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.
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