My CC21 project now has a Facebook event page.
Preview a score. Schedule a performance. Commission a new work. Tell a friend.
Join the experiment, and discover the value of free music!
Showing posts with label current composition projects. Show all posts
Showing posts with label current composition projects. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
String Quartet: Deadlines and Samples
Another composition, my first of four dissertation projects, the semester, the summer, our three years in a "cheap" Brookland apartment, my four years in DC (until February). The end of all these is less than 25 days away, which brings a curious blend of anxiety and relief.
String Quartet No. 1: At Best It Sometimes Rhymes
(5 bonus points for anyone who can ID where the title comes from, without the help of Google.)
Movements 2, 3, and 4 are now complete (or, complete enough), with a combined performance time of around 8'30". I've prepared a preview of these movements, along with an early draft of Movement 1, for your viewing and listening pleasure.
Here they are. (Leave comments at the bottom of this post.)
Pending successful Development, Recap and Coda sections, my quasi-minimalist first movement (6'43") will be completed by next Monday, along with individual parts for each movement (15'15" total running time).
An elusive Movement 5, which for some reason waited until last week to appear in my head, would make a nice bookend with Movement 1. It explores repeating cycles of varying lengths, from the 2-3 beat minimalist cell, up through the period, all derived from the same material. So it's kind of like a minute-long chunk of music that's accompanied by short, repeating snippets of that same material.
At least, that's what it will be like once I've written it. Movement 5 might be completed before the summer is out, but perhaps not in time for my official dissertation submission. Once everything is truly complete, I'll re-post MP3s and PDFs of each movement.
(100 bonus points for anyone who read this far.)
String Quartet No. 1: At Best It Sometimes Rhymes
(5 bonus points for anyone who can ID where the title comes from, without the help of Google.)
Movements 2, 3, and 4 are now complete (or, complete enough), with a combined performance time of around 8'30". I've prepared a preview of these movements, along with an early draft of Movement 1, for your viewing and listening pleasure.
Here they are. (Leave comments at the bottom of this post.)
Pending successful Development, Recap and Coda sections, my quasi-minimalist first movement (6'43") will be completed by next Monday, along with individual parts for each movement (15'15" total running time).
An elusive Movement 5, which for some reason waited until last week to appear in my head, would make a nice bookend with Movement 1. It explores repeating cycles of varying lengths, from the 2-3 beat minimalist cell, up through the period, all derived from the same material. So it's kind of like a minute-long chunk of music that's accompanied by short, repeating snippets of that same material.
At least, that's what it will be like once I've written it. Movement 5 might be completed before the summer is out, but perhaps not in time for my official dissertation submission. Once everything is truly complete, I'll re-post MP3s and PDFs of each movement.
(100 bonus points for anyone who read this far.)
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
S.Q. Update #2: 5 weeks left
In five weeks, I plan to submit my completed string quartet for initial review. My quartet listening has been very rewarding, but one can assimilate styles only so quickly.
Today I listened to Davies' Little Quartet No. 1 again, this time without the score, and couldn't hear the same cleverness and melodic interplay I did last time.
I also listened to two slow Borodin movements: No. 1 Mvt. 2, and No. 2 Mvt. 3. My attention waned during the first track, but his Notturno from Quartet No. 2 is really lovely to listen to.
Although I've tried out many different compositional tools, methods, and aesthetic goals in the past four years, my primary outlet remains a singable melody.
This is no surprise considering my musical background: Catholic church hymns (no vocal harmonies) and 90's country music, followed circa 1997 by Billy Joel, Ben Folds, and 80's/90's musical theater: Les Miz, Phantom of the Opera, Songs for a New World.
While I sang in numerous choirs up through undergrad, and played trumpet/baritone horn through high school, the active consumption of classical music was largely absent from my musical diet.
The first live classical music I remember hearing was the Canadian Brass and/or South Dakota Symphony Orchestra in Sioux Falls, probably sometime around 1997. My first opera experience was Fargo-Moorhead's Madama Butterfly in 2004 (five years ago, at age 21!).
I've been a composition major since 2001, and a serious composer since 2004.
I'm not exactly sure what I'm getting at here, other than to explain (or excuse?) my periodic struggles with "contemporary classical" composition, using models from Debussy to today. I am alternatingly fascinated, challenged, confused and bored by the prospect of "writing like them."
It seems to me that, even more so than the "death" of functional tonality, the Twentieth Century also accomplished a profound dissolution of melody as the primary structural force in a composition. (Ooh, that's a nice sentence! I'll have to remember that.)
Gesture, color, rhythm, timbre, register, text, process, technology... Virtually every post-1900 work I've heard seems to function as an exploration of one or more of these facets. (There are exceptions - Barber, some Copland - often derided as behind the times.) And yet, even the majority of classical musicians are never explicitly trained to listen for these alternate aspects as delineators of form.
Okay, so that's a long digression that I needed to get out. If you haven't guessed already, I'm hesitantly beginning the middle section for my beautifully melodic, consonant, lyrical second movement, and I'm in no place artistically to say anything worthwhile.
Perhaps a series of distinct timbral environments presented in Rondo form? Eh...
Today I listened to Davies' Little Quartet No. 1 again, this time without the score, and couldn't hear the same cleverness and melodic interplay I did last time.
I also listened to two slow Borodin movements: No. 1 Mvt. 2, and No. 2 Mvt. 3. My attention waned during the first track, but his Notturno from Quartet No. 2 is really lovely to listen to.
Although I've tried out many different compositional tools, methods, and aesthetic goals in the past four years, my primary outlet remains a singable melody.
This is no surprise considering my musical background: Catholic church hymns (no vocal harmonies) and 90's country music, followed circa 1997 by Billy Joel, Ben Folds, and 80's/90's musical theater: Les Miz, Phantom of the Opera, Songs for a New World.
While I sang in numerous choirs up through undergrad, and played trumpet/baritone horn through high school, the active consumption of classical music was largely absent from my musical diet.
The first live classical music I remember hearing was the Canadian Brass and/or South Dakota Symphony Orchestra in Sioux Falls, probably sometime around 1997. My first opera experience was Fargo-Moorhead's Madama Butterfly in 2004 (five years ago, at age 21!).
I've been a composition major since 2001, and a serious composer since 2004.
I'm not exactly sure what I'm getting at here, other than to explain (or excuse?) my periodic struggles with "contemporary classical" composition, using models from Debussy to today. I am alternatingly fascinated, challenged, confused and bored by the prospect of "writing like them."
It seems to me that, even more so than the "death" of functional tonality, the Twentieth Century also accomplished a profound dissolution of melody as the primary structural force in a composition. (Ooh, that's a nice sentence! I'll have to remember that.)
Gesture, color, rhythm, timbre, register, text, process, technology... Virtually every post-1900 work I've heard seems to function as an exploration of one or more of these facets. (There are exceptions - Barber, some Copland - often derided as behind the times.) And yet, even the majority of classical musicians are never explicitly trained to listen for these alternate aspects as delineators of form.
Okay, so that's a long digression that I needed to get out. If you haven't guessed already, I'm hesitantly beginning the middle section for my beautifully melodic, consonant, lyrical second movement, and I'm in no place artistically to say anything worthwhile.
Perhaps a series of distinct timbral environments presented in Rondo form? Eh...
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Seven Deadly Sins Cabaret: A Preview
As a preview of things to come in the upcoming production of Doctor Faustus (Friday evening, Saturday afternoon and evening in the Callan), here are a few of the sound cues I've written.
Seven Deadly Sins Cabaret samples
(click to hear audio - without accompanying monologues, of course)
Sin 2: Covetousness (an acrobatic gymnastics routine)
Sin 4: Envy (ballet, quasi pas de deux)
Sin 6: Sloth (12-tone canon, sprechstimme voice not included)
Sin 7: Letchery (sultry night club act)
And there's more where that came from! See you Friday or Saturday.
Seven Deadly Sins Cabaret samples
(click to hear audio - without accompanying monologues, of course)
Sin 2: Covetousness (an acrobatic gymnastics routine)
Sin 4: Envy (ballet, quasi pas de deux)
Sin 6: Sloth (12-tone canon, sprechstimme voice not included)
Sin 7: Letchery (sultry night club act)
And there's more where that came from! See you Friday or Saturday.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Current Projects
Here is a short list of my current composition projects. The first two are half-done and due this Tuesday. Not that I'm making excuses for not posting or anything...
* Dirge for the New Sunrise, for soprano, flute, violin, guitar, and percussion (approx. 8')
based on the poem of the same name by Edith Sitwell (text set with permission)
* Orpheus (re)set, for tenor and piano (5')
A new musical setting of three operatic arias, each from a different opera based on the legend of Orpheus: Monteverdi's L'Orfeo (1607), Charpentier's La descente d'Orphée aux enfers (mid-1860's?), and Telemann's Orpheus (1726). Settings are in their original languages.
* Stage Music: Faustus
Scene music and sound design for Jay Brock's early-May of The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe (written before 1604).
* Dirge for the New Sunrise, for soprano, flute, violin, guitar, and percussion (approx. 8')
based on the poem of the same name by Edith Sitwell (text set with permission)
* Orpheus (re)set, for tenor and piano (5')
A new musical setting of three operatic arias, each from a different opera based on the legend of Orpheus: Monteverdi's L'Orfeo (1607), Charpentier's La descente d'Orphée aux enfers (mid-1860's?), and Telemann's Orpheus (1726). Settings are in their original languages.
* Stage Music: Faustus
Scene music and sound design for Jay Brock's early-May of The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe (written before 1604).
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Current Projects
Below is a list of my current composition projects. No wonder I only get about ten measures of music written for each piece per week!
The main priorities right now are Beauty, which is sorely past due and being written for a friend, and in memoriam Hibakusha, an art song, soon-to-be chamber piece, that I believe represents my best work to-date.
1. Beauty (working title) - a meditation for solo organ, for organist Jonathan Hellerman, based on the hymn tune For the Beauty of the Earth, planned for premiere at CUA in the spring of 2008
2. in memoriam Hibakusha - for baritone voice, piano, and spoken voice; currently being re-orchestrated for baritone, piano, string quartet, flute, percussion, and multiple voices; I plan to submit a recording of this piece to a number of composition competitions in the next few months (see above post)
3. Creating music to a brief trailer for a film on a native community in Ecuador (electronic music only) - my first entirely computer-generated composition project, and the beginning of my possible future ventures into film scoring
4. Arranging pieces for the student-run CUA pops concert Christmas Eve in Washington
5. Creating music/live sound-generation techniques for a theater project based on The Epic of Gilgamesh
6. She Gestures - for solo piano; my first work conceived with harmony and rhythm as independent elements; as the title suggests, quite "gestural" - a growing feature of the more reserved, austere side of my output
7. Set 'em Up - for jazz band, using pitch sets (very loosely)
The main priorities right now are Beauty, which is sorely past due and being written for a friend, and in memoriam Hibakusha, an art song, soon-to-be chamber piece, that I believe represents my best work to-date.
1. Beauty (working title) - a meditation for solo organ, for organist Jonathan Hellerman, based on the hymn tune For the Beauty of the Earth, planned for premiere at CUA in the spring of 2008
2. in memoriam Hibakusha - for baritone voice, piano, and spoken voice; currently being re-orchestrated for baritone, piano, string quartet, flute, percussion, and multiple voices; I plan to submit a recording of this piece to a number of composition competitions in the next few months (see above post)
3. Creating music to a brief trailer for a film on a native community in Ecuador (electronic music only) - my first entirely computer-generated composition project, and the beginning of my possible future ventures into film scoring
4. Arranging pieces for the student-run CUA pops concert Christmas Eve in Washington
5. Creating music/live sound-generation techniques for a theater project based on The Epic of Gilgamesh
6. She Gestures - for solo piano; my first work conceived with harmony and rhythm as independent elements; as the title suggests, quite "gestural" - a growing feature of the more reserved, austere side of my output
7. Set 'em Up - for jazz band, using pitch sets (very loosely)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
