Obviously, it has been yet another busy time for me since I haven’t made a post in two months. Well, in that time I finished a symphonic work and had it read for my doctorate, subbed at a church and then became interim organist and director, and have been spending every waking moment on writing my dissertation. With all that going on, along with family, it has been a busy time and I unfortunately have neglected the blog. I have had all the intentions in the world to record the two Sonatas – I even had two failed recording sessions! I will try to get back to that soon.
In the mean time, I went through my things and I found a recording of a work that I have not yet published. I was commissioned by Michelle Kardos to write a work for organ and percussion for her graduate recital and I have the premier recording! It was a fun piece to write and one that I hope to edit in a publishable form soon. The percussion part needs some editing to be more accurate to my intentions. Percussion is my Achilles Heel in composing and I was really happy with the result here. From my perspective, I simply went to town with the percussion.
Let me present you with the first problem in my head: the organ is not a percussive instrument and keeping time between the two performers would be incredibly challenging. Let alone the space between the pipes, console and percussion instruments, coordination at the very least is a huge problem. First solution: an ostinato pulse throughout the entire work. Second, the contrast between the instruments need to work together. Next solution: have the percussion move through stations of similar instruments. Third thought and solution: if the percussion is progressing through various “stations,” than the form of the work should reflect that. Five stations and form moments seem correct; divide the work in a “mirror” fashion. As in, the form of the piece would reflect an ABCBA like form. I also had the stations reflect that as well – metallic percussion in the B sections, snare and tom toms in the As and C is something totally different! Final compositional consideration: this is a performance work not a liturgical one. That means I use materials that I might not normally use and in this case it is a tone row and its matrix. I decided to do it a tonal manner similar to the composer Joseph Wilcox Jenkins.
Before presenting the work, I want to give you all who read this an awesome quote. When I interviewed Olivier Latry for my doctorate, I mentioned that I was writing this work, specifically about the challenge of writing the non-percussive organ. His response was something like, “It depends on who the organist is.” So brilliant. I do want to mention the quality of the recording – it’s not perfect. That’s not because of the recording engineer – it’s more to do with the church space. As mentioned earlier, the percussion was physically closer to the mics than the pipes were and the diffusion in the church space was dominated by percussion. Finally, about the title: I wanted to write some heavy metal for the organ. I internet searched “heavy metal” and after the musical genre, it gave me “high density metal.” Sold.