In an earlier post (Drawing a Blank) I mentioned the terror of the blank page, as one begins a new project. Well, I’m about to start, and so I’m working my way through and around that blank page (well, blank screen really, since I use the music notation program Finale). My son Jeremy and his fiancee Amanda are getting married in mid-August; they’ve asked me to write something to be played during the ceremony.

Jeremy and I talked about that tonight. It’ll probably be no more than two minutes; played on piano. I asked about other service music: Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring for the bride; Beethoven’s Ode to Joy for the happy couple as they leave. Anyone for a little joy?

So I’ve started my precompositional planning. I need to decide on a style, develop a motivic idea or two (my wife Marianne suggested tossing in reference to a tune Jeremy sang when he was a kid–maybe…), and get some notes written. Not tonight, ’cause I’d like to get some sleep sometime and the last thing I need is to have the piece running through my brain. But it’ll be working in the background anyway. Joy. Piano. Two minutes: barely enough time to get started; an eternity to complete. I’ll let you know how it works out…

I was asked to play piano at a memorial service this morning. While there is often some sadness at such a service, there is also joy in celebrating life–especially the life of the one who died. There was much joy this morning. I usually play piano or organ before the service, lead hymns, maybe accompany a soloist, and play a postlude. Not today. Wonderful harp music before (turns out I knew the harpist decades ago when we were…much younger). And an outstanding duet by two members of Calaveras.

I guess I don’t get out often enough. Greg and Vickie from Calaveras are consumate artists, with strong singing and instrumental work. They sang “Ready to Fly” from their latest CD (visit CDBaby and search for “Calaveras”). The song spoke of one not getting ready to die but rather getting ready to fly. A wonderful image that was especially appropriate this morning.

The song has a folk/celtic sound with strong lyrics and strong music. I don’t buy a lot of CDs–particularly by people I hear at memorial services–but I just bought two of theirs. It was nice to be jolted out of my comfortable musical rut. I’ll probably have more to say after I’ve heard their CDs.

…All creatures great and small. So begins a hymn, sung to the tune Royal Oak, which I first set for piano in 2001 and, more recently, for organ. After getting up real early (see ATBaB pt I), checking out some Point-of-Sale software we’re thinking of installing in Marianne’s yarn store, I headed off to the church where I’ll be guest organist for a couple of weeks.

In addition to playing a voluntary by William Walond (a contemporary of G. F. Handel in London), I decided to play one of my organ variations on All Things… but found it difficult to pull one variation out of what is a pretty robust set of variations. I checked out my piano variation and really liked it (well, duh! I did write it.). To make it more challenging (for probably both performer and listener–but see my closing comment) I wrote it in 3/4, while the original (see the excerpt above) is in 4/4. Here’s how the first statement of the melody looks in 3/4:

Notice that the left hand gives a pretty pronounced downbeat, while the right hand floats above it all. When I play, I try to allow each hand to be metrically independent of the other. It’s a little unsettling, but also a little surreal. Perhaps a reminder of how difficult it is to obtain beauty…

You may see hints of the melody in the tenor portion of the left hand, here doubling (the first two measures) and then following (the descending scale in the left hand in measure 4 imitating the descending scale in the right in measures 2 and 3). When the melody repeats, it comes in on beat 1, increasing the subtle canon…or so I hope!

The b or verse section handles the tension between 4 and 3 differently. In the original, the melody does this:This melody is a miniature masterpiece. As the verse continues, the melody rises to meet the beginning refrain. It’s a neat way to make the refrain in this simple two-part form seam both fresh and inevitable.
I didn’t want to do the same 3-against-4 procedure of the first part of my setting, so I fit the melody into its tighter quarters by eliminating repeated notes and shortening long notes:I stressed the lowness of the melody by moving it into the bass clef, and almost turned it into a sequential passage. Apart from just plain liking the tune, I have found that giving myself a musical challenge, like fitting 4 beats into 3, is compositionally stimulating–particularly since I want the result to be comfortable to the listener’s ear. For all of my academic focus (rather ingrained after 25 years as a university music professor), this is no music for music’s sake. I want to freshen people’s ears while they hear something they know, even if they don’t recognize it right away.

…although, in light of this morning’s explosions in London, it’s sometimes a little harder to see the bright and beautiful as clearly. Still, daughter Delara had her morning commute only lengthened and not permanently put on hold. The day started early in California with a before-5:00 a.m. call saying she was ok. Both parents were relieved, even as we know other parents and friends and lovers and children won’t be, feeling a loss that will hurt for a long time to come.

…silence…

I didn’t mean to take so long between posts, but between the start of a search for a new church music position and some substantial work on my website, my creative energy was tied up in knots. It’s been fun to work on the website–certainly more fun than working on my job search! I started off with some pages I had put together on a short early April vacation with a combination of hand coding and Netscape Composer. As I came back to the project last week, I used Arachnophilia for a bit. It supports handcoding, but is a bit cryptic to figure out. I decided to load a copy of Dreamweaver I’ve not been using lately, and I’m in love.

I set things up so that the website mirrors my web directory on my computer. The uploading is automatic, which I find to be quite slick. As long as I don’t goof and save over something I didn’t intend to lose, it’ll be great. (The answer, of course, is to back everything up.) Dreamweaver gives me a combination of “what you see” and handcoding that I find quite helpful. It’s actually akin to my notation software (I use Finale, but Sibelius and others work much the same way). In the case of the notation software, I can look at the notes, or listen to MIDI playback, jsut as with DW I can look at the file, or see the behind-the-scenes code.

I’m intending to use my website as an every-growing catalog. While it’s relatively static, I’m hoping to apply the sort of approach I took with my earlier post here about Ellacombe, where I provide program notes and a little background info along with excerpts from the music. I hope I haven’t set me too much of a task. To see what I’m trying, check out my pages on a variation set for flute and piano (see discussion and excerpts). Since I’m hoping to provide enough information so that some performers might decide my stuff is worth working on, I’m trying to give them enough information to make an informed decision.

I attended a very nice organ recital at St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco on Sunday (July 3, 2005). Ansgar Wallenhorst, a German organist, held forth at the might Ruffatti. I’ll have a couple of comments on this delightful event soon.

Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) talked about the concept of Gebrauchsmuziek–essentially functional, or occasional music. He wrote for a broad range of instrumental and vocal combinations, writing music that he expected to be used, rather than sit on a shelf. A look at his list of compositions will quickly show you that he was both prolific and far-ranging in his interests.

My compositional career, while probably less prolific, is certainly focused on producing practical works for specific situations. I’ve been working on some web pages where I hope to show a catalog of my works while offering some commentary and some downloadable works. I’ve produced eleven pieces since the start of 2005. One is choral (written for a competition); the others all have an organ or piano part for me to play. Since I’m an organist with reduced opportunity to conduct choral groups than in the past, I write most for the resource most accessible to me. Eight of the ten instrumental works are based on hymn tunes; there’s not much of a surprise there, since that allows me to either strengthen congregational singing or support the theme of the service.

6/18/2005: Prelude on Ellacombe (organ)
6/4/2005: All Things Bright and Beautiful (organ)
5/28/2005: New variations on St. Denio (1981) (organ)
5/13/2005: A Song of Promise (SATB chorus and orchestra)
3/20/2005: Fanfares for an Easter Day(3 trumpets, 2 trombones, optional timpani, organ)
3/9/2005: Variations on a French Carol (arr for organ)
3/4/2005: Variations on a French Carol (flute and piano)
2/28/2005: Reflections on Brother James’s Air (flute and organ)
2/7/2005: Beginnings (organ)
1/21/2005: Passacaglia on Spirit (organ)
1/15/2005: McKee Variations (organ)

I’m getting pretty close to opening up some pages on my web site with excerpts and comments on each piece. Watch for links in my Recent Work section to the left. On the other hand, it’s been 10 days since I’ve done any composing of a musical nature. I may just get sidetracked for a few days…

Well, I played my Prelude on Ellacombe (for organ) this morning. I thought it went well. It was particularly gratifying that I made different (relatively small) mistakes each time (we have two morning church services). As a performer I find that I often have words with my composer self. What was I thinking about, writing two lines in the pedal? Particularly when skips of a 4th or 5th are constantly required?

Between the intricate pedal work of the opening and closing sections and the articulation of the manual voices (lots of staccato–contrary to the principle of legato playing that organists first learn) I had a nervous week or so as I became familiar with the piece. It only took about 6 hours of actual rehearsal; I knew yesterday that I was ready when I didn’t use the other two hours I had planned (freeing me to work on other stuff).

I didn’t have time to check if an adequate recording was made, since I left just as the final notes of the postlude were dying away to head to the Giants/A’s game in Oakland. I’d expected something like a Concerto Grosso, with lots of give and take, and a certain amount of antiphonal play. It was more of a Tuba concerto, with the Giants’ collective head stuck in the bell of the Tuba–they didn’t even make an effective mute as the A’s took the day 16-zip.

While my morning performance wasn’t a shutout, I felt almost as good about my piece as the A’s did about the game. If I can’t post a recording from the service, I’ll make one soon and provide a link under Recent Work on the sidebar.

I’ve been volunteering this week at the San Francisco AGO (American Guild of Organists) chapter’s POE (Pipe Organ Encounter for teens). We’ve had the privilege of hosting 32 students from around the nation–some already capable organists, others trying the instrument out for the first time. It’s been a delight to get to know these folk, and to hear and see their enthusiasm for a broad range of music, from classical to various contemporary idioms.

Our guest artist for the week was Felix Hell. The fact that he’s 19, with an impressive 11-year performing resume, a B.A. from Curtis–not to mention a wonderful role model for our students–paled beside his outstanding performance at last night’s concert. I’m not a fan of big, bombastic organ works that don’t seem to know when to stop, but he made the organ dance, giving big works the vitality of intimate chamber music. His performance of Liszt’s Prelude and Fugue on B-A-C-H was stunning; certainly the best I’ve ever heard. Although Liszt would never be on my top ten…list, this performance would be.

The composition I really enjoyed was actually by Bach (J.S., that is). His Prelude and Fugue in D Major (BWV 532) was also exceptionally well played by Mr. Hell, with a crisp articulation that made the music sparkle. The work begins with a simple reiteration of 16th-notes: d-e-f#-e.
A colleague remarked that Bach was just showing off. And he did (both J.S. and Felix) with fine style. The opening riff is answered by alternating chords. The work continues as Bach spins out a simple moving down and up by step. With little more than basic step-wise movement he crafts a wonderful musical edifice. If ever justification was needed for learning scales, this is it (OK–there’s another Bach work built on an ascending D Major scale–in the pedal–but allow me a little licence!).

It’s fair to say that much of my own composing has focused on using small motivic ideas to build larger structures, but Bach does so well with what looks at first to be pretty unprepossessing material. I know–you might be thinking that it’s not just the material, but the procedures that are applied to the material. And so it is. Music is as much the spaces between the notes, the material the composer leaves out, as it is the stuff we hear (John Cage may have gone a bit far with his 4′ 33″ of space between the notes, but he was right on about music being much more than just notes on a page).

I don’t know how I’m going to get the Bach out of my head. I’m off to practice Ellacombe (see my previous post), which I’m playing tomorrow. Maybe that’ll help. On the other hand, maybe it’s time to get out my score of the Bach and renew my acquaintance with the piece up close and personal… Mr. Hell has set the bar rather high; thanks for a lesson that was both musical and inspiring.

This is the start of my latest piece, a prelude on the hymn tune Ellacombe. I’ve written several pieces following the rough form of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ setting of Rhosymedre. While I’ll spend some time on that in a subsequent post, suffice it to say he presents some nice introductory material, then states the tune in the left hand against this material, repeats the tune in the right hand with a fuller accompaniment, follows with a tag from the first setting, and ends with a restatement of his introductory material.

I thought I might use the same form with a different tune. Easier said than done! I started with the left hand and pedal material (based on the opening two notes of the tune in the right hand). The tune wasn’t supposed to come in for a page or so. After I wrote the intro stuff, I realized my intro didn’t flow like RVW’s and, frankly, wasn’t as interesting. By this time, I was at what I hoped would be the closing statement and decided to play with the tune a little:

Notice that it’s similar but the tune is not treated as simply. After I wrote this, I realized that my beginning was too bare (although a lot easier to play, since the pedal only played the bottom notes, with the left hand doing the upper part of the pedal, and the right hand doing the chords. But no! The music kept demanding changes, so the simple tune was played against the chords, and the poor feet are kept busy.) I didn’t achieve RVW’s simple elegance, but there’s a satisfying buildup and sense of conclusion with my piece. I’ll put up an audio clip as soon as I play the piece in public.