62 days: some productivity

Posted on by Dale

On III. Allegro gracioso, I accomplished a few things, fiddling with orchestration here and there, plus tweaking that big finish strophe so that it repeats. No ending yet, but I’m thinking I need to listen to it about a dozen times to see how it might end. There’s still the threat of a total revamp, from J. Strauss to R., but if it will come, it will come.

I also whacked out about six measures of Fanfare for Double Bass Duo & Percussion. We’ll see about that one.

I also got a sonnet blocked out for Prairie Home Companion’s contest. I’m afraid I’ve worked myself into a couple of rhyming corners, and of course it doesn’t say what I want it to say yet, but I have until Friday to polish that off.

All in all, a good day. But IV. Largo still looms.

63 days: A concept

Posted on by Dale

I got email yesterday from Dianne Mize, my painting teacher from my summer at GHP, a newsletter kind of thing reminding us of her blog, where she posts a painting every day. Not that that kind of productivity depresses me or anything.

Anyway, as I scrolled through, lusting after her work, and her work habits, one of her posts led me to this website/post, and the concept of notan: light and/vs. dark in a composition. For Dianne and Robert, of course, the concept is literal in a visual sense.

But I began to think about notan in terms of sound and orchestration. The more I have listened to symphonic works recently in order to glom how they do it, as George Lichtenberg would fret, the more I pay attention to the clarity of the orchestration. I’ve talked before about trying to avoid the problems that Robert Schumann had in layering too many instruments into a passage; I don’t think I’ve been able to avoid them.

On the one hand, as I’ve listened, the strings are the bedrock of the symphony. They play practically all the time in most pieces, and the violins in unison more often than you might think. On the other hand, sometimes they step into the shadows and allow the other sections or soloists to have a moment in the light.

I’ve got the concept. Where I think I have failed in the execution is in setting up themes in a way that these moments of light and dark occur organically. I still feel as if, in IV. Lento especially, I’m writing too strophically. The fact that I can label each pass through a theme with a nickname means that it’s too segmented. In III. Allegro gracioso, which I swear I’m going to get to work on in just a moment, the name of the game is strophe, although as I mentioned in my earlier post I think I could try breaking those up as well.

Anyway, that’s one of my goals this week is to revisit IV. Lento and see about crushing the thematic material and seeing if something good can come of that.

Now I’m going to work. Really.

63 days: Here we go

Posted on by Dale

It’s spring break for me, which means I have some time off to get some real work done on the Symphony.

Of course it’s not that simple. On Thursday we go up to Greensboro to see Grayson and hear his girlfriend’s junior recital (she’s a percussionist) and see his best friend in Cloud Nine. That means I really have only three days to get work done.

And of course there’s a whole list of other things that have to be done: the garden has to be mulched; the kitchen has to be cleaned, a bigger project than you might think; a sofa table has to be converted into an entertainment center; and finally, I have to figure out how to use that Miracle Putty as seen on TV to repair a whole list of items around the house. I’m sure there are other items that are not on my list. Yet.

Still, I have high hopes for getting III. Allegro gracioso finished this week, unless I start hearing voices again: “…in re: Straussian, less J. Jr. and more R., please…” Only the voices don’t say please, they say, “…or it will never work…”

Here’s a photo of the herb garden: I found thyme, added some spicy basil, and look at all the lettuces! That’s a new thing for me. We’ll see if it works or whether I’m going to be feeding rabbits and chipmunks.

My herb garden, ready to be mulched.

65 days: Gardening

Posted on by Dale

I love my herb garden. It’s right outside my kitchen door, so I have easy access to it. It started years ago as a tiny plot along the wall, with parsley, oregano, basil, and chives, and it’s grown into a respectable plot with a brick path down the middle.

But over the last year, it’s become overgrown with grass and weeds. The weeds are easy enough, but the grass digs in and it’s impossible to get it all out. Also, the rosemary had become overgrown, the parsley had been destroyed by the power company replacing the telephone pole in the middle of the garden (don’t ask), and most everything else was just looking ratty. It was time to take it down.

Wallace Stevens uses a garden in his poetry as a symbol of reality: the universe is chaos, and out of that chaos we organize what we can into what pleases us to call reality. This reality is our garden, and a creative person is one who looks for a way out of that gardem, for more chaos. And occasionally, it is necessary to raze the whole thing and start over.

In our real real world, it is necessary to raze the whole thing and start over. I saved the chives, one of the cilantro plants that had sprung up, and the oregano, although it might have been better to start over with that. I sprayed the whole thing with Round-Up™, tilled it up, busted up the soil, spread some mushroom compost over it, tilled it again, and let it sit.

Yesterday, looking for firewood for tonight’s meeting (I was quite unsuccessful, so any Lichtenbergians reading this: bring firewood!), I was at Wal-Mart, and loath though I am to patronize the place, I impulsively bought most of the herbs I need. They did not have English/common thyme and couple of other things, but I was able to get most of it.

I dithered about getting the plants in the ground, because the clouds were so dark, but again, I could not resist my impulses, and I dug in the dirt. My herb garden is replanted. I keep walking out just to look at it. I love my herb garden.

I love my herb garden because there’s nothing like being able to do any recipe that calls for fresh basil or dill or chives and just walking out the door with my scissors and coming back in with actual fresh basil or dill or chives. I love it because when there are no recipes, just you and the salmon or chicken or soup, it frees you to do whatever is possible. Roasted potato wedges? Just plop some chives, oregano, basil, and thyme in there. Salmon? Whip up a sauce with lime and dill. Playing with a vinaigrette? What’s your pleasure?

I have a couple of cookbooks and gardening books devoted just to herbs, most of which I don’t refer to any longer since I’ve become “expert” in the subject. Perhaps I should set those free.

So what all is in my herb garden? Chives, oregano, marjoram, tarragon, thyme, dill, cilantro, sage, basil, parsley, arugula, and rosemary. I used to try for lavender, but it just wouldn’t grow; it’s too hot here. (The tarragon is “Texas tarragon”; the French variety withers in our heat.) The arugula is new this year, and I suspect it’s going to meet a similar fate. I may plant some bee balm, and if I can find lemon verbena, it’s in there like a flash.

I tried lemon grass, and it grew well, but I used it so little that it wasn’t worth the enormous amount of space it came to take up. Likewise lovage, although I’d love to have some of that again. Mints are seductive, but they do run rampant. I actually planted some last summer, but the garden was so strangled with grass by the time I got home from Valdosta that even the mint couldnt’ survive.

I keep looking at fennel, but I don’t use it enough to warrant planting it. I’m curious about borage, calendula, and savory. Publix had a potted herb called culantro, which seems to be a big-leaved substitute for cilantro. I keep wondering whether garlic or horseradish would work in the garden. There’s always catnip…

Time to go out and look at my garden again.

66 days: a little bit louder now

Posted on by Dale

Squeezed out a little more of the end of III. Allegro gracioso and played around with some orchestration.

Also, for some reason, pulled out a folio sheet of score paper and labeled it I. Fanfare, for double bass duo & percussion. Yes, I decided some time ago to expand last summer’s Dance for double bass duo & marimba into a suite, but why I thought I should even label a piece of paper at this point is beyond me. (Fanfare, Threnody, and Dance, in case you were wondering.)

Anyway, here’s the mp3 of III. Allegro gracioso. Keeping in mind how IV. Lento begins, see if you can guess how I’m going to end III.

Interlude

Posted on by Dale

So, I was up in the middle of the night, hoping that my kidney stones were on the move at last, mainly because I don’t want to be on painkillers instead of vodka on Saturday night; apparently one should not do both, and surfing the web while I made sure I didn’t need to take another Vicodin, and I Stumbled across this website. It’s OK to go peek; it’s not going to engross you. Just get a good feel for it.

Pretty nice site, no? Well written, if a little chatty, and cleanly put together. Very non-amateurish, I thought.

And then I thought, waitaminute: what about this site?

I’ll cut to the chase. When I first came across the Pioneer Woman site, I thought it was just a little too produced to be real. It was quite possible that it was a front for a food conglomerate. I was, however, too lazy to check.

Now the Noble Pig site comes along, and I’m really thinking the whole thing is fake. For one thing, it’s a chore even for me to change the header image in my blogs. And Pioneer Woman even has dropdown menus and rollover buttons. Again, not impossible, but a pain. The photos on both are lit and shot exceptionally well. The writing, in both style and tone, is flawless. The recipes are undeniably appealing. Both are just a bit too well done.

I checked the bottom of both sites; both are “copyrighted,” and yes, I know my blogs say the same thing, but they’re boilerplate. Pioneer Woman says it was designed by this person (whose website does not inspire confidence), but the whole thing could be a front. Noble Pig merely gives the date.

I’m still too lazy to check, i.e., doing a Whois number on them; instead, I’m wondering why I’m so suspicious and why it should matter. Do I have some kind of deepseated prejudice against women who cook, such that I don’t believe they could achieve such online slickness? Am I so cynical that I think only a corporation would put up such a site?

If so, where’s the hook? Is the product placement all there is?

What are they up to? This is how madness begins.

67 days: Check it out!

Posted on by Dale

I didn’t think I’d get any work done tonight on III. Allegro gracioso, and instead I’ve nearly got the whole thing sketched out!

I’ve started playing with orchestration here and there, but it’s still mostly a sketch. There’s an odd bit in there where instruments sound like they’re tuned to a weird scale or something. I don’t know what that’s about.

But on the whole it’s quite what I wanted. Here’s the mp3.

68 days: experiencing a slight delay

Posted on by Dale

I doubt I will get much done on III. Allegro gracioso tonight, since the gastrointestinal distress which afflicted me on Saturday morning is now revealed not to have been connected to any quantity of tequila at all, but merely the precursor to a kidney stone, which settled in quite nicely during the course of today.

Even if we get back from seeking medical attention in time for me to work, I’m determined that I will be too medicated to do so.

update: Four and a half hours later, we got back home. IV fluids, CT scan, and of course absolutely no pain that might indicate I was anything but a drug-seeking hypochondriac. Fortunately, I guess that’s the word I’m looking for, the scans did reveal two stones, one on each side, just resting. I am armed with meds.

This is extremely irritating. First, of course, there’s the entire evening spent in the ER, and then there’s the possibility of the pain arriving just when I want to work. Hey, maybe it’s another chance to submit to Dionysus: enough Vicodin and I can whack out the rest of IV. Lento without batting an eye.

Feh.

69 days: no new stuff

Posted on by Dale

I didn’t get to work on the Symphony this weekend, but I am pleased to report that at tonight’s Masterworks rehearsal, I introduced “What a Wonderful Bird the Frog Are” and it was quite well received.

It’s a silly little song, of course, but in many ways it is quite perfect, and not an easy piece to learn. I asked them to ignore the time signatures, which switch between 2/4 and 3/4 nearly every other measure, and just to count eighth notes, especially eighth rests. A little work on parts, and they were singing it perfectly in about five minutes.

There’s always the doom factor, naturally, but we’ll just pretend we know nothing about that.

(Those who sang William Blake’s Inn said, with obvious insider pride, “Thank god it’s not Milky Way.” I just smiled quietly with them.)

74 days: Allegro gracioso

Posted on by Dale

I’m calmer today, thank you.

As you will recall, I was a little freaked by how quickly I had gotten to the recapitulation of this movement. Tonight I went back to the score paper and sketched out a couple of strophes that might reasonably be inserted here and there in what I already have. But none of it seemed to fit.

I also listened to my favorite waltz, the “Delirien” waltz by Josef Strauss, Johann’s younger and to my mind more melodic brother. I wanted to hear more of how he structured it. I mean, it’s all pretty formulaic, and I might as well use the formula. I don’t yet have a flutes-with-pizzicato strophe, and I don’t really have a Big Grand strophe, which ought to come second or third in the lineup. I’ve got the cute little twittery one (it’s about third), and a couple of the smooth, legato ones.

(At the moment, you can’t really tell how some of my bits are going to fulfill your expectations of a concert waltz, because so far all you’ve heard is the sketches in the strings. Some of those are going involve brass leads, cello variations, etc.)

I listened particularly to the end, where Josef has the return of the first strophe, followed by the return of the second, followed by the coda. I think I’m going to vary that. Instead of following the recapitulation with the second strophe, I’m going to toss in a new one, followed by the Big Grand Finale.

The new secondary strophe is in place, and before I share it I want to tweak it a lot, because I want to do a lot of interesting stuff to its repeat before heading into the BGF. But I’ve made progress, and I might actually be finished with III. Allegro gracioso by this time next week.

Just in time to use my spring break to plunge back into IV. Lento; allegro. That’s okay. I’ve been having ideas.