The first Variation, Progression, is a development of the opening progression. At it’s core, it simply moves pieces of the chordal progression around, first with the piano and later with a plugin. It is also in 3/4 rather than 9/8 and introduces the use of piano that will be present throughout most of the work. It’s also the first time I use some non-instrument plugins, again informing what is to come in the work. The first one that is the most notable is Krush, a down-sampling plugin that is freaking amazing. The other is Raum, a Native Instrument’s reverb plugin that was free for a brief time and is really high quality.
What I love about this movement is that it really helped me develop a technique for how I moved forward with the writing process in this project. For me, the work lies somewhere between composition and improvisation. It’s been a while since I have posted an improvisation, but I still improvise regularly in liturgies and try to keep improv in my fingers. In this movement, I took the chord form the ending of the previous movement and slowly adjusted the chord one note at a time until it was something different. One fun thing I have learned about improvising is how to mess with time or rather the perception of time. There’s an aspect of misdirection with the noisy synth in the first minute, but that allowed me to shift the chord in the first minute and a half or so. That allowed me to change up how things progress in comparison to the first two movements.
As I was formulating the entire work, the first and most obvious choice to me was to simply start messing with that circular progression used in the Aria. This is also the movement that introduces the use of the piano which was somewhat improvised. I’ll come back to that part, the improvisation in a moment – I just want to address on formal element that I carried over from the Aria. Each of the movements are variations on the previous movement and the general form of pretty chordal progressions to distortion and dissonance is how the Aria ends. I like the idea that each variation changes in some manner from the previous movement rather than variations based on a single musical idea.
Back to the piano improvisation as I want to speak to an element of the creative process. As I was completing the album, I found myself contemplating my interactions with my various ideas and the end result. I have had this interaction between composition and improvisation that is not a usual part of my creative output, meaning they don’t often directly mix into an end result. While the end result here is a fairly coherent piano part plus a few extra (HELM) synth elements, a movement like this one is more improvisatory to my ears than something specifically planned out. To be clear, it was planned out, to some extent, but with room for improvisation, the the progressions were certainly chosen on the fly.
Last weekend I released an album! Unlike most of the posts I make here, this music is not related to the organ, improvisation, or any kind of choral music. This is not outside of my ballpark per se, but rather something I have wanted to indulge in for some time. The basic premise of the album, from my perspective, is an etude, a study work to teach myself several DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) plugins. The plugin limitations start with these instruments: HELM and two piano sounds, Addictive Keys Studio Grand and Spitfire Audio LABS Soft Piano. HELM was at the forefront of the project. The piano instruments were used generally by me as a tool for improvisation and I did a very small amount of quantizing to keep it feeling human (a.k.a. click tracks = metronomes). I also used Izotope’s Ozone 9 Elements on all of the tracks for LUFS (loudness unit full scale) and this really cool stereo imager thingy. I’ll get to the other three plugins when we get there.
Today I present one single track “Aria,” that sets the general tone of the whole work. I have said in this blog before that a piece of music, no matter what genre, geographic area, time period, etc., will tell you, the listener what is about to unfold in the broadest terms. This being an aria, I wanted it to be pretty and pleasing before it becomes something else. The progression is pretty simple, the meter is in nine, which makes for very un-square cycles, and only uses HELM. It’s all fairly straight forward!
Happy New Year and more importantly, happy no more 2020! (I guess?) For the first time in a long time in my life, this week has represented a week without expectation. I recently updated my bio as I completed my DMA, but its completion blended in with the pandemic and my work-life. In fact, the past 5 or 6 years have been full of projects and works based upon the expectations of the profession I have sought. Which is fine! But it meant that many of the things that I have written about, posted, shared, and put out in the world is based on a certain amount of expectation. The downside is that I’m always creating something NEW, which again, is fine.
That all being said, I recently recorded the Theme and Variations from Organbook, BCB 18. It is a work that stands out to me from that collection, which has very much influenced my compositions in the past decade. I haven’t recorded much from it because Carson Cooman recorded eight movements with fantastic results. The Ostinato movement has had particular success HERE and HERE. I love both interpretation and do not feel that anything needs to be added to its lexicon.
As mentioned above, the Theme and Variations helped guide me to a simpler way to achieve a variety of outcomes with a small amount of music. This particular movement led to the creation of two chorale variations: Erhalt uns Herr and Besançon. Both of those works, in my opinion, are fantastic works for both liturgy and concert, with emphasis in the pedagogical realm. In fact, I think the three of them would make a nice “Suite” for a concert. But that’ll have to wait until we can once again gather. Keep an eye out for more works of latter days! Pick up the Organbook today!
Well, it’s taken quite a while to get this recording posted, but I finally got a decent recording of (what is likely to be) the final of this series of recent pieces. All of them are free on IMSLP and they are all grouped in threes as a sort of prelude, offertory, and postlude. Much like the Miniatures, I write these works as an outlet to get notes on the page. These current works have been in part, a way to creatively deal with the pandemic and the isolation it has brought to our lives and hopefully give something back to the musical community. It’s all part of my general philosophy of composition: namely, I as composer should not only strive to write challenging works, I should also give back with works that are accessible to more people who want to engage in the musical experience. There is certainly more to it than that; I have whole thoughts about writing music for children that I haven’t truly explored compositionally, but someday I hope to.
Philosophical meanderings aside, I don’t know that I have a lot to say about this Chorale, Scherzetto, and March. There are days when compositions just “write” themselves and this was the case here. Again, I was not looking to move mountains with these pieces, just offer practical pieces for liturgical use or early pedagogy. The Chorale is in a sort of fluid French manner that I love, the Scherzetto has a pedal tone ostinato throughout with a changing figure above, and the March is the most straight forward of all, the type of “Finale” at the end of service or suite of movements. My biggest issue in delivering this work had more to do with recording issues than anything else. But that’s my problem and not something anyone else has to worry about. Download the work here on IMSLP and go make some glorious music!
This piece has actually been up on IMSLP for a little while now, but I didn’t want to write about it until I had a chance to record it. The previous two pieces that I wrote had three parts to them each: blank, blank, and blank. The idea being that they would fit a liturgy nicely with a prelude, offertory, and postlude. The other element I kept in mind was play-ability with both of them possibly being done with manuals only or with pedals. With that in mind, I recorded the first two on a portative organ at St. Andrew’s. For the third (and final?, I am not sure yet) work in this series, I felt that an all manuals work needed to be next. Consequently, I didn’t feel like the portative would express the music as well as the large E.M. Skinner/Lulley organ.
Two things about the individual movements: I wrote an invention because I have a student currently studying it and thought it would make a nice middle movement. Inventions are not strict in their form or formula, as say, compared to a fugue. But when teaching counterpoint in composition, it works well as a culmination of two part exercises. (In my method of teaching counterpoint in composition, Sinfonia would be end goal for three voices and Fugue is of course, four.) Secondly, the Sortie went through a lot of drafts. I love using minimal techniques and uneven numbers of measures; it keeps the piece disproportionate in just the right way.
Composing a symphonic piece is a lot of work. Paschal, as has been alluded to in the previous post here and here, is a piece that I am immensely proud of and also something I wish I could restart or at least give my 5 year ago self some advice. But when it came time to finish the work, I had several outcomes and outlines that saw the work finish in a number of different ways. Ultimately, I chose a “slow-fast-slow” model for the entire work, which creates a more thoughtful work as it doesn’t end with a bang. Originally, I wanted to end with a bang, but time was not my friend in writing this work and sometimes that benefits the creative process.
Unlike the first two movements, which have a hodge-podge of material that developed over a long period of time, this third movement was created last and free from any revisions of earlier drafts. That allowed me to finish Paschal as a summary of all the things that came before it and look at the first two movements with fresh eyes; namely, only at the material that is actually in the pieces and nothing of the revisions or musical material from earlier drafts. This lead me to a singular thought, if not an obvious one: the last movement should be a summary of the first two.
And then, if the first two were in some part about Spring while using the chants from Easter, then it would make sense that the final movement would be about those voices. The original conceit for the ending involved the Te Deum chant and I decided to include that one idea as all the chants for the day are represented in this final movement. The other thought I had, generally, was to reverse what has happened in the first two movements. The end of the third movement is similar to the beginning of the first movement, the middle of the work includes a high point similar to the second movement and final movement ends where the second left off – again, the last movement is meant to mirror the first two in some sense. I wish I could say this is my idea but it is something I lifted from Kaija Saariaho and my research into Maan Varjot, which has mirror like reflections in its overall form.
The last insight I will offer for this piece is small: I recorded myself singing some of the chants slowly and then used the program Spear to analyze and show the harmonic spectra of my singing. I then approximated it with the symphony at certain points. I never intended to follow a strict, spectralist sense of realizing a harmonic spectra, but it did offer a guiding hand in how to orchestrate the chants in a different way than the previous two movements.
I said it before and I am going to say it again, I am really proud of this work! If it hasn’t come across in my writing here, that surprises me. I may have spend too many years working on it, too many drafts, and as a part of my doctoral studies, there was an inevitability to its creation which led to the general attitude of being done with it. When I actually heard it performed, all that went away and the hard work showed itself. Paschal could use some more editing, but I need to it go and be a piece in the world. I hope to someday return to the symphony for composition.
I posted this video and score about a week ago but didn’t want to write about it because I had just posted the second movement of Paschal. The corona virus and my current position at St. Andrew’s Episcopal has afforded me one small thing: the opportunity to write a series of generally manuals only works that could work on a big instrument and a small portative, like the one at the church! Quite some time ago, I was commissioned by Carson Cooman to write a work with this in mind and it produced the Fantasia primi toni. One of the reasons I recorded it on the Paul Manz practice organ at Duquesne was to demonstrate the piece’s ability to adapt itself to various instruments.
When the pandemic caused churches to close and many moved services to streaming, my original thought was to use the portative for St. Andrew’s. Consequently, it had me looking at my manuals only liturgical music and as a composer, what that might mean for new compositions. This has manifested itself in a number of compositions before, in particular the Miniatures volume I and volume II. After releasing some compositional energy with this free work, I wanted to continue this general trend and compose more works in this Bachian vein, but with my own small twists.
And here is the next one: it shares the fact that it has three movements, but the first two in this one are somewhat related. If I were to use this liturgically, I would probably do the fantasy and variation as prelude and the toccatina as postlude. I have not fact checked this, but the melody may or may not come from Vierne – which is just fine as I love music that is strongly related to composers who influence me. There are certainly some Messian-like moments as well. Listen to the work and get the score here on IMSLP!
Obviously, I haven’t posted in about a month or so, partly due to the end of the semester and partly due to defending my research for my doctorate, WHICH I PASSED. Woo! As of this post, I am not done as there are revisions expected. I am, of course, completely fine with that as I and my committee want the best possible outcome. I have plans to escape my home to work on the piece and hopefully make a recording of an upcoming work. Stay tuned for that!
In the mean time, as I scour my recordings to decide what to post next, I thought it would be worth covering a movement that I uploaded a few weeks ago but never wrote about. That would be the second movement of my symphonic work Paschal. I did discuss the first movement some in this post here, but I did not really reveal any information about its composition. I seemed to have spent that post preparing myself for this new, shelter-in-place reality that we are experiencing and may continue to in the coming summer months. (Heck, were not even going to Montana this year!)
Without intending to do so, I am happy that I get to discuss the building blocks in some detail now as the first two movements are really strung together by the development of their composition. I mentioned that the original ORIGINAL version was Messiaen inspired and about 20 minutes long. That version was never read through and when I started my studies, the piece began anew from scratch except one basic element: the chants from Easter. The first two movements were once one movement with it beginning about a minute into the first movement and ending where this movement does. The chants are not obvious in any way, but they are there. If you pay attention to the bass pitches at the end of this second movement, it makes up the beginning of the Victimae paschali laudes, the sequence for Easter. All of the chants before that point are there and in liturgical order up to that point. While the first movement only uses the introit, the second movement incorporates the psalm, the alleluia, and as mentioned, the sequence. The last movement, as might be predictable, uses the offertory and communion. More on that last movement soon (though the video is up at the time of this post).
Listening to the first two movements back to back, it is clear in my mind how they were once a single musical goal and now they are two whole movements. What is interesting to me is how these sorts of things evolve and what was once a 20 minute single movement work to a 7 minute single experiment to a five movement something-or-other becomes a typical slow-fast-slow symphonic work. Everytime I listen to each movement now, it works better than it should based on the journey the musical material took, but that is one of the weird things being a composer. Sometimes things turn out better than expected.
I am going to take a brief detour on my symphony piece Paschal to share a quick piece I wrote and recorded in two days. I am currently the interim organist and director of music at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Highland Park, a lovely place for music. Many moons ago, I did my second Artist Diploma recital there on the rebuilt Skinner/Luley organ. (Peter Luley and Associates is a local organ builder who is wonderful and a good friend!) But as the shelter in place situation stands, all services have moved to online streaming and we have been using the chapel and the portative organ.
In a moment of spontaneity, I intended to write an brief Prelude and Fugue for manuals and it turned into something bigger than I expected. It really needed a middle point and thus the Adagio was added – I have not missed the fact that Bach has a Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in the same key areas. I was certainly thinking of that wonderful piece by Bach when writing this one. Every once in a while, things just click and this was one of those moments. Because of writing it so quickly, I decided it would be a good free piece to add to IMSLP and can be found here on this link. Enjoy the piece and play if you can!