Mene, mene

In some ways I found this last project to be rather easy. Perhaps "easy" is the wrong word. I certainly put a lot of work into it, but maybe to say it came naturally would be better. There are a lot of reasons for this, I believe.

Firstly, I already had my creative juices flowing after the first project. I didn't do a whole lot over the summer, so sitting down in September and trying to crank a few pieces out was difficult at times. Not only did I have to get myself in the right mode, but I had to settle back into the school routine at the same time. After completing my Three Solitudes I only needed a short break before I felt ready to dive back into composing. In fact, I'd already had some ideas floating around my head well before the project began.

Combining music with poetry was also something new and exciting. And rather than slow me down in the compositional process, I actually found it helped out quite a lot. Not only did the text generate music, but I found the music was self-generative. I've never before told someone else's story in my own words (music). I've used my own text before to write songs, but in doing so I'm almost doubling my work because I have to tell the story through my words as well as through my music. If I get stuck in telling one side of the story, chances are the other side will also get stuck. But with this project the text was already there. I just had to know how retell it.

It helped that the poem is so beautiful anyway. I really felt a connection when I first read it, and knew right away that it was the perfect text to use. I still wish that I'd been the one to have written it first. So in that way, I wasn't even really telling someone else's story. It was already mine.

As I mentioned before, not using a piano in the ensemble also changed my compositional process. Rather than be concerned with my capabilities and limitations as a musician, I could focus more on the music and the sonic landscape. I allowed myself to write exactly what I wanted to hear and worry later about whether or not it could be done.

In a way it would almost appear that the piece has changed in little or subtle ways since its beginning, but it's deceiving. It's true that I changed little once I'd finally committed to a passage, but I probably spent just as long as I usually would have coming up with the right passage in the first place. So from one week to the next it might not look very different, but from day to day, or more likely hour to hour it could go through many changes.

Of course I say all of this without yet having heard the piece yet (I consider the MIDI file a rather poor representation). I finally have a rehearsal this week with my performers, so I will see what works and what needs work. I do not foresee any radical changes. I think I said what I needed to say and in the proper language too.