Go ahead, read this. I’ll wait.
So, if I’m reading this gentleman’s post correctly, the American Family Association is all down with a) stoning a whale, and b) the manager of SeaWorld alongside him.
My only takeaway from this is that I hope that the crew who continually quotes Leviticus to keep the rest of us from eating shrimp realizes where the trajectory of their logic takes them, and us, if we’re not diligent in our exposure and ridicule of them.
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.
What’s your pleasure?
I’m ready for it to be warm. No, really ready. Really.
I’m ready to unclog and untangle my herb garden. Some of the plants are making a valiant effort to put forth, thank you, parsley, chives, and oregano. I would thank rosemary, but it never goes away. The sage is too old; I need to replace it.
Cilantro usually reseeds itself, but I haven’t seen any shoots. It’s probably been TOO COLD for it to do its usual year-round thing.
It is about time to try to put out lettuce. But first I have to find a day that’s warm enough for me to be out there to unclog and untangle the place.
However, here’s the good news: this year I will be here all summer to maintain it and to enjoy the fruit of my labors. In the past, I’ve planted a lovely garden and get to use it for maybe four weeks before decamping to Valdosta. When I get back, whatever has survived without me is overgrown with grass.
But not this summer. This summer I can cook every day with fresh herbs. I can rescue plants that are failing, or rip them out and get new ones in the ground. I can try potted herbs, since they have to be watered every day and I’ll be here to do that, and probably will be lo0king for something to do after the first three days of leisure.
Yet another reason to get busy and get the bassoon/quartet piece done, so I can actually free up some time.
Technically, though, I can wait until weekend after next to start digging and weeding. At that point, the bassoon/quartet piece will already be in the mail, and I don’t have another competition for which I will have to write a new piece, at least if I decide to bag the a cappella Italian children’s choir piece, which I think I am.
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.
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.
[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.
In Seattle last week, we drove over to Fremont, a yuppie/hippie enclave full of funky shops and publicly funded street art. In one of the funky shops, full of locally made jewelry, decorative items and paintings, I was amused to see yet another jeweler making things out of old typewriter keys. There was TAB and SHIFT and :; and all the whole QWERTY gang.
But then I was startled to see a key I had completely forgotten about: MARGIN RELEASE.
Wow.
For those who have never had to use an actual typewriter—we’re not talking about those slick last-generation numbers that were actually word processors—let me explain the MARGIN RELEASE key.
First, you had to set your margins by positioning literal metal tabs on the left and right on a bar behind the platen. You also set tabs on the same bar.
Back in the old days, you had to keep a calculation running in your head as to whether the last word you were about to type on a line would actually fit between where you were and the margin. The margin would simply stop you cold in your typing, midword, if you miscalculated.
(Am I remembering correctly? Or was the little bell actually set to go off before the actual margin to warn you?)
If you did miscalculate, you just had to slide the carriage over to start the new line and then remember to go back and manually erase the foreshortened word.
Unless…
Unless the word in question was short by only one to three letters. Then, depending on the character of the document you were typing, you could choose to press the MARGIN RELEASE key, which, you guessed it, released the margin and allowed you to keep typing.
Nowadays of course the word processor does all your calculating for you. You just keep typing, and when the word is too long, it simply wraps to the next line. We live in awesome times.
I was brought up short by this artifact from my past. It articulated suddenly for me recent aspects of my life that have puzzled me and others in my life. The labyrinth, for example, seems almost like a Close Encounters kind of endeavor. Why? my lovely first wife kept asking as I transformed our barren back yard into some kind of alien landing site.
Why indeed? “Why not?” is not of course any kind of answer. I could only respond that the pattern appealed to me in some way I could not explain, and in the event, it obviously appeals to others as a space of refuge, contemplation, even power.
But now I have more of a partial understanding and answer: it’s a margin release. It allows me to push that button and temporarily go beyond the margins of my quotidian existence, to connect with parts of the universe that unfortunately are not available to me during most of the daily grind. However, my hope is that someday, someday, I’ll get the hang of it, and I can just keep typing off the edge of the page.
So I bought the MARGIN RELEASE charm, hanging on a silly ballchain chain, to wear as a talisman on my new Utilikilt. Look for it soon in a labyrinth near you.