Category Archives: Blessays

Mistakes and Revision

Friday, February 19, 2010

I remember a time (as surely anyone who has ever created anything can) when every note I wrote was sacrosanct.  <em>That</em> is how I wrote this, and <em>that</em> is how it shall remain.  Fortunately, that period was incredibly short-lived.  Maybe it’s because I started life as a performer.  And maybe because, as a performer, I tended toward Broadway, where the written note, the written rhythm, are the barest guidelines for performance: the great Broadway singers transform the square quarter- and eighth notes on the page into something altogether different and more alive.  Even pitch material gets reworked in performance so that the original melodies become forever changed – the <em>definitive</em> performance often bears little resemblance to the composer’s written score.

Now, I don’t mean to imply that such a thing should be done in the concert realm.  Concert music as we know it is very controlled in the ways that works should be performed: if the score says X, do X.  But I’ve definitely been marked by my experience.

That being said: often, particularly in vocal music, a performer will accidentally play/sing what is technically a wrong note – viz, it is not written in the score.  I’ve often rewritten passages in my songs to integrate a particularly felicitous “mistake” in performance or rehearsal.  Maybe a soprano, in rehearsals, doesn’t realize she’s singing something slightly off from how it was notated; I hear it, love it, and point out to the soprano what she’s been singing wrong, but instruct her not to change a thing – her error is more elegant and beautiful than what I had originally written.

I had a similar thing happen during the rehearsal process for the re-launch of the Tobenski-Algera Concerts last month.  Tim Kiah, the composer of one of the songs on the program, attended a rehearsal during the week before the concert, and Marc and I ran through his song so that he could offer observations, criticisms, and corrections.  After a few instructions on phrasing, he mentioned that I was singing the final phrase wrong: rather than singing X note, I was singing Y, something I’d not noticed myself since what I had been singing was in perfect keeping with similar motives that had come before.  His instruction, though, was to keep doing what I was doing: sing it “wrong”, because he was going to integrate that change into the score because he liked it better.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard a performance or rehearsal of a work of mine, noticed a “wrong note”, and decided to keep it.  Or the number of times a performer has asked for a slight revision to ease a particularly difficult passage.  Invariably, the change is so minor to the overall effect of the score, yet so major because it allows the performer more ease in performance, that not to make the change would be pure folly.  And honestly, had they made the change without my knowledge, I’d be none the wiser, so imperceptible are most of these shifts.

And then there are those composers whose work I’ve performed who wouldn’t accept suggestions of this kind: they had written it <em>this</em> way, so I should work harder to do exactly what was on the page.  There’s something here that’s more than a little off-putting.  Chances are that I’m being poorly paid (if I’m being paid at all) to put in a lot of rehearsal time for a single performance of a work.  And chances are that all I’m asking for is an entrance to be doubled in the accompaniment, or that the vocal line be in some way supported.  I (or anyone else who might perform the work) am doing this composer a favor.  So why is he looking down his nose at me for trying to perform his piece well?  I’m not stupid for not being able to find my pitch – there’s a good reason for it.  And I’m less likely to want to perform works by this composer again because of this experience.

I see this form of revision as good faith toward my performers.  If there’s something I can do to make their lives easier, I’m happy to (within reason, of course) in hopes that they will appreciate my efforts on their behalf and a) perform my music well, and b) perform my music <em>again</em>.

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Engraving: A Hobby-Horse

Friday, February 19, 2010

A man and his Hobby-Horse, tho’ I cannot say that they act and re-act exactly after the same manner in which the soul and body do upon each other: Yet doubtless there is a communication between them of some kind; and my opinion rather is, that there is something in it more of the manner of electrified bodies,—and that, by means of the heated parts of the rider, which come immediately into contact with the back of the Hobby-Horse,—by long journies and much friction, it so happens, that the body of the rider is at length fill’d as full of Hobby-Horsical matter as it can hold;—so that if you are able to give but a clear description of the nature of the one, you may form a pretty exact notion of the genius and character of the other.

— Laurence Stern, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

One of my favorite musical Hobby-Horses – one that I can ride for hours on end — is engraving: That is, for those who are unfamiliar with the term, the art of putting the notes on the page so as to make the score legible and attractive – a far more important aspect of composing than most people, many composers included — mostly young, but surprisingly often not —, realize.

A brief history of my own engraving abilities, practices, and standards: I started my compositional life using a scaled-down version of Finale called Notepad, which allowed me to put on paper what was in my head. The results, although essentially accurate, were unattractive at best. It seemed to me, still about 5 years away from my first composition lesson, that the important thing was to get the notes out, and that the score was good so long as the individual notes were legible and not literally piled on top of one another (a frequent issue with Notepad, and later, albeit to a lesser degree, Finale itself). My earliest scores were a bit of a wreck – the notes were crammed together on the staff with no regard for proportional spacing, and elements of the score often collided. The scores were legible, but barely.

In college, my engraving improved (though I was still completely unaware that such a term existed, let alone that there were standards to such a thing). Since my works were being performed with some regularity, I found that I had to put more work into making the score readable, which wasn’t exactly the most pleasing realization at the time, as I much preferred sitting down at the piano and hammering out something new than sitting in front of the computer, clicking away entering notes and dragging things around to create more space and take up more paper. At a certain point, though, one of my composition teachers started getting frustrated with the legibility of my scores, and would spend more and more of our lesson time marking up the score with a red pen, pointing out the problems with the engraving. I seriously resisted most of his suggestions – they weren’t musical criticisms, and therefore weren’t worth much of my attentions. (Ah, youth!)

The idea of attractive engraving as a desirable thing started to leak into my brain toward the end of my undergrad career. I was recommended a book written by a friend of one of my professors, which purported to set down exact rules and procedures for staff sizes, positioning of articulations (down to the pixel!), etc. I realize in retrospect that this is all pure foolishness. This made a science of engraving, when it is in reality an art.

When I was invited to study privately in NYC, my new teacher, who had spent much of his youth as a Broadway copyist and an engraver for Ned Rorem and Virgil Thomson, among others, made a number of immediate, sweeping changes. I was forced to buy Sibelius. Having been a Finale Man for eight years, I hated the idea of switching software (the Finale/Sibelius debate is nearly as heated as the PC/Mac silliness, both sides being completely entrenched and unbudgeable). And we spent a sizable portion of our lesson time discussing engraving practices: how to avoid collisions, proper spacing, the general rule for how many measures should be in a system, etc.

In time, I came to love Sibelius. Rather quickly, actually. I can’t imagine myself going back.

And in time, I came to be quite proficient at professional-level engraving. I now do some freelance engraving work from time to time. And I’ve integrated the engraving process into my compositional process. As I input a score into Sibelius, even if I’m still composing it, I do a significant level of tidying up and formatting as I go. It saves time later, and really helps me to see the score for what it is, and helps me to assess where I am and where I want to go with the piece.

I end up seeing a lot of scores by young composers, now, and the quality of engraving I see varies rather widely. Some scores are super clear and very attractive; others have clearly received little attention in the way of formatting or “beautifying”.

I understand the mindset of those young composers who don’t put the time into their engraving – “The music should speak for itself.” I agree – the music should speak for itself. But it can’t unless it is properly engraved. Reading a score that hasn’t been given attention to visual detail is like listening to someone speak with a very heavy accent. Or reading horrible handwriting. The content may be there, but it’s so much work to figure it out.

Even looking through a stack of well-engraved scores is a frankly tiring endeavor. That, plus the additional effort required to decipher any number of poorly-engraved scores, is absolutely exhausting!  It’s all too easy to dismiss a poorly-engraved score out of hand.

So what can composers do to make their scores clearer and more attractive? Think about the performer – consider what you can do to make the performer’s life easier.

A few points to consider:

1) Are the beats clear? Can the performer easily make out the basic division of beats in each measure? (I.e., does a 4/4 bar look like two sets of two quarter notes? Do your 3/4 bars look like 3/4 bars, and not 6/8 bars, and vice versa? Are the rhythms – especially complicated rhythms – notated in a way that facilitates counting them out?)

2) Do the notes have enough room to breathe? (Are there too many or too few bars per system so that the system feels cramped or empty? Are lyrics spaced so that they are easy to read?)

3) Are the staves and notes a reasonable size? Too many composers leave their software at the default size settings so that everything seems far too large, which gives it the sense of being “easy” – music for beginners: the notes are large and safe.

4) Are your articulations and markings placed clearly and correctly? (Expressive instructions are italicized, instructions for playing techniques are non-italicized, articulations generally go on the side of the notehead rather than the stem….etc)

5) Are you consistent with your accidentals, and are your intervals properly spelled? Nothing is more maddening than constant switching between sharps and flats. There are occasions when sharps and flats may peacefully co-exist in the same measure, but generally one should stick with one or the other for as long as possible. And few things are more confusing in the moment than augmented or diminished intervals. These should be respelled – especially for vocalists – to be as immediately-readable as possible.

The general idea is to consider how you would like the score to look if you hadn’t seen it before and had to perform it with virtually no rehearsal time. That doesn’t mean dumb down your music. It means make your hard music as easy to learn (and perform) as possible.

Look at professionally published scores, and see how they’re formatted. And – most importantly – ask your performers if there’s anything that they found particularly difficult, or if a particular element of your notation was confusing. Then change it!

For my hobby-horse, if you recollect a little, is no way a vicious beast; he has scarce one hair or lineament of the ass about him—’Tis the sporting little filly-folly which carries you out for the present hour—a maggot, a butterfly, a picture, a fiddlestick—an uncle Toby’s siege—or an any thing, which a man makes a shift to get a-stride on, to canter it away from the cares and solicitudes of life—’Tis as useful a beast as is in the whole creation—nor do I really see how the world could do without it—

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Looking Back and Looking Forward

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

2009 turned out to be a particularly slow composing year for any number of reasons. Last year I finished the final quarter of “Permanently” from at least a moment; wrote one choral work and four short songs; and started – but didn’t finish – a short work for orchestra.

One reason for my lack of significant output turned out to be a little surprising – I didn’t have a teacher anymore! I’ve always been quite a self-starter, so I was a little surprised to realize that one reason why I wasn’t churning out music was that no one was looking over my shoulder, and I didn’t have to have a certain amount written each week for someone else to look at. I’ve temporarily changed that state of affairs – this past weekend, I started private study with Chester Biscardi, a web client and good friend (also the Director of the Music Program at Sarah Lawrence College). We’ve decided to use the orchestra piece I started in Ucross as a jumping-off point. I’m glad to be finishing the work finally, and to be working with Chet because he’s a fantastic composer – and by all reports a great teacher, as well!

While working on the orchestra piece (still as yet untitled!), I’ll also be working on a paraphrase of at least a moment for solo piano. Marc Peloquin and I have been putting together the next Tobenski-Algera Concert lately, and, while I didn’t plan on having one of my own works on the progrm for once, Marc insisted that I write a new piece for him to help balance the program. So, rather than wrack my brains for new material under such a tight deadline (the concert is March 9!), I’ve decided to rework the Koch cycle – shorten it considerably, and fold the vocal line into the piano. I consider it a “paraphrase” – a la DDT’s Acrostic Paraphrase, but I’m making the work shorter rather than three times the original length! I’ve made the bulk of the cuts already, so my next task is to start folding the vocal line into the piano part. I’ve been aching for a premiere of the cycle, so this performance will be a bit of a palliative.

In keeping with the arrangement kick…. Last year, I showed Chet the finished score of at least a moment – or, rather, emailed him the PDF of the score with MP3s of the MIDI playback from Sibelius. Since I loathe the voice sample used in Sibelius’s Kontakt Player, I always use flute instead. After listening to the MP3s and looking at the score, Chet made the comment that the vocal line stands so well on its own that I could easily pull out the text and use it as a flute piece. So, I shall! The only decision that remains to be made before I jump in with the Delete button is whether to transpose it or not. As it stands, the piece goes a minor third too low for a standard flute (the piece bottoms out at A3), though it’s ideal for an alto flute. So I have to decide whether to leave it as is and say it’s for alto flute, or bump it up a minor third. Or I could do a version of both!

Further on the compositional horizon – past the completion of several other works that have been in my compositional queue for far too long (completing the piccolo trumpet & string quartet piece for David Glukh; writing a duo for violin & piano for Roger Zahab) – I’ve been thinking quite a lot on a musical subject that I’ve frequently been told I should pursue: opera. Probably the main impetus for my starting to think seriously in this vein (I’ve frequently, and idly, thought about writing opera throughout the years, and have several ideas for larger-scale projects that I won’t tackle for a little while) is the fact that I’ve been lucky enough to go to the Met several times in the past few months: I saw Janacek’s From the House of the Dead (liked the music, hated the production) and Strauss’s Elektra (wonderful) and Ariadne auf Naxos (absolutely divine). I’ve started grabbing recordings of operas where I can find them and putting them on my iPod to listen to at work. (Recently heard Der Rosenkavalier for the first time and was absolutely transported!)

So I’ve been thinking about how I would go about writing an opera – what a good starting point would be. I may start with an existing short play, since that would probably be the simplest in terms of getting started and working on my own. I’ve definitely got my eyes peeled for a potential librettist, though. There are a few ideas bouncing around in my skull at the moment that have got me excited (not so much plot ideas, as structure and general concept), and I’d like to pitch them to a librettist. That is, if I can find one! I suspect that I could make one of my large-scale ideas happen fairly easily (and, frankly, I need to do it quickly if it’s going to happen!), but I’d like to have a chamber opera or two under my belt first. More details as things progress.

This sudden burst of compositional thought and action ties in closely with the second reason for my dearth of output last year. I spent all but a month and a half of 2009 unemployed (2009 didn’t manage to be the Year of Buying DVDs – instead it was the Year of Falling Behind on Rent!), which left me with a lot of free time. By all rights, I should have been churning out new works right and left! The problem, though, was that I had too much free time, and I fell into a horrible habit of intense procrastination. I would wake up late every day (between 10:30 and noon), putter around the apartment for a while, then settle in front of the computer for the rest of the day – frittering away the hours with blogs, silly internet videos, and watching movies and TV shows on Netflix. Needless to say, there was a bit of honest-to-goodness depression involved here, which also stemmed from the fact of my unemployment. I found that when I don’t have a draw on my time, my time tends to become somewhat valueless, and therefore meaningless. A day job – the eternal enemy – is actually a necessity at the moment. And for more than just paying the bills!

I recently started a new day job – some temp work, which allows me the flexibility to function as a musician – and the result is that I can now both pay the bills and feel as though I want to write again!

Now that I’ve discovered two creative danger zones for me, I can address the issues and fix them.

Hopefully 2010 will be a Year of Writing a Lot of Music. 2009 was a let-down in a lot of ways. Compositionally, I wrote far too little. Financially, I was always anxious and falling behind. Economically in general, things just sucked. And politically, the year was a little disappointing – although some good things were accomplished, those accomplishments went largely unnoticed amid the noise of Balloon Boy; the hyped-up, insane expectations of The First 100 Days; the utter absurdity of The Second 100 Days (as though we hadn’t head enough talking heads talking about other talking heads’ evaluations of etc); etc. But with the success of the first new T-A Concert, and the start of a new day job, I’m feeling energized and positive about this year.

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New American Art Song – Next Week!

Friday, January 22, 2010

Rehearsals for next Wednesday’s concert continue apace, and about 90% of the concert is ready to go. Marc and I have scheduled 2 more rehearsals, Sunday and Monday, and you can be sure that I’ll be drilling certain passages in the meantime.

I’m really, really happy with the song selections that we’ve made, and I very much look forward to presenting them next week. A few extra weeks of rehearsal would be nice. Even one more week would go a long way. But I also think that the concert would be good if we performed tomorrow.

In the past year, I’ve picked up a hobby horse that I absolutely love to ride: supporting the vocal line in a song or aria. I’ve hounded certain composers whose work I’ve performed about giving the singer more guideposts along the way – it’s something that I aim for in my own work, and is very important to making the singer’s job a little less aggravating. I think we often write harder music than is absolutely necessary so that we look smart to other composers. (“My music hard, and that makes me smart.”) It was certainly drilled into my brain by a number of past teachers that I had to write music that was super-smart, which clearly meant “not attractive” and “difficult”. I was even told that certain pieces of mine, typically the more well-received of my works, were “too beautiful” – which means exactly what? (I think that it means absolutely nothing.) One trap that we song composers fall into when we lose our bearings and stumble off into SmartyPants Land is to make our vocal lines extremely difficult. I don’t mind super-hard vocal lines, myself, so long as they’re supported in the piano, or whatever instrument(s) I happen to be singing with. A well-placed note that gives me my starting pitches – or that shows me that I’m on the right track – can go a really long way toward making me comfortable. It always feels nice to know that I’m not completely on my own – I question myself a lot less.

Accuracy is clearly something that is desired by both composer and performer. But if, after weeks of rehearals and private drilling of parts, I still can’t find my pitches, I have little choice but to approximate in performance. It’s not ideal, obviously. And something I maybe shouldn’t really admit to. But I also believe in being honest with composers or performers I work with. I’ve told performers on a number of occasions to approximate certain passages because, honestly, who but me is going to know the difference? I’d rather that they sing the pitches that I’d spent hours/days/weeks working on, but if it comes down to the singer sounding timid and unsure of themselves, or sounding as though they know what they’re doing even if they don’t really, I choose the latter any day. I’ve also had to tell some composers that unless they gave me more support in the piano part, I’ll probably end up singing pitches that are quite inaccurate, but I’ll sing them as though they’re right.

I’ve mentioned that I strive to support my singers as much as possible, but I know that I sometimes fall short. I definitely do in two of the songs from echoes, which I’ll surely be revising a bit after this performance. My supportive sins aren’t major, but I’ve found myself floundering in the middle section of “conspiracy”, and in the opening of “people shouting”. A few well-placed supportive notes would go entirely unnoticed by listeners, but would have made the songs simpler to rehearse! How bizarre to be having problems singing my own songs! Fortunately, the unsupported sections are short, and the vast majority of the cycle feels great.

I do want to single out one cycle in particular from this concert for the composer’s excellent work in supporting the vocalist at every turn in a way that is comforting to the singer and very elegant. Zachary Wadsworth’s Three Lullabies is really well-written, and I’ve felt super comfortable with it in rehearsals. At first glance, it’s a little intimidating (some harmonic nebulousness that seems prohibitive, and some seeming rhythmic scariness in the second song). However, his songs have given me the least worries, and have felt really relaxed from the beginning. At every entrance, and during tricky phrases, Zach gives little nudges in the right direction. He never outright doubles the vocal line, but selects important pitches (and sometimes rhythms) throughout many of the phrases and echoes them in the piano part. Unsupported, X or Y pitch may be difficult to grab out of thin air, but he always finds an elegant way to make his singer feel at home, even with tricky, chromatic passages.

There are some moments in the program where I’d like a bit more support from the piano part, or a little clearer engraving (another hobby horse, one I’ll surely address here soon), but I like to think of myself as a smart singer – I can figure it out (I have figured it out, but we’re all prone to slip-ups). I feel as though all that remains to be done now is to pound about 5 or 6 entraces into my brain. Beyond that, the program is performance-ready!

So everybody make your reservations now!

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Starfish mix-up

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Not long after I returned from WY, I was asked to email a copy of the Starfish lyrics to be printed in the program for this past Saturday’s concert. At the same time, I was dealing with the fact that my bathroom ceiling had partially collapsed while I was away, leaving a 4′x2′ hole in the sheet rock above my toilet. So, in my flustered state, I emailed off the wrong copy of the text – a MUCH earlier version that was barely recognizable as the text used in the piece. (Idris and I had spent a considerable amount of time reworking the text together so that it was, as Idris put it, “more musical”, though I saw it less as “more musical” than as “more streamlined” – we removed a number of lines throughout, and replaced a handful of words, as well.)

As a result, there was a considerable amount of confusion during the first few minutes of the performance of Starfish. The confusion in the room was palpable, but slowly dissipated as people abandoned the incorrect text, and just listened, instead. How embarrassing for me, though!

Let that be a lesson – no matter how a-twitter you may be, be sure to check yourself before submitting program notes and texts!

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Gulbransen 475797

Monday, August 10, 2009

The new piano arrived today: a Gulbransen upright, which was manufactured in 1959. (I learned this afternoon that the Story & Clark was manufactured in 1956.) I’ll post some photos of it later today or tomorrow – as soon as it’s all settled in, and I’ve managed to put my apartment back together.

The move was remarkably smooth, compared to when the Story & Clark was moved in. The Gulbransen moved out of David and Ray’s apartment on W 11th at 12.30, and made it up to my place in about an hour. (Also, who should I run into as I waited outside the building, but Joel! Not a major surprise, as he lives just down the hall from David and Ray, but a pleasant one nonetheless.) I’d managed to move the Story & Clark out of the way before I went down to 11th to meet the movers so that they could just put it exactly where I wanted it. It helped everyone that the 11th St building has an elevator; otherwise, carrying the piano down 7 flights of turning stairs would be little fun, and very expensive! My building, though, has two flights of stairs leading to my door, and the second flight has two nasty little turns that are more than a little tight. The second turn is the tightest, but surprisingly was the easier of the two this time. Last time, the three movers had major problems navigating that turn. Maybe it helped that there were only two movers this time? One less guy to get in the way?

Most unpleasant for the movers, though, was the heat and humidity. It was nearing 90° – a high so far this summer – and the humidity was pretty awful, as it has been recently. Hoisting a piano up a tight stairwell with no real ventilation to speak of – less than completely pleasant. I know I was sweating just watching them!

The piano was moved in without incident, though, and I’m already in love with it. I’m especially in love because it’s still in tune. I think it was last tuned in November, and it managed to hold its tune (save for a few keys at the extremes) through the move.

The Story & Clark… I can’t find a taker, unfortunately. I’ve called a few piano repair shops and asked if they’d like it for parts, but they don’t have much call for Story & Clark parts. And no artists have taken an interest in it. So, I may just make my own art project out of it. Bits of it I’ll turn into shelving. Some pieces will end up on my wall as froufy decoration. The rest… I’ll put out by the street for the garbage men to pick up.

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Piano #3

Monday, July 27, 2009

I’ve decided to give up on my upright.

The treatment worked for a bit, but already the piano sounds as though it hasn’t been tuned in a long time, and to repair it would cost far more than it would cost me to buy a new piano altogether. So, I’ve decided that I’d like to give it to a visual artist who can use it in their work. Or, honestly, anyone who wants it. If someone is willing to move it out, they can have it.

So what am I going to do for a piano now?

Two weeks ago, David offered me his upright, under the same conditions: if I move it, I can have it. He was given the piano by someone who lived in his apartment building and who needed the space. David’s now in the process of making space, and is passing on the piano since all of his work is done on his baby grand. Fortunately, I’ve seen this one in action already – he previewed a new piece on it in November, and both the piece and the piano sounded great. Any piano that can hold up under the force of David playing his own works….

So, I’ve been waiting to find a taker for mine before I further clutter my apartment with another piano. If I can’t find a taker in the next week or two, though, I’ll have to move David’s in anyway and put up with less space until I can get rid of the Story & Clark. Funny that I’ll have acquired three pianos in less than two years. Certainly not what I expected.

So: Any artists out there looking to use a piano as a part of their work? Or anybody looking for a piano that doesn’t really work? Look no further!

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Piano repair photos

Friday, June 5, 2009

I just found a few photos of when I did the piano treatment. Most of the photos were supremely blurry, but these two give a reasonable sense of how disruptive the process was. (And how small my apartment is.)

And here are a few post-repair, post-reorganization photos just for kicks.

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Playing catch-up

Thursday, May 28, 2009

I’ve been a bad boy lately, and have been neglecting my bloggerly duties. This has mostly been due to the wrapping up of my academic career at CCNY. Last Monday, I passed the Oral Examination in music analysis, concluding my academic responsibilities at the school. And two weeks prior, I submitted my thesis (at least a moment). Today is, in fact, the Commencement Ceremony, which I happily forewent in favor of sitting home and getting some work done (and not paying nearly $100 for the cap/gown/sash/etc that I’ll only wear once, then stick in a closet somewhere and never look at again).

So after two (kinda long) years, I have a Master of Arts in Music. Now I can… do… stuff…. Ok, I knew going into it that it was another piece of paper for my mother to put in the safe where she keeps all the important family things. It allowed me to study with David, which was my primary goal (the remainder, I mostly saw as jumping through hoops). And it’s a stepping stone to the doctorate, which I intend to do in about five or six years. I’m in no hurry to start – I’m all schooled out for the time being. But the doctorate will allow me to teach when I’m good and ready (I’m thinking my mid-40s) so that I can have some kind of pension in my old age. Such a practical plan!

Now that I’m done, I can start to concentrate again on things that fell by the wayside during the past two years, namely the Tobenski-Algera Concerts. It’s now been over a year since the last T-A concert, and I’m none too happy about that fact. We’ve had a few abortive attempts at relaunching the Series, but any number of random obstacles got in the way: scheduling conflicts with performers, difficulties getting commissioned composers to actually write the pieces that were commissioned (another rant for another day!), and (not least) the “school mentality” I got into that slowed certain areas of my productivity/motivation to a crawl. But we’re currently planning a NYC Gay Pride Week concert as a follow-up to our 2007 concert, which was such a success. More details on that as everything coalesces.

Plus, there’s another art song concert in the works for the early fall, and a concert with the ensemble Percussia.

I can also start applying to colonies for times other than the Summer, when it’s nearly impossible to get in. I love art colonies, so it’s been painful not having the ability to go when I’d like to. Or, really, at all, since everybody and their brother applies for the summer sessions when nobody’s teaching, leaving no room for young’uns like me.

Performance-wise, I premiered Casey Hale’s “Todesfuge” on May 12 with pianist Mia Elezovic at the CUNY Graduate Center’s Elebash Hall. It was a fun performance, and I look forward to the opportunity to sing it again.

I also sang an orchestrated version of “Permanently” from at least a moment for the CCNY Musicians Accord readings. The orchestration was a little difficult to get started, I’ll admit. I found it incredibly difficult to distance myself from my initial harpistic conception of the piece. When I brought in a first draft to David, he spent the majority of that lesson more than a little angry at my horrible orchestration (though an hour later he was praising my orchestration of a MacDowell piano piece, proving my point that the problem was a matter of personal distance from the original piece). The final result, though, was quite nice: some great shifts in color, and good use of the tutti ensemble.

And compositionally, I’ve finished the first and second movements of the Glukh piece. End-of-semester business forced me to put the piece aside for a few weeks, so I’m picking it back up next week. I completely rethought the Fanfare movement, and the music just exploded out of me. I originally wanted a full-ensemble fanfare, but got mired in canonic silliness that killed the movement. So, I took a step back and noticed that I hadn’t used the violins at all in the Chorale Trio preceding the Fanfare. Why not write a fanfare for the two violins? It’s a fresh sound, and completely unexpected, as far as fanfares go! The thought that completely freed me up, though, was about timing – I had originally wanted each movement to be roughly 3 minutes. So, why not cut it down to one? A one-minute fanfare for two violins. Perfect! In a matter of days, I had finished the first draft of the movement, and I finished the revisions within a week. Now, I’m waiting to start the Aria, which will be for the full ensemble.

I’ll wrap up with a tiny rant. Yesterday, I got back my materials from one of the competitions I entered this Spring (none of which I even managed to place in, by the way). Now, I don’t put the competitions’ return addresses on my SASEs, so I’m not entirely sure which competition these materials were from, but based on the piece I sent, and the fact that the score was clearly an ‘anonymous submission’, I have a pretty darned good idea which competition this was from. I won’t name names, but I will say that it wasn’t one of the big ones. Now, I’ve heard a lot of composer friends complain endlessly about the way that competitions treat applicants’ materials. (Poorly.) And I’ve had more than one score come back bent, scuffed, or with stains that weren’t there when I mailed it off to be judged. But never before have I had part of my application disappear. I mailed off a score and a CD. The CD, I put in a nice little jewel case to keep it from getting scratched or broken en route. I got back the score and the CD, but not the jewel case. Did the jewel case get lost? Broken? Accidentally put in with someone else’s application? Or just stolen? Regardless, I don’t care. The fact that the jewel case was missing shows a real disregard for applicants’ materials. I paid to have that anonymous score printed and bound, I bought the blank CDs, CD labels, and jewel cases, spent around $10 in round-trip postage, and paid an entry fee for this competition. Not to mention the time I spent considering my application, compiling all of the materials, and standing in line forever at the post office to get the application mailed by the postmark deadline. I think I deserve to get all of my materials back in the same condition that I sent them in. If the postal service damages my materials en route, that’s between me and them, but when a piece of my application (specifically, the only piece I can even think of reusing, since an anonymous score is worthless and [I think] a complete waste of my money) doesn’t even make it into the return envelope that I provided, there’s a real problem. Rant over.

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Post-treatment review

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

The tuner has come and gone, and the result is promising.

While we were chatting before he started working, the tuner mentioned that he doesn’t usually trust treatments like this to work, but that it was certainly worth a try, especially given the state of the piano when he last saw it a year ago. All during the tuning, I couldn’t help but wonder if and how badly the pins were slipping.

In the end, though, the tuner was pleased with the treatment. He thinks that the piano should keep its tune for much longer, though the pins most likely will continue to slip a little bit – more so than a normal piano, but infinitely less than before, when 15 seconds of light noodling could throw a key a whole tone or more off. His one ‘complaint’ was that he thought I should have doped the pins as well, then used the CA treatment afterward so that the wood could expand even more. But in the end, he said that I had done a good job with the treatment, and that I had served myself well by doing it on my own.

There’s still going to be some slippage, but the piano is actually useful, now, beyond being just a surface to stack things on. So, the treatment was essentially a success! Hooray!

My plan now is to buy a basic tuning kit to do touch-ups between tunings myself – it’ll save me some money in the long run, and I’ll learn a new skill. I also think it’s best if I start saving for a newer (or brand-new) piano – something without issues. The problem here, of course, is that the piano was a [string of expletives] to get up the stairs – and I paid professionals to move it! So, to get this one back down and a new one up…. Less than pleasant (which is why we pay people to do these things).

The sad thing is that this piano was rarely ever played before I bought it – it apparently sat in a corner for decades, drying out. The felt on the hammers didn’t even have dents from hitting the strings when I got it!

So far, though, I’m pleased with the outcome of the treatment. If there are any changes in the state of the piano, I’ll post here to let the internets know about it.

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