Recently I took a look around my study and decided that after three years of having part of my study floor clogged with the stuff from my office at the Presbyterian church, it was time to stash it. I bought a big old plastic tub and tonight I began sorting.

What seemed to take up piles and piles on the floor, plus a great big box, collapsed rather neatly into a few small piles in the tub. I took the precaution of creating a word processing document (searchable via my laptop’s indexing) which lets me know what I’ve stuck in there.

Some surprises as I worked through the piles, like the mantel clock which was a gift from the cast of Lying In State, the world premiere comedy we did back in 1998, nearly ten years ago, folks! That will go to school with me.

I also found a great many of the original scores for all my early stuff, all the One Fish Two Fish pieces, plus the Symphony for Band in C minor. And there were all my notebooks.

Back in the day, before the computer would allow me to write my music, and play it back, I had to do it all by hand. Shockingly primitive, I know. But music paper was hard to come by, and so whenever I came across notebooks, I’d buy all I could and hoard them. Most of these notebooks are mostly empty, with various projects grouped here and there in them: Christmas Carol, some anthems, a snatch of William Blake here and there.

After getting the tub loaded, I went through all these notebooks, even the juvenilia from the early 70s, and played through everything in them. Most of it was sketches for stuff that either worked out and got used, or was terrible and should have been erased, but there were some bits and pieces which were nice enough to salvage for new projects. I found some lyrics (for what, I have no idea) that will be used in Day in the Moonlight, and I found more than few fragments of music that will show up either in one symphony or another or in the Stars on Snow album. I even found some themes from an early idea for a symphony that actually still resonate.

So it was not exactly what you’d call a productive evening, but it was fun and a little bizarre to dig back through my early, mostly incompetent self. I had some good ideas, but I was clearly clueless about how to develop most them. Although I will say I found one or two babysteps that showed I had a clear understanding of structure even then.

Anyway, I’ll be putting all those fragments into Finale files so I can stash them away for future pilfering.

In other news, Lacuna sang the complete Visit to William Blake’s Inn last night as the special guests of Barnes & Noble. It is most likely the last time Newnan will hear the piece. Unless someone prominent steps up in the next two weeks to be in charge of the Organizing Committee, I’m going to start shopping it around to other places.

The performance was very nice indeed, give or take one or two King of Cats solos being fluffled. I’ll miss working with the chorus.

It’s always an odd feeling to finish a piece, especially when it has to go in the mail, because then it really is finished. I had sketched out another ending to “Sir Christémas” on Thursday night because I wasn’t exactly happy/sure about the ending you’ve all heard. At that point, I couldn’t even hear the difference (although they were totally different in structure), so I invited an untrained but opinionated audience (Ginny) to tell me which one she preferred. She liked the original, so into the mail it went.

So no going back, at least in terms of the VocalEssence competition. If When I don’t win, then I can turn around and tinker with it all I want, of course.

What now? It was ironic that on Thursday, an email arrived from the American Composers Forum alerting me to all the competitions out there. There’s one from Salem College in Winston-Salem for harpsichord music, due November 1. You can write either a solo piece or duet, any instrument; I’m thinking trombone. There’s a contest for the Sybarite Chamber Players in NY (gotta like the sound of that group), a string quintet. That’s due November 30. And then there’s the Millenium Chamber Players in Chicago, up to eight players to be drawn from a string quintet, wind quintet, trombone, percussion, and piano. That one is due November 15. Hm. What to do?

I guess I could do all of them, on two week cycles. That would be fun to read about, wouldn’t it? Three major works in a month and a half? (They’re all supposed be at least 10 minutes long.) I could cheat and start to work on them now, of course. There’s always Maila’s request for something for her, David, and Joren, too, and the symphony. Don’t want to wait too long on that one, do I?

It also has occurred to me that I might actually officially orchestrate Blake Tells the Tiger the Tale of the Tailor for the September 18 performance. That might be a good way to play with the new Finale 2008, which now has choral sounds with the Garritan Personal Orchestra! (You will have noticed that I didn’t install this thing in the middle of “Sir Christémas.”)

What’s that, Mike? Oh, you’re back from Africa and want to know what progress I’ve made on Day in the Moonlight? Selfish bastard.

I think I’m done. I had about an hour this afternoon between getting home and having to come back to school for open house, and I just hacked out the ending. I resisted doing a flat da capo ending, but whatever I tried that was new and different just sounded lame. Finally I just gave in to centuries of tradition: end the thing the way you began it. I threw in some senseless interesting modulations every half measure just to make it sound a little different, and I think it’s done.

Last chance to kibbitz: PDF score and mp3 for your perusal. Tomorrow morning it goes in the mail.

So close, so close! I worked hard tonight, cutting and pasting, listening for that inner camera (how do you like them synaesthetic metaphors?) that would show me what the final piece should sound/look like.

I think I’m done except for the ending, and I know what it should be. It’s just late now and I think I’m going to deal with that tomorrow night. That way it’s still very, very shiny when I pop it in the mail on Friday morning.

If you like, here are the PDF score and the mp3. (The mp3 is pretty big, so be forewarned.)

It’s not too shabby, and it’s actually fun to sing. I can hear a lot of subtleties that the computer is just not getting but that a chorus and celestist would, like in the third verse, which should be as gentle as possible and probably slower than I have it marked.

There are a lot of blank measures at the end, so a lot of dead air at the end of the mp3. I’m not fixing it tonight.

Continuing my organic exploration of the text of my selected carol, “Sir Christémas,” I have arrived at the end of the first stanza. I think.

I decided that the opening, though delightful, had about reached the limit of human tolerance for tinkly triplets. Dotted quarters, offset with syncopated figures in the bass, were called for, I thought. That led naturally into a slow setting of the first line of the first verse, “I am here, Sir Christ(é)mas,” followed by quiet little “trumpet calls” on the next line, “Welcome, my lord, Sir Christ(é)mas!” Not bad at all.

Actually, I had blocked out the melody in the basses of the first line last night, but when I listened to it tonight it sounded like a natural extension, a response, to the intro, and it needed to sound like an opening of a stanza so that when I repeated it, the audience would recognize it as a signpost, as it were. I changed it to more strong sound.

I double-checked the next three verses to see if my structure could be applied to the first two lines of those and still make musicosyntactical sense. I think it can. With a moderate amount of force.

The last line of the trio I thought needed something a little crescendo-y, so I took that ascending chromatic line at the end of the intro and used that. I’m not sure about it, but it’s a place holder at least.

My plan at this point is break into a pointillistic “Nowel, Nowel!” after each verse, modifying each with different chromatic lenses and with different coloristic strategies in the celesta. Wow, that actually sounds like I know what I’m talking about. Wait, I do know what I’m talking about. Wow, that actually sounds like I could intentionally effect that about which I know I’m talking. Or something.

::sigh:: Just listen.

I’ve hammered out the rest of the little prologue: “Who is there who singeth so, Nowel?” That’s not as involved as it sounds, since it’s only two more measures. Still, in a very organic kind of way, I’m letting the music evolve. I have that tinkling opening motive and the descending thirds of the chorus to play with now, so that’s something, and I’ve added an upward run through all kinds of chromaticism.

Next, like tomorrow night, I have to work on a body for the thing: what are the outlines of the verse? It’s got to be solid enough to bear repeating for the four verses, and I’d like it to be recognizable, i.e., so that if I interpolate the “Nowel” sequence in between, the audience will hear it anew when it returns. Sounds like I’m working towards a rondo form here.

I found an NPR broadcast of the 2003 winners. Very pretty, and very typically “choral,” with all kinds of mellow blendings and suspensions. I’m sure we’ll hear similar kinds of things this year. I’m betting lots of starry music, and lots of lullabyes, so maybe mine will stand out as all kinds of different.

I had pulled together several texts last night which I found on The Hymns and Carols of Christmas, a pretty exhaustive site.

If you’d like to second guess me (other than the hundreds I didn’t even look at), here’s a list:

• http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/a_a_a_a_nunc_gaudet_maria.htm
• http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/child_divine.htm
• http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/little_children_wake_and_listen.htm
• http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/sir_christmas.htm
• http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/wrapt_in_the_silence_of_the_nigh.htm
• http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/yule_days.htm
• http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/sleep_my_little_jesus.htm

I really liked the Yule Days one, a kind of out-of-left-field version of “Twelve Days of Christmas.” (Thank you, Scotland.) But the accompaniment for this year’s competition is, as I mentioned yesterday, a celesta, very dainty and very quiet. I’ll set “Yule Days” for a more raucous accompaniment.

So which one did I pick? “Sir Christmas,” which is a little odd, since I think the text also suggests a more raucous setting. I know that we did one at Newnan Presbyterian that was a whole lot of fun and very hard on the choir and organist both.

Still, I’ve made a good start. I began by opening “Ginny’s Valentine,” a piece I did for Ginny one year when I forgot to do anything else, and assigning the celesta to it. Limited range, the celesta, especially in the Garritan Personal Orchestra version. I guess they only did the four-octave instrument, because it doesn’t have the range indicated by Anatomy of the Orchestra. The SoftSynth version, of course, has no range limits at all, since it’s synthesized and not sampled like the GPO. Also, if you will recall, SoftSynth has choral sounds while GPO does not, although the new Finale, arriving next week, is supposed to include new GPO choral sounds.

After I played around with getting a feel for the instrument, I opened up a new piece and just began playing with notes.

And here’s the first six measures for you to listen to. Just playing, and a long way to go with a non-metrical text, especially in a week and a half, but a good start.