It's "raining up a storm" in Lakeland and has been since early morning. Sophie (the beagle) was disconsolate last night due to the lightning and thunder.
I'm writing a beginning band piece for a specific beginning band. I like writing to specifications. Clear parameters really help me know what to do and to feel good about it. They push me to engage very realistically with the craft of composition.
Here's my assignment as I understand it so far:
jazz-based or influenced
small number of low brass that play best together
clear and restricted ranges for all instruments (generally an octave or less)
clarinets are the strongest and largest section
parts need to be simple enough to be played but engaging enough not to bore the players
fairly simple rhythms
and nothing can move much faster than moderato
it would probably be a good idea to write music that sounds pretty good even if some of the players lose their place and keep playing anyway!
And I'm sure there are more things I'm not remembering at the moment or haven't realized yet.
This composition process is fun but slow: discovering what the piece is and can be. It's very true in this situation that the primary work of composition is editing. I write a little, trying to make something I like, I listen back and think of the parameters, adjust it accordingly, then I listen again to see if it works for me, then I adjust it accordingly, then I think about the parameters, adjust, put the passage back in context, adjust, etc. etc. etc.
Like I said, fun but slow. And good for me.
Composing is like building a house. That doesn't sound very original. But I like architecture and this image helps me. It's also good for appreciating, from the outside, the significance of what composers do.
When you build a house, you need to consider what that house is for - a single young professional, a large family with children . . . shelter in the tropics or on a mountain in New Hampshire . . .
And you need to make sure it's structured well. There are principles involved in making it a good "machine for living" and lots of wise people and regulations to help you do that.
And from time to time, someone comes along and suggests a totally new type of room or way to use an existing room. Then that catches on and changes the way we see houses and the way we live in them.
When composing, I need to take into account who's going to be using my music and where it will be used:
opera singer? congregation? children?
concert stage? church? classroom?
How will it be structured? Its structure will have something to do with the questions I just posed above - "form follows function."
And then Beethoven comes along and says "What if we make the first theme sound like an introduction, put the second theme in major mediant, and have a really long closing group? Oh yeah, and a quick appearance of the first theme transposed into the Neapolitan right when we think the piece is about to end. How did he come up with this stuff? But it really works, so we listen to him.
Finally (sort of a new topic) the other day I noticed that almost all the melody notes in "All the Things You Are" are the thirds of the chords that tend to be used to harmonize them. Anyone who tries to play the piece on the piano with good voicing has probably already noticed this. But it struck me because I've been thinking about the relationships between melodies and their accompaniments, and particulatrly about how what members of the chords are featured in the melodies contibutes to the mood of the music.
Before Christmas, I was meditating on the fact that Mary "pondered all these things in her heart." That sounds very inner to me. I was wondering how to write a melody that would express Mary's inner-ness, and I improvised some melodies that focused on the insides of chords - the thirds. It seems like that leads to melodies that are sweet and warm, and at times, rather innner in nature.
Showing posts with label bands. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bands. Show all posts
Friday, January 21, 2011
Saturday, April 12, 2008
CMS, CBF, AGO
It has been a busy few weeks.
Jeff Prillaman and I presented a lecture-performance on Liszt's Petrarch Sonnets at the College Music Society meeting in Gettysburg. Here are some of the ideas we shared:
Liszt resonated personally with Petrarch's struggle between the spirit and the flesh.
Liszt puts the performers in the appropriate dramatic moods through the technical demands of the music.
The sonnets are constructed of a series of styles ranging from art song to Bel Canto to Verismo. Such a demanding progression of vocal requirements is similar to the sequences of technical demands he puts on pianists in works like the Dante Sonata or Mephisto Waltz.
We heard many excellent presentations at the conference including presentations on piano music from China, Haiti, and works by the Russian jazz-influenced composer, Kapustin. A personal favorite of mine was on the strategic use of bands on the battlefields of the American Civil War.
On the way home, I played at Woodland Heights Baptist Church where Kathy and I worked in Richmond, and in the aternoon I played on a concert with friends from the Talent Developing Studio at Slash Christian Church. Slash is the oldest wooden church in Virginia.
Last night, Kathy and I drove to Raleigh for part of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina meeting. There I learned about the Winston Salem-based Institute for Dismantling Racism. I took part in a fascinating discussion of the use of arts in missions work led by Jonathan and Tina Bailey who are artistic missionaries in Indonesia. They discussed the complexities of creating new Christian expressions within traditional styles such as gamelan and shadow puppetry. I also attended a presentation on the history of Chowan University given by our president, Dr. White. I learned many interesting things there including some facts about the recent restoration of the MacDowell Columns building. The massive columns on the portico are made of cypress and had around 35 layers of paint on them before they were scraped and repainted.
Today I played a concert for the Northeastern North Carolina Chapter of the American Guild of Organists at Roanoke Bible College in Elizabeth City. I had not been on that campus before and was impressed by the facility in which I played. It housed a nice chapel with a good older Baldwin, a gym, and a library. The building is situated right next to the water where there are swings, geese, and ducks.
I've felt a little frustrated practicing lately, but I've pushed through it each time and kept practicing. I felt like it paid off today as the memorized works held together better than in the previous performances. Also, my frustration pushed me to connect on a deeper level with the Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet pieces I've been playing. I played them more personally today and with more focus on the various characters from the play as they are expressed in the music. I had been trying to do less with time and more with color, which is what my best Russian-trained friend tells me is most stylistically appropriate. I appreciated that and agree with that, but I allowed myself a little more rhythmic freedom today, and I believe the pieces really came to life in a way they hadn't before for me.
Maybe frustration in practice is sometimes a sign that the opportunity for better playing and a deeper personal connection is at hand if only we don't give up.
As an encore I played my recently composed Ragtime Etude. The piece is a little bitonal and I think the bitonality of the last page keeps any one pitch from sounding like a strong tonic. I think that may be a compositional problem I need to solve. As Dr. Benjamin often told us, most composing is editing!
Jeff Prillaman and I presented a lecture-performance on Liszt's Petrarch Sonnets at the College Music Society meeting in Gettysburg. Here are some of the ideas we shared:
Liszt resonated personally with Petrarch's struggle between the spirit and the flesh.
Liszt puts the performers in the appropriate dramatic moods through the technical demands of the music.
The sonnets are constructed of a series of styles ranging from art song to Bel Canto to Verismo. Such a demanding progression of vocal requirements is similar to the sequences of technical demands he puts on pianists in works like the Dante Sonata or Mephisto Waltz.
We heard many excellent presentations at the conference including presentations on piano music from China, Haiti, and works by the Russian jazz-influenced composer, Kapustin. A personal favorite of mine was on the strategic use of bands on the battlefields of the American Civil War.
On the way home, I played at Woodland Heights Baptist Church where Kathy and I worked in Richmond, and in the aternoon I played on a concert with friends from the Talent Developing Studio at Slash Christian Church. Slash is the oldest wooden church in Virginia.
Last night, Kathy and I drove to Raleigh for part of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina meeting. There I learned about the Winston Salem-based Institute for Dismantling Racism. I took part in a fascinating discussion of the use of arts in missions work led by Jonathan and Tina Bailey who are artistic missionaries in Indonesia. They discussed the complexities of creating new Christian expressions within traditional styles such as gamelan and shadow puppetry. I also attended a presentation on the history of Chowan University given by our president, Dr. White. I learned many interesting things there including some facts about the recent restoration of the MacDowell Columns building. The massive columns on the portico are made of cypress and had around 35 layers of paint on them before they were scraped and repainted.
Today I played a concert for the Northeastern North Carolina Chapter of the American Guild of Organists at Roanoke Bible College in Elizabeth City. I had not been on that campus before and was impressed by the facility in which I played. It housed a nice chapel with a good older Baldwin, a gym, and a library. The building is situated right next to the water where there are swings, geese, and ducks.
I've felt a little frustrated practicing lately, but I've pushed through it each time and kept practicing. I felt like it paid off today as the memorized works held together better than in the previous performances. Also, my frustration pushed me to connect on a deeper level with the Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet pieces I've been playing. I played them more personally today and with more focus on the various characters from the play as they are expressed in the music. I had been trying to do less with time and more with color, which is what my best Russian-trained friend tells me is most stylistically appropriate. I appreciated that and agree with that, but I allowed myself a little more rhythmic freedom today, and I believe the pieces really came to life in a way they hadn't before for me.
Maybe frustration in practice is sometimes a sign that the opportunity for better playing and a deeper personal connection is at hand if only we don't give up.
As an encore I played my recently composed Ragtime Etude. The piece is a little bitonal and I think the bitonality of the last page keeps any one pitch from sounding like a strong tonic. I think that may be a compositional problem I need to solve. As Dr. Benjamin often told us, most composing is editing!
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