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A View of Twenty Views, part 2

Thursday, February 2nd, 2017

In February, I will be travelling to Atlanta, where I will give the premiere performance of the complete Twenty Views of the Trombone at Eyedrum Art and Music Gallery, at the invitation of Olivia Kieffer.  This is the second in a series of posts about that piece and how it has come to be what it is.

Read the first post, on the history of this piece’s composition so far, here.

I performed Twenty Views of the Trombone in October 2013 on a concert of the Cleveland Composers Guild.  At that time, it was still a work in progress, with only eight or nine pieces complete, but you can listen to that performance here.

The premiere performance will be Friday, February 17 at 8pm at Eyedrum.  Admission is $7 at the door.

I will be tweeting using the handle @MattSComposer before, during, and after this process.  Join the conversation with #twentyviews–the final post in this series will be a Q&A, so send me your questions about the piece, or composing, or life in general, and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Twenty short pieces is a lot to keep track of, even for the person who is writing and performing them.  I’m not completely sure how to keep the audience on track–perhaps they should open their phones to this blog during the performance!

At any rate, here are my thoughts on the first seven pieces, in the order in which I am currently planning to play them at the premiere.

1. What It’s Like

This is the piece that started it all.  The title is deliberately incomplete: the full statement is “What It’s Like to Play Trombone.”  Every idea behind Twenty Views, musical or otherwise, grows out of this one-minute sketch from 2009, first performed at Jan Hus Church in New York City in March 2009 on a Vox Novus Composer’s Voice concert organized by David Morneau, with a preview the month before on a faculty recital at Oklahoma Panhandle State University.  I had been out of graduate school less than two  years at that point, and I hear quite clearly my style from that period.  There are distinct resemblances to my graduation piece for orchestra, Five Rhythmic Etudes, especially the first movement, “Hobnob.”  Thirty-seven measures of mixed meter, an essentially pentatonic approach, and is it in the key of A?  Possibly.  I tried to write a piece that was comfortable, humorous, and light-hearted, and I think I succeeded.  I also succeeded in creating a piece that was exactly one minute in length, and this was useful a year or so later when I arranged it for orchestra to enter in Vox Novus’ call for scores for 60×60 Orchestra.  It was selected, but that project has yet to come to fruition, so the amplified version of this piece has yet to be performed.  Luckily, I amplified What It’s Like in another way: the final piece of Twenty Views of the Trombone, “What It’s Really Like,” is an expansion of the first piece.  I don’t know what “official” order I will eventually settle on for these pieces, but I do know that “What It’s Like” will be first, and “What It’s Really Like” will be last.  Any partial performance should begin (and always has) with “What It’s Like” and end with “What It’s Really Like.”

One idea that I incorporate in Twenty Views of the Trombone is synecdoche.  I didn’t start out thinking this way, but as the movements accumulated, it turned out that there were some opportunities for pieces to represent parts of a whole.  (The phrase All hands on deck is a synecdoche because the word hands substitutes for entire human beings).  Thus, “What It’s Like” is a synecdoche both for “What It’s Really Like,” and, in a way, for Twenty Views as a whole, and for the entire experience of playing the trombone or listening to trombone music, or for the experience of life.   Libby Larsen said that music tells us something about “what it’s like to be alive,” and there is that sense in the title as well.  As Twenty Views of the Trombone came together over the years, I found that in many ways it was a piece about my life–I have played trombone for most of my life, after all, and my love for doing that has determined the course of my life.

2. What It Once Was Like (I)

Also from 2009, as I began to expand upon “What It’s Like.”  First performed on a faculty recital at Oklahoma Panhandle State University, and then premiered formally at an Oklahoma Composers Association Salon concert in the fall of 2009, alongside three other movements, and, again, Let Everything That Has Breath Praise the Lord.  This is the first of several backward-looking pieces–in this case to my studies with Tony Chipurn at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music in the mid-1990s.  It begins with an interval–Bb3 up to Gb4–familiar to any trombonist as the first two notes of Alexandre Guilmant’s Morceau Symphonique.  

3. What It Could Be Like (I)

The third piece that I presented for the Oklahoma Composers Association in 2009.  The “What It Could Be Like” pieces envision the future–specifically, life after death.  As a Christian, I accept salvation, but more on that later.  This piece envisions the mind fading away into nothingness as the brain fires off a last few electro-chemical bursts.  Marked Sempre rallentando e diminuendo, it is written in free rhythm, and calls for the Harmon mute, which has me greatly concerned, as I’m not sure how to safely get my mutes from Cleveland to Atlanta on a commercial airliner.

4. What One Philistine Thinks It’s Like

First performance at Eyedrum in February. From the sublime to the ridiculous, then.  I don’t know if I should call the method for playing this piece an “extended technique.”  There are plenty of people who choose not to understand what it is that musicians do.  This is a reminiscence about one of them, and something of an inside joke between my wife and me.

5. What It Sounds Like When the Philistines Talk About What It’s Like

First performance at Eyedrum in February.  I am an expert in the field of music.  Over the years there have been many ways in which people have said things about playing the trombone to me that, if they only knew what they were saying, they probably wouldn’t have said.  Am I an elitist snob?  Probably, but no more so than anyone who involves himself deeply in some area of endeavor who then has to speak to people about it outside the field.  I try not to be a jerk about it.  This piece explores what I’ve heard from people–most well-meaning, some not–over the years, starting in the 1980s, when everyone I met seemed to mention Glenn Miller.  This is the first piece in the cycle to employ spoken word, something I have been thinking about for quite some time, since I heard Dan Trueman’s doctoral composition recital in college in which the Amernet String Quartet spoke a somewhat Dadaist text.  I incorporated a “commercial” with a narrator in my clarinet concerto Daytime Drama in 2011, but the use of speech in these pieces is somewhat different–perhaps as a shorthand for musical expression, since these are short pieces.  Perhaps a better composer would not require such recourse.

6. What I Thought It Would Be Like (I)

First performance at Eyedrum in February.  A short piece as a sort of march with lots of 16th notes.  You enter a career with certain expectations, and sometimes those are met, and sometimes they aren’t.  This piece isn’t not what being a trombonist has turned out to be (especially since it has turned out that I am playing this piece), but it isn’t exactly it, either.  It would be more fun if more trombone music were like this, but it would also be much more stressful.  Woe to the trombonist who would write music for himself to play.

7. What It’s Like When I’m Working (Aubade)

First performance at Eyedrum in February.  As a father of young children, the solution to my need for a set composing schedule over the last two years has been met (somewhat) satisfactorily by getting up an hour before everyone else.  This works because I compose at the computer and can do so in silence.  It then becomes a race between my ability to keep working and not get distracted by email or social media, and my children’s desire to awaken seemingly earlier every day (my daughter is stirring right now…).  So, the piece begins with a warm-up, and just as it seems to get started, it has to stop.

This is the second of a short series of posts about Twenty Views of the Trombone.  The first post gave an overview of the history of the composition of the piece, and next posts will continue to discuss the individual pieces and serve as a program note.

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A View of Twenty Views, part 1

Friday, January 27th, 2017

In February, I will be travelling to Atlanta, where I will give the premiere performance of the complete Twenty Views of the Trombone at Eyedrum Art and Music Gallery, at the invitation of Olivia Kieffer.  This is the first in a series of posts about that piece and how it has come to be what it is.

The premiere performance will be Friday, February 17 at 8pm at Eyedrum.  Admission is $7 at the door.

I will be tweeting using the handle @MattSComposer before, during, and after this process.  Join the conversation with #twentyviews–the final post in this series will be a Q&A, so send me your questions about the piece, or composing, or life in general, and I’ll do my best to answer them.

 

In 2009, I was teaching at Oklahoma Panhandle State University.  David Morneau invited me to come to New York City as a composer, with a piece he remembered from our days together as graduate students called Let Everything that Has Breath Praise the Lord.  A short piece for trombone and electronics, I could play it myself on a Vox Novus Composer’s Voice concert that he was curating.  David asked if there was anything else we could program, and told him there wasn’t, since I didn’t have any other connections in New York, and no money to pay them, anyway.  He suggested that I write and learn a second short piece, for unaccompanied trombone, and I remembered the first assignment I like to give to new composers:  write a one-minute piece for your instrument that describes what it’s like to play your instrument.

The result was What It’s Like.  I played it on a faculty recital in Oklahoma before I left, and then in New York City in March 2009 at Jan Hus Church, alongside pieces by David Morneau, Jeremy Ribando, and Milica Paranosic.  That trip was many firsts–my first time bringing my trombone on an airplane; my first time missing a connection and getting stuck in Denver (on the way home, luckily); my first time visiting Queens, where David played the host with his gracious wife Jolayne; the first performance of my music in New York City, or anywhere on the East Coast; and the birth of what would become an eight-year composition project, Twenty Views of the Trombone.

I quickly discovered that having music of one’s own to play alone is a useful thing.  What It’s Like expanded from one piece to four for an Oklahoma Composers Association Salon Concert in 2010, and to six pieces for the Aspen Composers Conference in 2011.  I’m not sure at what point I began to think of an eventual large-scale work–twenty pieces, in homage to Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur l’enfant-Jesus–but by the time I left Oklahoma in 2012, I’m certain that was the plan.

In Cleveland, more new pieces followed–for a John Cage Musicircus organized by Chris Auerbach-Brown at MOCA Cleveland, for the first performance of my work on a concert of the Cleveland Composers Guild, and for the 2015 Manchester New Music Festival in Indiana.  By that point, there were ten pieces, with ideas for a couple more. I didn’t know how I would wrap things up, but the plan was to always begin with What It’s Like, always end with What It’s Really Like, and include at least one new piece in the bunch every time I played the piece until there were twenty of them.

Meanwhile, I was playing trombone less and less–I wasn’t teaching lessons, or actively seeking gigs.  I don’t think there has been a time in my life since I started playing in 1986 that I was spending less time with the instrument, and that concerned me.  Two decades of developing my skills, of pushing my own limitations on this instrument would be lost, withering on the vine.

It reminded me of how, once upon a time, I knew Spanish fairly well.  Fluent might be an overstatement, but I think after five years of study in middle school and high school, I was relatively comfortable with it.  When I arrived at college, I had the chance to study the language further.  I had taken the AP exam in Spanish, but the modern language department wouldn’t grant credit for it–only placement by taking a computer-based test.  I took the test to see what might come of it, but chose not to enroll in the class.  There were other things to pursue, despite how useful fluency in a foreign language might be, and while I retain some limited ability with the language, I would say I’ve forgotten most of it.  Losing my skills as a trombonist would be much worse, a far greater loss.  I have difficulty imagining becoming an ex-trombonist.

I have friends in this situation, of course.  Not every college music student continues to pursue music seriously.  The horn player who develops focal dystonia and changes directions.  The violist who becomes a realtor, or the clarinetist who ends up in law school.  The many of my female classmates who simply seem to have gotten married and become mothers, leaving little time for music.  The music education major who ends up an administrator.  This is not what I want for myself, and in an important way, Twenty Views of the Trombone has been a reason to forestall it.

Continuing to play the trombone gives me a connection to some of what brought me to music in the first place.  It helps me meet people who can relate to playing an instrument much more than they can relate to composition.  And it gives me a certain credibility when I place my music before other musicians.  It keeps me grounded and realistic in my expectations as a composer–my flawed, often rusty technique reminds me that most of the musicians I will work with possess the same.  My music is performed mostly by amateurs, students, and teachers, most of whom face the same challenges that I do when it comes to building or maintaining their skills.

In my fortieth year, then, 2016, I heard about Eyedrum.  One of my Atlanta connections posted Olivia Kieffer’s call for composers to present their music at this club/gallery/venue in a city I hadn’t visited in a very long time.  I contacted Olivia, and told her my proposed work, and shared the recordings I had of existing movements.  A forty-minute work for unaccompanied trombone is daunting on many levels, but it’s the kind of thing that works well at Eyedrum, apparently, and I was booked.  The plane ticket purchased, arrangements made.  I had only to write the remaining pieces, and, as always when I have a goal and a deadline, the music came quickly.

 

This is the first of a short series of posts about Twenty Views of the Trombone.  The next posts will discuss the individual pieces and serve as a program note.

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Breakfast Cereal

Thursday, September 29th, 2016

A few weeks ago, Becky bought a box of Cocoa Pebbles. As with all chocolate-flavored cereals, I had no interest in eating them–I don’t like the way they turn the milk brown (I also don’t like chocolate milk, so there you have it). Melia liked it, though, and in giving her some for breakfast, I noticed some letters splashed across the front of the box, advertising the cereal’s tendency to turn the milk “chocolatey.” As it turns out, the very thing that makes the cereal repellent to me is the thing that some people find to be a salient feature, and is, perhaps, a reason for buying it in the first place. The same is true with art.

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Nail Polish

Tuesday, August 9th, 2016

My daughter, Melia, is two-and-a-half, and in that phase where she wants to do everything for herself.  She is fairly convinced that she is a fully-grown human and not just a larva.  She loves to open the refrigerator, and actually can be quite helpful at times, too.  On the other hand, I’m sitting at a desk right now where she discovered a green marker yesterday.  There are marks on the paper that was left out, the desk, and the computer screen.  No serious damage done.

But three mornings ago, Melia was up and about before anyone else and found a bottle of nail polish.

With boys, the equivalent temptation to nail polish seems to be the hornet’s nest, which, when combined with a few nearby rocks, seems to provide a story for many a grown man.  I’ve known as many women who remember getting themselves into trouble with nail polish or nail polish remover as girls.

Becky has painted Melia’s nails, both fingers and toes, on several occasions.  She is training Melia to be a girly-girl, probably to make up for the 100% boy specimen across the hall in the form of our son Noah, but also because it really couldn’t be any other way.  Becky loves to do her own nails, as well, and a couple of bottles of nail polish are often to be found on the little shelf about a third of the way up the stairs to our bedroom, on the opposite side of the baby gate from Melia’s room.  We have never locked this gate at night, thinking that to have to fiddle with it in a fire might be dangerous, so it was only pulled closed, but not latched.  Melia usually wakes herself up, and has lately been in the habit of just playing alone for a while as I work in the cool quiet of the morning.  The door to her room sticks during the summertime, and she can’t always open it, so I usually come downstairs first thing to find her books, puzzles, and Barbie dolls scattered across the floor.  She greets me with a smile and says, “I wake up!” and I change her diaper, and we eat breakfast, with Noah joining us as soon as he is ready.

All this will change soon, since Noah is headed to first grade in about ten days, but this has basically been the routine this summer.

On Saturday, I heard a few noises while I was working, as I often do, but I was making good progress in my composing, and so I didn’t come downstairs right away.  When I found a stopping point, I shut down.  As I came down from the bedroom, I heard water running in the bathroom.  Melia had let herself out of her room, and was washing her hands, another of her favorite activities.  She apparently hates sticky hands, and often tries to get up mid-meal to go to wash up in the bathroom.  This particular morning, however, she looked at me sheepishly, and I could see that the first three fingers of her right hand were bright pink, bordering on fuchsia.  I knew immediately what she had been up to.  She gave me a sheepish look as I dried her hands, noticing the swipes of pink on the sink and the faucet.  She had been caught with polish before, and knew that she had crossed a line.  I just need to determine the level of damage done.

I went into her room, and saw the offending bottle on her bed, still upright fortunately, with the lid and brush in the bottle, but not screwed on.  I closed the bottle up, and as I did, that’s when I noticed the quilt.

My mother has taken up quilting in her retirement.  She selects the fabric and designs and pieces the quilts, and outsources the quilting itself, and the results are amazing.  The beds at our house all have full-sized quilts on them, with matching pillow shams and throw pillows.  We have the best-looking beds I’ve ever slept in, and the bedding provides a real incentive to get the beds made each day, at least for me.  The time and effort and money that go into these creations is significant, and I view them as heirlooms to cherish, fancier versions of the crochet afghans my grandmother was forever creating as she sat in her recliner watching the Cleveland Indians on TV.

Melia is still not potty-trained, and after a significant nighttime diaper leak, we decided to put a store-bought comforter on her bed and fold her quilt from Grandma at the foot of the bed.  It is a white floral pattern with pastels, and it serves as well as an accent as a full bed covering for now.  I looked at where the bottle of nail polish had been on the bed, just glad that it hadn’t been dumped over.  It rested on the comforter, but there was a spot of polish on the quilt, a half-inch or so of pink in the middle of a white patch.  I knew immediately that it probably wasn’t coming out.  Acetone (nail polish remover) is a solvent, not an emulsifier.  It dissolves nail polish (or furniture lacquer, or Toons), but it doesn’t cause it to bead up and away from whatever object it may be stuck on.  It needs to be wiped away, and a porous surface like fabric, is excellent for wiping, but isn’t all that good at being wiped.

Becky tried to get rid of the spot, but it isn’t going anywhere.  Secretly, this doesn’t bother me, and I think there is a composer-type reason for this.  My mother made that quilt for Melia–not for anyone else.  It is, in a sense, a collaboration.  My mother made the quilt, and it is up to Melia to use it, and now that it has a spot of nail polish on it, it isn’t good for anyone else.  It is indelibly Melia’s quilt.  A quilt demands to be used as a quilt, to cover a bed, to keep warm the person in the bed, to absorb the essence of that person.  Two-and-a-half-year-old Melia loves nail polish, and now we will always remember that.  It has become a part of the history of her quilt, and the history of our family.  There is something beautiful about it.

I see my music in a similar way.  I may work largely alone to create a piece of music, investing my time and money in a project.  I then give the piece over to musicians, who must make it their own, and it isn’t truly a piece of music until they have done so.  They complete and validate my work through their performance of it, through, what might be broadly construed as doing violence to my work, since they will come to conclusions about the work that I may or may not have intended or considered.  At any rate, I need them to burrow into the piece and to live with it and to instill it with their essence in order for my work to be full-realized.

So I’m not mad about Melia’s quilt and the nail polish.  It was inevitable and necessary.

 

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Harmony

Thursday, June 23rd, 2016

Yet another post in response to a question from my student Cooper Wood, who sent a text message yesterday asking, in part, how I work with harmony, and how I structure chords.  Early on in my lessons at Ohio State, Donald Harris put a similar question to me, and I don’t quite remember my answer–I’m not sure that I was able to answer him at that point, so here, twelve years later, is an attempt.

I have often thought of composers falling into three groups–harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic.  Beethoven and I are rhythmic composers, and for us, if the rhythm is correct, the harmony and melody will fall into place around it through the application of motivic constructions and a sense of when the harmony needs to change.  It is not that a rhythmic composer ignores harmony but that the musical meaning isn’t concentrated there.  As interesting as Beethoven’s harmonic language can be, there is no equivalent to the Tristan chord in his work.

Two things I don’t do, at least not regularly:  I don’t consider my work from a functional/tonal perspective, at least not during the writing of it, and I don’t simply sit at the piano and let my fingers fall where they may, to see what kinds of chords come out.  That is to say, I rarely think of chords in either sense–neither as units functioning in some system nor as groups of notes played simultaneously.

Here, then, are some of the ways that I think about harmony:

Thickness of texture: Is this a moment in the piece where a more complex, richer sound is required? This makes harmony into a timbral decision, where there is a continuum, something like this:

Single line—Octave doubling—Non-octave doubling—Two or more parallel intervals—Voice-leading—Clusters

My 2010 Piano Sonata displays almost all of these at some point.

Scale and Mode: While I rarely explicitly choose a specific scale or mode, melodically, my music often behaves in modal ways, and I feel that introducing an accidental is a change in harmony.  On the small scale, this may happen quickly.  I notice a distinct preference in my music for flats over sharps, and my feeling about accidentals is that they point, so I am frequently choosing notes that point down a half-step.  My trombone concerto Homo sapiens trombonensis (2005) includes examples of this sort of thinking.

Consonance and Dissonance: I spent several years before graduate school trying to come to terms with my personal approach to dissonance, as nothing, at least to my thinking at the time, says more about a composer than his or her use of harmonic language.  I still hold to Vincent Persichetti’s idea, laid out in Twentieth-Century Harmony, that the degree of dissonance is something that a composer must tightly control.  So, in my work, I tend to make harmonic decisions based on how consonant or dissonant a passage needs to be, adding notes when appropriate, and thinning out the texture when necessary.  For me, chord constructive is an additive conception.

Organum: William Russo’s book Composing Music was at one time a standard title on the shelves at Barnes & Noble, and though I never bought the book, I certainly read large chunks in comfortable chairs.  One idea that stuck with me is what he calls organum–doubling a line at a parallel interval to increase the complexity of the timbre.  A key feature of my style for at least the past ten years has been melodic doubling in sevenths, usually minor sevenths, although sometimes following the diatonic scale.  Much of my piano music uses these parallel sevenths, beginning with 2008’s Starry Wanderers.

Set Class: In some of my works, I have, early on in the process, discovered a set that appeals to me, and based the work on that to one degree or another.  This is usually an outgrowth of my work with motive, and in some ways, the set becomes a harmonic motive.  In my most recent work for solo piano, The Rainbow’s Daughter, I found myself drawn to the set [0236] during the composing of the first movement, “Polychrome’s Prism.”  Its two thirds (which I wrote as two sixths) slide easily into a minor triad, giving the sense of refraction that I wanted to suggest.  In the subsequent movements, I found that I could turn [0236] just as easily into an augmented, diminished, or major triad, and the structure of what is one of my most harmonically-conceived pieces became clear.

Counterpoint: I often attempt to combine melodies, resulting in harmonic structures.  My training in 16th-century counterpoint (begun with Dan Trueman in music theory at CCM, and continued in self-study, most significantly in Schubert’s Modal Counterpoint: Renaissance Style, which I used as a teaching text) and in 18th-century counterpoint (with Jan Radzynski at Ohio State), had the desired effect–it gave me a sense of the possibilities of the ars combinatoria and as a result, I think about the direction of each voice in a composition, with the resulting variety of rhythmic and melodic direction.  I don’t, however, generally include canon, fugato, or strictly fugal sections in my work.  I don’t find that these techniques provide sufficient reward for the effort involved.

Layering: In place of imitative counterpoint, I often choose a layered approach, in which small, repeated melodic/rhythmic units either build a texture through successive entrances or appear simultaneously.  I used this extensively in my 2010 band piece Moriarty’s Necktie, and the idea of adding a layer is never far from my mind, although this rarely results in a simple melody+figuration texture.

So–I don’t know that I have answered the question put to me now by both my teacher and my student, but these are some of the things that I think about as I work.  For Cooper, I hope this helps.  For Don, just know that I am still working on that answer for you.

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Seven Last Words: A Primer

Wednesday, February 10th, 2016

The Prodigal Blogger returns, after a busy season of holidays and the first month of the New Year have passed!

I am looking forward to the premieres, one at a time, of my new set of organ pieces, Seven Last Words, over the season of Lent.  Rob Shuss, organist at Shoregate United Methodist Church in Willowick, my home church, will play a new piece in the set during the 10am worship service at Shoregate.  The premiere will stretch through Lent, beginning on Sunday, February 14, continuing every Sunday until Palm Sunday, March 20, and concluding with Good Friday worship on March 25.

I wanted to take a moment to put down a few ideas to help explain the piece, how it is put together, and what it means.

This work was the result of a conversation Pastor Jon Wilterdink and I had about the role of art and music in Christian worship.  Shoregate has a strong, diverse musical tradition that incorporates many members of the congregation in both vocal and instrumental music, and the church where I grew up had a similar relationship to music.  It is safe to say that much of who I am as a musician was formed in the church, both by participation and by listening to the music of others.  At the time of our conversation, Pastor Jon was planning a more music-centered worship for Advent, and wondered if something similar could be done for Lent.

The Lenten season is central to my experience of the Christian faith.  The Scriptures for Lent emphasize Jesus’ humanity while at the same time underscoring His divinity, and there is a relentless intensification as the Church once again follows his ministry as it begins in earnest, culminates in triumph and ends in seeming tragedy.  I thought immediately of the theme of Christ’s Seven Last Words from the cross, the utterances (not words, but phrases, really) that the various Gospel writers recorded during his public execution.[1]

I thought immediately, too, of Rob Shuss, Shoregate’s wonderful organist, who provides the support for so much of our music making.  A set of solo organ pieces would be an opportunity to show his talents and abilities in a new light.  It would, also, be a challenge for me as a composer–although I have included organ in music for larger ensembles, and arranged the music of others for organ, these are my first solo organ pieces.  Each instrument has its quirks and unique abilities, but organ is special because each instrument has a somewhat unique set of capabilities, and even instruments manufactured to be identical are installed in different locations.  A piece for organ, then, will, more so than for other genres, rely much more intently on the skill of the performer to make decisions about the overall sound that will work best on any given instrument.  Not being an organist myself, I have made suggestions regarding the registration, or specific sounds to be mixed and blended, but in the end, I have to trust that Rob will work with my notes and Shoregate’s instrument to produce a clear, effective performance.

Since my new work was to be seven pieces, each about 4 minutes long, but spread over 40 days, I looked for ways to organize the entire set and make them coherent and relevant.  Each piece is a short meditation on the “word” at hand, and each is influenced by one of the Psalms, which Jesus often quoted and turned to during his agony.  But, to ensure that the pieces would not be seven independent pieces bunched together, I found three musical ways to unify the set.  If, someday, someone chooses to play all seven pieces in one sitting (which would take about 30 minutes), I hope the work can be heard as a unified whole, more than the sum of its parts.

An overall plan emerged, then, before I had written a note of music.  This is not unusual for a composer, and for any large work, one needs to have a road map of sorts in mind.  There may be detours along the way, or the journey to a complete piece may end up with a completely different destination, but without an ending in mind, the route will either ramble aimlessly, or simply never leave home.  Since there is nothing better for the creative process than a good spreadsheet, I fired up Microsoft Excel and laid out my ideas, one row for each of the seven pieces, and a column for the various Scriptures and attributes I hoped to incorporate.

To hold the seven pieces together musically, I used several devices.  First, all seven pieces have the same pitch, C, as their tonic, or musical home base.  Each piece, however, uses one of the seven diatonic modes.  Without going down the rabbit hole of music theory, a mode is a major scale (do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do) that chooses a note other than do as its tonic pitch (home base).[2]    At any rate, each piece has C as its home base, but uses a slightly different scale.  Over the seven pieces, the modes are organized so that the first piece uses the brightest mode (Lydian) and the last piece uses the darkest mode (Locrian).  Each mode has seven pitches, and between any two consecutive pieces, six of those seven pitches are held in common.  The result is a gradual shift from light to dark as the tonic pitch remains the same while the other pitches change, symbolizing the progression to the darkest day of the Church calendar, Good Friday.  Each piece begins and ends with a cluster of all seven pitches for that mode played at the same time.  The cluster is repeated three times, to remind us of the three nails that held Jesus to the cross.

Lastly, each piece is centered around a musical interval–the distance between two pitches.  Musicians number these intervals by counting the number of note names involved–a third, for example, might be the notes B and D.  Counting those note names and the note C between gives us the name “third.”  (Incidentally, we name intervals this way for the same reason that we speak of Jesus rising from the dead on the “third day”–because the Greeks and Romans didn’t have a concept of zero.) I’ve chosen these intervals for their traditional symbolism, and they remind us of various aspects of the Crucifixion.

Here is a summary of all seven pieces:

1.  Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.  Luke 23:34.  To be performed the First Sunday in Lent (February 14).  It uses the Lydian mode (a G-major scale, starting on C), and centers on the interval of the second, symbolizing duality, important here as Christ’s nature as fully man and fully God.  It is associated with Psalm 3.

2. Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.  Luke 23:43.  For the Second Sunday in Lent (February 21).  It uses the Ionian mode (also known as the C-major scale), and emphasizes the interval of the unison (or first), symbolizing unity, the final covenant that God makes with us through the Crucifixion.  Is is accompanied by Psalm 62.

3. Dear woman, here is your son… here is your mother. John 19:26-27.  For the Third Sunday in Lent (February 28).  This piece uses the Mixolydian mode (an F-major scale, starting on C), and focuses on the fourth to represent the church and the imperative that we have to care for each other as if we were born into the same family.  Psalm 2 is the reading for this piece.

4. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  Matthew 27:46/Mark 15:34.  For the Fourth Sunday of Lent (March 6).  This piece uses the Dorian mode (a B-flat-major scale, starting on C).  This middle piece, using the middle mode, is inspired by the only one of the Seven Last Words to appear in more than one Gospel.  Its musical interval is the sixth, symbolizing Satan, and the temptation that is memorialized in the whole Lenten season, and that must have been renewed for Jesus as he hung on the cross.  The text is the wrenching Psalm 22, also the source of Jesus’ words.

5. I thirst.  John 19:28.  For the Fifth Sunday of Lent (March 13).  This piece uses the Aeolian mode (also called the C-minor scale).  The number five has often been used to symbolize humanity, and since this Last Word underscores Jesus’ own human needs, the interval of the fifth plays a prominent role.  Psalm 42 restates this literal thirst as a spiritual thirst.

6. It is finished.  John 19:29-30.  For Palm Sunday (March 20).  The dark Phrygian mode (an A-flat major scale, starting on C) contrasts the triumph of Palm Sunday with the suffering to come.  The musical interval of the seventh, symbolizing God, reminds us that what is finished at this moment is not only the man Jesus’ life, but God’s plan to finally redeem his creation.  At this central moment of history, it is only fitting to consider Psalm 118, the literal middle book of the Protestant Bible.

7. Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.  Luke 23:46.  For Good Friday (March 25).  The darkest mode, Locrian (an D-flat major scale, starting on C) completes the cycle of modes.  The interval of the third symbolizes the Trinity, reunited at the moment of Jesus’ death.  Psalm 31 provides the accompanying text.

I hope that hearing these pieces through the season of Lent will help you focus your attention on the topics of the season and consider, as I often have, the grandeur and majesty of God’s grace, through Jesus’ suffering as a human being.  It is my hope that, after Good Friday, we will feel the depths of that darkest moment, and that Easter will thus be all the brighter for us as we celebrate anew the risen Lord.

 

 [1] These seven verses have often been a theme for composers over the centuries.  The two most famous pieces are Théodore Dubois’ oratorio Les sept paroles du Christ, an 1867 work for vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra; and Hadyn’s Die Worte des Erlösers am Kreuze, in versions for orchestra, orchestra with chorus, and string quartet, from 1786.  Both pieces last over an hour in full performance, and I take some inspiration from them, but neither piece is really my model for Seven Last Words.

[2] If you want to know more about modes, here’s a pretty good YouTube video about it.

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What I’ve Been Writing, and a World Premiere

Saturday, November 28th, 2015

I took a moment this morning to put the final touches on one work, and “check in” with two more.

I spent part of October finishing a new piano cycle, The Rainbow’s Daughter.  This is one of those rare pieces that I’ve written without a commission, although the first movement, “Polychrome’s Prism,” was composed as part of the Cleveland Composer’s Guild collaboration with the Music Settlement for Taniya Dsouza, a student of Nella Kammerman here in Cleveland.  I wanted to explore more fully the character of Polychrome, who appears in L. Frank Baum’s The Road to Oz, the fourth of his Oz novels.  I discovered Polychrome as I was reading the Oz books to my son, Noah, and thinking about a set of pieces based on characters from this land across the desert.  I knew that I didn’t want to focus on the obvious foursome–Dorothy, the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion–but on at least a few of the other very interesting characters in Baum’s world.  I considered writing short sketches about several subjects, but in writing “Polychrome’s Prism,” I discovered a tetrachord, [0236], that could be easily modified to any of the four triads.  “Prism” made use of the minor triad, so I developed a plan to base three subsequent movements on the augmented, diminished and major triads.  Thus, “Polychrome’s Passion,” “Polychrome’s Pearl,” and “Polychrome’s Power.”  It has been interesting, and refreshing, to write a piece using such specific harmonic materials.  This is not my typical way of composing, but it felt like a necessary and important exercise.  The four pieces seem to speak a common language, and, as intended, reflect a single character.  I am now, of course, stuck with a piece that has no plan for a performance.  I will send it out to some of my previous collaborators, or perhaps find a performer for an upcoming Cleveland Composers Guild performance.

In October, I also began work on a commission from Renee Goubeaux, a cellist with the Toledo Symphony, for a new work for cello and piano.  It has been nearly a decade since I wrote for a solo stringed instrument, and it has been fun digging into the capabilities and potential of a world I haven’t visited in a while.  I have the piece about half-written–it will be a ten- to twelve-minute piece, and there is currently about six minutes of music, but it is on hold while I’ve given the draft to Renee for comment.  I’m curious to see how this part of the collaboration works.  Renee and I went to high school together, and she is the first composer I ever met–we both started composing in the gifted and talented program.  I don’t think she has kept up with that side of her creative work, but she at least knows about the process of putting notes on paper, and it will be interesting to bring someone with her background in at this phase of the creative process.  The piece is tentatively titled Meditation, since I’ve been reading Marcus Aurelius this fall.

Earlier this month, I sat down with Jon Wilterdink, our pastor at Shoregate United Methodist Church, for lunch in the cafeteria at Lakeland.  We discussed worship and the arts, and what the church can be doing to foster the work of artists.  I had reached out to him after reading this article on the subject.  At the end of our conversation, he asked me to contribute musically to our worship for the coming Lenten season.  The idea that immediately came to mind was a cycle of organ pieces based on the Seven Last Words of Christ.  Rob Shuss, our organist, was game, so I have started writing, according to a fairly intricate plan.  I have associated each saying with several Scriptural and musical elements, so each movement will also refer to one of Jesus’ parables and to a Psalm, as well as being focused on a specific diatonic mode (progressing from Lydian to Locrian over the course of the cycle), and emphasize a diatonic interval within that mode.  The pieces will be premiered on the six Sundays in Lent (beginning Febraury 14, 2016) and on Good Friday.  This is my first work for organ, so I’m taking some time to try to understand this instrument, but also trying to work steadily, as Rob will need the pieces as soon as possible.  I have written the first movement, “Father forgive them,” in Lydian mode, emphasizing the interval of the second, and associated with Psalm 3, and the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector.

This is my first sacred music written on commission in many years, and the first to be performed in over a decade.  One struggle I have had as a composer is finding outlets and opportunities to write music about my faith.  There is a huge demand for music in the church, of course, but not for work that pushes musical boundaries in search of a spiritual experience.  The difficult thing has been to find a community that meets our spiritual needs but that is also interested in what I can offer.  I’m excited to make this attempt, although 28 minutes of music for an unfamiliar instrument in just a couple of months is a little daunting.  At least Christmas break is in the intervening period, and the later pieces can be polished even as the earlier ones are being premiered.

Speaking of premieres, Antoine Clark and the McConnell Arts Center Chamber Orchestra gave a splendid first performance of my work …into the suggestive waters… in Worthington, Ohio on November 1.  Becky was unable to attend because of back troubles, but my father and brother came along, and my mother came to the dress rehearsal so that she could watch the kids during the concert.  Having a professional orchestra commission and play my music was a fantastic feeling.  I now need to work on getting a second performance of the piece somewhere, and that means leaning on conductors and sending them the excellent recording of the premiere.  I made some great contacts at the post-concert reception, and I would love to increase the presence of my music in my hometown.

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Program Notes

Monday, October 26th, 2015

I don’t know if anyone ever reads the program notes I write for the Lakeland Civic Orchestra or for my own music.  I assume that audience members get bored and eventually turn to them, but I think I am the rare person who eagerly jumps to the notes before the concert or during intermission.  However, I’ve come to a couple of ideas to make them better and more interesting.

I love the big-time orchestra practice of listing the instrumentation for large pieces in a conspicuous place–the Cleveland Orchestra puts it in a sidebar with the other vital statistics for the piece, including the Orchestra’s own history with it, which I find fascinating.  How long did it take a world-class orchestra to get around to programming pieces that would become standard repertoire?  At any rate, my practice for the Lakeland Civic Orchestra has been to put this information in a short, introductory paragraph, which I then follow by a less-formal, more explanatory paragraph or two, depending on the complexity and history of the piece.  I have come to consider writing the program notes a crucial part of my own preparation, as I summarize my conception and understanding of the piece.

What to explain, though, and how to say it?

I’m always amazed at concerts of new music to read notes that are blow-by-blow musical descriptions of a piece.  “The first theme, a haunting sea chanty for nose flute, lasts seven bars and is in alternating duple and triple meter.”  I can’t abide this, and I cringe when I see it.  How could one possibly sit in a concert with the express intent of counting measures?  In this age, if one is truly interested in such things, it is usually quite easy to inquire about the score.  Tell something about the piece–how it came to be, what it’s about, what it’s not about, how it makes someone feel, why it exists.  If the foremost achievement of your work is how it is put together, it isn’t much of a piece (unless you are Bach, in which case, your mastery is likely self-evident, and there is no need to write about your pieces form in the program note).  One of the rare big-time orchestra program notes I read in this fashion, a Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra note on Ravel’s Bolero from the mid-1990s, did, in fact, include a section-by-section accounting of which instruments played the melody.  Useful as a reference, perhaps, but are we then expected to sit, pencils in hand, and check off the solos as they appear?  It’s not as though there are likely to be surprise substitutions.  While I admit to a certain satisfaction of filling in the scorecard at a baseball game, where following the details minutely can focus one’s attention on the event at hand in a situation in which there are many distractions (most of them edible or potable), attending a concert isn’t the same thing.  Or, perhaps there are audience members who would like a scorecard of sorts.  Witness the Baltimore Symphony’s experimentation with live-tweeting of concerts, although I think this more a testament to our addiction to our mobile communications technology than an indication of some latent demand for on-the-fly musical analysis.

My other beef is bad writing in program notes, particularly passive voice.  Authors of the type of note described above are particularly vulnerable to passive voice, creating zombie sentence after zombie sentence (if you can put the words by zombies after the verb, a sentence is in passive voice), but they are not unique in their infection with this plague.  Again, when composers are permitted to write their own notes, quality often goes down, a thing which I find inexplicable, as I can’t imagine a composer who is not also a voracious reader and thus, hopefully, a passable writer.  At the very least, we should have the capacity to self-edit and revise until something is good.

I see no reason why a program note ought not to begin with the title of the composition as the subject of the first sentence (not as a title with a colon following it, mind you, but as an integral part of the paragraph).  It should be in boldface and, if not a generic title, in italics.  In 2015, these are not optional.  Give us something to make us want to hear the music–a good story, the inspiration for the title, the importance of this piece to your oeuvre, or how much you enjoyed collaborating with the person you wrote it for.  Give the reader a sense of what it was like to compose the piece, or what it will be like to hear it.  The most common question I get from audience members is “how did you think of it?”  This is a hard question to answer, but they want to know.  Even if it is complete fabrication, because your piece is perfectly absolute with no clear inspiration, you must listen to it afresh, with the ears of an audience member, and attempt to come up with something that will help explain why you did what you did.

Remember, too, that a good note isn’t simply spewed onto the page–do not wait until you are working on conference or festival submissions to write the note.  I don’t consider a piece finished until I’ve completed my short, written justification of it, so make note-writing a part of the compositional process.  I am focusing on being more reflective about my life lately, and it occurs to me that writing the program note is a fantastic post-compositional way to reflect on the act of composing, and on the project just completed.

My thoughts.

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