Category: Composition

For this week, the 4th Sunday in Lent, the Improvisation is a little more joyous and clear.  One of the aspects that I have enjoyed in writing these pieces is letting them be what they are rather than coming to an obvious conclusion.  Not that the latter is a bad thing (see the Miniatures), but sometimes a lack of ending is important.  Lent is certainly a season that anticipates something immense and the music should reflect that.  This 4th Sunday is of course Laetare Sunday, reminding us to rejoice.  The 4th Improvisation has a clear structure and form, a reminder of the powerful moments to come.

PS: It was just pointed out that the third system had no repeats but had text that read implied the repeats.  That text has been taken out.  In actually performing the work, I found that repeat to be intrusive to the flow of the work.

Today I present the next two Lenten Improvisations.  The first, Improvisation II, has similarities to Improvisation I, but fleshed out in a different manner.  The second, Improvisation III, is an inverted canon.  Of course, that’s a simplification of technique, but each is again an exploration of a single stop color that can be found on most instruments.  I continue to find the exploration of an individual stop to be challenging and the challenge is what makes it inviting!

  

Greetings on this First Sunday in Lent!  For the first time ever, I am making a post that does not involve some kind of Youtube video.  Mostly due to time, I don’t foresee myself having the opportunity to make any recordings of this next round of short pieces over the coming weeks.  But I still want to get these works out in a timely manner, namely one piece per week this coming Lenten season.  Without further ado, here is the first Lenten Improvisation.

It is a very introspective piece and one that certainly ends on a musical question mark.  I think that’s incredibly appropriate to the Lenten season as it anticipates something to come.  It is a time of preparation and having music that reflects something coming is hugely important.

As with the previous post, I have been revisiting some of my earliest works.  Today brings the middle movement from my Suite (Mouvement), also from 2006.  While I will freely admit that the first and last movements aren’t all that great, I do like this middle one quite a bit.  It certainly shows the very strong Denis Bédard influence that pervades much of my music, but particularly in my first pieces.  In fact, if you put my Suite next to his Suite, it’s pretty obvious how much I paralleled his work in mine.  Of course, these years later, I do not think it is a bad thing by any means to imitate those whose works deserve imitation.  I’m just happy that this particular movement holds up fairly well by itself.

I recently was revisiting some of my first works when I discovered this little gem from the collection Five Short Pieces (2006).  The entirety of the work is dedicated to Denis Bedard and Rachel Alflatt, but they were written for Rachel in a particular situation.  The church she worked made a decision to have announcements happen before the prelude and that turned the prelude into an awkward affair.  She was looking for short pieces, about 2-3 minutes in length, and I did my best at the time to make that happen.  Of the five that I wrote, this is easily my favorite.

Happy Gaudete Sunday!  Or Pink Sunday, depending on what meme you may have seen recently.  I was hoping to post an improvisation, but what I did wasn’t worthy of the website.  Instead, it seems to be an appropriate time to show off the the complete Miniatures.  That link gives you access to a PDF of all 8 Miniatures in a formalized BCB Baetz Edition publication.  If you haven’t seen any of of the posts yet, you can listen to it all here, where I have made a series of Youtube recordings:

Enjoy the pieces and happy Advent in case the opportunity doesn’t arise for me to say so before Christmas!

 

And here is the final piece in my (likely first) set of Miniatures, Miniature VIII (Carillon).  As mentioned in a previous post, I said that I had a loose plan for the overall arc of the eight Miniatures, with the intention of ending with something big.  With that, I actually this second or third, fairly early in the process.  What I find interesting about the generation of these eight pieces is that this was perhaps when I started moving slightly towards a Vierne aesthetic with meaning to.  With those earlier posts, I mentioned the incorporation of certain chromatic elements typical of Vierne and it happens right in the middle of the piece.  Unintentional it may be, but this was the source/part of the source of the Vierne-ness of some movements.  Also, it’s a carillon and yeah, hard not to throw a little hommage to Vierne’s phenominal carillon piece.

Keep an eye out for a complete packaged version of all the Miniatures!

Miniature VII (Tremolo Chorale) is now up and available!  To be transparent about the process of giving out free music, this is the penultimate piece in the first set of Miniatures.  The original plan was to do eight of them and had picked out a title/form for most of them.  The titles were certainly not always used and adapted as freely as I felt – the Minuet turned into the Moto Minimalismo Minuetto.

This piece, on the other hand, was one of the few that retained its title as originally conceived.  BUT, and this is big, it is a second version that was only revised last week.  Not even revised, it’s pretty much a new piece.  The only elements that remain from the original composition are structural, namely, the back and forth of the tremolo and chorale.  The original was much more straight forward and certainly easier to play.

I want these pieces to be quite distinguishable from the Organbook pieces, which are generally simpler in aesthetic and execution.  Not that one is better than the other, just different.  If I am going to write another set of pieces for mostly manuals, I need a creative reason.  Check out Carsom Cooman‘s Youtube channel if you would like to hear some of the Organbook pieces.  His performances are exquisite!

Enjoy!

Miniature VI (Borbottio) is now up on Youtube and ready to be downloaded!  If you have ever followed any of my improvisations on this blog, you may have some notion of what it sounds like when I do.  Particularly the festive toccatas and what not.  What you don’t know is that I often mumble while doing so – usually the theme when it enters.  The subtitle to the piece is, well, Italian for mumble.  I’ve had fun with the titles of these miniatures!  It’s a fast, ruckus piece and I do suggest having fun with the “Pedal ad libitum.”  Check out how I did it:

Happy Halloween!  My kids are in bed, the festivities are done, and I have a moment to release the next Miniature.  This fifth Miniature, subtitled “Moto Minimalismo Minuetto,” clearly contains an influence from the minimalist aesthetic.  Every once in a while, as with the previous Hommage to Vierne, I feel the need to briefly explore something that I haven’t before.  My general problem with much of the Minimalist repertoire is it is often too long-winded for my taste.  I tried to balance my need for change without changing too much, adding a little at a time in a minimalist manner.  It was an interesting exercise that I think produces some nice results – and don’t forget, you can get the score here!