Annotations

Between commissions, between jobs. Just between.

I decided about a month ago that I was going to make a statement. My postcard pieces were relatively successful, resulting in a composition prize, 2 conference performances, and a professional premiere. What didn’t go right was that the prize-winning piece was never performed, due to the pandemic, and the piece that the first set of postcards was supposed to produce (a commission) was never performed in its original version, again a casualty of the pandemic.

Write a short fragmentary piece, post a good sounding mockup on Facebook and weave it into a longer piece. That was the plan, and it was successful while it lasted. I had people looking at my Facebook page every day and commenting on them. The pieces fit together into movements (Shadows of Innocence), or stood on their own in collections of miniatures, like the string quartet and Postcards from Home. There were also hybrids like Far from the Fading Light, which was a set of miniatures, but some movements were combined. The technique was useful in finishing another hybrid, Temps, which I began almost 10 years ago and run into a wall. One feature of these postcards was that they were mostly composed for octet or dectet and reorchestrated to fit the intended piece. That was good for competitions, since I could add or subtract movements and/or instruments to fit the specifics of that competition. That was how Postcards from Home and Suite No 1 from Far from the Fading Light were chosen for performances. Others weren’t, but that is the nature of competitions.

That brings me back to my current position. One of the drawbacks of the postcard method was that when it came to providing large orchestrations of (for example) Far from the Fading Light, the original was so bare that I felt like I should expand the material. While I could have, it would have changed the piece, and I didn’t really want to do that before the original version was performed. Paradiso has never been performed in its original version, although the octet, sinfonietta, and one orchestral version have. I also felt limited by the length of the postcards. I could have expanded them, like in Shadows of Innocence and Temps, but I felt like I was just recycling material. Part of Ceres in FftFL appears in the first movement (reorchestrated), and the last part of Temps also appears in an earlier movement, as well as at the end of Troublesome Stranger. That isn’t really unusual. Beethoven had a string trio that appeared in (IIRC) his second symphony. Shostakovich was reusing entire movements all over the place. It can be the part of the ordinary process of sketching.

As the last two years of my job situation was pretty depressing, I haven’t been writing much new music, mostly revising/cleaning up pieces, arranging a symphony movement for band, and creating collections of excerpts of the postcard pieces to submit to various calls for scores. Here is a solo clarinet piece drawn from Temps:

I couldn’t tell from the results whether they picked any piece at all in response to the call. There was a piece for clarinet and electronics, and I don’t remember that option being in the call. It doesn’t matter. I now have a solo clarinet piece, which is what part of Temps was meant to be anyway, i.e. it started as solo clarinet piece and expanded. (I think the beginning of Contretemps was the original idea.)

I’ve decided that since no one is clamoring for music from me at the moment, I would try a similar project that circumvents the problems with the postcards. I’ve been calling them Notations. They are longer, and start with a full symphony orchestra as my tableau. This is specifically for writing an orchestra piece, my fourth symphony, which I sketched several years ago, but decided not to write until after my third symphony was premiered. I’ve given up waiting. I’m writing this in such a way that the software I use for my mockups performs best – I’m writing to the software. If it doesn’t sound good, I do something else. I am also working on a trumpet concerto.

I have been posting them on my Facebook page, but here is a compilation of most of what I have so far:

That is a mostly complete first movement, the first interlude and the first 3 notations of the second movement. Notation 11 overlaps with the end of this, and then there will be another (yet unwritten) before Notation 12. There will probably be 2 more notations to complete the movement before Interlude 2. I have another unnumbered notation from the next movement, which may be the last.

I say “may” because, although I have 2 notations targeted for a trumpet concerto, there is another that I don’t know what to do with. It is about 3 minutes long, and at the moment doesn’t have a solo trumpet part. It isn’t a complete movement, but I need to make a decision whether it will go into either piece. It was an experiment. I’ve always thought of my music as being French influenced (esp. Oyre’s Garden), and I wanted to see if I could make a texture like the beginning of the third part of Daphnis et Chloe (Ravel) work with my harmonic system. The answer is that it does, but I need to make my experiement sound LESS like Ravel before I post it. Only then can I decide whether it fits in either the symphony or the concerto. I may just write it as a stand-alone orchestral movement.

When you listen to the mockup you may say, “French? No. Lutoslawski or Bartok.” Well, yes. I was originally thinking of a concerto for orchestra, which both have written, but if anything, this is more like Lutoslawski’s fourth symphony, which is in some ways a departure from his previous ones. This is a logical outgrowth from what I have been doing, connecting large movements together with interludes that blur the lines between them. It is formally less traditional, and I’m playing with my harmonic system a little.

The immediate differences between the symphony and trumpet concerto lie in how I approach the harmonic system. The symphony relies more on the series linearly, although I don’t take every iteration of the row to the end. Sometimes, I’ll go 8 pitches in and divert to a different one. You may find the last 4 notes somewhere else, but you may not, and you may find them out of order. At times, I am working with my catagorized sets, especially when I’m choosing my harmonies. I am relying on my ear more in this piece, which frequently results in less dissonant, thinner harmonies. The row has a run of 3 semitones, which destroys my chance at consonant 6-note harmonies, so I pick and choose my chord tones from the set to create 3-5 note harmonies instead. You may even notice the occasional major or minor triad. I’m also experimenting with non-chord tones, but when you have 4 “predominant” sets, it is difficult to hear which one it is, since they share 3 notes with the tonic set. (Dominant shares 2, Predominant 3, Tonic 4). Is it a different predominant set, or the same with non-chord tones? You may notice some of this in the introduction to the first movement and especially right at the end of this excerpt.

The trumpet concerto (so far Notations 4 and 6) relies on the series very little, just the classified sets. My experimental notation fits this pattern. I could abandon the concerto and use the material in the symphony, but it is based on sets a semitone lower. It just happens to be a predominant set, so I could fit it in, but I am hesitant to disrupt my plan in that way.

That’s all for now. I’ll probably check in again after I’ve made more decisions.