This is an odd feeling: I put the “Pieces for Bassoon” in the mail this afternoon, heading to its two competitions, one in Illinois and the other in Massachusetts. Now I have no composition facing me. It’s that feeling of twiddling my thumbs that I have always found very uncomfortable.

It’s not that I want to be staring at another deadline, and I don’t have another piece ramped up in my head demanding to be written. It’s just that I’ve been relatively productive, nay, even successful, the past two weeks, and I’m feeling good about myself as a composer. Shouldn’t I then take advantage of this sudden burst of self-esteem and keep going?

The next thing on my list is a children’s choir competition in Italy, and I think I’m going to give that one a pass. I don’t really know anything about children’s voices, and I don’t know the quality they’re looking for. (Remind me to blog about dreaming a text for it.)

I think I will either dive back into the 24 Hour Challenge or go back to sketching ideas for the Ayrshire Fiddle Orchestra. It is not my intention to write that piece until this summer, but it won’t hurt to generate a lot of ideas.

And this last work has taught me that generating a lot of ideas is a very good idea indeed. Yes, I already knew that, but the “Dialog” movement brought it home to me in a nostalgic way. The “Heartfelt” theme, the lovely little bit after the bassoon pitches its fit, is a very old snatch of melody indeed.

After I wrote A Christmas Carol in 1980 (1981?), it was suggested that I write another holiday piece that we could do in repertory with CC, in case we ever got to the point that we were standing backstage whispering, “Die, you little cripple, die!” Not that we ever did that.

I decided it might be interesting to do an evening of short pieces. I don’t remember any of what we selected other than Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Match Girl,” which is one of the most effectively maudlin stories ever written. I can scarcely type the words without tearing up. Damn the man.

Anyway, I don’t think I got more than a couple of melodies sketched out even for that one piece, and this “Heartfelt” theme was one of them. It was called “In My Arms,” and it was going to be sung by the Match Girl’s grandmother in the miserable child’s final vision of heaven as she freezes to death. (I recently read something online that indicated the writer thought the story ended happily. Hello??)

Go back and listen to that section. “In my arms…” were the first words, and I don’t think I ever wrote anything solid other than that. But the cognoscenti will recognize that I would have, if I had finished it, gone far beyond even “The Cratchits’ Prayer” in levels of rising gorge.

The moral of my story? Never throw anything away. If it doesn’t fit your current piece, you might, thirty years later, find a spot for it.

Cover me, I’m going back in.

Upon repeated, obsessive listening (a necessary part of my compositional process), I have decided that at least three portions of “Dialog” need to be longer: the Tango, the Chorale, and the Finale itself.

I’ll keep you posted.

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8:30, It’s now official. I’ve expanded the Dialog bits that needed more, cleaned up the scores, and finalized the mp3 files.

Pieces for Bassoon & String Quartet, by Dale Lyles

I. Waltz | score [pdf] | mp3

II. Threnody | score [pdf] | mp3

III. Dialog | score [pdf] | mp3

I need an album cover. Somebody design me one.

Undeterred by the ministrations of the emergency room, nuclear medicine, and the cardiology staff of Piedmont-Newnan Hospital, I have continue to work on the piece from my hospital bed. (Yes, Piedmont-Newnan has wi-fi.) I’ll have to wait until I get home to play with some kind of ending, and I’m not sure the last eight measures make any sense yet, but it’s substantially advanced enough from yesterday’s version for me to post the new one:

PBSQ3 (Dialog): score [pdf], sound [mp3]

I’m liking this a lot.

9:00 pm, Done, for the most part. I’m sure I’ll find plenty I want to tweak, the last cadenza in particular is just a place filler, and there are plenty of places where I’m sure you’ll think, “Oh, I see what he wanted to do there,” even if I didn’t. But if I don’t get to work on it again before I have to mail it out, it will serve.

PBSQ3 (Dialog): score [pdf], sound [mp3]

And with that, here is the complete Pieces for Bassoon & String Quartet:

• I. Waltz (score)
• II. Threnody (score)
• III. Dialog (score)

Today was such a glorious day that I came home from school, changed straight into my kilt, and headed to the labyrinth to soak up the sun. I also sketched out the end of the “Heartfelt” theme and the beginning of the finale.

Here’s what I got:

PBSQ3 (Dialog): score [pdf], sound [mp3]

Finale is not playing the molto rallentandos like I want, and yet it keeps playing the accelerando at m.79 all the way into m.82, making it sound like the bassoon is ripping out 32nd notes. I like the way it sounds, but I need to mess with the notation to get it to do that. Anyway, the last little sigh of the bassoon should be imagined as very slow and defeated.

From the little fragment at the end, I think you can tell where it’s heading. I should be able to wind it up tomorrow night.

Question: I played with actually writing out the dialog in the score; sometimes musicians can be obtuse. What do you think?

All right! This movement is going to be fun, fun, fun, fun to write and fun to play.

All I’ve added this morning so far is the next strings bit of the “dialog,” but it was so clear as to how this is going to work that I had to share immediately:

PBSQ3 (Dialog): score [pdf], sound [mp3]

12:00, Lunch break. And I think you’ll enjoy the piece so far. I was completely unable to suppress my tendency to wit, and now I’m just reveling in it.

PBSQ3 (Dialog): score [pdf], sound [mp3]

1:40, Added a little more Tango. I think we need one more exasperating exchange, and then I’ve got the ending all worked out, except for the actual part where it stops, of course. I think you’ll like it. But first, some sun in the labyrinth, I think.

4:45, Lots of sunning and holding cats’ tummies to the sun. Eventually, though, I gave up the sun and came inside. I pressed forward and have reached this point:

PBSQ3 (Dialog): score [pdf], sound [mp3]

This is a pretty wonderful piece, I think. It makes me laugh: poor little bassoon can’t catch a break. No matter what he does, the strings turn it into something pretty. What to do?, to quote Mr. Honea. First I have to wind up this theme, and then we can begin our grand finale. And it is grand, I can assure you.

Another thought: I like the way it begins innocently enough, a pleasing yet serious contrast with the Threnody, but it has a game to play with the listener from the very start.

When you’re writing a piece that is supposed to “sag to a stop,” it should hardly come as a surprise when it just does that of its own accord.

I’m going to post what I’ve got, but what I’m doing now is taking it out to the labyrinth and listening to it for about thirty minutes, doing my whole gestalt thing, listening for where it’s incomplete or incorrect. Then I’ll come back in a fix it, if I need to. It will be interesting to see what changes occur.

As of 10:00 am:

Threnody: score [pdf] sound [mp3]

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11:00ish: (with 30 minutes devoted to making and delivering coffee for the Wadsworth gang) Yep, I know what I need to do.

12:45: Lunch break, in the labyrinth. More listening, more fixing.

2:45: I think I’m done. Comment away.

Threnody: score [pdf] sound [mp3]

I’m working, I’m working.

I’ve decided to go with #1, and I’ve renamed it “Threnody,” because that’s what it sounds like. More later.

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10:16 pm: Here’s what I have going on. I have four motifs I’m working with:

1. the quasi-“Alberti bass” figure that the bassoon opens with
2. the quarter/half/quarter figure first heard echoing down the first and second violins
3. the dotted quarter followed by descending eighths, first heard in the viola
4. the dotted quarter followed by eighth notes grinding to a halt

There’s also the grace note attacks that keep popping up.

Anyway, I’m playing with combining those motifs in various mixes, often ending up with two instruments dwindling to nothing, only to have the wheel (of life?) given another spin. Eventually, however, the whole thing will just sag to a complete stop.

In the sound file, the last thing you hear is the first violin rousing itself to a bit of bravura. It doesn’t work yet, so don’t bother to comment. I’ll have to keep playing with the line until it makes sense.

More tomorrow.

PBSQ2(threnody): score [pdf] sound [mp3]

Here we go with the Pieces for Bassoon & String Quartet. So far, my plan is to have three movements. The first is I. Waltz, which some of you may recall from this past summer. I really like this piece.

The second movement will be a Rhapsody of some kind. More in a moment.

For the third movement, I am seriously thinking I want to take the “clouds” sequence from “Phoenix” and turn that into a quasi-rondo: have the strings launch into this intense, even romantic passage, repeat it, embellish it, make it impossible to keep up with. Relegate the bassoon to some deformed, crabby crawlings around either at the bottom of it range or at its top.

For the Rhapsody, I was delighted to find that I had started two sketches for this. So you get to help me choose which one to work on in the next eight days. Make sure you listen to the first movement first to get a feel for the overall work.

• Rhapsody #1: score [pdf] sound [mp3]
• Rhapsody #2: score [pdf] sound [mp3]
• Rhapsody: #3: start over

What’s your pleasure?