Taking deep breaths

Posted on by Dale

Everybody take a deep breath.

On Sunday, July 26, at 3:00, at the Centre for Performing and Visual Arts, the Hangzhou Youth Orchestra, on tour from China, will give the world premiere performance of “Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way.”

This will follow a performance at the Rialto Center for the Arts in Atlanta the day before.

Holy cow.

What makes this really interesting is that it’s on traditional Chinese instruments, so I have no clue as to what it will actually sound like.

Still.

Deep breaths.

Again.

24 hour challenge #9

Posted on by Dale

From Aditya, who may still be in India, comes 4-642-10:

Listen! Where Atlantic beats
Shores of snow and summer heats…

That’s ll. 21-22 from Bret Harte’s “What the Engines Said.”

[If you’re just joining us, here are the instructions for the 24 hour challenge, as well as previous efforts.]

6/03/09, 1:05 pm

24 hour challenge #9, “Atlantic Beats,” for Aditya: score [pdf], performance [mp3], bassoon [mp3]

OK, Adi, we’re even. This is good stuff. Harte’s original poem was about transcontinental trains, but clearly I’ve set this as some kind of sea chanty. I think it has some beautiful harmonies in it, and the recombination of earlier measures once the voice enters is striking.

pre-GHP time

Posted on by Dale

It is now that time of year with me that makes me very anxious: the week before I leave for GHP.

My anxiety is based largely on the idea that time is running out, that I have a limited number of days to “get things done.” A corollary anxiety is the idea that I have to make sure that I know what those “things” are that need to “get done.” A third anxiety is the fear that I will identify a “thing” that I cannot get done before I leave, like a doctor’s appointment or something like that.

I have to think about tidying up my presence here in Newnan, picking up stuff around the house and putting it away. Getting my study in some kind of order. Deciding what stuff I take with me: music? drawing? painting? What do I leave behind?

What needs fixing around here that I need to get to? (For example, yesterday I found our yard guy kneeling over the lawnmower, trying to put a wheel back on. How does he do these things?? I just told him to leave it. So now fixing that is a thing that needs to get done.)

What kind of social items do I need to take care of? I need to go see Lucky Stiff at the theatre this afternoon, plus make a cheesecake to take to the faculty “meeting” tomorrow. How many family meals do I need to plan to cook, which something I love doing and will miss all summer? Is there an evening for the Lichtenbergians to gather one more time? There’s a Shubian shoot on Thursday night.

Haircut? Check. Prescriptions? Semi-check. Laundry? Anything I wear all week has to be laundered before I leave. I have been known to drive into Valdosta with dirty clothes. Things I can wash: have I made time to wash them?

Is there time to go see the Monet waterlilies exhibit at the High on Sunday and still get everything packed? How will the arrival of the child’s girlfriend and her roommate on Saturday impact all of the above?

I have a database that tells me what to pack, so I don’t worry about forgetting something essential. Every year I try to take less. But you can whittle the essentials only so far and you still have a van full of plastic storage tubs. Then you start adding stuff that’s not on the database list, like the books I want to read, or the poetry books for the 24 hour challenge.

I’ve decided not to take my paints, but I will take my sketchbook and pencils. Do I take my drawing books? That’s another small load right there.

Things are a little extra complicated this year. For the first time, I have the labyrinth. I have to make sure that it’s taken care of for the summer. (I’m paying the child to maintain it.)

GHP itself has complicated the run-up period, in that I have to redesign a small sheaf of documents before I get there next week, so that time has to be figured in.

And you can tell how rattled I am by all of this just by looking at how disjointed this post is. I don’t know that writing it all down has assuaged any of my anxiety at all. I need to go make a cheesecake.

24 hour challenge #8

Posted on by Dale

From Jobie, 1-11-18:

The woods shall to me answer, and my Eccho ring.

As stated previously, this is from Spenser’s “Epithalamion.”

[If you’re just joining us, here are the instructions for the 24 hour challenge, as well as previous efforts.]

5/28/09, 8:40 pm

24 hour challenge #8, “My Eccho Ring,” for Jobie: score [pdf], performance [mp3], bassoon [mp3]

This was interesting. I started out with a string quartet doing something completely different, and then when I was getting to the point of figuring out how it was setting the text, I decided to try something different and start over with the piano.

The start is marked ppp, so you may have trouble hearing it.

This is interesting to me, because I’m not sure I’ve set the text, but the music is interesting, and I’m getting a mildly sadistic thrill to throw something up that is so clearly a fragment and so very, very undeveloped. You can just hear the potential just bleeding from the score.

In other news, I went back and recorded the vocal performance for #6 and #7. They are exactly as you expect.

In other other news, I will not be putting up #9 today, because I will be celebrating the end of school tomorrow night and I know I will not be composing anything for the next 24 hours. Perhaps Sunday.

24 hour challenge #7 (and #8)

Posted on by Dale

This is interesting in a problematic kind of way:

Craig, in his never-ending search to crank it all the way up, sent 11-11-11. Since the first range of the first number is 1-5, it cycles back to 1.

So then right on his heels, Jobie sent me 1-11-18. See what they did there? They’ve put me within 10 lines of each other in the same poem.

Even more interestingly, that poem is Edmund Spenser’s “Epithalamion.”

It’s all about choices, innit? Do I treat them both as being from the same piece? Do I set them separately? Do I further explore the wedding song idea, and do I rip off the Renaissance again? It’s a puzzle.

On top of that, my time is actually booked tonight and tomorrow night, although I should have enough to squeeze out something. We’ll see. Midnight tomorrow is a long time away.

One thing at a time:

And teach the woods and waters to lament
Your dolefull dreriment

…which is lines 10-11 of the poem. We’ll think about line 18 another day.

[If you’re just joining us, here are the instructions for the 24 hour challenge, as well as previous efforts.]

5/27/09, 7:36 am

Another early morning post, so no vocal rendition yet. I’ll get this one and #6 this afternoon.

24 hour challenge #7, “Your Dolefull Dreriment,” for Craig: score [pdf], performance [mp3], bassoon [mp3]

This is a prime example of what I like to call “cheating through orchestration.” The accompaniment is so far from interesting that I’m willing to bet my lottery earnings that we can find its exact chord progression in half a dozen Baroque pieces. (Certainly the passacaglia-like structure is Baroque.) But hand it over to a plucked bass and vibraphone, and suddenly it’s self-aware and all cool and stuff. I’m OK with that. One thing I’m learning from this experiment is that it’s perfectly fine to take the easy way out. If these were real pieces, I would go back and tinker with them to make them interesting, but as it is, I’m learning to just spit it out without regard to quality.

A list of books

Posted on by Dale

My mother-in-law called yesterday and asked me to put together a list of “25 books you should have read before graduating high school,” for the guidance of her younger grandchildren. Always wishing to avoid the appearance of didacticism, as St. Paul might have better said, I have renamed this list “25 books you’ll have fun reading before you graduate.”

This list can contain anything, from Huckleberry Finn to Harry Potter. So, what are your nominations?

Here are my first thoughts:

  • Huckleberry Finn and/or Tom Sawyer
  • Harry Potter
  • at least some of the Sherlock Holmes stories
  • Feed

What about the heavies, Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, 1984?

24 hour challenge #6

Posted on by Dale

from Terry, 1-581-2, which gives us:

And spread the plague of gold and blood abroad:

That’s line 287 of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “The Triumph of Life.”

Mercy. What am I to do with that?

5/25/09, 7:13 am

24 hour challenge #6, “The Plague of Gold and Blood,” for Terry: score [pdf], performance [mp3], bassoon [mp3]

Everyone is still asleep around here, so I’ve opted for a bassoon version instead of my usual bawling. In fact, I’ve gone back and added a bassoon version to all of the pieces so far, for those who want to hear the music without my personal interference.

I’m intrigued by the way these pieces get written. Since I’m not spending a lot of time on any of them, I’m going with the first impulse and then reshaping that as the minutes tick by. That’s one reason you’ve heard a lot of clichéd writing: I’m just going with the obvious. In this one, for example, the “Pines of the Appian Way” kind of ostinato is pretty hackneyed; the orientalism of the right-hand is kind of surprising, since the poem is about the depredations of Western culture, but there you go.

Anyway, I’ll try to get the vocal version done later. I’m now up to twelve requests. It seems as if no matter where I am in the process, I’m only half done. It’s also occurred to me that I will probably have to pull back on all of this when I leave for Valdosta.

24 Hour Challenge #5

Posted on by Dale

from Aditya, 4-594-27:

That thou mays’t know mee and I’ll turne my face.

That’s the last line of John Donne’s “Goodfriday, 1603: Riding Westward.”

[If you’re just joining us, here are the instructions for the 24 hour challenge, as well as previous efforts.]

5/24/09, 4:45 pm

24 hour challenge #5, “I’ll Turne My Face,” for Aditya: score [pdf], performance [mp3], bassoon [mp3]

This one’s not very interesting, just a ripoff of late English Renaissance music, and very much a fragment of that. Competent, and for me, that’s doing good, but not inspired. Sorry, Adi: send me another challenge and maybe we’ll get lucky next time.

24 hour challenge #4

Posted on by Dale

from Emily, 4-332-17:

And I thought; this is their day,
how it breaks for them!

From “Epithalamion/Wedding Dawn,” by Michael Dennis Brown.

[If you’re just joining us, here are the instructions for the 24 hour challenge, as well as previous efforts.]

5/24/09, 9:18 am

24 hour challenge #4, “How It Breaks for Them,” for Emily: score [pdf], performance [mp3], bassoon [mp3]

The worst part of this project is having to hear my voice. I’m never warmed up, and I sound awful. That’s OK, I think the vocal lines are fine and would only sound better with a real voice singing them.

Anyway, this one is short and sweet, very sweet. No apologies for the unsophisticated approach to the very real sentiment of the poem.

So, four pieces down, and four more to go as of yesterday afternoon. I’m sure there will be more, which is good. I am actually enjoying this (except for the singing part.)

24 hour challenge #3

Posted on by Dale

from Mike, 2-777-22, which gives us:

… I dance a
clubfoot’s waltz, my legs driven by horsemen,
bones hounded by lust.

Thank you, Mike! That’s ll. 20-22 from “Song of the Andoumboulou: 15,” by Nathaniel Mackey.

[If you’re just joining us, here are the instructions for the 24 hour challenge, as well as previous efforts.]

5/23/09, 9:46 am

Well, that was fast. I must have been inspired or something.

24 hour challenge #3, “I Dance a Clubfoot’s Waltz,” for Mike: score [pdf], performance [mp3], bassoon [mp3]

I really like the quartet. The vocal line I’ll have to grow used to, although the actual line “bones hounded by lust” I think is effective.

I just learned with this piece that I can record my voice in Finale, which is definitely easier to follow the score with these tricky rhythms. That cuts out using GarageBand in the middle. Now if Finale would export an mp3, I’d be down to one piece of software.