I’m heading out this afternoon for a residency at the Blair School of Music. Tomorrow night I give a lectern-lecture on my music, followed by a Nightcap Concert featuring The Voice, Saturn Dreams of Mercury, What Happened and String Quartet No. 4: The Infinite Sphere all played by the Atlantic Ensemble. If you see me, tell me I sent you. Details here.
|
Author ArchiveFun weekend on tap: Tomorrow the world premiere of Kenneth Frazelle’s The Book of Days, commissioned by the Secrest Artist Series (the same bunch that commissioned Lang’s Love Fail) and performed by the Strata Trio. The next night, bassoonist extraordinaire Saxton Rose is the soloist for Avatar by Dana Wilson on our Wind Ensemble concert. Then, on Saturday night, Composition student Bruce Tippette has his Master’s recital, with performances of Evening Glimmer, Intrigue, Quartet Fo(u)r Bassoons, Motion, A Sprightly Dance and Chai. And one matinee: if you can get yourself to the Bach’s Lunch program on Friday at Starmount Presbyterian in Greensboro, NC, you can catch Low and Lower giving what I believe is their 12th performance of Poke.
These are familiar sensations to all composers, to one degree or another. But I also found myself confronting another experience I haven’t heard discussed so often. Every musical idea has multiple potentials. Composing is, in a sense, a matter of choosing which potentials to tap into once an idea has been set in motion. That same idea, in a different work, could just as easily head off in a completely different direction. I frequently find myself going back to ideas from previous works, trying out new trajectories, exploring characteristics left untouched in earlier compositions. In that sense, an idea gets developed within a given piece, but also gets developed over the course of my output. Looking through the 20-year-old flute concerto, I found a number of seeds that bore different fruit in other works, some earlier, some later. There were even a couple of notions I still find useful today. And then there are the dead ends: ideas that served their purposes in the concerto, but have had no further use. As I study them, I can’t help but wonder what they lacked, why certain collections of notes, rhythms or gestures have a more powerful personal resonance than others. It’s as though some musical ideas promise hidden kernels of truth that keep me digging away, through the hours, through the years, hoping to uncover them. Faced with a number of short flights in recent weeks, I grabbed a copy of Composers Letters, edited by Jan Fielden, that I found in my home (not sure how it got there, having never read it before). The book, which came out roughly 20 years ago, presents selected correspondence of European composers from Monteverdi to Britten. Perfect bite-sized chunks for bouncing from terminal to flight to terminal to flight. Reading it brought me face-to-face with the belief that successful composers need to be vicious people. There is a long and honorable tradition in this regard: as the editor quotes Auden’s words to a young Benjamin Britten, “If you are really to develop to your full stature, you will have, I think, to…make others suffer, in ways which are totally strange to you at present, and against every conscious value that you have, i.e., you will have to be able to say what you never yet have had the right to say – God, I’m a shit…” At the time this book came out, I don’t think I would have admitted to subscribing to this belief, but twenty years later, I’ve come to realize the degree to which it appealed to me at that time. I was in a place where I delighted in exposing the raw underbelly of history, and of human interaction. Now, though I suppose raw underbellies deserve to be exposed as much as anything else, I’ve learned the danger that lies in zooming in on the underbelly to such a degree that all other aspects fall from view. Flipping through the book, it is easy to say now that Lully was a special flavor of crème du chien, while Haydn was most assuredly not. I’ll leave it to others to argue as to which one was the better composer. Although perhaps that is beside the point, since Auden specifically referenced “stature,” by which standard it makes sense to say that Lully achieved great stature in the musical world at a younger age than did Haydn. And maybe that’s what all of this is about. Having known a good many composers — close friends, enemies, teachers, students, acquaintances — I feel safe in saying that some of them are, or were, pretty vicious people. The vicious ones are sometimes excellent composers, and they sometimes have tremendous stature within the profession. But I have known vicious composers who accomplished little and gained little from their accomplishments. I’ve also known composers who were perfectly lovely people, and their accomplishments and gains have varied as much as have those of the meanies. In my case, I like to think that I have become a bit more benevolent over the years (though I still have to keep tabs on my propensity for putting people who take presumptions in their place – it doesn’t do anyone any good), and my music is, on the whole, marginally better than it was when I was less accommodating, which is to say I still write really fantastic stuff from time to time, and the stuff in between the fantastic stuff is mostly pretty decent, with an occasional misfire. Or, to hopefully put it more clearly, becoming a kinder person has not had a detrimental effect on my work, nor has it improved my work noticeably. Any improvement that’s occurred is solely a matter of practice. But the concept of the horrid person who creates sublime art is a powerful paradox. People who are as easily seduced by paradox as I once was will find it difficult to resist. Generally speaking, if you want to find me-the-teacher, it’s best to visit the UNC School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, where I can more dependably be found than anywhere else. For a few days in June, though, I’ll be in residence at the Charlotte New Music Festival and Composers Workshop, the brainchild of the remarkable young composer Elizabeth Kowalski. Elizabeth launched this frigate last summer, and I was a happy sailor in its maiden voyage. She organized a full roster of events, classes, lessons and concerts last time around, and she’s got another great lineup going again this summer. Read all about it here, and sign up if you want to catch my act on June 24-25. Also on board: composers John Allemeier, Armando Bayolo, Craig Bove, Mark Engebretson and Ronald Parks. When I first moved from NY to NC in 1987, I had to adjust to, among other things, the early emergence and sustained resonance of spring. After all these years, I’m still taken aback by the vivid colors of late February. Now it’s March, and the seasonal shift is in full swing, though the equinox is still half a month away. But spring has many meanings, and many manifestations. Right now, in the tail wind of winter, I’m in the middle of spring break, a time of intense creative focus. String Quartet No. 6 is a mess of scribbles now, showing its outlines and some random details, much as the nascent spring is apparent in the expanded boughs and dotted hues.
I will likely be writing further about this piece in the coming months (it’s not due until next winter) but this week I will content myself with the writing, instead of the writing about. So for now, check out Low and Lower’s performance last Friday of an excerpt from Poke on WGBH’s “Drive Time Live:”
If you are in the WGBH broadcast arc, tune in tomorrow afternoon at 4:00 for Drive Time Live. Low and Lower will be performing their stand-up-and-sit-down routine, including a performance of Poke. You can also catch their show on Saturday or Sunday, if you find yourself in Kittery or Piper Shores, Maine. I’d link you to the details…if I could find them myself.
It will be great to see him again. I love spending time with people whose achievements and work ethic put me to shame.
I’ve been working on a septet (horn, strings piano) for the Seattle Chamber Music Society. In November I was contacted by composer Jeremy Jolley asking if I had any models for the instrumentation of my piece that he could share with the commissioning club at their first salon, in which he was going to initiate discussion of my work. First of all, how lovely to be asked such a question by interested parties. It’s always wonderful to encounter people who want to delve into a brand new composition to this degree. Unfortunately, though, while there may be other septets for horn, piano and strings out there already, I don’t know any, so I wasn’t using any models in creating mine. So how best to express appreciation for a question that one can’t answer? My response was to dash off the following haiku:
How did Mr. Jolley and the commissioning club feel about my non-answer? Not sure, because I had no response. Perhaps when I arrive for the third salon in May I will be greeted with spitballs, or even tomatoes. Probably no less than I deserve. As I noted last time, my students have an orchestra concert tomorrow. I’ve been enjoying the rehearsals, but tomorrow will be the real payday. Meanwhile, another student (Nicholas Rich) is in Columbus, OH, where he has the honor of having a piece called Big Circles on the SCI National Conference program tonight – not the student conference, mind you, but the one featuring seasoned pros. Monday I’ll be at Symphony Space for the NY premiere of What Happened, a piano quartet, courtesy of 20>>21, as part of the Composers Now! Festival (actually, I’ve seen the name of this festival given with an exclamation point, a colon and nothing at all). I feel honored to have not one but two works on this festival — I neglected to mention that the premiere of Seven Stories last week was part of the same festival. I’m eager to find out how this ensemble pronounces its name, and exactly what kind of emphasis to give the punctuation in the festival title.
|
|
Entries (RSS)