The day began and ended with a bang: an emergency Caesarean and a fire.

In between, though, I accomplished a few things. In the morning, I got the copies of the score and parts of “Dance : for double bass duo & marimba” run off, collated, autographed, and distributed to the three players and two instructors who are making it happen.

I also ran off a set for the GHP music collection in the library. Being a good librarian, I rooted around in the Library of Congress catalog for examples of sheet music. Then I prepared the beginnings of a MARC record for the cataloging people over in Odum Library.

This is convoluted, but bear with me: while looking for a couple of pieces in the library a couple of weeks ago, I happened upon a brass ensemble piece by Einojuhani Rautavaara, one of my favorite composers. In my Library of Congress search, I decided to look that up, since I knew it was cataloged with score and parts. (Why not just use the Odum catalog? The LC catalog allows you to view the actual MARC record with all its little tags.)

Then I looked up DOUBLE BASS MUSIC as a subject heading, and began studying those records. I printed one out to use as a model for my MARC record and was halfway through constructing it when I realized what I was looking at: a Rautavaara double bass concerto! I was floored at the serendipity. I gave it a listen at the iTunes music store, then ordered it via Amazon. Cool.

During the afternoon, I prepared a lesson for Jennifer Cole’s “Math and the Arts” class on the foundations of music: the overtone series and how it gives us the twelve notes of our western scale; tunings, including equal temperament; keys, key signatures, and the circle of fifths. All multi-media, of course.

So I covered both the beginnings of music and its end, in a published score.

Yes, yes, I know, the end is the performance, but give me break. It’s been a long and weird day. It started at 12:30 in the morning when we rushed Suzette Hermann to the hospital. We just thought that having a fully pregnant instructor was a first. Little did we know. Short version: her little girl was delivered by c-section, stabilized, and transported to Macon for higher level care. Suzette remains in the hospital. Both are going to be OK.

If only that had been all, it still would have been a good day. It ended with a fire in Sawyer Theatre, where Justin Horn was setting lights for the dance concert. We don’t know exactly yet how it started but Justin acted promptly in pulling the fire curtain, calling 911, and evacuating the building. We think at this point the damage is limited and is mostly smoke and water.

However, the Fine Arts Building has been shut down at least for tomorrow. Which means, of course, that the reading of “Milky Way” is probably down the tubes. This is the least of the program’s concerns, and I am being churlish to mention it. I feel more badly for Alex Depew, the horn player whose piece was also being read, than I do for me. And of course for the dance majors, whose concert is seriously threatened, and all the other fabulous things which are scheduled for the next five days in that building.

My free time today was devoted to rehearsing with the All-Campus Chorus. This year, we’re doing Vivaldi’s Gloria. Yes, I know, nothing particularly challenging about it, and I have raised my eyebrows and pursed my lips at its selection. When Stephen bragged about how well the runthrough with the music minors had gone, I reminded him that we can all do it with our eyes closed.

Still, it’s a very pretty piece and singing it with a full orchestra is always fun. Thank goodness our oboist this time is wonderful. Somehow it’s the oboist who in the past has just lain down and deflated, but Jordan Dale seems to have what it takes to thrill us. It should be a good concert.

Really minimal today. I ran through the next lesson on Logic, learning more about getting sound files into a “song project,” but didn’t really get anything done. The program is getting more and more complicated by the page. When I left off, I was supposed to be assimilating the methods by which you can assign key commands to all those endless menus and windows.

In other news, the vocal majors and jazz majors had their concert tonight. The vocal majors, led by David Reimschussel, were phenomenal. A smart, sophisticated program, perfectly performed. The jazz majors, led by David Springfield, are still learning, I think, except for one Chris Cassino, who was a marvel: tenor and soprano sax, and flute, and quite felicitous on all three. Add to that the fact that he’s tall, athletic, and quite good-looking, and you’ve got a total package. If he’s interested in a career in jazz at all, I imagine we’ll be adding his name to the Wikipedia article on famous GHP alums.

Before the concert, one of the double bass players came up to me and thanked me for the piece I wrote for them. Quite flattering, and he seemed to be genuinely pleased with the music. I want to try to get together with them and talk about their instruments, get a better idea of what sounds good on the instrument, what might be interesting to try, and what is clearly impossible.

After breathlessly knocking out “Dance” in one day, a view that ignores the thinking and the two days of false starts, I didn’t get anything committed to paper today.

I did get a poster for the All-Campus Chorus done for next weekend. Those have to go out today or tomorrow.

Otherwise, it was a quieter day. I have had a request for a piece for piano, saxophone, and trombone, of all things, and I’ve been mulling solutions over in my head. I haven’t come up with anything, or rather, I’ve mulled over different attacks on the problem and haven’t decided which one to take.

One idea I’ve had is to open with the piano just arpeggiating all over the place. Never one to to reinvent the wheel if I don’t have to, I popped over to the library to see if I could find a score to Rachmaninov’s 2nd Piano Concerto and just steal that passage (or at least see how it’s done.)

They didn’t have that score, but as I was wandering the M stacks, I passed through the section of books about specific instruments, and lo, there was A new history of the double bass, by Paul Brun. Had to have it.

It’s actually very wittily written. How can you not love a book whose author, after quoting Weber on the necessity of simplifying cello parts for the basses, footnotes it with “Weber apparently omitted to mention the useful little ruse of feigning a coughing fit so as to produce a diversion during a difficult passage!”? Or whose section headings include things like “An Instrument that does not inspire Trust” or “A Fisticuffs Lesson”? or has a recurring section heading called “The German Exception”?

At any rate, I know a little more about the instrument now than I did when I wrote my first piece for it. Yesterday. I’d know a lot more if I actually read the whole thing.

(FYI, I handed the piece over to Stephen, and good soul that he is, he immediately turned it over to the bassists. I haven’t heard any reviews yet.)

You will scarcely credit this, but I wrote “Dance for Double Bass Duo and Marimba” today.

I ditched the temple blocks; they just weren’t working. But I knew I wanted some kind of percussion going on that would provide the rhythmic fleetness that the basses just can’t do, poor things. Finally I fell back on my friend the marimba.

Now the challenge was to integrate, if not subordinate, the marimba, which if I didn’t deliberately hold back would take over the piece; it would become a marimba solo with growly accompaniment back there somewhere. This I did by keeping it (at least at first) in its lower registers and playing a rhythmic motif that is clearly accompanying the basses and not vice versa.

I don’t think I mentioned one of the piece’s salient points: it’s in 7/8 time. Tricky, but savage. The piece is marked “dangerously,” and that’s what I want the bass players to do, to push it towards violence.

Harmonically, it’s in the Phrygian mode: start on an E and play a scale using only white notes. Dangerous sounding, you see. It shifts about a bit, but it’s mostly pretty minimalist in nature. About halfway through, it breaks out into C major, and it’s this portion that probably will trivialize it. It’s too pretty, too much sunshine and hope in such a moody piece. Plus, happy music cannot be serious music, you know, not since the twelve-toners and the atonalists hijacked concert music 80 years ago.

Too bad. It’s perfectly serviceable gebrauchsmusik. Well, unless it can’t actually be played by bassists. I’ll spring it on Stephen tomorrow and find out.