Having slammed “Phoenix” in the mail yesterday to the Meistersingers out in California, I feel as if I’m accomplishing… something. Second competition in as many weeks. Wow.

True, last week’s was just the SATB arrangement of “Sonnet 18,” and this week’s was the mostly unsatisfactory “Phoenix,” but still, there it is. I have re-entered the world of competitive composing.

Next up, I want to tack on two more movements to the bassoon/strings piece from this past summer, in turn based on “I dance a club-foot’s waltz” from the 24 Hour Challenge, which I also need to get back into. There are two competitions with deadlines of March 15 to which I can submit that.

Yes, it’s simultaneous submissions. The day I win either competition, much less both, is a day you should all be worried about, since clearly the entire universe has changed some of its core functions.

Making time for this could be a little problematic. The social life is once again whirring up. Atlanta Opera tonight, if it doesn’t snow; Lacuna starts back up tomorrow night; the Wadsworth concert Saturday; Boys & Girls Club benefit on Sunday (Oscar party); math/science night at school next Thursday; and massive Masterworks weekend next weekend.

If push comes to shove, I’ll steal some of the nicer bits from “Phoenix” for this next piece. Might as well.

I’m going to live-blog this thing out of sheer frustration.

10:16: cheesy setting of I feel so helpless, but right now I’m feeling it. Setting All the familiar doctors/Touching the familiar folds is a brick wall.

10:21: got a rhythm worked out for All the familiar doctors/Touching the familiar folds. Now I have to segue from the pattern I’ve set up in I feel so helpless to something that will bear up under the lengthy line. Lengthy, however, is a good thing: I have only about 3:00 so far, and the piece has to be 4:00 at least. Who knew all this collapsed into so tiny a timeframe?

11:06: A death spiral phrase written. This simply has to be longer, so I’m going to break up the phrase and repeat it in fragments, actually setting up/anticipating the breakup of the water coda.

12:01: It’s patched together. I’m going to go have some lunch, then listen to it again afterwards. It almost coheres.

2:30: Lunch, Kroger, and now I’m in the back yard. I’ll share what I’ve got. Comment at will. I still have to construct a piano reduction, and there are some automations in Finale which will do most of that for me, print it, and mail it. They suggest a CD with a MIDI realization. I might do that, too.

“Phoenix”: PDF score, mp3 soundfile

It is four minutes long by the grace of unwarranted repetition. The last measure’s infinite repeat in particular nudges it over the four minute mark.

The knowledge that Mozart never felt this way in his entire life is very annoying to me. The fact that I have outlived him by twenty years is hardly consolation.

On a side note, I am ready for it to be a great deal warmer. I am weary of sitting in my labyrinth and feeling cold air on my body. I want the caress of the sun. Have another Carlsson’s Gold, Dale. Thank you, I will.

In another thirty minutes I need to go in and hammer out the piano reduction, then start the coq au vin we’re having for the Olympics Closing Ceremony Feast.

Well, at least I have a good start on my Lichtenbergian goal of churning out a great deal of crap. I wonder how much of this piece I can steal for next week’s continuation of the bassoon/string quartet? Discuss.

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update: Here’s the piano playing the piece. It’s almost tolerable here. Piano [mp3] (There are some minor changes from the score/mp3 above. One of them is fiendish.)

I didn’t post this yesterday because I was so disgusted, but as I work to finish the piece today, I might as well share what I nearly abandoned.

Score [pdf] | Sound [mp3]

Bleh. It just doesn’t work. But screw it, I’m going to hammer out the last third of it, duct-tape the “water” coda onto it, and mail it in. If they pick the thing, the joke’s on them.

I have lost my mind.

Since the atonal screeching of the first third of the piece was starting to get to me, I thought I would go work on the end, which I intend to have a gentler, more puzzling tone.

Well, it is that.

It is very reminiscent of one of my really great masterpieces that has never seen the light of day, the last number in the aborted One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish^[1] , which I later used as the extended coda for a bizarre and demanding Alleluia. Only that piece had the sixteenth notes in the accompaniment and all the voices had to do was to chime in gently with “Now we go to sleep” and ending with “From there to here/From here to there/Funny things/Are everywhere.”

This is a bit different.

Score [pdf]. Sound [mp3].^[2]

^[1] Fans of my music will fondly recall “Clark” from that lost work.

^[2] Those who are paying attention to the file names will notice that this is phoenixwatersketch2. Yes, there was a first attempt, a much more singable thing. I like this a lot better.

Bleh.

I’ve written more. I’m not sure it’s anything but random screeching. But I got it through the first “What to do?”

Score [pdf]. Sound [mp3]

I have set myself the task of composing an a cappella SATB piece by Saturday in order to enter into a competition the deadline of which is Monday. That means I have to have it finished by Saturday so I can polish it by Sunday and pop it in the post first thing Monday morning to have it postmarked March 1.

(I’m also submitting the SATB arrangement of “Sonnet 18” to the Yale Glee Club Emerging Composers Competition , that goes in the mail tomorrow.)

Anyway, I asked my fellow Lichtenbergians to suggest a text yesterday. Lots of good responses from them, of course. I really really liked Mike’s suggestion of Edward Lear, and was set to compose “The Dong with the Luminous Nose” or “The Jumblies.” Ironically, in searching my hard drive for the text to “The Jumblies,” I came across a list I had started back in 2008 of my Lichtenbergian goals, and for 2008, one of them was to set “The Jumblies.”

I began thinking of textures for “The Dong” and had given quite a bit of thought to it, using the voices as orchestral accompaniment along with the text, but I think it’s too long. The piece has to be 4—8 minutes long, and I was having to cut sections before I even began. I wasn’t sure I could get it all done by Saturday. It’s not strophic; Lear wallows in the verse without regard to regularity, so I wouldn’t be able to cheat by repeating verses like I did with “Blake Tells the Tiger the Tale of the Tailor.”

Fortunately, one of Marc’s texts was equally tempting, and a great deal shorter if, naturally, a lot more opaque:

I don’t want to be a phoenix.
I want to be something learning to walk
Like the corpse at a funereal dance.
I want to learn the rainbow’s backstroke.
I want release from restraint.

What to do?

The sky scares me.
Graceless hands reach out of the clouds.
Are these those clouds of unknowing
The books talked about?
Am I crossing into wonder?

What to do?

I feel so helpless.
All the familiar doctors
Touching the familiar folds
And I quake in the same cold ways.

Am I made of water? Why?

What to do, indeed?

Here’s my first stab, score [pdf] and sound [mp3]. It’s only the first phrase. I’m thinking of marking the opening wail Keening, because that’s what Marc would do.

At the moment, I have a vague plan. The first stanza will be fairly knotted, as you’ve heard, with a little loosening at “I want release…” but knotting back up with “What to do?” The second stanza will, despite itself, begin to cross into wonder. The second “What to do?” will be unable maintain its confident despair. The last stanza will be almost resigned to its loss of nihilism. I’m almost certain that’s not what Marc intended.

Thinking in a cappella is very hard for me.

I got the American Composers Forum newsletter yesterday and there on the front page was an article by Eric Whitacre, “Advice for the Emerging Composer: Competitions.”

Eric Whitacre, for those who do not know, is one of the major cool kids of contemporary choral music. His blog is here. Highly readable.

Anyway, he outlines some benefits for emerging composers to enter all these competitions. The first is exposure, which makes sense. Even if you don’t win, the judges will have seen your work. He says several times judges have contacted him to see if they could program his work that didn’t win the competition.

Second, he says, you’ll finish the piece. I’m a Lichtenbergian. ‘Nuff said.

Third, and I will quote him directly here:

In the last 18 years I’ve probably entered a hundred competitions and I have never won anything. Nothing. I lost the ASCAP Young Composers award three times (in three different years I entered “When David Heard,” “Lux Aurumque,” and “Cloudburst,” lost with all three.

And more of the same. Incredible. “Lux Aurumque,” sung here at a midnight mass in London. Didn’t win. His most recent post talks about getting a letter from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, rejecting his application for an award they had invited him to apply for.

He says not winning is a good thing. It helps make you stronger, if you’re smart, because it reinforces your sense of your own worth. Your piece should have won, dammit, because it was good, and you know that. It’s what keeps you writing more.

All in all, a timely and enjoyable article. And now I have yet another blog to keep up with.

I went through all the forms and rules and regs last night to match up deadlines and what I might have on hand already to submit to each one.

I had to ditch the Utah Arts Festival right off the bat. They expected a recording of the work you’re submitting as an example of your work, no MIDI realizations permitted. In other words, you either have had performances of your work already or you have access to musicians. Oh well.

The Yale Glee Club, deadline March 1, is getting “Sonnet 18.” (They have a prize of $1500 + travel expenses to the premiere.)

The Meistersingers (Huntington Beach, CA) needs an a cappella piece. I’ll have to write one, and since it’s due March 1, I bet this one doesn’t get done. ($1000 prize, plus performances and recording.)

The University of Illinois School of Music has the Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award, $1000 first place. They’re going to get the quartet/bassoon piece I did last summer. Since their deadline is not until March 15, I’m going to try to write two more movements for that. Maybe.

The Composers Conference and Chamber Music Center at Wellesley College (Wayland, MA) is also getting the quartet/bassoon piece, also due March 15. This one is an actual conference you get to attend and work with older/wiser composers and hear your work worked on. Or something. The call for scores is pretty fuzzy. It looks as if they’re asking for scores of anything you’ve written for judging purposes, and then they’ll pick ten people to come play at this conference. So they may also get “Milky Way” and the “Epilogue,” because those are pretty.

The 1st International Chorale Composition Competition, from the Monteverdi Choral (Cles, Trento, Italy) wants either a setting of “The 33rd Song” from the Divine Comedy for SSATBB chorus, a cappella, or a children’s choir piece, also a cappella, any text. (Prize is $1000 + publication.) Since the Dante is 39 lines of Italian, I’m not going there. Anyone want to write me a text for the children’s piece? Deadline is not until March 31.

The New York Virtuoso Singers want either a cappella or piano accompaniment. Deadline is April 10. They’ll get whatever I write for Meistersingers, which means they may get nothing. Prizes include nominal sums + performance in NYC + possible publication by Schirmer.

And finally, the National Opera Association’s Chamber Opera thing, deadline May 1. They’re getting William Blake’s Inn, and it’s up to them to decide it’s not an opera. Of course, if they decide it is, then I have to rescore the whole damned thing for 20 players. Somehow I am little concerned about that.

Fanfares? If I get inspired by all the rest of this, I might knock one out.

All righty, off to work on none of the above: I’m going to try fiddling with Marc’s Vibes piece.