Posts Tagged ‘piano sonata’

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.

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Composing, Personal Reflections | Comments Closed

Being a “Real Composer”

Saturday, August 31st, 2013

2012-2013 was a surprisingly good season for my music–about 20 performances, all told, in a variety of places and venues, with a nice balance between premieres (Lady Glides on the Moon, Nod a Don, Le Voyage Dans La Lune and my Suite for String Orchestra) and second, third and later performances.  Some were simple–me playing Twenty Views of the Trombone at a John Cage Musicircus event at MOCA Cleveland, while others were more elaborate.  Some involved my making them happen (performances of my Piano Sonata and Moriarty’s Necktie at the SCI Region VI conference at West Texas A&M, a conference I cohosted), and others happened all by themselves (Selena Adams’ performance of South Africa on her DMA recital at the University of Colorado, right before winning a gig with the US Army Field Band.  In all, a very good year for my music, and 2013-2014 is shaping up as well, although not quite as spectacularly, but with an early start, a repeat performance of Lady Glides at the Parma Music Festival/SCI Region I conference in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, which, with a little luck, might lead to more, as always.

It makes me feel like a “real composer,” I’ve felt, along with acceptance into the Cleveland Composers Guild, for which one is elected, not simply enrolled.  March and April, in particular, felt very busy, and this fall, there will be a day (September 29) where my music is played at the same time in two cities (Dallas and Cleveland).  Another milestone is that many of these performances are happening without my being present, or even involved other than selling a copy of the sheet music through my website.  This is a big deal.  South Africa continues to be my “greatest hit,” which surprises me at times, but I’m also gratified by that fact.  I’ll be looking for a couple more sales of that piece as horn students begin to program their recitals for this year.

Going forward, the big challenge, I think, is to continue to get my music out there and build my reputation as a composer.  I have a sense that I need to become a “Cleveland composer,” which is a tougher nut, in some ways, than composing was in the Oklahoma Panhandle.   There are areas in which I’d like to see growth in myself as a composer over the next few years–handling larger forms, dealing with complexity, exploring percussion, working toward a greater depth of emotional expression in my work.  Over the summer, I had lunch with Donald Harris, my graduate advisor, and he stated that I was growing in interesting directions.  Another of my teachers, Tom Wells, heard my piece in New Hampshire and stated that he was proud of me as a student.  To have my teachers–themselves distinguished and experienced composers–feel that I have done good things years after my time with them is a good thing.

Being at Lakeland, where my tenure is not bound up in producing new compositions or having as many performances as possible, gives me the freedom to pursue projects at my own pace, and not to feel like I need to take pieces on, write another book, or submit to every conference of SCI or CMS.  Composition can be more artful now and not a part of my family’s livelihood.  My one composition student, young Cooper Wood, has been quite an inspiration this year as well, and as he enters high school, I’m hopeful that our work together will benefit both of us.

It is impossible to be without disappointments as well.  I still feel that Moriarty’s Necktie is a very good piece, possibly my best, but it has now been through the cycle of awards for band composition (Revelli, Beeler, Ostwold, etc.) without being recognized.  There will be more band music from my pen, of course.  One also does not apply to conferences and festivals without rejections; more rejections than acceptances, naturally.  While each of these hurts, my faith in my work is undiminished, and I will continue to write and submit.  I’ve been diligently informing ASCAP of all my performances, and applied for the Plus Award for the first time this year–between ASCAP and the website, it would be nice to see some monetary return, if only to cover costs, but I feel that that is probably still at least a couple of years off.

It isn’t about the money, though.  On the other hand, in our culture, money means that someone, somehow, values my music in important ways.  Money is the reason I haven’t pursued my dream project–a symphony for orchestra.  Not that I require an enormous payment, but at this point in my career, I can’t write a piece that won’t have a prospect of a performance, and so my Great American Symphony waits for a commitment.

Onward, then, into another year of being a Real Composer.

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Closed

The Middle

Tuesday, February 5th, 2013

My last post described some things that I learned from another art form, woodcarving, through my father and his teacher, Spirit Williams.  Here’s another in the same vein, purely by chance, mind you.

I firmly believe that other art forms have a great deal to tell us about composing, which means that if I have a chance to chat up an artist during a plane ride, I’m going to take it. Last Spring, I met Kiersi Burkhart on a plane from somewhere to somewhere (I think it involved Denver, a city where I one day hope to see more than the airport and the hotel where the airline sends me when my flight is screwed up). She writes young adult novels, and also a blog. This post showed up the other day, about how to help the middle of a novel.   Her five suggestions have me thinking about the middle of pieces, so here are my thoughts about Kiersi’s thoughts and how they might relate to composing.

1. Raise the stakes. This “tip” gets thrown around a lot, and for a long time I wasn’t really sure how one could implement such broad-sided advice.

The easiest way I’ve found is to first work out what your characters’ goals are (both small and large), and then determine: what are the consequences of your characters not achieving those goals? Now make them even more dire. Life and death. Death and destruction. Whatever you can do to make the repercussions of your characters’ not achieving their goals worse, do it.

I think the best way to raise the stakes in a musical composition is to move beyond your starting material in some way.  I’m not suggesting that you string together theme after theme after theme (although it worked occasionally for Mozart), but if you’ve focused on one melodic idea up until this point, say, a third of the way in to the composition, it’s time for some contrast.  This new material should relate to earlier portions of the piece in some way–a similar harmonic framework, or a motivic relationship–but there is a need for variety as well.

Another way to raise the stakes might be to employ a change in texture–if things have been very homophonic up to now, it’s time for some counterpoint; if you’ve been writing lots of interwoven lines, it’s time to pare the texture down.  All kinds of great things can happen in the middle of pieces–the classical approach to creating a movement has a middle that is much more loosely-constructed than the beginning, and even in the middle of a Bach fugue, we can go long stretches without either a cadence or the fugal subject, just riffing on little ideas that have come up.  Speaking of riffing, think of the structure of a bebop jazz performance, with its tightly-constructed presentations of the head at the beginning and end and the loosely-constructed solos in the middle.

2. Lower the low points. The best part of middles is when it seems all hope is lost–that there is no possible way your character can achieve his purpose.

Remember in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, when Han Solo gets trapped in carbonite? Even worse, he’s shipped off with a bounty hunter to see Jabba the Hut, and our heroes are too busy trying to save Luke to chase him down.

At this moment in the story, we (the audience) feel somewhat defeated, like there’s no possible way Han can be rescued from his terrible fate. And in Return of the Jedi, this situation only gets worse when Leia is enslaved by Jabba.

Find that low point in your story (make one, if it’s not there already) and then make it worse. While you’re beating your hero into the ground, beat harder. Did something go wrong in his heist plan? Find three other things to go wrong, too. And it’ll be really satisfying to your audience when your clever protagonist manages to worm her way out of this ridiculous bind.

I think what Kiersi is getting at here is dramatic tension–the middle is the place where we really aren’t sure how things are going to work out, and as such, it has the possibility of being the most exciting part of a piece of music.  Certainly, as a composer, I often view my pieces this way when they are in process: there comes a point when I know what the rest of the piece is going to look like, and I know that I will be able to finish it.  Composing the middle, though, can be frustrating for exactly that reason–I don’t know how I’m going to get out of the situation in which I’ve placed myself.  There’s a famous moment in the first movement of Beethoven’s Eroica where the texture devolves into these dissonant, repeated chords, as though Beethoven threw up his hands, smacked the piano keyboard, and wrote down the results.  Beethoven takes this almost-mistake and slowly winds his way out, with a diminuendo and resolutions of dissonant notes that leads back to the main theme–the beginning of the ending.  In my own Piano Sonata, about three-quarters of the way through, the relatively-complex rhythms and texture dissolve into a single line, notated in stemless noteheads, a moment of repose for performer and audience, and a summation of what has come so far in the piece, and preparation for some of the breathless material that lies ahead in the push to the climax.

3. Up the conflict. Are your characters friends, lovers, or comrades in arms? Are they getting along, smooching, snuggling and heisting in perfect harmony?

This is the primary way in which I find middles sag: the character relationships stale. Either they are at peace with one another for too long, or they’re at odds without any moments of relief.

Cause some conflict. Stir up some drama. But be wary of falling into common conflict traps: misunderstandings that would be easy to resolve, unlikely coincidences, or blowing up a small issue into a big one (this is my biggest complaint with romantic sub-plots).

Use inherent character flaws to guide your conflicts. Is one of your characters prideful? Have that pride lead her to hurt the other character in a way that seems irreparable.

Again, we have to turn to Beethoven, who can’t seem to write a middle section of a symphony movement without a fugato (and who was imitated by countless others).  As Kiersi mentions, though, it’s easy to fall into some common traps, and fugato is one of them (why does Brahms turn every movement of Ein Deutsches Requiem into a fugue?  I submit that it may have been youthful inexperience).  Unless your piece has been somewhat contrapuntal up to now, throwing a fugue in seems kind of desperate (Berlioz writes scathingly about this practice in his orchestration treatise).  But the beauty of fugue is that it does have that “cool” factor, and it’s critical to find something to do with your materials that propels the piece forward.  Look for the same kinds of rhythmic intensification that fugue can provide–change the position of motives within the bar, let them happen sooner, and closer together.  Foil the listener’s expectations about when things will happen: sooner (more drama), later (more tension).

4. Comic relief. I might be the only writer with this particular problem, but I have a hunch that I’m not. Why so serious? If things are getting intense in your middle–as it probably should–be cognizant of how your reader is feeling. In the middle of drama and conflict, give your reader the occasional break.

The break doesn’t always have to be comic. Let your characters have moments of tenderness or insight into one another. In a romance, let passion momentarily override conflict (leading to more conflict, of course). In a thriller, let your protagonist feel victory–short-lived victory. A good middle is a combination of low and high points, leading up to your dramatic finale.

This can be hard to remember, but great music can be funny, not just serious.  Whether it’s Bach’s quodlibet in the Goldberg Variations with its use of street songs (not funny to us, but probably hysterical to Bach), or the trio of the Scherzo in Persichetti’s Symphony for Band, where a little group of instruments, pulled along by a muted trombone, plays a little march that sounds like it would go with a Dr. Seuss story, there is humor in good music.  A composer is a human being, and being human means being both tragic and comic.  Some composers do this better than others: think of the burlesque version of the march from Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony that shows up in Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra.  I’m sure that Shostakovich laughed the first time he heard it, because his own music is filled with irony and parody as well.

That said, it’s easier to plant comic relief in a dramatic work–the Papageno subplot in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, for example, and of course the dark humor of the graveyard scene in Hamlet that adds levity while staying on topic–the downstairs view of the goings on at Elsinor, perhaps.  Kiersi also suggests that intimate moments in the middle provide a break–it works in music, too, as in the piano-cello duet in the second movement of John Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1–intimate not only in texture but in meaning as well.

5. Escalate tension. A good climax is the tip of the highest peak of your story arc. Leading up to that peak are your second, third, and fourth-highest peaks.

I suggest doing this with “post-outlining”: now that you know all the plot points of your story (all the “ups” and “downs,”) organize them in order of severity. Your lowest lows and your highest highs should come near the end, leading up to your finale.

This is especially important when revealing important plot information. You don’t want to save all of your high-value cards and staggering reveals for the very end; drop some of your big bombs (but not your biggest bomb) during that sagging middle section, then escalate leading up to that super mondo finale–and hopefully leave your readers panting.

This suggestion may or may not apply to a given situation–sometimes the beginning of the end of a piece of music is a moment where tension is released–the recapitulation of a sonata-form movement, for example, or the beginning of the “Simple Gifts” variations in Copland’s Appalachian Spring.  The ending of a piece is inevitable once it begins, and layering coda upon coda (in the way Tchaikovsky does in his Fifth Symphony, for example) doesn’t move the beginning of the ending anywhere closer to being the middle.  In good music there is a crucial difference between music of the beginning, music of the middle, and music of the end.  Some great middle moments, though–the trombone chorale in the last movement of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony comes to mind–are the last moment of calm, an eye in the hurricane.  The birdsong section of the slow movement of Dvorak’s New World Symphony is a change of character that builds into a critical statement of the motto theme of the symphony before the return of the main theme for the movement.  It would behoove all of us to study the Romanza movements that Mozart frequently uses in his later piano concerti–the quick middle Sturm und Drang sections like the one in K.466 are the uber-middle–the middle part of the middle movement of the three-movement structure.  The formal considerations of music are somewhat different than those of the novel, of course, because of the way that repetition is a critical component of good composition, but the dramatic concerns are similar.

Ralph Vaughan Williams is said to have said what every composer (and author) knows: something to the effect that starting a piece is easy, but getting to the end is hard.  This is the difference between being a tunesmith and being a composer:  a song is all theme, but a composer has to be able to take themes (or the equivalent) and connect them in meaningful ways, constructing the musical equivalent of a novel.

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

White Heat

Friday, November 30th, 2012

For years, I’ve been telling students that they need to be composing daily, and I still believe it, but the reality of my approach to composition over the last couple of years has been something different.  I’ve become the person who doesn’t compose for weeks, then sits down and pounds out the draft of something in a few hours, tweaks it over the next few days and calls it finished.

This is not intentional, but for the last few pieces, it seems to have been working–from my Piano Sonata (composed in late 2010) forward, this has been my modus operandi, and it’s produced several strong pieces.  It’s as if in some sense I’ve paid my dues, and now the skills are just there, ready when I need them.  To try to use them every day might prove counterproductive–the result might be a dilution of the available resources (I’ve always thought of Saint-Saens in this way–he wrote so much music that the really good ideas were spread too thinly for him to be a “great” composer, and he became a merely facile one with a couple of memorable works and a lot of forgotten ones).

This new approach isn’t by choice–having a child under three and a wife who likes to see her husband regularly just isn’t conducive to consistently doing creative work once you throw in the full-time teaching position.  But it seems to be working.

I have no desire to continue this way, and I have no illusions that I’ll be able to maintain my “hot hand” indefinitely, but it’s interesting.  At some point, I’ll want to get into a better routine, but it’s thrilling right now to carry around ideas for a project in my head for a few weeks, and then pour them out into a new piece.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Closed

Lunchtime Thoughts

Wednesday, October 31st, 2012

Looking back, I’ve been neglecting this blog–posting every six weeks isn’t really going to do it. So–my Halloween resolution is now and then to go on at lunchtime and put up about ten minutes worth of thoughts. Here goes:
I’ve been spending some time getting together a group of composition projects for the next year or so, and it’s looking good. First, there will be a piece for flute choir in honor of Donald McGinnis’ 95th birthday, commissioned by Katherine Borst Jones at Ohio State for her Flute Troupe there. Dr. McGinnis was Kathy’s teacher and the subject of my doctoral research–he was the band director at Ohio State for over thirty years (from the 40s to the 70s), and was also a composer and flutist, so it’s a very interesting commission from a personal point of view. I’ve started a couple of different openings, but I haven’t found the one that really makes me want to keep writing–when I do, the piece will come, so I’m giving it another shot this weekend.

After that will be a first for me–a film score. At the Region VI Society of Composers conference earlier this month, the WTAMU Symphony Orchestra performed excerpts of the silent film scores that BJ Brooks has created for them over the last few years. Now that I’m conducting the Lakeland Civic Orchestra, I’ve decided to try the same thing with them in April, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to use Georges Melies’ 1902 Le Voyage Dans La Lune, which I will score and we will then project during our performance.

Next, a collaborative project–Antoine Clark, a clarinetist who was at Ohio State at the same time I was, approached me about scoring a new work of his for clarinet and band.  Antoine’s work is a Fantasy on Themes from the Barber of Seville for clarinet and piano, and would make an excellent solo vehicle in the tradition of pieces for cornet by Clarke and Arban, and I’m very excited about working on this.  Look for performances in the Columbus area next fall.

Finally–and I find this incredibly exciting, I will be writing a piano concerto for pianist Avguste Antonov, who is based in Grapevine, Texas and has performed my Starry Wanderers and my Piano Sonata.  Avguste performs as a concerto soloist regularly, and the piece won’t be ready until the 2014-2015 season, but I’m thrilled to be writing for this medium.  If you need a preview, Avguste is playing excerpts from Starry Wanderers tonight in Youngstown!

Those are the new projects–there are plenty of performances of old pieces on the horizon as well:  In two weeks, Magie Smith will be the clarinet soloist with the Sinclair Community College Wind Symphony and Kenneth Kohlenberg in the premiere of my concerto Daytime Drama–a piece that has been waiting longer than it was supposed to wait, but that is in good hands with a group I used to play in.  November 17 in Dayton, Ohio.  Two weeks late, I’ll be conducting my Variations on a French Carol with the Lakeland Civic Band, on December 2 here in Kirtland.  Then after the new year, performances of my Suite for String Orchestra will get rolling, beginning with Maura Brown and that Batavia High School strings at the Illinois Music Educators Association convention on Friday, January 25 in Peoria–at 9:30am, but it’s my first MEA convention performance, so I’m excited.  Performances will follow thereafter in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kansas and Florida!

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Closed

Begin the Ohio Period

Monday, September 10th, 2012

I’m not a huge fan of the music of Arnold Schoenberg, unlike a certain friend of mine who claims to listen to Pierrot Lunaire to relax.  Don’t get me wrong–it’s great music, just not for every day.

What I love about Schoenberg is that his music kept changing throughout his career, with the biggest change of all being the one that happened with his move to America in 1933.  At this moment, Schoenberg backed away from the “pure” 12-tone works of the ’20s and early ’30s and started to compose in a more eclectic, less dogmatic way.  These late works aren’t his best-known, but some of them are wonderful–the Theme and Variations, Op. 43, for example.  It was as though after moving away from Vienna, ending up in Los Angeles, Schoenberg could no longer be everything he had been and had to be what he would be next.

This summer, I finished the last piece of my “Oklahoma” period–my Suite for String Orchestra, which will have multiple performances over the next nine months.  Reflecting, I’ve written some good music over the last five years–several pieces that I am really proud of and that have gotten some favorable attention: Starry Wanderers, South Africa, Ode, and Moriarty’s Necktie have all had performances in multiple states and get me to thinking that I just might be a good composer when I think about them.  My Piano Sonata is also slated for second and third performances this fall, and my concerto for clarinet and band Daytime Drama is slated for a premiere in November.  It’s been a good five years.

The Oklahoma pieces are, by-and-large, practically conceived–shortly after arriving in Oklahoma, I decided that I wouldn’t write anything without a commission or at least a promise of a performance.  I’m starting to feel able to make more out of less–creating a piece using developmental techniques rather than stringing together sections of music based on different material–Moriarty’s Necktie feels like a leap forward in that respect.  My study of Beethoven’s piano sonatas and Mahler’s symphonies a few years ago helped me see this–as a theory teacher, I am often inspired by my teaching, but we don’t always spend a great deal of time on large-scale works.  I’ve become less of a vocal composer than I used to think I was–and I’m coming to terms with that, in a way.  I don’t think I’ll ever be a songsmith of the likes of Ned Rorem or Roger Quilter, but again, if the right levels of interest come along, that’s fine.  Except for a little bit of fiddling with Pure Data, I haven’t done any electronic music since leaving Ohio State in 2007, and I have to say that I don’t miss it.

In Oklahoma, my music became more focused, more diatonic, more image-driven.  I saw things and places that were inspiring, and I became a father.  There was longing, and there was hardship–as though, like Schoenberg, I was an exile, but like Schoenberg, who played tennis with Gershwin and ran into Stravinsky at the market, there were times of living, as well.

So, what will the Ohio period bring?  I hope to have time now to focus on the post-compositional phases of each piece–publication, promotion, building the brand, as it were.  For me, this is not the fun part.  I spent last weekend composing a new work for clarinet and percussion for Jenny Laubenthal in a white heat, and it was a great time.  I had been thinking about the piece for a month, and it was pure joy to see it come together.  I want to make a sincere effort to get behind my works and send it out to the world more often.  Moriarty’s Necktie is headed to a conference and two awards juries–big awards, the Ostwald and Beeler Prizes, that would put me on the map in a very significant way.  There need to be more subsequent performances, more publications.  I want to be less distracted by other projects.  It was great to write a book in 2010-2011, but it was enormously consuming.  I’m glad to be able to say that I did it, but if I do it again, I need a better reason than “It will look good on my CV.”

I’ve been exploring quintuplous meter, and I’m not sure where it’s going to go, or what the potential for it really is.  But, just as a composer can’t write everything in 6/8, not every piece will be in quintuplous meter.  So far it has been sections of pieces, or short pieces within larger groupings.  What would it mean to have an entire symphonic movement in quintuplous meter?

I’ve taken on the orchestra position here at Lakeland, and I one day hope to write for orchestra again.  Mahler became a great orchestral composer by being a great orchestral conductor.  I have the benefit of being able to learn from Mahler’s scores and recordings, of course, but it’s good to be back in an environment where I will see those instruments on a regular basis!  Will there be orchestra music?  This has always been a question for me.  I have a love-hate relationship with the wind ensemble–bands commission and play my music, but they aren’t orchestras.  There is possibly a piano concerto in my future… would it be too much to hope for a symphony?

It will be interesting to read this post again in five years, to see what has actually happened in this part of my life–until then, Keep Fighting Mediocrity!

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Closed

Best laid plans…

Sunday, August 31st, 2008

As many of you know, in addition to everything else, I am in the midst of a project to study one Beethoven piano sonata every month.  August was Op. 57, “Appasionata,” and I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t get to it as much as I should have, between website design, composition and the start of school.  I got to spend some time with the first movement, and listen to the recording a few times, and read Charles Rosen’s analysis in The Classical Style.  Other than that, I just didn’t get to it.  There was music to write and there were students to teach.

So… I solicit the thoughts of readers–what have you learned from this piece?  It is a standard example in music history class, so many of you will have looked at it at some point.  Let me know.  In the meantime, perhaps next month will go better.

There were similar distractions in Beethoven’s life… notably his efforts to gain guardianship of his nephew.  Hopefully, I will be writing piano music soon and have that much more incentive to dig into my Beethoven.  On to #24!

In the meantime, be sure to enter the contest:  www.martiandances.com/contestcategories.htm

And you can always check out my previous rants about Beethoven piano sonatas on my facebook page (using the Notes application).

‘Til next month!

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Beethoven Piano Sonatas | Comments Closed