Monday, September 29, 2008
I finished “One Train May Hide Another” last Wednesday. I’ve got a few revisions to do, but nothing major. I was rather hasty in saying that I could get the song to be only 6 minutes long. I think it takes that long just to read it aloud! It ultimately clocks in at 11 minutes! By far the longest song I’ve ever written (though still 14 minutes short of being my longest piece period). I’m incredibly happy with it, though.
The song’s length has forced me to reconsider the overal shape of the cycle. So, in order to rebalance it, I’ve decided to reverse the song order. In the current order, the two shorter songs don’t balance well; they become an annoyance – the piece, psychologically, feels over, so the other two just serve to make the cycle “too long”. With the shorter ones first, the longer song becomes the perfect denouement.
The length is also making me consider the excerptability of the song. Although it refers musically to the other songs in the cycle (thanks, precompositional planning!), it stands on its own very well. For the first few performances, I expect that “One Train” may be the only part of the cycle performed because of programming considerations, which doesn’t at all hurt my feelings. I may indicate in the score that “One Train” may be performed separately. We shall see.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
I started this past weekend on at least a moment. A little behind schedule, unfortunately, but the Statman songs took longer to write than anticipated despite a fast-and-furious start, and the Staunton Music Festival was much more socially oriented than expected, which meant that the first notes didn’t go on paper until Sat., Aug. 30. Still, it’s a very solid start (nearlyt he first quarter of “One Train May Hide Another” – a very long poem for a song), and I suspect that I’ll be able to fairly fly through the songs.
I’m coming to the decision to make at least a moment contrast plenty of time not only in the number of voices, but also by making plenty of time more dramatic and lyrical as opposed to a very pronounced use of recitative in at least a moment.
“One Train May Hide Another” will probably be almost exclusively recitative, with a few bursts into full ’song’. It’s incredibly wordy for an art song text, so I have to ‘throw away’ a lot of text; i.e., set it in such a way that it moves very quickly. It’s something that I do well, and I think it will serve me well, here. The set as a whole should be around 10 minutes, and, were I to give the poem more lyric expression, it could easily be expanded to 15. My goal is to clock it in at 6 minutes.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
The premiere of echoes in Staunton, VA went very well. My thanks to Julia Turnbull and Matthew Stephens on all of their hard work and dedication. Mark Statman attended the premiere with his family, and his son Jesse videoed the event. In the coming weeks, Jesse will tape an interview/conversation with the two of us here in NYC to turn into a short documentary around the work.
I’m also particularly happy with my performances of Chet Biscardi’s Modern Love Songs and excerpts from David Del Tredici’s Gay Life (In the Temple, Personals Ad, Here). Chet, too, was happy with the performance. It was great performing with Robert Barrett and Matthew Stephens on the respective songs – both are fantastic musicians.
