Month: February 2017

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Improvisation: Liturgical

It’s been a little while since I have posted an improvisation and part of that is due to technical difficulties as well as the complications to my life and livelihood.  The largest change is in where and when I am playing at the Monastery.  Due to serious illness, my counterpart in the Retreat Center of the Monastery, I have been playing for all of those services and Masses as well.  One of those additions has been to play for a Friday evening Mass as a beginning to the retreats.

You may notice a lack of video as I usually include myself playing.  I have been trying for several weeks to get a good video and they never seemed to turn out due to various technical reasons (that’s code for unfocused lens, bad angle, forgot to hit record…).  So here it is, an improvisation without video.  One little bit about what musical material I am using: in melodic minor, with raised scale pitches 6 and 7, five of those notes create a whole tone series, leaving out do and re.  That’s cool and I used it.

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Composition: Organ

I have finally reached the movement in The Divine Office that is my earliest “official” composition.  I have works that I wrote during my time as an undergraduate, including the much of the music for my wedding, that I don’t take all that seriously.  Most of it is, honestly, not very good.  It is the sort of thing written by an inexperienced composer.

Except for this singular work!  I have at different times attempted to regularly compose (and improvise) contrapuntal works to keep the techniques solidly in my tool box.  This movement is the one example of a trio that I kept around because I simply liked it.  There are several contrapuntal errors that I overlooked, but as so many works even in the vain of the great masters, the piece is more important than the rules.

Okay, that is quite the statement, but I think I realized from the beginning that my desire for the music to work is more important than any musical “rule” given.  I have recently been improvising canons because I find them (always) challenging.  It has been unfortunate that the recordings have not turned out well.  But much as improvisation has guided my aesthetic, here is a great example from the beginning of my explorations that is really nice and points to many of my interests intersecting the ancient and the modern.