Posts Tagged ‘symphony’

Effort-Shapes and Ideas from Architecture

Sunday, October 3rd, 2021

I’m amazed that it’s October already.

I was feeling very behind on some things for work and school, and my wife, Becky, got tired of my grumpiness about it and gave me the incredible gift of time last week: she took time off from her job so that she could be around and give me some relief from some parenting duties. I took advantage of that time to get back into my morning composing routine: waking up an hour ahead of everyone else to work. It feels good to be back on it. Plus, I was able to work ahead on some of the things I normally do on Fridays and clear the decks for most of a full day of composing this week. It felt good: too good… because it had me thinking about how it might work if I did that every week, and spent that day just building my composition business. It seems possible, but risky, but possibly very rewarding.

I suddenly find myself with multiple projects. Last month, Ted Williams of Choral Spectrum contacted me asking for Christmas music. There is a history there: eighteen years ago when I was living on the West Side of Cleveland, I joined that ensemble, starting the same concert cycle that Ted did. They performed one of the pieces that I submitted as part of my grad school applications, and I haven’t done a great job keeping in touch, but I’ve been in contact with Ted now and then. I found a nice, short poem by Ella Higginson called “Christmas Eve,” and suggested it as an original piece. I finished it this week, after creating a draft in my parents’ dining room in September, and rehearsals will start on Monday, for premiere performances in December.

Next, I’m returning to the first piece I wrote after graduate school, the fourth in my series of sonatinas for woodwind instrument and piano, in this case, oboe. There is a connection to that same time with Choral Spectrum, because I used the bassoon piece, the first in the series, as a part of grad school applications as well, including a recording with fellow Spectrum member Andrew Bertoni on the piano part. I’m now reworking the oboe piece, which has never been performed, for Justine Myers, and we are hoping for a performance on a Cleveland Composers Guild concert this spring. As I was working on both these pieces, I had advice from Donald Harris in my mind: “let the music breathe.”

Then, to the carillon project, I suppose. Last summer, Guild members had a tour of the McGaffin Carillon with George Leggiero for a collaboration that will feature our compositions for the instrument this fall. Fall is here, so I need to get started on mine.

After that, it will be the band piece I’m writing in memory of Chuck Frank for the Lakeland Civic Band . I have an idea for a wordless vocal soloist and Heidi Skok is on board, so while that part will be cued in the instrumental parts, it will be a great way to feature one of our great local musicians.

And then… I want to return to the symphony. Delayed first by COVID, now just by my procrastination.

The amazing thing is that these projects represent the fruits of a decade or more of collaboration, networking, and community-building. My goal since returning to Ohio has been to become a Cleveland composer, and I feel like I have achieved that, at least at the moment.

Now to the title of this post:

Two ideas for analytical or compositional tools came over my transom this week.

The first was when I went to observe Scott Posey’s Acting I class as part of my duties as a College Credit Plus faculty liaison. I had watched him work with his students at Lake Catholic before, but he started his class with a warm-up and review of something called “effort-shapes,” coming from Laban movement theory. This was immediately highly suggestive to me as a way to think about the physical expression suggested by a passage or piece of music. I also wonder if there is any similarity or connection to Dalcroze eurhythmics, which I have never had the chance to study.

The second is from a YouTube video. I’ve been watching architecture videos by Stewart Hicks lately, and his video on Francis Cheng’s Form, Space, and Order really struck me. Where  Laban seems to suggest itself as a tool for medium-scale analysis, Cheng’s five basic building plans (centralized, linear, radial, clustered, and grid) are highly suggestive of ways to understand the overall structure of a larger piece. Of the standard forms, fugue would be centralized; sonata would be regular; rondo would be radial; variations would be radial or clustered?; and something with a repeated bass or harmonic progression would be grid. Perhaps? Something to consider… Orchestrating or arranging for large ensemble often feels like working with a grid as well. Penderecki’s Threnody suggests a clustered approach; while Lutoslawski’s Fourth Symphony is more radial. Intriguing set of possibilities.

Then, yesterday, we went to Cedar Point. My approach to fun at theme parks is a little different than most people’s, I suppose, but I enjoy looking at how the place works, and at how people interact there and flow throw the space. I find that standing in line for rides gives plenty of time to watch how those rides work, and how people interface with them, and to think about what I’m seeing. Recently, one of my contacts on Twitter posted Baudrillard’s thoughts on Disneyland, and that was running through my head. While Cedar Point is in many ways a theme park in search of a theme (beyond, as Noah and I discovered, “Eat. Ride. Repeat”), it functions in much the same way Disneyland does on a technical level. This may not be true from a cultural standpoint, though. Disneyland also does not have nearly the history and layers that Cedar Point does, where there is an 80-year head start and any number of callbacks (such as the Blue Streak roller coaster) to earlier eras of American pleasure-seeking. I’ve decided that I’m going to have to read Simulacra and Simulation.

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The Symphony: In a Stall

Wednesday, November 27th, 2019

In aviation, a stall is a dreaded moment: an airplane climbs at too steep an angle, and doesn’t have sufficient thrust to maintain airspeed over the wings, loses lift, and begins to fall out of the sky. This is a problem so basic that even working on Aviation Merit Badge as a Scout (where the national BSA policy was that you wouldn’t actually leave the ground), I found myself in a simulator and put the simulated plane into a simulated stall within seconds of taking to the simulated sky. Stalls happen for a number of reasons, including pilot error, and every pilot needs to know how to correct (and avoid) them.

In writing my symphony, I am in the process of drafting the second movement, and I find myself in a stall. Late September and the first part of October, as detailed in my previous post, saw me composing a first movement in a white heat–consistently getting up early for my 6-7am timeslot, taking advantage of days when more time was available, working through a plan–both for work and for the form of the piece–that I was very happy with. It was my usual productive fall–I’ve seen this before, and I’ve mentioned my season-correlated cyclic energy levels. The months of September and October are important–I am rested from summer break, the days are getting shorter, but they are often sunny. After my blog post on October 20, I deliberately took some time away from the symphony, though. I knew that I was only at the beginning of a long journey, and that it is important to let the project rest and marinate from time to time. After a week, though, it seemed like enough, and I dove into the second movement: my first sketches are dated October 30, and I proudly wrote “Reformation Day” at the top of my outline for the second movement.

For the first part of November, all was going well, although I notice that my work on the sketches doesn’t reflect every day. My musical language in this movement is different, and I made the decision to incorporate some quotations from a piece that I wrote for my father’s aunt, Nancy Turner Sturdivant, who passed away this month (I wasn’t close to her, but I admired her, and she was very special to my father; there should be a blog post on her). I have also been working with string glissandi and some use of the kind of controlled aleatory. Not a piece that goes easily into Sibelius, and not a piece that, frankly, matches well with the first movement I was so excited about. About a week ago, in a fit of procrastination, I went back to the first movement and listened again, and now I’m worried that, in order for what I’m doing in the second movement to make sense, the first movement will require some major revisions.

Self-care is a word that gets thrown around a lot by composers, and I’ve been trying to make sure that I give myself time and space to do good composing on this project–my dream project of a quarter-century. I pretend that my work and my composing are two different worlds: my job at Lakeland Community College is a very good one, but there is no expectation in it that I be a composer (a conductor, yes, but not a composer). As the semester pushes forward, my job changes: I add an online class during the second 8-weeks of the term, more work is due in the full-term classes, the end-of-semester tasks begin to loom, and the things that were started earlier in the semester have to be wrapped up. Just as I know my seasonal rhythm, after thirteen years on the semester plan, I know this rhythm as well. My job isn’t especially stressful (at least not the way I work), but it requires mental energy that comes from a limited supply, and when things ramp up there (an orchestra concert in November, with another looming on December 9; my post-tenure review due; switching over to my 2nd 8-weeks classes; beginning to think about Spring semester), it starts to impinge on my creative work.

Then there is the reality of family life. Becky is under tremendous stress right now. In October, she accepted a promotion in her job at Ulta Beauty to a full-time management position. I whole-heartedly support this, but it has meant a different schedule, as she is now opening and closing the store at times, and just working more hours. Is October the best time to take on additional responsibilities in a retail environment? Maybe, maybe not. I don’t think she is struggling at work in any way, but it is still a source of stress, and she feels that she is pushing herself, just as I am pushing myself in writing this symphony. On top of it, her parents are in the process of downsizing, and it hasn’t been an easy process for anyone, which compounds her stress at work.

So now I find myself taking time away from the piece: days when I find something else to do with my hour; mornings when I hit the snooze bar and lose part of my hour; mornings when my hour isn’t productive because I’m too tired from staying up late to support Becky or just to read a science fiction novel. I am in a stall at the moment.

Like the pilot facing a stall, I have seen these things coming: I knew that Becky’s job would shift some things at home onto me. I knew that the workload at Lakeland would shift as the semester progresses. I knew that my fall energy would fade and that the excitement of beginning this project wouldn’t last. This was completely predictable.

  • Just as any pilot is trained to break out a stall, I have an idea of what to do:
  • Allow myself the time away, firm in the knowledge that the work will be there when I come back to it, and that there is plenty of time: the better part of two years before the final piece needs to be ready for a November 2021 premiere.
  • Get more sleep. Going to bed much after 10pm means that my 6am composition slot is not a healthy habit. For a few weeks, I wonder if I ought to make a rule that I’m not getting up early if I go to bed late and stick to it.
  • Change up the routine: I have this opportunity coming with the end of the semester. I have a couple of weeks where I may not have to rely on my 6am hour as much. As good a thing as it is, some of my best work happens when I am able to break out of the 6am slot and compose in other times and places.
  • Exercise. I can’t get the sunlight I was getting earlier this semester, but I can at least get my body moving.
  • Diet. Halloween put a temporary end to my attempts to lower my refined sugar consumption. Since then, it has been a cookie or a piece of candy whenever I feel like it, and that can’t continue. I’ve gotten into a 2:30pm diet cola habit at work, too, and I need to break out of that.
  • Confidence in my training. I know that I can write this piece. I know that I know what to do to keep going in the face of a loss of lift.

I can pull out of this stall.

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The Symphony: A Golden Spike Moment

Sunday, October 20th, 2019

In May 1869, the Transcontinental Railroad was completed, working from both ends simultaneously, with a golden spike at Promontory Point, Utah. This morning, I had my own Golden Spike Moment as I completed the first rough draft of the first movement of my first symphony.

I decided to write a symphony earlier this year, from an inspiration I had several years ago. The hymn “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow,” which our church sings to the tune Old Hundredth nearly every Sunday as the Doxology, struck me one Sunday as an interesting possibility, and each Sunday, as we sang it again, I was pulled closer to it, thinking about what an extended meditation on that hymn might be like. While it isn’t perfectly ecumenical, it is a broad acknowledgement of a Creator God who loves us and wants us to be happy.

Earlier this year, I was in a difficult place creatively. My mid-winter depressive tendencies seemed to strike especially hard, and must difficultly, I had only one small project with a specific deadline (a piece that I was very happy with as it turned out). Despite a promising start to 2019 in terms of performances, nothing specific loomed on the horizon either, and creatively, I felt stuck, with no specific reason to continue. I even failed to complete another piece in time for the call for scores for which I envisioned it, which turned out to be a real missed opportunity. I was wondering if I had a future as a composer. This doldrum lasted well into the summer, and a fanfare commission which should have been done in a matter of weeks dragged on, actually interfering with the symphony project. Part of me was wondering if I had a future as a composer at all.

For several years, I have been telling myself that I would write a symphony for 2021, the year I turn 45: my last attempt was a false start when I was composing my doctoral graduation piece at age 30–that piece ended up being Five Rhythmic Etudes, and the tale is cautionary, because despite a strong premiere of the outer movements, I have never heard the complete piece. Would a full-scale symphony find a place on anyone’s program? As the director of the Lakeland Civic Orchestra, I knew that if I tailored the work to their strengths, we could perform it.

In May of this year, I cast the die: doubling down on my uncertainty, I wrote a commissioning agreement, as I usually do for my compositions, only this time, I commissioned myself, for a forty-minute symphony based on Old Hundredth to be delivered in time for a November 2021 performance. The goal seemed far enough away to be possible, and I didn’t tell anyone at first. If this is my final work as a composer, then I have accomplished most of what I hoped I would do when I started writing music: I have dreamed of composing a symphony for about 30 years now.

The next step was to take the large goal and set smaller ones:

Date Goal
September 1, 2019 Planning and Sketching Completed
November 1, 2019 1st Movement Short Score
January 1, 2020 2nd Movement Short Score
April 1, 2020 3rd Movement Short Score
July 1, 2020 4th Movement Short Score
September 1, 2020 1st Movement Orchestrated
November 1, 2020 2nd Movement Orchestrated
January 1, 2021 3rd Movement Orchestrated
March 1, 2021 4th Movement Orchestrated
June 1, 2021 Full Score Finalized
August 1, 2021 Parts to Orchestra
o/a November 7, 2021 Premiere Performance

This in hand, I relaxed, and here was a mistake. My depression continued into the summer, in part because a course I had planned to teach was cancelled for low enrollment, and I just wasn’t putting the time in. I was staying up late at night and sleeping through my early-morning composing sessions, finding it difficult to get back on track. A week turned into a month, and by August 15, I had nothing sketched. I also had a fanfare for the Lakeland Civic Band that was still undone. With the start of classes at Lakeland, however, I had an incentive to reset my sleep schedule, and I got back to work. By early September, the fanfare, Mysterious Marvels, was completed, and I turned my attention to the symphony.

I began with the chorale, thinking that each phrase could be expanded into one of the four movements of the standard form. I examined the harmonizations from several hymnals, and settled on the one in use in my current church, No. 95 in the United Methodist Hymnal. In mid-September, I made a few sketches, and then created this overall plan:

The one-page outline of the first movement of my symphony.

The one-page outline of the first movement of my symphony.

The date, September 19, is somewhat later than I had hoped, but I was on my way. On the back of this page, I wrote:

What makes music “symphonic?”

  • “combining of tones”–whole is greater than sum of parts
  • development–motivic, thematic
  • explanation of a musical thesis
  • timbral variety and contrast
  • block scoring
  • weight and depth of emotional impact
  • breadth of expression and variety of means of expression
  • public, community-oriented statement meant for a broad audience

What do I want from this symphony?

  • summation of my work thus far (but do I break new ground here?)
  • statement about who I am now
  • cohesive, unified design (Panufnik, Lutoslawski)
  • playable, enjoyable for musician and listener
  • praise to God: four movements based on Old Hundredth, but is that
    • structural
    • motivic
    • more explicit?
  • but also ecumenical–invitation to praise and community, but faith is private

I began sketching on paper–a technique I have started to rely on increasingly over the last couple of years, and with the sketches I had created ahead of the one-page outline, I began to develop a plan that expressed the outline. It was only a single line of music in places, but by the end of September, it was continuous music from beginning to end of the movement. I then began to put ideas into the computer–still using Sibelius 6–and flesh them out as I described my process: a short score, with one staff for every instrument. As it happened, I started scoring the end of the movement first, from “D1” in my outline, and when I reached the end, I went back to the beginning, and so today, I reached D1 again, and drove the Golden Spike with a staccato D for low strings, oboe, and bassoon. A gentle hammer blow, since gold is soft.

This project has invigorated me: I have my usual fall energy for it, and the music has flowed easily. My years of composing have led to a workflow that I feel I can rely on: I don’t wait on the muse for inspiration–I sit down and write when it is time, and it is now time. With a movement under my belt, I am confident that two years from now, we will be rehearsing for a premiere.

And so today, I listened to my entire draft of the first movement, about 11 minutes of music. I will tweak it a little, and then lay it aside while I compose the rest of the symphony. Last week, my wife asked if she could hear it, and I had to respond that it was not yet ready–when she wakes up, I’ll tell her that it is today, because I have driven the golden spike.

 

 

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Symphony on the Brain

Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

Every so often, I go through symphony envy…

I’m older than Beethoven was when he wrote his first symphony, but younger than Brahms by the time he finished his initial contribution to the genre, so maybe it’s just a part of the phase of life I’m in now–a desire to work on big, meaningful projects that really define who I am as a musician and a human being.

It might be that I’ve been running across symphony references–today is Phillip Glass’ birthday, and the American Composer’s Orchestra is giving the premiere of his Ninth Symphony in New York (I won’t be there… we have band rehearsal in Oklahoma).  Additionally, my facebook friend David Sartor, whose music I have been admiring of late, posted that he has begun working on a Symphony No. 1, despite not having a commission, because he feels like he needs to do that.  David is somewhat older and more established as a composer than I am, but I understand the desire to tackle this genre, whether the results are immediately wanted or not.  A respondent to David’s facebook post said that if he wrote his symphony for band instead of orchestra, he’d have plenty of opportunities for performance, which is probably true.  Last, I just finished reading Nicholas Tawa’s new book The Great American Symphony.  As I read about some pieces that I’ve loved for years and some that are unfamiliar to me, I came to realize what an American thing it actually is to write a symphony.

So, first, Phillip Glass.  I’ve come to the conclusion that the minimalist label might  be incorrect for Glass’s music–his textures are reminiscent of true minimalism, of course, but the structures of his music are not, even in pieces like Wichita Sutra Vortex.  Unlike Reich or Riley, they are meditative, but not entrancing.  A thought, and I will have to think more about it later.  Happy Birthday!  and congrats on your premiere tonight, Mr. Glass.

As a performer who has played orchestrally but whose main experience is in band, I wonder if my desire to write a symphony for orchestra, like David Sartor’s, is not a little bit misplaced, or in my case, even a form of betrayal.  I have spent my professional life promoting the idea that bands can, should and must play serious original music–like the symphonies for band by Hindemith, Persichetti and Gould–I even wrote my DMA document on a symphony for band (by Donald McGinnis), but I want my first symphony to be for orchestra.

When I wrote my biggest orchestra piece to date, Five Rhythmic Etudes, I had just turned thirty and initially started sketching a symphony–unlike many composers, I have only even made a halting attempt once!  The piece turned into something else, and I can see now that I wasn’t ready to write a symphony.  If a great college or military band came to me tomorrow with a commission for a symphony, I would probably accept it–all the while wishing the piece was for orchestra.  Am I being a traitor to the very movement that has allowed me to participate fully in serious music as a professional?  I’ve written some band music over the years–and some of my best pieces are for band–but I’m still not ready to completely admit that I am a “band composer.”  As many doors as that might open, it certainly seems to slam others shut.  Of course, writing a symphony could have precisely the same effect.

That said, I’m excited about my major project for the first part of the year, a suite for strings.  Alongside, I’m cohosting an SCI conference, so I’ll be professionally busy for quite a bit of the year, but 2013 is wide open–if any conductors or patrons are reading this, I’m want to write a symphony, and I won’t do it without a commission: I don’t write anything unless there is a firm promise of a performance.  Listen to my music and see what you think, and you know where to find me.

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Op. 90

Monday, December 22nd, 2008

I’m closing in on the end of this project–one Beethoven Piano Sonata each month until they’re done.  Today I’ll put down what I think about Opus 90, Sonata No. 27 in E minor.

The opening phrase reminds me of where Romantic piano music was headed–it could be a Schubert impromptu, and there is a great deal of music in here that sounds very off-the-cuff–Mozart would have probably called this piece a fantasia, not a sonata.  However, the colors that Beethoven obtains from the instrument over the course of the piece (both movements) are quite wonderful.  I don’t recall Beethoven changing key signatures within a movement before (although, now that I think about it, the funeral march of Opus 26 goes from seven flats to four and back).  The change to C-major (at least in name… the key is actually the Neapolitan, F at that point) is interesting, and happens in both movements).  Interestingly, the end of the development section seems to hang out on the tonic instead of the dominant in the first movement. 

The second movement–a lovely sonata-rondo.  Again, the improvisatory nature seems reinforced by things like the triplets in the accompaniment at the end of the first episode, when the rest of the piece is sixteenths.  I don’t know that I have ever noticed the trick in the 2nd episode in music prior to this–Beethoven is in the key of c-minor, and needs to be in c-sharp minor to get back to the home key… in a trick beloved by every choral arranger since 1975, he substitutes a dominant on G-sharp for one on G… who knew that Beethoven could be so lazy!?  I heard the funny movement, and expecting to see some crazsy enharmonic thing out of the back of the theory book, here is the lamest, least-tonal (what would Schenker say here?) way to get to the key you want.  I was shocked!  (Is there a name for this device?)

Some writing follows that is almost as if Beethoven wished he were writing for string quartet or orchestra–the tied half-notes just cry out for winds!  I wonder how much he was thinking about the seventh and eighth symphonies at this time?

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