take it easy, you're on the right track!

Ah, young composers, and their amazingly long lines and fantastic ideas. wait...i'm one of those composers. lol

Had another meeting with my mentee. Man, this guy has quite the staggering mind. Honestly, anyway that takes on reading ancient philosophy (partly for class and partly because he wants to) and doing "a series of exercises using all 5 forms of species counterpoint, for multiple voices" without being in a theory class is quite astounding. I never had that kind of drive. prolly never will. lol.

Anyway, we were discussing his latest assignment, a clever piece of orchestrational fun. He is to take 4 different percussion parts, two of which must used pitched instruments at some point, and create some sort of theme. Then, develop the theme not through various pitch or rhythmic invention, but through timbre. Ah, orchestration.

Oh course, he came to me with big ideas. "he's my rhythmic ideas. i think i'l use just one." there were three, and, from my basic guess, each one was about 6 or 7 measures long. Yeah a bit long. He drew out his ideas for the melody and accompanying gestures graphically (a fun way to work, i think). and went to elaborate on his ideas.

After awhile, a smile crept over my face. How many times have i done this exact thing! Here's my idea, here are 20 other ideas, each one quite long. and wonderful. and, i will say, his patterns were quite interesting. and his ideas on the melody were interesting...but...

When is there too much? it's a big question i think. I tried to lead him toward making a decision on one line to follow. Then, i offered the simple advice "do a bit less, work within the confines of the idea, and keep it simple."

I think one of the biggest challenges in composition is limiting oneself. It's easy to come up with great ideas...well...easier to come up with great ideas than start with one and turn it into something more. This invention, this development of idea is what separates the greats, ranging through time, from the wannabes. It's why we remember Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schoenberg. they new how to do more with a little.

And it's something i struggle with everyday i composer. My last piece, 6 Pieces After Basho, was a giant exercise in restraint. I had limited resources (not quite a full band instrumentation), limited abilities (it was for a HS band playing right around grade 3 literature, not a "dream group."), and decided to limit myself in time (each movement being 1 minute, except the last which went 2, but it's really in two 1 minute parts) and in content (working mainly with 0 2 5, 0 1 5, and 0 2 7 trichords, mostly in inversion). and, honestly, i'm not sure each movement does stand alone perfectly. However, as a whole, the piece, i think, is pretty successful. Maybe not a masterwork, but a pretty good piece. Restraint does wonderful things. And figuring out invention using limited materials can really lead to great things.

My mentee is a quick learner...I pointed out that his first rhythmic idea can really be broken down into two separate ideas, and the rest of it is based almost fully on it. He wasn't sure what i meant, but i illustrated that the first two groupings (3 3 2 and 3 2 2) really made up the whole line (i believe it was 3 3 2 3 2 2 2 3 3 3 2 2 2, though this was about 8 hours ago he showed it to me). So, take the basic units, 3+3+2 and 3+2+2 and create the ideas out of that.

Then, we came to the big part. The professor had given two pages of a piece he had written for percussion quartet as an illustration. I pointed out one other thing. "ya know, it seems like you're thinking of continuous rhythm and lines...what about silence?" we started talking about this and that, and he told me a story about his marching band days when, while playing in the pit (he plays bassoon, which is conducive to marching band. i should tell him about the bassoon solo i once saw in a marching band competition...). they were doing music from Wizard of Oz and the first song was Over the Rainbow (of course). afterwards there was silence, then...BOOM, the percussion erupt into the tornado! He said everyone was surprised and he got a reputation for being the guy that leapt into the air at the gong and really beat the heck outta it.

And i smiled...and looked at him, and said "why was it effective?" and he laughed. "Oh wow, and we came back to it! Because it came from nothing!"

exactly! Silence is a large part of music, and something that is easy to forget about. There doesn't need to be constant motion. in fact, constant motion can wear down the ears. it creates expectation of sound. and music is at least in part playing with expectations. I could go on and on regarding this topic, as it's an interesting psychological/philosophical discussion in what we get out of music, but, suffice it to say, that when you know what's going to happen, every time, it can get boring. When you never know what's going to happen, you're going to stop paying attention. It's about finding the middle ground, fulfilling and denying expectation

and, on that note, i'm going to sleep. "lessons" are a lot of fun, especially since it happens in the afternoon on a day i don't have anything, so we just kinda sit around and talk till we're tired of talking. It generally seems to go a couple hours. lol. maybe not always productive time, but, i guess as long as we're both learning, then it is productive, on some level. Ah, sleep

Oh yeah, i finished my meta-sonnet. I shall post it and a discussion of it later...

importance of what we do

First off, let me say i love workshop. i really do.

Still...it has been brought up that i'm spending too much time on this grade 2.5-3 HS band piece and that i should get it out of the way so i could write what i want. It seems that they do not believe me when i say i WANT to write the piece and that i find it incredibly important.

I do think some great things were said. My piece has a certain transparency in its orchestration. Almost all of my pieces have had that. I don't like "and everyone together now!" especially in band.

especially especially in band.

why?

because too much of band is like that, especially at the lower level. Yeah, in college, a proficient wind ensemble could do some amazing things. But in HS, it seems, composers are happy to create 4 or 5 lines, maybe 6, and call it a day, and double the hell out of it. I find that ANNOYING. i've got (in this piece) at least 10 non-percussion lines. and, yes, i do a fair amount of doubling. But, i find it disgraceful to think that just because a piece is grade 2.5 and therefore "medium easy" i can't have transparent orchestration. I still have tutti moments. I still have "all together now!". the last bit of this movement is going to be a chorale, and while i had originally planned on holding back somewhat in my forces and doing it as a WW feature with a LB pedal chord, i've decided to put everyone into the chorale. Still...still...

It's this kind of thinking that creates boring, lame, run of the mill, weak, unpedagogical pieces. now, there is nothing wrong with writing an entertaining piece, if that is its purpose. and there are many things to learn from well written entertaining pieces. But is, essentially, a 4 part homophonic sound really entertaining? i don't think so...i never did.

I think of some of the really cool, not so hard to play pieces. Percy Grainger did some great pieces, done in what he called "Elastic Scoring." here's a link to a page with a quote from Grainger explaining it.

http://www.percygrainger.org/progno11.htm

He did several piece this way. Yes, the one i played was Grade 4, but the overall language of the piece was a bit more challenging than mine, with a lot more counterpoint. a lot more counterpoint. and no, i'm not talking about Lincolnshire Posey. Can't remember which piece. oh well.

Anyway, teaching students to stand up and play out is important. forcing sections to play something a bit harder, even if its just 3 or 4 bars, is good. "hey, baritones. check out those 4 bars in Mvt. 2. practice those 4 bars. the rest is pretty easy, ya?" "ya" "perfect, learn those 4 bars!" that's a lot more doable then "Hey, baritones. i know you usually play half notes, but this guy just wrote a TON of 16th notes for ya. have fun!"

I also find it interesting that i meet a lot of resistance when i write moderately complex rhythmic passages and say "yeah, that's easy for a band." seriously...i've played in band...as long as it's spelled out well and not really crazy (not like i'm doing 5s or 7s or something, just entering on 2 in a slow 6/8) a band can handle it. I mean...if a band can handle playing in more difficult meters, then a syncopated rhythm won't kill them. I remember learning syncopated rhythms in band starting my first year...maybe within the first couple months.

Anyway, the main thing is, I find this work important. very important. Kids don't have enough "good works" to play. Am i writing some magical work that will get picked up and played all over the country? i doubt it...but am i writing something that can at least be incredibly meaningful to a group of 30 kids? most definitely. and if walking into a class and telling 30 kids who normally get to play whatever Hal Leonard has on sale that year, that they have a piece written especially for them, and i tried to make it was awesome as i could...well....

those 30 kids may remember it their whole life. and maybe they'll learn something about music too...

and isn't that worth taking the time to make it amazing?

teaching day 1 and opera

So, today was my first day with CITS (Composers In The Schools), a part of the UMKC Academy. Went to a local MS with a undergrad senior from UMKC to work with a 7th grade orchestra. It was an interesting experience.

Neither of us had taught there, and our only contact was a short e-mail over the weekend. So, it was really a "wing it" kind of day. We weren't sure what they had been doing, or what the teacher wanted to do this semester. So, what do you start with?

"Hi, my name is ___" of course. from there, it was easy...

kind of...

I went a route (and the other teacher went along for the improv ride quite well!) of finding what interests the students musically, then writing something. The primary teacher, of course, already had an outlined idea of the project. I had a feeling he might have. He jumped in, and, i whispered to the other teacher from UMKC "always trust their teacher to jump in and know exactly what they need. you start the lesson, he'll direct it where it might need to go to fit his plans."

Ah, i miss working in this situation. I spent a lot of time doing it in undergrad. It's...kinda nice

So, i planted the seed of working from music YOU like. As i told them, any composer has to write what s/he likes, otherwise the piece will NEVER get done. and that's the truth. if you don't like it, don't want to do the project, it won't happen...until, maybe, the last minute, if its an assignment of commission. Which leads me to the "never take a commission you don't want." lol.

They're assignment is to come up with an 8 bar sketch of a melody. They had previously worked on melody, harmony, some part-writing, and what makes up music, so it was a good step. I was thinking more along the lines of two or three 4 bar sketches, but that's because i still think too motivically. lol.

In other news, i finally watched this 1983 production of Die Tote Stadt. Honestly, the music was amazing, Korngold is a fantastic composer, but the staging was...well...

It was amazing. absolutely mind boggling. Completely surrealist. which, made some sense, as 90% of the opera is a vision by the main character...however...

it was too disjointed. I actually couldn't follow what was happening. I'm no novice to the stage nor to opera. I was raised a theater brat, know my way around designing just about everything (some things much better than others. sets, not my forte, but i know a good one when i see one). This...well...I really couldn't follow what was happening.

The characterizations were quite wild. First, Paul (the lead) is portrayed as a sociopathic schizophrenic. He has incredible mood swings, attempts suicide to begin the second tableau, kills his best friend, has sex with a woman in what appears to be a coffin he fashioned into the floor with a normal wooden door that holds his dead wife, turns a pious processional into a macabre display of half-death, and in the end, commits suicide...

now, i'm all for artistic interpretation, but, yeah...that's about 160 degrees off from how i'm reading the character. in the original, he gets in a fight with his friend, but doesn't come to blows, the sex definitely happens but there is no mention of a cellar style mausoleum, and he doesn't commit suicide, instead leaves Bruge with his friend.

Oh my, and his friend Frank. For some reason, he is portrayed first as a priest. then he is portrayed as a devil/vampire image, then as a bishop (still with his died red beard and thigh length red braid of hair). it is this bishop image he sees at the end as his friend asks him to leave the city...

To me, the entire ending is a 180 from the libretto. I read it as a man who has finally let go of the past through these violent visions. He's finally able to let his wife die and leaves the city with his friend, Frank, to see the world. Regain himself

Not kill himself. Paul is quite insane during the visions, there is no doubt, but it's a not a suicidal/homicidal insane. It's the crazy we all go through when we lose someone dear to us. yeah, there's a lot of "i can't go one" and "i don't want to live" but it's not like it was portrayed here. His manic. He is schizo, even in reality, completely off his rocker. He wants to die. he seeks death. and he seeks penance for looking at a woman, even at the end, when, in the original story, he finds redemption and the ability to live on his own.

That's the rub to me. they changed the end of the story. They changed it enough that it's just not Die Tote Stadt to me anymore. Now, it's about a crazy dude, seeing crazy shit, and killing himself, not a man working through all his problems, the loss of his wife, and finding a way to live. That's a pretty huge difference. big enough that i can't understand the artistic choices. so, you wanted to make it darker? the visions are already pretty terrifying (not quite Salome terrifying, but pretty bad).

I could go on and on about this, cause there are a lot of points of deviation that, to me, actually change the original meaning.

Let's say it this way. A lot of people complain about movies made from books, that things were changed, blah blah blah, and that it should be "a movie based upon the book" not just "the book as a movie." Well, this is an opera based on the opera Die Tote Stadt. By itself, as a work, it's remarkable. but it's not Die Tote Stadt.

oh, btw, they left out lines that didnt fit the mood. to me, that's telling. "Oh, i need to make this super dark, so, this portion of the opera, i'm gonna take it out." There's a point where artistic interpretation is a bit too far from what was meant. you lose the story. I lost this story entirely

And then it turned into...

A passacaglia

It was quite inadvertent. but by bar 16, i had realized it.

It's a departure for me. I don't often use fancy "classical" forms. The basic stuff, binary, ternary, bar, through...that's what i usually stick with. It's not a hatred of the classical forms, or anything silly like that. It's just...

The forms mean certain things have to happen. Let's say i'm writing a sonata. Ok, i've got 5 parts with which to work. They happen in this order: intro, exposition, development, recap, coda. On the surface, that's fine. Write an intro, a couple interesting themes, work with them a bit, play them again, and then end it.

But there's all these little bits that come along with it...those are the things that kill me. Links to tonality...Like, theme 1 should be in tonic, theme 2 should be in the dominant. at the recap, both should appear in the tonic. if you happen to do theme 2 in a minor mode, say, the supertonic, then it needs to appear in major at the end.

it's like a fugue...sonata says more than just the order...it's all the other bits and pieces that make me a bit crazy.

so, i'm writing a passacaglia. it's relatively open ended really. All i need, technically, is that repeated bass ostinato. check. now it's about the orchestration, and the variations of the "melodic" line that is created. It'll serve well for this, as it is a piece for HS band.

certainly a teaching moment. "hey guys, let's talk about form for a second. anyone notice something peculiar about mvt. 2?" "yeah, there's a repeated figure."

Pedagogically, it's sound. As far as the character of the piece, it's sound. But as a tool i like working with its too...predictable? the interest has to come from the orchestration. Time to pass that little guy around...