Creating something every day for 365 days: the music
I think I’m through with the waltz. It’s not finished, I’m just through with it.
Yes, it’s complete, and yes, it makes sense in its twisted little way, but I still feel as if I have lazily slapped together a few combinations and turned it in. Oh well.
Here’s the “completed” Waltz for String Quartet & Bassoon. (Here’s the score, if you want it.)
I need to go double-check it for impossible double-stops before I let a real violinist see it.
You can listen to yesterday and today’s work on the B section of the bassoon quintet here.
I think it’s not long enough. I think I could make it into a major development section, or use it as the second theme for an actual sonata allegro movement. I barely get the theme stated when I dismantle it and build to a screeching climax (from which I will ratchet it up even more until it collapses back into the claustrophobic A section.) I think it’s not enough.
However, if my goal is to have something for students to read on Friday, and it is, then we’ll just go with it as a first draft.
The bowl continues to dry and crack.
I opened up a new Finale file today and just played with B section phrases, making up stuff, discarding stuff. I seem to be congenitally unable to avoid the lyrical. Sure, I need a contrast for the B section from that astringent little waltz, but it sounds like a Prokofiev ballet piece.
So be it. I’ll push it to its limit and turn it violent as soon as is possible. Look for slashing strings and unison screaming before settling on an unsettled chord stabbing its way into a fff crescendo, only to collapse into the recapitulation. Bones hounded by lust.
The new piece is now called Waltz (for string quartet & bassoon). I figured I couldn’t just call everything Dance, and I know better than to call it I. Allegro, because I’ll probably never get around to another two movements to make it a true quintet piece.
Anyway, I worked on it this morning and have the first theme exposited, along with a transition into the second theme. Did you know that you can double the length of your exposition by shoving in a repeat?
Here it is so far.
In other news, I’ve hauled out the Fool’s Errand from last summer to give it a look. The path we followed last year, indeed, our very meeting place, is fenced off behind construction now, so I have to head out and see if the soundtrack as it stands will match the new campus topography.
While I wait for the bowl to dry, I’ve been sketching, which I’ll talk about in a moment. I’ve also been mulling over a new piece based on the 24 hour challenge #3, which I’ll also talk about in a moment.
The bowl has cracked as it dried, which is to be expected: it’s thick and dries unevenly, and the drain hole presents a further issue. The cracks are developing around the hole as the bowl shrinks away from the center.
Not to worry, my professional advisors tell me. First of all, the cracks are fillable. And even if they reappear in the firing, we’ll just plug them with slip and glaze. Failing all of that, there are several epoxies we can use post-glaze. So I’m not worried.
Here’s a picture:
So I’ve been sketching. Not assiduously mind you, but I’m working. I’ve focused on photographs of my fellow Lichtenbergians taken in the labyrinth, and specifically their faces. This is a very hard thing. This week I’ve worked on my own portrait, and I’ve finally produced one that sort of looks like me.
I’ve also produced several that have a vague resemblance to my grandmother in her dotage. I persevere.
Mostly it’s the eyes and the nose. I need to go back to my reference books I brought with me and do some actual studying on “how to do it.”
In other news, after hearing “I Dance a Clubfoot’s Waltz,” our string teacher welcomed the chance to have his students read through a completed version of it. I’ll be working on that tomorrow morning.
The problem at the moment is that I’ve grown accustomed to its little 20-second form. Taking a crowbar to it and prying it open for more development is very scary. I think it will open the same, but then take some basic fragments to build on, the pizzicato triplets, the hammered hemiolas, and the bassoon phrases, returning to the current piece as a recapitulation and coda.
I went to the library to check out a score for Shostakovich’s 8th Symphony. (I wanted his string quartets, but those apparently are still in the acquisitions department, since June of 2006.) While I was there, I thought it would be fun to find my Dance for Double Bass Duo & Marimba on the shelf. Using my trusty iPhone, I found the call number and tracked it down.
They have the score and parts, but they have also copied the score into a little booklet which is shelved separately. It was fun to see it. And then I noticed that it had been checked out to interlibrary loan back in April. Wow! One wonders who found it and ordered it? Clearly whoever it was didn’t find it interesting enough to perform, or surely they would have contacted me.
Anyway, the current piece cannot be called “Clubfoot’s Waltz,” I’m sure, so I think it’s going to be another Dance for Basson & String Quartet. I’m going to experiment giving the bassoon part to a second viola or second cello, but it will probably remain for the bassoon.
bumped from 6/5/09
Betty sends 4-365-12:
Small birds roost secure in the rhododendron thickets
By the walk to the locked garden
That seems very pretty, although it comes from a poem called “Burning of a House,” by Thomas Henn, ll. 10-11.
[If you’re just joining us, here are the instructions for the 24 hour challenge, as well as previous efforts.]
update: I’m calling a hiatus. The weather is gorgeous, and I need to spend as much time in my back yard as I can in the two days left to me at home. I’ll get back to this piece early next week, maybe.
further update: I ran into Betty Smith on the Square this morning, and she confessed that she was disappointed in her text selection. She was hoping for something serious and dark. So out goes the little I had worked on, and I’ll start over. Serious and dark it shall be!
6/21/09, 10:25 am
OK, you’re just going to have to trust me that I’ve finished this one, only three and a half weeks after I was supposed to post it. I have an excuse: after I got to Valdosta, I simply have had no time to sit down and work on anything like this. You will have noticed that I have blogged only once since getting down here, and that was simply to announce the cancellation of “Milky Way.”
And now it seems that my FTP server is blocking me, since I’m coming from behind VSU’s overzealous firewall. I’m waiting for it to be unblocked, and then I can post the results. It’s in the same vein as “Atlantic Beats,” if that’s any help.
finally:
24 hour challenge #11, “Locked Garden,” for Betty: score [pdf], performance [mp3], bassoon [mp3]
No performance at this point; I’ll have to do that in the morning when no one else is in the dorm.
from Peter, 2-1025-16:
beneath that unique sun that steadily bled
That’s l. 10 from Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “A Desperate Vitality.”
[If you’re just joining us, here are the instructions for the 24 hour challenge, as well as previous efforts.]
6/4/09, 4:29 pm
24 hour challenge #10, “That Unique Sun,” for Peter: score [pdf], performance [mp3], bassoon [mp3]
In honor of Peter, I’ve included a French horn with the string quartet. However, this one is so pretentious that he may not appreciate it. It makes me laugh. Actually, as these atonal things go, the music isn’t bad. Listen to the bassoon version first, without the voice.
I could probably go back in and do more interesting things with the voice, whisper the words just below hearing/understanding, more fragments. That might make it better. Then again, it might not.
Everybody take a deep breath.
On Sunday, July 26, at 3:00, at the Centre for Performing and Visual Arts, the Hangzhou Youth Orchestra, on tour from China, will give the world premiere performance of “Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way.”
This will follow a performance at the Rialto Center for the Arts in Atlanta the day before.
Holy cow.
What makes this really interesting is that it’s on traditional Chinese instruments, so I have no clue as to what it will actually sound like.
Still.
Deep breaths.
Again.
From Aditya, who may still be in India, comes 4-642-10:
Listen! Where Atlantic beats
Shores of snow and summer heats…
That’s ll. 21-22 from Bret Harte’s “What the Engines Said.”
[If you’re just joining us, here are the instructions for the 24 hour challenge, as well as previous efforts.]
6/03/09, 1:05 pm
24 hour challenge #9, “Atlantic Beats,” for Aditya: score [pdf], performance [mp3], bassoon [mp3]
OK, Adi, we’re even. This is good stuff. Harte’s original poem was about transcontinental trains, but clearly I’ve set this as some kind of sea chanty. I think it has some beautiful harmonies in it, and the recombination of earlier measures once the voice enters is striking.