DMA Lecture Recital: April 7 at 7:30

April 7th (next Thursday) at 7:30 P.M., my final degree requirement, the Lecture Recital, comes to CUA's John Paul Haul. It's a recital of original music, along with analyses and comments, by your truly.

This event highlights my recent compositions, which have grown increasingly concerned with social and environmental issues and other topics of practical, everyday relevance. Click here for more information and a detailed program.

Hope to see you there!

Busy Business

What a busy time!

My "real job" (doing scheduling for a local energy efficiency company) got really hectic the past couple of days. Speaking of "real jobs," I hope to get one soon! By soon, I mean in the next 3-15 months. I recently began sending out my first of many applications for music theory/aural skills/composition teaching jobs at colleges and universities across the country. Wow, that search deserves a blog in itself, but I don't have time to write it. Anyone else want to write it for me?? Wish me luck!

Also, I recently returned from the CMS National Conference in Minneapolis, MN. It was such a great experience, and I learned a whole lot in five days. Grant writing, Max/MSP, effective classroom strategies, composition pedagogy, and more!

I'm just about learned out. Speaking of, my final dissertation composition, tentatively called cold.flat.still, is now in-progress. It's a 10-minute work for standard full orchestra that traces an aural geography of Minnesota. At least, that's the idea so far. More thoughts to come...

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.)

2009-2010 Composition Competitions and Conferences

For composers interested in diving into the competition/conference circuit this year, I have compiled information on select opportunities that I have my eye on. None have entry fees, though some have age/enrollment requirements, and some require conference attendance/registration fees if selected.

Of particular note to continuing students is the August 1, 2009 postmark deadline for the 2010 SCI Student National Conference (March 5-6) in West Virginia.

Opportunities (organized by deadline postmark date)
Academic conferences are listed in blue. View links for available instrumentation.

* August 1 - 2010 SCI Student National Conference (held March 5-6, 2010, at Marshall University in Huntington, WV). Call for scores, one-minute recorded works, paper presentations, and lecture recitals. The conference theme is Giving Voice: Social Justice and the Arts.
Must be an SCI member at time of performance.


* August 1 - 2010 SCI Region IV Conference (held February 4-6, 2010, at UNC in Greensboro, NC). Call for scores (including electronic), papers, and discussion panels.
Must be an SCI member at time of performance.


* August 2 - New Music Hartford 60/60 Concert. For works composed in 60 minutes. E-mail the host to sign up. At 3PM on August 2, 2009, the instrumentation is announced by e-mail. At 4PM, scores are due. Winning works are selected, and the concert is held August 30.


* August 15 (receipt deadline, e-submission accepted) - Soundcrawl Nashville. A sound-based art walk held October 3. They're asking for electronic works under 7 minutes, with detailed info on the tools and process used to create the audio. (If you submit a one-minute electronic work to the SCI Student National Conference, this could be the same one.)


* September 1 (e-submissions encouraged) - Wet Ink Ensemble. NYC chamber group seeking scores.


* September 15 (e-submissions required) - 2010 CMS Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference (our region!) (held March 5-6, 2010, at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC). Call for scores (PDF+MP3), including a Student Composers Competition category. (Must provide your own performers.)
Must be a CMS member at time of application and performance.


* September 15 - ASCAP/Lotte Lehmann Song Cycle Competition. Submit one art song, score and CD.


* October 5 - Symphony in C. Top-notch youth orchestra seeking 8-15-minute orchestra works, prior performance history allowed.


* December 2 (e-submissions required) - 2010 CMS National Conference (held September 23-26, 2010, in Minneapolis, MN). Call for scores (PDF+MP3), and papers/presentations on any college music-related topic. Conference Theme is "Music = Communication".
Must be a CMS member at time of application and performance.
There are two composition categories: (Contact me if these links won't work and you need more info.)

___* Compositions of 3 Minutes or Less: Call for scores (PDF+MP3) of 180 seconds or less, for one, two, or three players.

___* Choral Scores: Call for scores (PDF+MP3) for mixed chorus with or without piano, 5 minutes or less.


* February 13, 2010 (approx.) - BMI Student Composer Awards. Major national competition, for any classical work. Open to student composers under age 28 as of application date.


* March 1, 2010 - ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Awards. Major national competition, for any classical work. Open to composers under age 30 as of January 1, 2010.


* March 15, 2010 (receipt deadline) - ALEA III International Composition Prize. Chamber/solo works for 1-15 players, 6-15 minutes long. Score only. Open to composers under age 40 as of application date.

Mini-Post Mini-Series Part 3: Mini-Self-Revelations

Mini-Self-Revelations
(...or, what I've learned so far)

1.) I need music with a pulse. Fast, slow, irregular - any type is fine, but my ear and my body really crave some sort of coherent rhythmic structure.

2.) I don't mind harsh dissonances, when used with intention. More important than consonant sonorities is a continuity and logic in the level of dissonance from points A to B to C, etc...

3.) Early minimalism tends to rely on the repetition and modification of very small music units (1-2 beats). As the repeated cell becomes longer and more complex, minimalism gives way to simpler large structures: the repeated phrase, passacaglia, ground bass, strophic song forms, etc. Some moments in Glass' fifth quartet seem to take a few steps away from this local-level repetition to create something grander.

At what point does a minimalist cell become a repeated strophic period? I will attempt to answer this question in my first movement.

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...

Miranda Is Morning Music 1

Hi to the cast/crew of Miranda Is Morning, and anyone else who has stumbled upon this page. Here are some MP3s and PDFs of songs I'm working on for the show:

Funeral Dirge
MP3
PDF
This plays during the funeral procession, and may or may not be hummed to, or perhaps "AH"-ed to. It's piano and funny-sounding synth voice and can be altered to fit the length of the scene.


Last Night Was the End of the World
MP3
PDF
Here's a very first draft of Miranda's a cappella tune near the end of the show (lyrics below). This will likely not be accompanied, and can easily be transposed as desired.


Keep Up with Me
MP3
PDF
And finally, Aunt Janus' cabaret song (slightly modified lyrics below). Because the synth voice sounds so terrible in the original, a tenor sax is playing the sung melody. Matt - we'll test out the range and alter it as needed.

Feel free to e-mail me with any questions. Thanks!


***LYRICS***

Last Night Was the End of the World
Last night, the stars were all aglow
Last night I loved you, I loved you.
Last night, the stars were all aglow
Last night was the end of the world.

[Pause as needed for dialogue.]

And you told me a story
And the end was a sigh
You told me you loved me
Before saying goodbye.

Last night, the stars were all aglow
Last night I loved you, I loved you.
Last night, the stars were all aglow
Last night was the end of the world.


Keep Up with Me
(slightly modified lyrics, pending approval)

Some boys can croon
And watch the girls swoon.
With just a note or five

With the wink of an eye.
Women would fly
To their arms and beds.

Some men can sing
The whole room will swing
And go along for the ride.

For a night on the town
They’ll take you down
If you want to be led.

Frankie was tops when it came to love
But Sammy could beat him when push came to shove
And Dean was my favorite; as you can see
But none of them ever could
Keep up with me.

You say, “But wait.
Don’t you overstate
How much power those fellas have?

Well I'm sure they can wink.
And you might sink.
But we don’t feel a thing.”

Well, I say, sit down and
Just try to frown
When you see their baby blues

You’ll give out a yell.
And your heart will swell.
The moment that they sing, well...

Frankie was tops when it came to love
But Sammy could beat him when push came to shove
And Dean was my favorite; as you can see
But none of them ever could
Keep up with me, oh...

[Piano interlude.]

How’s everybody today? A little blue? Me, too, darling. Me, too. Why are you so blue? Boyfriend leave you? Fuck him, honey, you can do better. For that matter, fuck me. I am better. (hushed and to MIRANDA) What are you doing here?

MIRANDA
My job.

AUNT JANUS
I told you to take some time.

MIRANDA
Didn’t need to.

AUNT JANUS

Miranda—

MIRANDA
Next verse.

[The piano interlude ends.]

AUNT JANUS
All of those boys
And all those joys
Are over now, it’s true.

All of those men
Again and again
Put down the microphone.

Clap ‘til we’re sore
Scream out for more
An encore’s not in the cards.

The stage remains bare
And life is unfair
And now I sing alone.

Frankie was tops when it came to love
But Sammy could beat him when push came to shove
And Dean was my favorite; as you can see
But none of them ever could
Keep up with me.

Oh, Frankie was tops when it came to love
But Sammy could beat him when push came to shove
And Dean was my favorite; as you can see
But none of them ever could
Keep up with me.

Not a single one could ever
Keep up with me.

[Applause. She steps out of the spotlight.]

About That Time

Well, it's about that time of year. Posts are becoming (remaining?) more infrequent as the various pressures of jobs, school, composing, and life in general start to converge. I'm balance a larger variety of activities than ever now, even if I am only taking four credits. We'll see how next semester's seven credits goes. (That's my last semester taking courses!!!)

Right now I'm working on an orchestra piece commemorating the 200th anniversary of the births of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin (the same day! Feb. 12, 2008). The piano reduction of the "Lincoln" half is coming along, but the deadline is approaching faster than material is materializing! Well, here goes...

Keep Up with Me

Keep Up with Me is a song I'm working on right now for Steve Spotswood's play Miranda Is Morning. It's a tango-style cabaret song sung by a drag queen.

Sound fun?... Doesn't make sense?... Come see the show November 20-23 at CUA. While you're at it, check out the entire Hartke season. (Yes, the address says '05-'06, but it's correct.)

Note: This draft uses a synthesized tenor sax in place of the vocals, but I may post a live-vocals version in the next 1-2 weeks.

Check out the lyrics below:

[A cymbal strike, flash of a curtain opening, and a light reveals AUNT JANUS. She’s a striking drag queen of indeterminate age. Elegant and aggressive, and with just the right amount of camp. She’s wearing widow’s weeds—if Versace designed mourning wear. After a moment of tableaux, a piano introduces her with the first chords of a song.]

AUNT JANUS
Some boys can croon
And watch the girls swoon.
With just a note or five.

With the wink of an eye
Women would fly
To their arms and beds.

Some men can sing,
The whole room will swing
And go along for the ride.

For a night on the town
They’ll take you down
If you want to be led.

Frankie was tops when it came to love
But Sammy could beat him when push came to shove
And Dean was my favorite; as you can see
But none of them ever could
Keep up with me.

You say, “But wait.
Don’t you overstate
How much power those fellas have?

Well I'm sure they can wink
And you might sink,
But we don’t feel a thing.”

Well, I say, sit down
And just try to frown
When you see their baby blues

You’ll give out a yell.
And your heart will swell.
The moment that they sing, well...

Frankie was tops when it came to love
But Sammy could beat him when push came to shove
And Dean was my favorite; as you can see
But none of them ever could
Keep up with me.

[Piano interlude.]

AUNT JANUS
How’s everybody today? A little blue? Me, too, darling. Me, too. Why are you so blue? Boyfriend leave you? F*** him, honey, you can do better. For that matter, f*** me. I am better. (hushed and to MIRANDA) What are you doing here?

MIRANDA
My job.

AUNT JANUS
I told you to take some time.

MIRANDA
I did. Time took.

AUNT JANUS
Miranda—

MIRANDA
Next verse.

[MIRANDA brings the interlude and AUNT JANUS’s chiding to an end.]

AUNT JANUS
All of those boys
And all those joys
Are over now, it’s true.

All of those men
Again and again
Put down the microphone.

Clap ‘til we’re sore
Scream out for more
An encore’s not in the cards.

The stage remains bare
And life is unfair
And now I sing alone.

Frankie was tops when it came to love
But Sammy could beat him when push came to shove
And Dean was my favorite; as you can see
But none of them ever could
Keep up with me.

[repeat Refrain.]

Not a single one could ever
Keep up with me.

[Applause. She steps out of the spotlight.]

AUNT JANUS
Now let’s get Janus a drink. She’s gonna need it.

SCI/ASCAP 2009 Student Composition Commission

Here's another (free) contest that every student SCI member should enter:

SCI/ASCAP 2009 Student Composition Commission
Submission Deadline: December 15, 2008

Get more information on the competition from the SCI website, or download the application form (PDF).


I wonder when the national winners for 2008 will be announced... :) Still dangling that tiniest fraction of hope out in front of us.

Gilgamesh: Who Saw the Deep

Better late than never... If you're free this Thursday or Saturday evening, check out a show running in the DC Fringe Festival for which I did sound and "music" work. Gilgamesh: Who Saw the Deep is a retelling of the world's oldest recorded story, an ancient Sumerian legend about a mighty king's struggle with human mortality and his quest to overcome death.

My "sound" work consists largely of organized, improvised, ensemble-generated sound environments that underscore a large portion of the scenes. I had a great time working on this show, and I hope to use some of the same performer-generated/improvisatory techniques in more of my composing.

Remaining performances are this Thursday at 10pm and Saturday at 7pm at the Source Theatre:

1835 14th St. NW
Washington, DC 20009
(on 14th St NW between S and T)

Thur, 7/24 - 10pm
Sat, 7/26 - 7pm

U Street Metro (Green Line) 2.5 blocks away

Short instructions:
read the review, buy tickets and a button online, and check out the discounts you get with a Fringe button.


Long instructions:
Call for tickets: 866-811-4111 (Toll Free)
Or, to purchase online, go here and click on "Buy Tickets" on the left.

Tickets to Gilgamesh are $15 each, plus you need a $5 Fringe Button (one-time purchase) to get into any Fringe show. Go here to see a map of the awesome discounts you can get if you have a Fringe Button with you (includes various bars, restaurants, pet food stores, etc...).

Check out Carrie Klewin's review here.

To Be Franc

Hear It (MP3)
See It (Score)

As promised, here is another art song, again for soprano and piano. This was composed for an abandoned opera (my first!), which was originally going to be my masters thesis. The story is an adaptation of Mark Twain's comic play "Is He Dead?", which is now being produced for the first time ever, on Broadway -- the play, that is... not my unfinished opera.

Composed in a little under one week while I was rushing to complete my first attempt at a thesis, To Be Franc is a light, miniature view into the mindset of the opera's leading lady, Marie, as she explains her devotion to her love, Jean-Francios Millet (yes, the French painter). Millet has no money, but Marie frankly (or franc-ly - nothing better than a cheap pun on currency) doesn't mind.

Moments of note include the muddy major third accompaniment motive in the piano, the return of earlier material in the piano's upper register (final section), and the singer's awesome high B natural near the end. That's a difficult note, especially at such a serene, exposed moment!

...which brings me to my next point - acknowledging this second performance of my music by soprano Rachel Barham (AKA "The World's Greatest Diva Ever In The History Of The Universe"). Oh, and some amateur is plunking away at the piano behind her; sorry for that.

Comment if you see fit...

When People Are Soft

Hear It (MP3)
See It (Score)

This art song for soprano and piano was the first piece I completed as a masters student at CUA studying under Andrew Simpson. It was a bit of a struggle, taking me about four months of on-and-off work to complete.

Although it is rather simple in some ways, I mark this piece as one of the turning points in my composing career. Looking back, this piece is really quite tonal with just a few non-tonal elements inserted in places; however, this is the first time I ever really broke out of a diatonic added- or embellished-note tonality in any conscious, consistent way. Even the length (5½ minutes) was ambitious for me at the time, since most of my pieces were around three minutes.

Oh, and I must say thank you to Yufen Chou, pianist, and to Rachel Barham, AKA "The World's Greatest Diva Ever In The History Of The Universe," soprano. Composers would not survive without the support of performers who champion new music.

The Fall (Interlude) for orchestra

The Fall (Interlude) for orchestra

Hear It (MP3)
See It (Score)

This is my first original work for full orchestra. The majority of my output is vocal, solo, or chamber music, but hearing this selection from a chamber piece arranged for orchestra was very exciting.

The piece is an instrumental scene from my masters thesis, a one-act musical entitled The Eden Diaries. I intended a furious-paced tempo to match the scene's action (the biblical expulsion from Eden), but the work came out nicely for a reading with only one rehearsal.

Enjoy, and please comment on the orchestration (or, what you can hear of it), as that is the greatest challenge and the greatest fun when writing for a full orchestra.

(P.S. - To my subscribers, sorry for the failed post earlier with no links. I'm still new at this!)

PDF of Auf Dix: Fugue

For those interested, here is a PDF of the score to Auf Dix: Fugue, the movement I just posted as an MP3. You may now check my counterpoint and laugh. (It's my first real fugue!) Let me know what you think!

I will plan to post scores along with audio files from now on... once I figure out how to post both simultaneously.

Tune in soon to hear and see "Scene 6: The Fall" - a short excerpt for full orchestra from my masters thesis one-act musical, The Eden Diaries. Oh, and more word on my podcast when I have more to say.

Note: PDFs are also viewable through iTunes podcast feeds - one more reason to sign up for my podcast!

Auf Dix (A Test Run)

This is a (double-revised) test run of the audio link and podcast hosting functions of Blogger.

The file you are now able to listen to (hopefully) is a fugue, sort of. It was composed for my friend and fellow composer Jonathan, and is in a first draft. The audio was rendered using the Kontakt 2 sound library in Cubase Studio 4.

UPDATE: This new audio file is the same music, but actually mastered (roughly), so it plays at a higher (normal) volume and with a touch more bass. Enjoy, and let me know if it's any different

More discussion will follow. Thanks.

No Mozart Am I

This thought has been with me for years, but it just tapped me on the shoulder a few days ago, so I thought I'd share it with you.

While there certainly are similarities, the majority of the composing I do is categorically different from the composing of tonal-era Classical composers - Mozart, for example. Nearly all of my creations are tailored to a specific genre of project, be it live theater, film, or music theater.

The nature of the current project deeply influences not only the mood but even the very method of constructing each piece of music. My works, therefore, seem quite varied and eclectic. A good number of tonal-era works, in contrast, seem to be playing the same game and following the same set of rules.

Of course, this is a simplistic observation - not least because I constantly struggle to come out of the shell that is my simplistic, triadic, tonal foundation - but it is an observation that rings true for me nonetheless. I certainly do not mean by this to disparage the work done by earlier composers. I simply feel that what I do in practice rooms in front of a piano is largely a different process from that of many established composers of old.

But perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps I give my uniqueness too much credit. What do you think? If you are a composer, do you feel like your work is essentially the same work as Bach or Beethoven?