Back in the Swing of Things

I could say the delay has been because of all the snow, but that would just be an excuse... like using the previous part of this sentence as an excuse to post an awesome satellite image of a major snowstorm last month...  Photo by NOAA (www.noaa.gov)

So a whole semester has passed since my last blog entry.  Lots of things have happened since then (as I would hope to be the case for anyone in a five-month period); undoubtedly the most exciting event during that span has been getting engaged.  Let’s just say that If I had won the lottery (which would of course required getting a ticket in the first place), that would have easily ranked second.

Now that I have a semester under my belt (hard to believe that that represents a quarter of the degree program), I feel--as this post’s title suggests--back in the swing of things.  Not that I was sitting around doing nothing last semester, but now I’m more in line with my goal of composing on a regular basis.  To be honest it’s not yet entirely on a daily basis, but I do feel like it is more of a routine, as it should be for any aspiring composer.

As of yesterday, I have completed three new pieces: a piano trio (violin, cello, & piano), Daybreak; a saxophone duet, Birth of a Loaf: From Dough to Crust (more on that in a moment); and a choral work, Nishmat (more on that in two moments).


Daybreak marks the first “free” piece that I have written, that is, the first time I was composing with no assigned parameters.  Even in the more advanced composition classes I took at MIT, the instrumentation was at least partly assigned or limited.  But I composed Daybreak because I wanted to -- this piece was not assigned or commissioned in any way.

[Tanget:]

In one of my classes this semester, called the “Pro Seminar in Music History,” we have discussed “lateness” in music, such as any given composer’s so-called “late” period.  There are several questions that inevitably accompany this discussion, not the least of which is, “How do you mark when a composer’s ‘middle’ period ends and his or her ‘late’ period begins?”  (This in turn leads to the question, “Can you realistically sort any composer’s work into ‘early,’ ‘middle,’ and late?”  The short answer is no--case in point being Elliott Carter, who turned 102 last December... his “late” period supposedly started around 1980... where does that leave him 30+ years later?  But since I am already in a tangent, I won’t delve further into that discussion.)

I bring up the notion of “lateness” (and earliness and middle-ness) to ponder when the beginning of my “early” period will be marked.  (This is no doubt a somewhat egotistical train of thought, as it implies that I will be significant enough for someone to actually consider this point.)  Another way to pose the question is to consider what would be listed first (chronologically) on someone else’s list of my compositions.  Is it the first thing I ever wrote?  Probably not--that was a short little “ditty” I wrote when I started taking piano lessons 15 years ago.  (I remember the whole thing, in part because I have a good memory, but more so because the piece was short and sequential.)  Would it be the piano pieces I wrote in high school?  Would it be anything I wrote before college?  I don’t have an answer yet, but it should be interesting to think about!

[end of Tangent]

I haven’t yet gotten a performance of Daybreak, but it looks like I will be able to get some time in Hartt’s Recording Studio next month to get a real recording.  Stay tuned!

I’ll admit that it has been more than a “moment,” but next up is my Birth of a Loaf: From Dough to Crust.  The piece was written within a 24-hour period (last weekend) as part of a program called "Comp du Jour," organized by one of the doctoral students in composition at Hartt, Aaron Krerowicz (who also put together a concert the week before for SPASM, the Society for the Promotion of American Silly Music).

The idea behind Comp du Jour is to go from scratch to performance in 24 hours.  And so a few other composers and I met last Friday night and rolled a die to determine how many and which instruments we were writing for.  We then spent the next several hours writing music before meeting with the generous instrumentalists who rehearsed and ultimately performed the music.

So why Birth of a Loaf?  Well, I bake a lot of bread (I haven’t bought a regular loaf of bread the entire school year!  And not for the same reason Jean Valjean didn’t buy a loaf of bread...)  As I was sitting by my keyboard sketching out some musical ideas when I got a glimpse of my bread machine.  With less than a day to write a whole composition, I wasn’t about to look for too many other sources of inspiration.  Time is notes!

Each section in Birth of a Loaf has a different metronome marking (Q = quarter note) with a descriptive adverb as follows:

• Thoughtfully Q = c. 52
• Mixingly Q = c. 132
• Risingly Q = c. 66
• Expandingly Qq = c. 80
• Bakingly Q = c. 144
• Deliciously Q = c. 88
• With finality Q = c. 180 [This sounded better than “crustily”...]

The Comp du Jour experience was quite enjoyable on the whole, and a worthwhile reminder of what can be accomplished in a short period of time with a lot of focus.

Lastly, I’d like to write briefly about the piece I most recently finished, Nishmat.  This choral work sets the first paragraph of the Hebrew prayer Nishmat to music, written for SATB (soprano, alto, tenor, bass).  Below is my program note for the piece:

Nishmat (literally, “The breath of”) is a Jewish prayer recited on Shabbat and on major holidays throughout the year, including at the Passover seder. The Hebrew text, one of the most beautiful and poetic in all of Jewish liturgy, includes phrases from the Bible and language from rabbinic works.  The first section of the prayer, whose text is set here to music, consists of elaborate praise of God as the eternal ruler of the universe who cares for and guides His creatures.  Despite its elegant text, Nishmat is often recited silently. In setting the text to music, I hope to give prominence to this wonderful prayer.

I am very excited about this piece, which is going to get performed in April by the Connecticut Choral Artists (CONCORA).  I am hoping at some point to set the rest of the prayer to music; there is some magnificent imagery in the text that wasn’t included in this first “installment.”  I will end this entry with a link to a New York Times Op-Ed published last September on Rosh Hashana about the overall lack of classical Jewish liturgical music, even from composers with Jewish backgrounds like Offenbach, Mahler, Schoenberg, and Copland.  Whether or not this becomes my compositional calling, it is an area that is of growing interest to me.

Until next time...