No More Catchy Tunes!

I will not write another catchy tune for a long time. Theatre Hopkins’ Arabian Nights is up, and reviewed very nicely by a Baltimore radio station, and the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival’s Twelfth Night is going up on Friday. This is definitely the summer of straight plays, and when actors sing in straight plays, they need catchy tunes. People don’t usually ask me for catchy songs with memorable tunes, but now people have my ‘Come Away, Death’ 12-bar blues stuck in their heads all day, and I wake up singing the fart song from Arabian Nights at 3 AM. I’m proud of the work I’ve done on these two plays, but now it’s time to write something that just isn’t catchy. No clean four-bar phrases, no regular chord changes, and Nothing Catchy for at least a month. Until then I think I’ll dive back into chamber music with an expansion on the piece I wrote for SONAR last February. That was a five-minute piece for Pierrot quintet, loosely referencing the Goldberg Variations. I’m planning to expand it with a section based on a Machaut Rondeau treatment I did for another piece a few years ago, and some fiddling around with the Epitaph of Seikilos, which is the earliest piece of written music we have. Maybe, maybe when all that is done I’ll write another song with verses and a chorus, maybe……

Still not stopping for sleep or food

Hey team. I’m just checking in again in the middle of my marathon of work. Arabian Nights is finished, and opening a week from Friday. We’ve got a lot of work to do in that time, but luckily the cast is very talented, and very devoted, and I think we’re going to open strong (::knocks on wood::), even though we’re opening on Friday the 13th. Check out the Theatre Hopkins web-site for tickets. I’ve also got another job, writing songs for the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival’s production of Twelfth Night. This is the summer of plays for me, and I’m loving it. The production is set in 1920s New Orleans, but we’re not putting up a sign saying ‘New Orleans’ or anything. I think that’s a great way to go, and so far I’m very pleased with everyone I’m working with. This is a lot to write in a short period of time, but honestly, that’s exciting for me. One last thing, we scheduled the Seafarer shoot, and are going ahead with the river at dawn scenario. Managing the truly preposterous number of details involved with a film shoot is a great, but difficult, new experience for me. I am, though, going through metaphorical stress-balls at a rate hitherto unseen on planet earth. Good thing I love my job, and love long hours. I’ll check back in when my blood pressure is enough to form diamonds.

Don’t stop working, ever.

Sorry for the lack of posting, my life’s gotten a bit ridiculous. I’ve been graduating, moving, looking for a proper day job, etc. Now, although I don’t have the time to be doing this, I wanted to post about the part of my being overworked that is the best: the writing music part. I’m coming in for a landing on Arabian Nights, and it’s been a bit of a ride. Adding musicians, losing musicians, having musicians go to Europe (a surprising number of them did that, really), or having them get attacks of carpal tunnel so I have to re-write their instruments out of the score. For all of that, and the insanely short timescale, I’m loving this job. Unlike most composing, which is about expressing something vague, or an abstract form, writing for a play, and in particular this play, is about getting a very specific job done. If it doesn’t make the audience feel a certain way, or advance the plot in a certain way, all without getting in the way of something, it’s wrong and has to go. It makes my job a good bit easier, and in many ways more fun to have such a clear way of judging what I’ve written. I’m also finishing up a recording session edit on ‘The Stain of Love’ (Jason premiered it wonderfully and the recording session went very, very well), and ramping up for a film shoot of ‘The Seafarer’ in mid-June. It looks like we’re going to be shooting at dawn in a construction site by a river, but our plans keep changing, so honestly, who knows. Hopefully I won’t be gone as long again this time, and my life will return to its normal insanity soon.

I’ve got about a week.

I have a week to write whatever I want. Next Friday I’m having a long lunch meeting with my director for Arabian Nights to talk about the specifics of what she wants for the music in the play. After that I’m going to be locked in, writing Arabian Nights all night, every night. For the moment, though, I’m done with all my commissions, and I can write whatever I want. Right now, that means ‘Summer’s Twilight’, my Midsummer opera. I’m happy with the progress I’m making, but I wish I could just stop my life for about a month and write it. This week isn’t near enough time to get a significant chunk under my belt, but I’ve been dreaming of a draft of this thing for so long… 

Arabian Nights – round 1

I’m music directing/composing the Theatre Hopkins production of Mary Zimmerman’s adaptation of “The Arabian Nights”. The show goes up in the last three weeks of June, and there’s a lot to do. The play has 83 roles, which I’ve broken down into 13 actors, including two who basically only play instruments. Everybody plays instruments, everybody sings, everybody acts. Nobody ever leaves the stage. It’s an intense show. This early in a project, I wouldn’t usually want to post about it. This time, though, because of the structure of it, I’m doing things differently. I’ve made a complete outline of all of the music I plan to write, in excruciating detail, without actually writing a note of it. This is the first time I’ve ever done anything like that, but it was absolutely the right thing to do. The number of people used in this production is uncertain. Depending on who you have to do the play, how the 83 roles are divided can vary. In order to make sure I had enough instruments to do what I wanted to do musically, I had to do a thorough breakdown of the roles, and plan out what I wanted musically. That sounds like it should be simple, something one can do scene by scene, saying “For that love scene I’ll need a little love music”, and moving on. But to have the level of security I wanted, I needed to be more specific. What I wound up writing explains not only who is playing what when, but how what they’re playing relates to the story. In a play, I always want the music to be serving an explicit storytelling function. If someone in the audience says, “why is there music now?”, then I’ve done my job poorly. I now have, with no pitches at all, a complete account of what it is I need to write for each instrument for each moment. Every time a texture changes, a theme appears, I have a note of it. This could turn out to either be very useful or basically irrelevant. In general, I’m suspicious of pre-composition. Usually, when people plan out the form of a piece before writing it, they wind up writing a completely different form from the one they planned. That might happen to me, but given the emotional dictates of the play, that is, given the detailed and subtle story I’m obligated to tell, I don’t think that will happen. In actuality, I think I’ll be applying this technique whenever I work on a play, and possibly even an opera. If I had a constant answer to that irritating operatic question, “Why are all these people singing?”, I could be very certain to hold the stage. Overall, I’m happy with this new technique, and optimistic about the production. Check out my site (linked up in the blogroll) or Theatre Hopkins for more information. 

The Stain of Love

I’ve finished, at long last, ‘The Stain of Love’. It’s a song cycle for baritone and piano that Jason Buckwalter commissioned. The text is early William Carlos Williams poems. It’s a little strange that it took me so long to finish the songs. Three songs just didn’t make the cut into the cycle, and half-written drafts are sitting in my filing cabinet next to the polished score. One of the odd things for me about the piece was limiting my treatment of text to just song form. Usually, I put theatrical elements into everything with words that I write. My last song cycle had an acting pianist, and was covered in theatre. For this piece, at Jason’s suggestion, I had to restrain myself to art song. Trying to squeeze all my ideas into pitches and rhythms doesn’t seem like a difficult thing for a composer, but that’s just how much I love theatre. Jason’s going to premiere the cycle on one of his degree recitals at Peabody this spring.

Unabashed giddiness/plug

So, I’ve just learned that my solo acting cello piece, ‘The Seafarer’, will be done at the Kimmel Center’s Live in the Plaza series on May 18 of this year. This’s going to be a big performance for me, and hopefully a stepping stone to bigger things. I heard all this on the night of the Iowa caucuses, and given how much of a democracy geek I am, that made it a very good night.

‘Expanse’ done

So, I finished that cello solo. It was strange, after my first pass on it, which lacked rhythms and articulations and dynamics, all I did was add those things, make two held double-stops re-attack, and add a bit to one section that sounded a bit too much like the NBC theme (Eb, C, Ab in this case). The piece turned out to be nine minutes long, but only three pages. It’s very slow. But still, writing that much music in one pass with so little changing later, I’m a little suspicious of that. Anyway, I gave a copy to Marcus at his birthday party in DC last Saturday. He was pleased that I’d written him the piece he asked for, but I got this weird feeling. Giving a musician a piece of music as a present is a lot like giving someone work, all wrapped up with a bow. Anyway, I hope he likes it as much as I do, and I can’t wait to hear it. 

a cello fantasy

I’ve been feeling a little down. Last time that happened for any noticeable length of time I wrote a marimba piece called, unsurprisingly, “I Don’t Know Why I Feel This Way”. This time it’s a little different, and a little harder for me, but I still had a fit of fantasy-composing. Rarely does writing work for me the way it does in stories. A composer is supposed to have a tremendous feeling, and then communicate it through writing instrumental music – one untarnished feeling. That’s happened to me a total of twice now. This time I wrote a cello fantasy. I didn’t write it in a usual way. I just came up with pitches, and an occasional hint of a rhythm. It’s achingly slow, and sometimes when I go back over it I like the harmonies and the lines, and sometimes I don’t. My next thing will be to go back over it and make the rhythmic patterns work out. I know where the dynamics are, about, but not the rest. I honestly don’t expect to move any of the pitches at all (usually I re-write at least a bit). It’s odd. Still nobody’s realized I’ve got this blog – good and bad, fun for anyone who reads back the whole thing I guess. If Marcus Johnson sees it, he’ll realize that I’ve written him a birthday present. We’ll see what happens. 

Opening Aria

So now I’ll find out if Caitlin’s discovered I have a blog yet. I’ve got a full draft of her opening aria for Midsummer. I wrote the main theme and a partial draft in like August, so it’s good to have the whole thing properly drafted. Also, I’ve re-written the opening scene of the opera about four different ways. I think this way is finally it. Three parts: Hermia aria, trio with Lysander and Helena, Helena aria. Dispense with all the exposition right away, in as clean a structure as we can. I only have two concerns about the aria as it stands, well, three really. I have a non-thematic section in the beginning of the piece, just after the first big arrival. I’ve given it a fairly rigorous atonal structure. It’s got two voices accompanying, and they’re both doing this same wedge pattern in a vague canon type thing. It line up with the voice nicely, and my hope is that it makes the return of the themes in multiple voices later more compelling. That is, state the themes, don’t use them for a bit, then bring them back. My concern  is that the atonal-wedge-canon-thing might be a bit too murky to fit. Second is one interior voice which is thematically derived, but I’m just note sure about it. Maybe the harmonies aren’t right, maybe I need to state some different thematic material right then at a different pitch level, maybe more voice crossing, or less? I dunno – it might be fine, I’m just not quite sure about that line just yet. Third, and finally, the first and last big statements of the theme are identical. In an earlier partial draft they were slightly different, with the second one peaking a whole step lower. I may go back to keeping them a bit different – might just be a little cleaner. But then again, the two identical statements might sound a bit obvious. I don’t have a dogmatic view about repetition, for me it’s all about context, and I’m just not sure whether or not it will seem too obvious when it’s all finished. Those are my three, and admittedly small, issues with that. But on the whole – Hurray! I finally have Hermia/Caitlin’s opening aria! -ish!