After a frankly hellish few months at the day job (everyone agrees), I was finally able to take a few days away from the office to, y’know, get some writing done.
With a whopping FOUR commissions on my plate, all of which need to be done by March 10, I was wildly behind on getting things done, and desperately needed some uninterrupted writing time. Or, at least, minimally interrupted. Ok. A few hours strung together here and there that didn’t take place after I’d been sitting behind a desk for eight hours, to which this weekend was both perfectly and horribly suited. Perfectly because it was already a long weekend, and appending two days to it would be ideal; horribly because I knew that Saturday would be devoted to preparation for a concert I performed on, and I had tickets to see Powder Her Face on Sunday – both of which would absolutely involve carousing afterward.
So, I took Friday and today off, and have spent a significant amount of time either at the piano or in front of the computer.
On Friday and Saturday, I did the latest round of revisions to Only Air so that it’s ready to show to the last in a short series of mentors who I want feedback from. So far, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive and blissfully constructive.
Here is a jpeg of page 1 of the score (yes, I know that there are a still a few engraving errors):
Yesterday afternoon I finished my choral setting of They Lie at Rest, from a longer poetic work by Christina Rossetti. As always, it was exciting to put a double bar on a new piece. When I sat down at the piano yesterday, I had the final two stanzas of the poem to set, and they flowed out with a minimum of fuss. I also learned that there’s no singing allowed at the memorial the choir had expected to perform it at, so they’ll just do it elsewhere on the same trip.
Here are the cover and first page:
And today I’ve sketched out all but 5 1/2 lines of Voices, the companion piece to When Music Sounds.
A snippet of sketches:
If only every day were like today!
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