Two pieces of mail came today from the American Composers Forum, of which I am a member.

The first is in cooperation with Vocal Essence, the group that had the Christmas Carol competition that I did not win last fall. (I heard the winner on NPR’s Performance Today. It was very pretty.) They’ve announced a call for scores for their Essentially Choral program, an opportunity for “emerging composers.” I guess I qualify.

Anyway, the deal is an SATB piece, either a capella or with instrumental accompaniment, up to five instruments. No keyboard by itself. Any text. No previous public performance. Deadline is March 14.

The second opportunity is in cooperation with the American Music Center and the Minnesota Orchestra, and it’s the 8th annual Composer Institute. Up to nine lucky “emerging composers” will work for a week with Alan Jay Kernis and the Minnesota Orchestra, finally hearing their orchestral work performed.

The deal here is orchestral work, not choral, 15 minutes or less in length (although longer works will be considered). Not previously performed or read by a major orchestra. Deadline is March 7.

So now the question is, will IV. Lento-Allegro be ready by then? One would hope. If I’m actually writing a symphony to be performed this summer, I would need to write one movement every 47 days or so. I need to be finished with this one by mid-February. So that might actually be doable.

The choral thing I’m not so sure about. I’m not sitting on any text that I feel the need to set. I know one of my Lichtenbergian goals is to set Edward Lear’s “The Jumblies,” but I really was thinking that might be my aprés-symphonie oeuvre.

In other news, I did hear from Noah, so he’s alive and well. He was indeed closing on a house, plus some heavy-duty work on some big internet clients, so he hadn’t had time to finish getting lichtenbergian.org up and running. Maybe this weekend. And then…

In other other news, I sent out an appeal to GHP staff for photos, and now I have probably more than I can use, which is great. So I’ll be spending this weekend and Monday getting the video reassembled. Sunday is for composing.

Well, this was a surprise. How’d that happen?

(Sforzandos and crescendos are still left largely to your musical intelligence, and cut-offs are still icky. And the last note is cut off. I’m not fixing that at the moment.)

I tried to work on a molto agitato sequence for IV. Lento-Allegro last night, but I wasn’t feeling well for some reason. I know what I want, for once, and I could even hear it in my head, but I couldn’t concentrate. It kept coming out wrong, and the orchestration was absolutely appalling, although I can’t tell whether it’s me or the software. I think I want cellos, but it’s not sounding right, not stressful enough.

Part of the problem is that in order to get the computer to sound like what I want the orchestra to sound like, I have to over-indicate in the score. Real players would look at the command molto agitato and immediately tackle the passage with shorter bowing and stronger attacks on the strings. The computer is not so savvy. (Of course, I didn’t actually mark it agitato, so maybe it’s smarter than I think.)

I often ran into this problem in William Blake. I would have to fill the score with markings that I think would only overwhelm actual players just to get it to sound like I wanted it to.

On the other hand, it never hurts to be specific.

However, nothing was working last night, not the melodic line, not the shape of the thing, and certainly not the orchestration. The trumpets were too loud, it was the wrong key for them to sound right, and the basses were muddy. So I left it in sketches and went to bed early.

I played with the main theme for the 4th movement a while tonight, with three little variations. One was the theme in the flute with the triplets in the harp. Not quite what I needed, but my goal tonight was to throw things out there and see what happened.

Next I scored the main theme as heard in the Sonatina for the strings alone. That was nice, and rather meditative. Perhaps for the ending, or maybe an interlude, or maybe one of the variations before we hit the big climax.

Interestingly, I took that variation and transposed it up a fifth, an lo! without my doing a single other thing to it, it took on an entirely different character. It was triumphant and soaring, partly because the violins were now in their heroic register, and partly because it was in D major, which can’t help itself: it just sounds heroic. Something to do with the being a good key for the brass back in the day; if you go check all your favorite glorious baroque bits, almost all of them are in D major.

The problem, of course, is that the symphony needs to end in G, the key of the meditative variation. I’ll think about that another day.

No mp3s today.

I worked on my Assignment L.08.01 after that, and I think I have something. It’s not excellent, but it’s there. It’s also fairly NSFW, although you have to squint to figure that out. I’ll post it wherever the Lichtenbergian Society blog ends up.

I couldn’t help myself.

I fully intended to work on a) the three songs from Moonlight that have been occupying me; and b) Assignment L.08.1, but somehow, I sketched out the opening to the last movement of the symphony.

Let’s see if my new plug-in works, allowing me to embed the mp3 file here. (You should see a blue arrow to click on.)

Not bad for a first draft. I know that a real orchestra will balance the brass choir better than I can, so ignore the obstreperous tones of the first trombonist here. I think maybe those low C “oomphs” may need some low brass under them. We’ll see.

In case you’ve forgotten, I stole this theme from my Sonatina Four Hands for piano, and this is where we’re heading. (Some weird tempo stuff going on there, but this was a Finale 97 file that thank goodness Finale 08 deigned to even open.)

Off to pack up Christmas stuff.