I actually got back to work yesterday, sort of.

Having chosen the “least of these” text for the Outside the Bachs piece, I sat down to work on it. And nothing happened.

I have in my head a vague Presentiment of what I want the piece to do, but the problem is the text. It is not even close to metrical, which shouldn’t be a problem in the long run, but at the moment it has me stymied. I mapped out its rhythm and tried applying notes to it, but everything I diddled with sounded either trite or aimless.

After an hour of that, I gave up and did the crossword puzzle.

Here’s what I’m thinking: set the text to a quiet, chantlike episode, perhaps a capella. Follow it with a nasty, loud, militant outburst from the organ, perhaps with a snare drum on the side. After the organ’s statement, return to the text, quiet, unaccompanied. The organ rebuts with a louder, nastier section. Repeat.

Two antecedents would be Charles Ive’s Symphony No. 4, 1st movement, and Carl Nielsen’s 5th, with the insistent snare drum in the final movement.

Even if I’m successful with this, it will be too polemical by half, especially if I include recognizable bits of “Onward, Christian Soldiers” and “The Star-Spangled Banner” in the organ interludes. I’ve almost decided not to conclude the piece with the congregation singing “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee,” and I know you’re relieved to hear that. But I haven’t ruled out members of the choir stating flatly, “I was hungry, and you did not feed me. I was thirsty, and you didn’t give me water. I needed clothes, and you didn’t clothe me. I was a stranger, and you did not take me in.” And so on.

Too much? I’m in a mood.

Recently I took a look around my study and decided that after three years of having part of my study floor clogged with the stuff from my office at the Presbyterian church, it was time to stash it. I bought a big old plastic tub and tonight I began sorting.

What seemed to take up piles and piles on the floor, plus a great big box, collapsed rather neatly into a few small piles in the tub. I took the precaution of creating a word processing document (searchable via my laptop’s indexing) which lets me know what I’ve stuck in there.

Some surprises as I worked through the piles, like the mantel clock which was a gift from the cast of Lying In State, the world premiere comedy we did back in 1998, nearly ten years ago, folks! That will go to school with me.

I also found a great many of the original scores for all my early stuff, all the One Fish Two Fish pieces, plus the Symphony for Band in C minor. And there were all my notebooks.

Back in the day, before the computer would allow me to write my music, and play it back, I had to do it all by hand. Shockingly primitive, I know. But music paper was hard to come by, and so whenever I came across notebooks, I’d buy all I could and hoard them. Most of these notebooks are mostly empty, with various projects grouped here and there in them: Christmas Carol, some anthems, a snatch of William Blake here and there.

After getting the tub loaded, I went through all these notebooks, even the juvenilia from the early 70s, and played through everything in them. Most of it was sketches for stuff that either worked out and got used, or was terrible and should have been erased, but there were some bits and pieces which were nice enough to salvage for new projects. I found some lyrics (for what, I have no idea) that will be used in Day in the Moonlight, and I found more than few fragments of music that will show up either in one symphony or another or in the Stars on Snow album. I even found some themes from an early idea for a symphony that actually still resonate.

So it was not exactly what you’d call a productive evening, but it was fun and a little bizarre to dig back through my early, mostly incompetent self. I had some good ideas, but I was clearly clueless about how to develop most them. Although I will say I found one or two babysteps that showed I had a clear understanding of structure even then.

Anyway, I’ll be putting all those fragments into Finale files so I can stash them away for future pilfering.

In other news, Lacuna sang the complete Visit to William Blake’s Inn last night as the special guests of Barnes & Noble. It is most likely the last time Newnan will hear the piece. Unless someone prominent steps up in the next two weeks to be in charge of the Organizing Committee, I’m going to start shopping it around to other places.

The performance was very nice indeed, give or take one or two King of Cats solos being fluffled. I’ll miss working with the chorus.

It’s always an odd feeling to finish a piece, especially when it has to go in the mail, because then it really is finished. I had sketched out another ending to “Sir Christémas” on Thursday night because I wasn’t exactly happy/sure about the ending you’ve all heard. At that point, I couldn’t even hear the difference (although they were totally different in structure), so I invited an untrained but opinionated audience (Ginny) to tell me which one she preferred. She liked the original, so into the mail it went.

So no going back, at least in terms of the VocalEssence competition. If When I don’t win, then I can turn around and tinker with it all I want, of course.

What now? It was ironic that on Thursday, an email arrived from the American Composers Forum alerting me to all the competitions out there. There’s one from Salem College in Winston-Salem for harpsichord music, due November 1. You can write either a solo piece or duet, any instrument; I’m thinking trombone. There’s a contest for the Sybarite Chamber Players in NY (gotta like the sound of that group), a string quintet. That’s due November 30. And then there’s the Millenium Chamber Players in Chicago, up to eight players to be drawn from a string quintet, wind quintet, trombone, percussion, and piano. That one is due November 15. Hm. What to do?

I guess I could do all of them, on two week cycles. That would be fun to read about, wouldn’t it? Three major works in a month and a half? (They’re all supposed be at least 10 minutes long.) I could cheat and start to work on them now, of course. There’s always Maila’s request for something for her, David, and Joren, too, and the symphony. Don’t want to wait too long on that one, do I?

It also has occurred to me that I might actually officially orchestrate Blake Tells the Tiger the Tale of the Tailor for the September 18 performance. That might be a good way to play with the new Finale 2008, which now has choral sounds with the Garritan Personal Orchestra! (You will have noticed that I didn’t install this thing in the middle of “Sir Christémas.”)

What’s that, Mike? Oh, you’re back from Africa and want to know what progress I’ve made on Day in the Moonlight? Selfish bastard.