All right, I think I’ve got it. I sequestered the heavy section into its own file, for future use. Then, and follow this carefully, I took the original opening (this one, up until the first brass choir) and added it after the brass choir in the current version, adding some woodwinds for flavor. In other words, it’s sort of the opening of this movement, but stripped down, without the scurrying violins.

Then, and this is the new part, I brought back the violins in their nervous 32nd triplet runs, and under that comes the English horn with a weirdly beautiful version of the agitato motif, very slow.

I think what’s going to happen is that the strings will pick up the agitato motif in a higher key, mutating it closer to its final form, and then it will struggle to stay alive, gasping for breath, until it just dies away.

From that death will arise the main theme in G major, solo violin, as you can hear at the end of the above clip.

No mp3 from tonight’s work. I want to get all the bits right first. But I am on the right track.

Here you go, Jeff, notes scribbled on the back of a daily Dilbert calendar sheet shortly before going to bed, worthy of George Lichtenberg himself.

First, sixteenth notes, topped by the motif, with the note tense, light strings.

Also: use agitato theme as the dying out end of the 1st section, then pick up violin solo, use Sonatina agitato [treatment, later,] to lead into current heavy section, after it stops, huge tenuto/pickup to total Rachmaninov.

There. Everybody happy?

So maybe I’ll have better luck tonight in getting the opening section to the double bar.

So I was going to work on IV. Lento tonight, but I couldn’t come up with anything. I wanted either to replace the heavy bit from two days ago or to interpolate a softer, tenser segment. But I couldn’t write the first note. It was very weird.

In true Lichtenbergian fashion, I fell back on III. Allegro gracioso, and at least for that I came up with a decent phrase. Here’s the bare bones sketch.

I forged ahead this morning, and I like it all except the very end of it. It’s not pesante enough. I had it all harmonized, but stripped almost all of that out and left it unison, and I’ve dropped everything down at least an octave.

Perhaps if I moved all the lower bass notes up an octave so that all the notes are no more than one octave apart…

Anyway, after I resolve that issue, then there’s one more slow bit before we hit the G major fabulousness. I may repeat some variant of the opening, or I may play it with strings only, very atonal and astringent. I’ll have to fiddle with it.

Here’s the new section. It starts where the opening left off.

In other news, Vampira is dead. I only read about it this morning in this week’s Time magazine, and I don’t know why I didn’t hear about it last week. I clearly missed checking Metafilter that day.

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.