Now that my doctor has transitioned from suggesting I might benefit from moderate exercise to insisting that I walk two miles every day (within 30 minutes, YOU GUYS!), I have the opportunity to listen obsessively to my work on Seven Dreams of Falling.

Thus it was that as I slogged around the park this morning I found myself really enjoying “Hark, the sound of screaming fans” as an entirely fun piece of bravado.

Which is why I set myself the goal of ditching it and writing something else.  I cannot shake the feeling that an audience of any sophistication would sneer at this snarky little tune.

side note: I’m having issues about melody.  On the one hand, I despise modern opera’s avoidance of a good tune.  There’s a reason why we keep scheduling the Top 40 years and years after their premieres and more modern pieces... not so much.  (For the record, I would love to hear and learn from each and every piece mentioned in that article.)

On the other hand, maybe it’s because of my lack of talent, but I don’t think bits like “Hark” are very strong.  It seems lazy to plop something in there just because it’s hummable.

Oh, who knows?  My inadequacy, my fear of not being thought one of the “cool kids,” or is it all just fine?  Discuss in comments.

So I wrote another version of “Hark, the sound of screaming fans.”  Not the whole thing, just the first two lines.  I’m not happy with it either.  It’s definitely got Theseus’s smarminess down, but if anything it’s even weaker musically than yesterday’s version.

Maybe I’ll keep pushing, writing ever more strenuously for voice and ear until I have something at which the cognoscenti will nod knowingly.  Or maybe I’ll just leave the gigue where it is.

Dream One, “Hark, the sound of screaming fans,” 2nd version | score [pdf] | mp3

I found a solution for the cheesiness of Theseus’s opening aria, and that is MOAR CHEEZEENESS YOU GUYS!

Seriously: I abandoned the lame attempt at polytonality in his first phrase and settled it into straight harmony, and then extended the first verse.  So now we have a full-on huckster approach, a kind of in-your-face/dare-you-to-diss-this-throwback attitude.

I’ve moved on to Daedalus’s objections, which will be in a kind of waltz mode over Theseus’s 9/8 gigue.

Dream One, “Hark, the sound of screaming fans” (06/24/14) | score [pdf] | mp3

I posted on Facebook how frustrating it is to compose something that is perfectly cromulent but which you know is not the solution to the problem, and after losing a whole week to grappling with Theseus’s first appearance, I was ready to slap down anything.

So I have.  It’s silly, silly stuff with a couple of good bits, but really, can you hear this being performed on a modern opera stage?  The faux-Baroque bit is too much to begin with, and now this lame bel canto?  I think it gets Theseus’s hucksterism right, but it’s just so unsophisticated.

But here it is.  Scoff in the comments.  I’ll be over in the corner working on a replacement.

Dream One, “Hark the sound of screaming fans” | score [pdf] | mp3

I’ve settled down to work on the remaining bit of Dream One, i.e., the section that follows Icarus’s “I am alone.”  In it, Theseus reveals himself as more of a showman than a hero; Daedalus is practically a monomaniacal technocrat; and Ariadne… well, Ariadne has issues.

Mostly today I’ve tried to parse the text and decide what it is that the music needs to be telling us.  I did some work on getting from the “machine music” scene change into Theseus’s opening lines, but now I’m doodling on the main theme of his number.  I think on the whole we need to hear some kind of lounge lizard or advertising jingle in his aria, but that’s going to take time, because after Daedalus interrupts whim with some priggish rebuttal, I want that theme to return for the bit of stichomythia between Theseus and Daedalus.

That in turn will be followed by the machine music (lightly), and then Ariadne, eternal feminist spoilsport, pipes up.  From there it’s just a short jump to “My mother, bored and pampered.”

Short version: I piddling around trying to invent an advertising jingle for the Event.

And I won’t have it done by the end of the week.

Don’t everybody get over-excited, but today we have two new sections of Dream One.

Lest you think that I was super industrious over the weekend, remember that I had worked on both of these all last week and only had the ending of each to hammer out.  Still, it is impressive, isn’t it?

The first is our old friend, Ariadne’s “My mother, bored and pampered.”  I had to work out her last phrase, “We map this fate forever,” in which I wanted Theseus to join her in a gentle lament.  I think it works.

Astute listeners will hear that I radically revamped the accompaniment to Ariadne’s climactic “I loved you—I love you!”  It’s very effective in a maudlin kind of way, and I’m wondering if it’s too Broadway.  Or am I forging new paths for La Scala?

The second new piece is the closing of our first Dream, “What of us?”  It starts with Daedalus reminding Ariadne that he too was trapped there, along with Icarus.  The music references “Fly and fall,” and then segues into the “machine music” motif as our trio retreat to their personal concerns.  (I am reminded of Sweeney Todd, where Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett often sing at cross-purposes, he of emotions and she of commerce.)  From there we reprise the opening chorus, “Let us joyfully gaze.”

On the whole, I’m quite pleased.  Next up: the beginning of this last segment of Dream One, transitioning from Icarus in the sky down to the control room.  It’s not a short piece of text, so this may take all week.  However, when I finish this, DREAM ONE WILL BE FINISHED, YOU GUYS!

Dream One, “My mother, bored and pampered” | score (pdf) | mp3

Dream One, “What of us?” | score (pdf) | mp3

Do not let me forget that I have to work out the “falling” motif.

Yesterday was pretty good, actually.  Having decided to skip the hard part of Ariadne’s bit and move on to the ending of Dream One, I found that it flowed very nicely and we have liftoff.  I still have some tweaking to do on it, but I think everyone will be pleased with the results.

Also, yesterday afternoon was the last session of the Newnan Theatre Company‘s KidsCamp Workshop that I taught.  As these things do, we ended up with a performance for the parental units, and I have to say that the kids acquitted themselves well.  Quick recap: the goal of the workshop was character development; the theme was “Villains.”  We spent the week in a wash of creative process—stealing David Seah‘s nifty mantra of EXPLORE | LEARN | BUILD | SHARE, we were able to defer judgment and decision-making until Thursday, really.  They generated multiple characters in their little notebooks, and we ended up with six monologs and three group presentations. (We had eighteen middle school students.)

They tended towards the sketch comedy end of the spectrum (with the concomitant maniacal cackling), but with only a week to produce, whattayagonnadoamirite?  I think that almost all of them were worth seeing and the fact that the kids developed every single bit it of themselves is worth something.  I regarded the whole workshop as an excuse to play with young minds and introduce them to the creative process.

The song was a hit.  I was quite pleased with the way the kids performed it and with the audience reaction.  It is a catchy, catchy song with multiple earworms.  I know, because I have trouble getting to sleep at night with it running through my head.

So here’s the next little section of “My mother, bored and pampered.”  I abandoned my interpolated text—although I reserve the right to come back and stick it in.

I’m posting this today even though I’m not sure I like any of it.  Some adventurous harmonies, but my compositional strategy of “listen to it over and over until it makes sense” may have failed me this time.  Will a conductor and cast take the time to understand it?  Does it in fact make sense musico-dramatically?

Oh well, unlike The Bridges of Madison County, this is not going to lose anyone millions of dollars, so I shall post it and then circle back to it later.

Dream One, “My mother,” 06/10/14 | score (pdf) | mp3  (The new stuff starts at about 1:10.)

Next, a little coda in which Ariadne and Theseus have a bittersweet duet, closing out that bit.  Then a bit of recitative from Daedalus, and then our “tinker-toy” theme kicks in to take us out to a reprise of “Let us joyfully gaze.”  Sounds simple enough.