow my compositional whims, and they’ve accepted, so far. I’m grateful that God has put my life in such a way to make the Lakeland Civic Orchestra a part of it, and that the members of the orchestra share my vision for what a community orchestra can be. It has made my job at Lakeland a job that I can’t imagine leaving willingly, no matter how many sections of Popular Music I have to teach online.

After we played the piece, I waxed poetic about how I felt about the group: I think I truly would rather have them premiere this piece than a professional orchestra made of strangers. A performance by the Cleveland Orchestra or the Cincinnati Symphony might be good for my reputation in the wider world, but it would in many ways ring hollow: strangers would be paid to play just another work, with rehearsals governed as much by the clock. The result might be closer to perfection than what we will attain at Lakeland this fall, but it wouldn’t be nearly as personal, nearly as meaningful.

And it was a relief: this piece I have worked at for six years was not an exercise in futility. It’s a piece we can play, and there isn’t any reason to rethink the program for November 9–which is fortunate, because the news is starting to be out there. Last week in the State of the College talk, Lakeland’s president Dr. Sunil Ahuja, who has been supportive of the Civic Music Program, mentioned both the program and the fact that I was writing a piece. People are talking, at least in my little world.

Last night, one musician asked if anyone had played my symphony before, and, since we had just finished our reading, I responded, “you have.” With that, I have not only written a symphony, it has been performed, and for perhaps its most important audience, the people who I wrote it for, the Lakeland Civic Orchestra.

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I am a symphonist

July 8th, 2025

In 2019, I decided to write a symphony. I have written that symphony.

Over the next few months until the premiere, I want to blog about it, so here’s the first of a series of posts.

This was something I’d been thinking about for a long time, since the 1990s when I first started to figure out what a symphony was beyond a name that some classical pieces had. I considered naming the orchestra piece that I wrote at the conclusion of my doctorate “symphony,” but in 2006, I didn’t feel like those sketches were getting much of anywhere. I’m embarrassed to say that even as a doctoral student, my approach was usually to just sit down at the computer, open Sibelius, and start at the beginning, assuming that the ending would take care of itself. I knew that there was more to the writing process from my time writing for English classes, and I had a sense that there was a certain amount of pre-writing that could be done, but it didn’t seem like pre-writing was something I could have brought to a weekly composition lesson: I needed drafts, and so pre-writing tended to be something that happened in my head, not something worked out on paper or the computer screen. I could have learned from my study of computer music and synthesis about the importance of pre-writing: using MaxMSP or some other tool to build a virtual instrument and the workspace to use it in are certainly a form of pre-writing. I did produce an orchestral piece in 2006, Five Rhythmic Etudes, but those five pieces are distinctly not a symphony, and they are studies more than they are fully fledged movements. I stand by them: they work well enough and have a certain appeal: they just aren’t a symphony.

And so I began in 2019 with a clear idea, and a timeline. I wanted this to be a 45th birthday present to myself, and I knew that I worked best with a deadline, so I decided to commission myself with a formal agreement. In the spot describing the work, I wrote:

a symphony for full orchestra in four movements of 30-40 minutes’ duration based on the Doxology (“Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow”)

Commissioning Agreement, May 29, 2019

This idea had been bouncing around my head for at least a couple of years at this point. We had attended Shoregate United Methodist Church, and on most Sundays, after the offering was collected, we would sing #96 in the United Methodist Hymnal, a song I had known all the way back to my childhood. The idea was one movement for each line of the four-line hymn, resulting in the classic plan of the symphony, with the hymn and the ideas behind it serving as a unifying element.

The timeline called for a performance in November 2021, and by the end of 2019, I had planned, sketched, and mostly drafted the first two movements. I felt well on track to complete the work, even if things were moving a little more slowly than I wanted them to. I had moved quickly through the first movement, and got to something I liked, if it wasn’t perfect. I celebrated my “golden spike moment” in a blog post in October 2019. The second movement seemed trickier: I was trying out a very different language than the first movement, and I wasn’t quite as sure that where it was taking me was the right direction. Then I made the mistake of going back to look at the first movement again, and was immediately convinced that it was a disaster. I declared in a second blog post in November that I was “in a stall,” and I wasn’t sure how to proceed.

I probably don’t need to detail what was going on in the world in late 2019, but suffice to say we were starting to hear about a new respiratory virus in China, even as the Democrats were attempting their first impeachment of President Trump, which sucked up all the news about the threat to world health. In those days, I was still active on social media, especially Twitter, which was good in terms of maintaining connections, but not always in terms of those connections being healthy. I’ve written about this before as well. I stopped composing the symphony for the remainder of the year, which led to further breaks: I have a tendency to slow down in the winter months this way that I’ve documented on this blog many times over. The second movement was planned and sketched, but the full draft remained somewhat incomplete: connected to itself at times by tenuous single threads, and yet I let it be, planning to return in the summer.

But as 2020 became the COVID year, I found myself teaching completely online, including my private trombone students, and with the Lakeland Civic Orchestra on indefinite hiatus. Without an orchestra, it made little sense to work on a symphony, and I was already spending far too much time at the computer just to complete my teaching work. I was also helping Melia and Noah adjust to virtual schooling and supporting Becky in her work, since she was brought back to her job in retail as soon as it was deemed possible. We were lucky in our COVID experience: we didn’t get sick, and no one close to us died. Our livelihoods were never seriously in question, and lockdown and the summer after were honestly wonderful family times in many ways.

When Fall 2020 rolled around, there were decisions to be made about how the ensembles at Lakeland would function. Full in-person rehearsals were deemed impossible and unsafe, and the result was two virtual concerts–one each semester of 2020-2021. Better than nothing, but not ideal, and certainly not the place for a 40-minute symphony. Between the two concerts, there were about 30 minutes of orchestra music, with each person recording their parts independently, and then stitched together Zoom-style.

I stopped composing completely at first, and then in Summer 2020 began to write a few things, but not the symphony. I didn’t know what to do with it, and resolved to come back to it, even though it meant reconfiguring the timeline and missing the deadline. I didn’t know if the Lakeland Civic Orchestra would ever return to what it had been in March 2020, or when we might meet in person again. That turned out to not be until Fall 2021, and over the next few years, we worked to get back to where we had been in 2020: it wasn’t always easy, but the hiatus really brought a renewed sense of purpose and community and an understanding of how precious our Monday night rehearsals are.

We also aren’t quite the same orchestra as we were in 2019. Musicians come and go all the time, but we had more than a few who ended up leaving permanently, some of whom were long-time stalwarts who had been with the Lakeland Civic Orchestra longer than me. One, tubist Ken Hughes, passed away as we were preparing to return to in-person performance, and there is more than one passage in the first two movements that I wrote with him in mind. We’ve found the successors we needed, but not their replacements.

In Fall 2024, we were back in full swing, and I think our 2024-2025 season saw us back to the place we could have been in Fall 2020: good-sized sections, relatively few ringers (which the dean likes), going after challenging repertoire. It also saw Lakeland in a difficult moment, with budget cuts, declining enrollment, and a new college president whose stated goal was to balance our budget and right-size the college. I wasn’t sure what this would mean for the music program, although we lost our Art Gallery and our Civic Theater program early on in the process. I decided that if I were going to write a symphony for the Lakeland Civic Orchestra it had better be sooner, not later.

I pulled out my old sketches to remind myself of how I had been proceeding. The kernel of the third movement had been in my mind for a while: I often remember Russel Mikkelson’s dictum that “composers are like poker players who like to show you their cards at the beginning of the hand,” and the third movement behaves that way: three notes, from the bassline of the third line of the hymn, repeated. As for the first two movements, I took Nico Muhly’s suggestion and made a one-page picture of the piece, lining up sections of the music with the structure provided by the hymn tune and its bassline, while also planning out a six-minute scherzo. By the end of September, there was a continuous sketch, and by the end of October, a draft for orchestra.

In some ways, it was going back to the way I composed in 2019: I had used Muhly’s one-page idea for the first time in Channels, the Pierrot-ensemble piece I wrote for Margaret Brouwer’s Blue Streak Ensemble, and having a sense of the ending when I was at the beginning, or even the freedom to begin in the middle has been very helpful. It seems utterly naive of me now to have thought it might work otherwise for a big piece.

Then, my usual winter-into-spring down time. I worked on a few small pieces and some arranging work, but also had a teaching schedule at Lakeland that didn’t have me in the classroom: a full slate on online classes, which hadn’t happened since COVID. I felt disconnected from the College and the things–bad for many of my coworkers–that were, usually of necessity, happening there. Unlike the lockdown, I was still on campus for office hours and the occasional meeting. As I type this, I haven’t been in a classroom since December 2024, and it feels strange and wrong. I am slated to be teaching in-person in Fall 2025, but I wonder if I will ever be back to being a mostly in-person teacher.

This symphony has been an act of discipline, but also an act of faith and an act of worship. I am almost certain that I have faced spiritual warfare types of challenges on the way: the fear of COVID that led me to put all my composing on pause in favor of extra sleep for my immune system; the uncertainty of whether there would be a good moment to program this piece; the doubts as to whether this piece would be too explicitly Christian for some members of the orchestra to bear; the self-doubt and hesitancy to bring it to completion. The last year has been no exception, and the route of attack was through my son, whose social and academic struggles led him to some desperate decisions, although thankfully not irreversible ones, that have had our family in a fair amount of turmoil and worry. I will perhaps detail these at a later time, but it took enormous resolve to come back for the fourth movement.

I worried about the Christian theme of this piece, intended as it is for an orchestra sponsored by a public institution. We have done plenty of music on Christian themes over the years, of course, and a certain amount of Jewish music as well, plus music inspired by pagan mythology. The Doxology is an invitation to praise and a hymn of praise, and is nearly as ecumenical as a Christian hymn can be: if you acknowledge God, you acknowledge that He is worthy of our praise. But the last line, “Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” marks it as specifically Christian.

There are, of course, versions of the hymn text that tone down its Trinitarianism, and they usually center on changes to the last line. I rejected these in the end, because it would be dishonest to pretend that it wasn’t the text we sang every Sunday at Shoregate that was the inspiration for this music. It would be bringing a lie into this call to praise and community that I was working on, and would only deepen the imperfection of what could only be an imperfect work from an imperfect composer. The text that stands is Thomas Ken’s 1674 lines:

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;

Praise him, all creatures here below;

Praise him above, ye heavenly host;

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

United Methodist Hymnal, #96.

I made my Muhly-diagram of the fourth movement in December 2024, but didn’t return to the music until April 2025 and completed the sketch on April 10. In that week, on April 8, there was one beautiful hour of creative flow. We had been attending Willoughby Bible Church since the new year, and Noah had an activity there. Normally, I bring a book or my phone, but I wanted to make some headway on my sketching. I let myself into the sanctuary and helped myself to the baby grand piano. The setting, the instrument, or just my preparation for the moment led me through a large chunk of the fourth movement, sketching development that I would eventually score in a flugelhorn solo with accompaniment. I was sure at that moment that I would finish the piece.

With four complete movements in hand, I returned to my drafts to turn them into full orchestra scores. My drafts had one staff for each type of instrument, plus notes on percussion, so it was a matter of adding staves–moving wood, as I like to think of it. There was still plenty of creative work: the matter of fleshing out the second movement, and making some decisions that I hoped would make the first movement more practical for the performers. I have long gotten out of the habit of writing notes only with no dynamics in the first draft, but there will still many decisions to be made in that department as well, along with decisions about bowings and other articulations. May was a busy month with online teaching as classes wrapped up, but by the end of the month, I had full scores for three movements, with the fourth following in June.

When to call it done? June 12, 2025 is plausible, and on that day, I exported MIDI files from Sibelius, converted them to mp3s in Audacity, burned them to a CD, and took the long way to pick my daughter up at daycamp while I listened to all thirty-six minutes in a row to make sure it was good.

But that still wasn’t the day: someone could take the score I completed at that moment and create materials for performance, but as I am not rich or famous, that someone needed to be me. I took another week to create staves for the individual parts, plus some staves that would make a more plausible MIDI playback than the way the parts would need to look in the first and second movements. The third week of June was editing the scores of the individual movements, and editing the parts lasted into July. I exported the final PDF file–Percussion 2–on July 4, 2025, just before Becky and I went to pick up Noah and Melia from a week at church camp.

I have written a symphony.

It took a little more than six years, although a lot of other things happened in between: a pandemic, a lockdown, an election, an insurrection, two wars, another election, my son’s middle school years, my daughter’s elementary school years, a change of careers for my wife, my forty-fourth through forty-ninth birthdays, my father’s dementia diagnosis, my brother becoming a citizen of another country, two Summer Olympic Games, many changes in my job, my concept of who I am, and my concept of what the world is. There is no static, single person that wrote this piece, and no single moment that it depicts, but I believe that it expresses values and ideas that are at the core of my being.

I have written a symphony. I didn’t know how to write a symphony until I wrote one, and if I had known just what it would take, and how long it would be until I could say it, I might not have started in the first place, but it was time then, and over the next few months, it will be time to let others hear it.

I have written a symphony: S.D.G.

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Me and Michael J. Fox

August 31st, 2024

What kid growing up in the 1980s didn’t want to be (or be with) Michael J. Fox?

I thought he had a pretty cool thing going on, and I’ll be the first to admit that it pains me to see his ongoing suffering with Parkinson’s disease. I can’t say that I’ve ever followed the news about him (or any other celebrity) especially closely, but I’ve always had a passing interest in Michael J. Fox because of two of his early projects that inspired me.

Just two: Teen Wolf will not be addressed here.

I grew up watching Family Ties, and I think it’s a show that maybe I need to go back and take a look at again. It was there, right after The Cosby Show on Thursday nights, but also in syndication in that sweet slot in the afternoon after I had finished my homework but before my dad arrived home for dinner and the TV got turned off.

I was also lucky enough to see all three Back to the Future movies in the theatre on their first release. The first movie came out when I was in the fourth grade, and I remember one Saturday my brother and my mom were up to something else, so my dad took me to the multiplex and let me pick. I don’t know whether I knew what Back to the Future was about, but I was into sci-fi, we went to see it, the first of many times my dad let me pick the movie (and probably one of the few when my choice didn’t disappoint him; years later, I suggested Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, which kicked off a totally separate “celebrity” interest).

I know people like Back to the Future–no, they adore Back to the Future, and they aren’t wrong. I watched it with my son for the first time recently, and it absolutely holds up. It is one of those something-for-everyone kind of films: teen rom-com, action, science fiction, buddy film, nostalgia piece; it has a fantastic score, a great screenplay, very good continuity, and really just the best of what 1980s cinema could offer. It’s up there with two of the first three Indiana Jones movies and the even-numbered Star Treks on my list of “will watch at any time with anyone” movies.

And at the core is Marty McFly, played by Michael J. Fox in his stammering, disbelieving, ski-vest-wearing self. Seeing the world through Marty’s eyes really makes the movie pop, and drives home the strangeness and foreignness of the entire situation. Of course, there’s great writing here, but unless writing is performed by a great actor, there’s nothing for it. Fox is cool when he needs to be cool, smart when he needs to be smart, and clever when he needs to be clever: Achilles, Patroclus, and Odysseus in one teenage heartthrob.

Sure, his day-to-day life has its problems, but who wouldn’t want to be (or be with) Marty McFly?

I never owned a ski vest (and why is a kid from Southern California wearing a ski vest all the time, or even for just the one day?), and I don’t think I ever consciously imitated Michael J. Fox’s Marty, but it was–and probably is–a touchstone for me of what it means to be cool. When the sequels appeared, I bought the novelization and was first in line at the movies (well, not literally first in line, but my brother and I were definitely there opening weekend; speaking of opening weekend, my daughter and I have a date coming up for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and I can’t wait). The second movie primed me for the complexities of time travel plots (Yesterday’s Enterprise, anyone?), and I’m still a sucker for a good story involving time travel (I’m currently reading The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley–great story, with some really pithy one-liners, too: p. 82: “Despite being out of uniform, he looked oddly formal, as if he was the sole person in serif font.”)

And then there is Alex P. Keaton, scion of the Keaton family on Family Ties. Alex is driven, and intelligent, and although his ambitions never lined up with my own (he wanted to be Gordon Gecko; I wanted to be Gordon Fullerton). He sees following the rules and being a part of the system as the way to success, or at least happiness, and I’ve spent a good chunk of my life playing that game–and I certainly spent my school years that way. It works for him: there are honors, accolades, and even girlfriends. And, of course, this is a sitcom, so most of it is reasonably light-hearted, although in the post-M*A*S*H sitcom world, there are strong doses of sentimentality and maudlin themes as well.

And Alex is basically a good guy–a good friend, a good son, a good brother. There is a fair amount in him to admire, and I took that. There’s that scene where Mallory’s boy problems intrude on Alex’s college interview, and he’s angry, but forgives her. It’s not just the sitcom imperative to wrap things up after twenty-two minutes: it’s a demonstration the need for family to be patient and understanding with each other, to help each other when times are tough, and it’s how I hope my own kids would treat each other.

I liked Alex, as portrayed by Michael J. Fox.

And yet, in eighth grade, our class voted on joke awards for each other, and at a party on the last night of our class trip to Washington, D.C., I received the Alex P. Keaton Award.

By that point, I understood that my classmates saw me as a “nerd,” and that Alex was a pretty straitlaced, nerdy kind of guy. I didn’t wear a shirt and tie to school every day, and my ambitions weren’t about success in business, but I didn’t play it cool about my perception of my own intelligence and ability, which was pretty inflated. Ticking down the list of Breakfast Club social groups, I was definitely more Anthony Michael Hall than Emilio Estevez or Judd Nelson, and while the Ally Sheedys may (may) have thought that was OK, they would never have admitted it to the Molly Ringwalds.

So the Alex P. Keaton Award stung. It was supposed to be fun and funny, but for whom? I wasn’t completely clueless: I knew what my social status had been through three years of middle school, and I didn’t like having it confirmed with a piece of paper (which I’m pretty sure I got rid of as soon as I could). I didn’t really think about what the real meaning of the Alex P. Keaton Award was, or what my classmates–some of whom were my friends–meant by conferring it on me.

Was it meant to be a compliment? It sort of lined up with “Most Likely to Succeed,” from one perspective: on Family Ties, there’s never any doubt for Alex, unlike for his big sister Mallory, that success in whatever he chooses–business, school, chess–is a given. (Also… in the 1980s, a teen heartthrob is shown having a serious interest in chess in a sitcom that aired on Thursday nights on a major network: how are we not talking about this?!?)

Was it a recognition that Alex P. Keaton is a pretty good guy, and the other kids thought I was a pretty good guy, too? I don’t know. I think–I hope–that I’m a better person than I was at age fourteen, but by middle school standards, I don’t think I was as rotten as might have been possible, even if I sometimes gave as good as I got.

Whatever.

Michael J. Fox played Alex P. Keaton brilliantly throughout the run of Family Ties, at least in my memory (again, I will admit to not having watched a single episode in a very long time).

As much as Family Ties was supposed to be about Boomer parents (former hippies) raising Gen X kids in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, the kids took over the show, and not in a “those darn kids” kind of way–in a way that showed them as fully-formed humans with problems that were no less important than adult problems–and those problems often were adult problems.

We have to talk about “A, My Name is Alex.”

In the 1980s, half-hour sitcoms would sometimes do this thing where they turned into hour dramas for an episode, syndication be darned. Again, they were in the post-M*A*S*H universe and had aspirations to be Important, and people sat there and watched them, because that was their dose of their favorite characters for the week. Individual episodes would be hyped in the lead-up to the broadcast, so you would know that a Very Special Episode of Blossom would be happening on Tuesday night (or whatever… I never watched Blossom, I swear).

In “A, My Name is Alex,” Alex P. Keaton seeks mental health counseling in the aftermath of a friend’s sudden death in a car crash. I had forgotten about this episode mostly, like much of Family Ties, but a recent reminder of it brought it all back. There is humor here, but it is mostly a serious episode, mostly set in the therapist’s office and in flashbacks that Alex experiences.

Even as a kid, I knew that Michael J. Fox is brilliant in this episode–taped before a live audience–in his ability to turn corners from joy to grief, from skepticism about counseling to vulnerability and honesty. It shows teenagers–it showed me–that even the heartthrob has to be sad sometimes, and even the highest high-achiever needs help when things get difficult: through most of Family Ties, Alex P. Keaton tries to be John Galt: overly competent, self-reliant, enlightened-self-interested, but part of the arc of his character is learning, as I think I had to learn as well, that “no man is an island.”

I don’t know that I always remembered the lessons from “A, My Name is Alex,” but I think the normalization of Alex seeking and accepting help from his family and a mental health professional probably helped me to do the same thing in my adult life when it was time.

And, apparently, it was Michael J. Fox who pushed for “A, My Name is Alex” to be made in the first place.

I’m not much for celebrity hero-worship or parasocial relationships, as any reader on this blog knows (do I even have any readers?), but I am thankful for those creators who have brought meaningful performances into being. Perhaps this is because I am a performer myself–conductor, trombonist, public speaker and teacher, and even sometime-actor; and as a composer, I certainly enjoy working with my fellow performers. I know what it takes to put yourself into preparing and presenting a work for someone else’s entertainment or edification, so there is a fundamental respect there.

Any actor who has brought two very memorable characters and personal touchstones for me personally into being deserves my gratitude, heartthrob or not. An actor who pointed to ways of being and modelled a course that would influence my own needs to be acknowledged. I know he’ll probably never read this, and it really isn’t about that, but if I could say two words to the great Michael J. Fox:

Thank you.

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