composer's notebook
essays & criticism on musical matters
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Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Stravinsky divided by Britten equals
It used to be that any awkward void of time in a day was filled by making entries in this online notebook. Now that we have a toddler, there is no longer that particular issue (surprise!). Something gives, and lately that's been this page.
Why--nothing important has happened in the last couple of months, has it?
In any case, did you know? Apparently everything I've ever composed has already been written by Benjamin Britten. As JM pointed out not too long ago - no one is exactly original, and where Mr. Stravisnky is most often the culprit, I've recently discovered that my Igor thefts are dwarfed by my cribbing off of a certain Type-A Brit who wrote all that music I've been obsessed with decades. Imagine that.
I've found that I have this category of musical works that are so beloved, so engraved in my brain, that I don't actually need to listen to them anymore to get enjoyment from them...I just simply need to think about them. Barber's Knoxville, say, or the Reich Tehillim. Recordings, too, like Paul Simon's Graceland, or this Chick Corea oldie/goodie. But most of them, seriously, most of them, are Britten.
Peter Grimes. Turn of the Screw. The Dirge from Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings. And of course, Young Person's Guide. A few weeks ago I had the compositional thought of emulating a certain part of YPG, and so was inspired to stage a re-listening w/score. This hearing, after however many years of not actually physically listening to the piece, reduced to me a puddle of tears at my desk. Seriously, there is absolutely nothing better than the end of that piece, and it's not just because I am a sucker for the 2 against 3 (I am). And I suppose because I had given myself the distance, for the first time I noticed something obvious about that fugue descant over the Purcell chorale at the end: it's just WAY simpler than I ever realized it was. I mean, it's just one line. Doubled all over the place. [Smitten Sigh.] Too good, Ben. Too. Good.
This experience also provided the epiphany that I'm basically trying to re-write the end of Young Person's Guide ... in every single piece. And it doesn't stop there. I was just listening to the Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, and holy cow if I don't voice my triads exactly like that, all the time...
Huh. I will see your Stealing Stravinsky, and raise you One Blatent Britten.
On a business note, after travels to Tallahassee (The Florida State University Chamber Wind's fantastic premiere of the Concertino with Eva Amsler as flute soloist and Richard Clary conducting), Williamstown, MA - site of The Newman Compound™ - and where Steve Bodner's Williams College Symphonic Winds blew the roof off Chapin Hall with their premiere of My Hands Are a City, and Bellingham WA where I enjoyed a fully-fun residency at Western Washington University, working with Chris Bianco's terrific wind ensemble and the really impressive Western composition students, it's now off to Chicago for a day or so at the Midwest Clinic. I look forward to seeing old friends and new faces this week at the Hilton.
And I promise not to wear my skinny tie.
Monday, October 13, 2008
What's in a name?
Well, CD cover-art, apparently. The Japan Wind Ensemble Conductors Conference has put up the track listing for their (live) CD from last March's concerts in Kurashiki, with Climbing Parnassus as the title piece. Considering that last year's CD featuring their 2007 JM commission sports a kingfisher on the cover (scroll down halfway), I humbly suggest that SB, who is the Composer-in-residence for 2009, comes up with a particularly evocative title. Perhaps something with explosions. Or armed combat.
I often think about those amazing concerts in Kurashiki, and this track listing reminded me of my favorites. The first track, the Ticheli quartet Out of the Blue -- that performance was, wow, crazy fantastic. On the second disc there's the Gilingham Sails of Time, conducted by Maestro Nakata, which was jaw-dropping with the three bands onstage. I took video of that, I remember.
I also see that they put my new friend Yoshi Hirano's premiere, Death Note Concerto on the disc, which makes me very happy. Yoshi introduced himself to me when I got there, as he and his girlfriend Natsuki (also a successful composer in Japan) were trained at Eastman, and we found we had many friends in common. I attached myself to those two for the next several days, and they generously went above-and-beyond as guides (both literally and culturally). Yoshi has made a name for himself in Tokyo scoring an insanely-popular manga phenomenon, called Death Note. Based on the music from that, he made a saxophone concerto for a friend of his, and it premiered at the Conference. I'm sure if I was even remotely familiar with the source material it would have been insanely cool to hear this, but I am lame and I wasn't, and so I dealt with it on a purely formal level. Unsurprisingly, it is an engagingly virtuosic barn-burner of a piece, in any circumstance.
Happily, at JWECC 2009 in Osaka: Concertino, with Tokyo Kosei principal flutist Ayako MAEDA as soloist, chamber players from the Nagoya Wind Symphony, and the great Mamoru NAKATA conducting.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Flowers might work
I'd write here more, but unfortunately I've been distracted with this disagreement I've been having with my 2nd movement. See, I think it would be nice for it to transition easily and beautifully from this gorgeous book into lovely musical architecture ... and it seems to think it would be funny to grab me by the scruff of the neck and bang my head into the piano. (Ach. It hurts.)
Luckily, there is plenty more music to write. The first movement, for instance. I wrote some possible actual measures for that one yesterday, and they made me giggle. That's usually a good sign.
One of the great pleasures of this project is letting myself think globally over several movements, so I've been reminding myself that getting frustrated with cramming material into a six-minute space isn't necessary this time and I can move on without guilt. Because for this one, it's all of a piece (so to speak).
So I think I'll let #2 cool off for a little while, because it's obviously really, really mad at me.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
(Yes, I still use one)
The other day while preparing to write out a fair copy of something from The Opera I found myself sans pencil and so randomly selected (ie. stole) the first one I saw from Better Half's bucket of writing instruments on her desk. Soon after: Oh man, this pencil is fanTAStic ... it's so smooth and it looks so sharp and clear and dark on the page, what IS this? Of course, by accident (seriously) I didn't grab just any old schlubby #2, but one of her crazy-nice sketching pencils. So, of course, now I'm hooked. I'm never going back to anything resembling a mechanical ever again. O! Faber-Castell 9000 Graphite in 7B hardness-grade, you have stolen my heart. Sigh.
JB knows what I'm talking about. Last year when I waxed nostalgic about the loss of Aztec manuscript paper, he deemed Eagle's old Electronic Scorer pencils "the greatest pencil ever created in the history of the Universe". Possible. But R.I.P, because the E.S. is gone forever, living on only as jpegs on the internets. So it's off to Pearl Paint, because in the interest of Marital Harmony I kind of have to return that Castell 9000 I stole. But also I have some serious procrastination to accomplish, and there is a world of Stupidly-Expensive Pencils out there, just waiting for my determination of exactly which one is the Perfect Stupidly-Expensive Pencil for me.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Oblivion
I have been waiting on writing something about David Foster Wallace, who basically broke my heart when he took his own life last week. It's not only that I don't know what I can add to our processing of the tragedy (I don't), but also that I've actually been hoping someone could articulate the loss better than I. That quest was almost hopeless, as everything I read in the days following left me kind of dull and angry and sad that all we seem to be able to muster collectively are rushed declarations of his genius, or self-serving pronouncements of having actually read (or heard of) Infinite Jest.
But then I read A.O. Scott's piece in Sunday's Times, and that one hit a lot closer. A little ping in my heart came with the realization that at least one other soul (besides Better Half) felt a similar sort of helplessness over the whole thing. Scott also finally capsulizes what I could not: that Wallace is, with all of the depressing detail, the voice in your head.