Category: Personal

1. Orchestral Study #1 (flowing and hymn-like)
2. Orchestral Study #2 (driving and chaotic)
3. Orchestral Study #3 (adagio with melisma)
4. Orchestral Study #4 (allegro)
5. Orchestral Study #5 (variations)
6. Orchestral Study #6 (space)
7. Orchestral Study #7 (dialogue)
8. Orchestral Study #8 (toccata)
9. Orchestral Study #9 (seven interludes)
10. Orchestral Study #10 (rupture, slowed down and from different angles)
11. Orchestral Study #11 (a crowd, disassembled)
12. Orchestral Study #12 (thesis)

This was the first one that I felt failure from the start and yet I’m very happy with the outcome. Composing has always been a process starting with impulsive excitement, going to studied focus, then emotional anguish throughout as sections flow or don’t or feel just-not-right, then the polish at then end (the last few day in this instance) and finally almost satisfying achievement. And then–what always happens but has not yet for this piece–a realization that I can never accomplish again what I did then/now. It’s not at all arrogance, just insecurity. Since the rock operas, I had forgotten what a trial these things are. But then I get to the impulse to start again.

Anyway.

I have come up with a few rules: no listening to the previous works and no planning for the next until almost complete. I don’t want to muddy the “whatever” with the impulses of what came before and what will come next. There is a slight overlap though: in the first days of the current I can’t escape the impressions of the last, and at the end of the current I can’t will away the desire for the next. Rules.

I had come into this study wanting to write a rushing vivace. I think I avoided very very fast music for my piano writing because I just could not play that fast, so it was nice to escape the limitations of technical skill. However, there were still mental limitation for this piece based on the rapidity of the ideas that I could hear… if that makes sense? And so for the most part I stuck with a more tonal palette just to sidestep the insecurity around dissonance in compressed time.

The opening melody came out and immediately felt like it needed a canon-like development. I worked from there and I’m not sure how but then decided the piece should be a rondo: A B’ B A B’ C A. The added B’ bridge came just as a halted start of the B theme that I hated to abandon because of the syncopation that ended up getting added, in a way, to the C. That weird and toneless C was intended to be a minimalist perpetuum mobile but that mood/texture started to feel bland as a prelude to the closing A, so I switched gears and went with a mash of syncopated noise.

I was surprise how much music I got out of this. For the first week or so I expected–because fast music equals many notes equals less time–it to be just 2 minutes or so. Right now I feel like this was the most exhausting to compose, but of course that’s until the next one is started.

And so my goals for the next one: a passacaglia, get more comfortable with brass, maybe add sections with the first violin and first cello, and (this is less specific) but have more instrument “swapping.” I heard in Brahms’ 1st how he would throw the melody from one instrument to another or add it to a single measure as harmonic color. I need to think about that.

1. Orchestral Study #1 (flowing and hymn-like)
2. Orchestral Study #2 (driving and chaotic)
3. Orchestral Study #3 (adagio with melisma)
4. Orchestral Study #4 (allegro)
5. Orchestral Study #5 (variations)
6. Orchestral Study #6 (space)
7. Orchestral Study #7 (dialogue)
8. Orchestral Study #8 (toccata)
9. Orchestral Study #9 (seven interludes)
10. Orchestral Study #10 (rupture, slowed down and from different angles)
11. Orchestral Study #11 (a crowd, disassembled)
12. Orchestral Study #12 (thesis)

This got away from me.

My intent going in was to write an adagio in simple ABA with more tonal harmonies. Maybe like a Brahms slow movement or more one from a Walter Piston symphony. I’ve been brushing up on Piston symphonies during commutes and am enjoying getting reacquainted. My goals (chosen after I finished the last study) were tone color and dynamics. With this study, I feel like I’m writing better across the orchestra but am still floundering with combining instruments.

I wanted the first section to be tonal and melodic, but I worry that it has too much of a “pops” orchestral feel. That’s the risk I had worried about starting these studies: moving from tonality in rock music to orchestral risks sounding unchallenging.

As I was working through that languid opening, I switched gears to the second section: a major key chant/melisma interrupted with expansive declarations.

While fitting the first two sections together, I made notes on what became the third section, which was intended as a perversion of the themes that came before. This was written more fully on the piano during improvisation and though the polytonality worked very well on the keyboard it was a crazy mess trying to get it to work with orchestra. At one point I was going to leave it out because the tone felt wrong. I went through two earlier attempts before coming up with the final arrangement. The first had a very strict rhythm and mostly for winds, but it didn’t have the “edge” that I felt at the keyboard. The next attempt used written rubato and exaggerated cross rhythms (with almost no meter), but it just created too much chaos along with the polytonal dissonances. The final product ended up with a balance of chaos and structure, edging towards chaos. I think most of my time was spent just on this section.

The piece has an ABCBA structure. Languid and melodic, melisma, perversion of themes, abbreviated melisma, triste languid coda.

I still need to attempt an actual, beautiful adagio. Next goals: vivace and maybe try for a more organic structure without abrupt changes.

1. Orchestral Study #1 (flowing and hymn-like)
2. Orchestral Study #2 (driving and chaotic)
3. Orchestral Study #3 (adagio with melisma)
4. Orchestral Study #4 (allegro)
5. Orchestral Study #5 (variations)
6. Orchestral Study #6 (space)
7. Orchestral Study #7 (dialogue)
8. Orchestral Study #8 (toccata)
9. Orchestral Study #9 (seven interludes)
10. Orchestral Study #10 (rupture, slowed down and from different angles)
11. Orchestral Study #11 (a crowd, disassembled)
12. Orchestral Study #12 (thesis)

My goal: open with a pulsing, harmonically spare section containing periodic dissonances that break the monotony. Twittering chaos in the winds interrupt and finally take over. Close with a celestial echo.

The pulsing section was the initial germ and what I started with, yet I struggled figuring it out and didn’t get it right until the other two were almost fully developed. It was more frustrating than expected and a very dispiriting start. The three voices in the wind section are inspired by some of Elliott Carter’s pieces where each voice is a separate monologue, almost without awareness of the others. In my head I had initially heard music with a complete lack of regular beat but ultimately was not able to realize that texture. The idea for the celestial section came as I was finishing the winds. I heard the initial motif and the cascade texture followed naturally. The overlapping transitions were developed after each section was nearly complete.

The pulsing section is maybe a little too repetitive; the twittering has voice crossing that may-or-may-not work; the celestial echo gets too dense and I could have maybe used fewer voices.

Need to work more on combining instruments and notating dynamics.

1. Orchestral Study #1 (flowing and hymn-like)
2. Orchestral Study #2 (driving and chaotic)
3. Orchestral Study #3 (adagio with melisma)
4. Orchestral Study #4 (allegro)
5. Orchestral Study #5 (variations)
6. Orchestral Study #6 (space)
7. Orchestral Study #7 (dialogue)
8. Orchestral Study #8 (toccata)
9. Orchestral Study #9 (seven interludes)
10. Orchestral Study #10 (rupture, slowed down and from different angles)
11. Orchestral Study #11 (a crowd, disassembled)
12. Orchestral Study #12 (thesis)

A year or so ago I decided to start studying orchestration in order to continue composing, even if no longer able to perform on piano. I had acquired a used copy of Walter Piston’s Orchestration book somewhere. It’s bound with an imprint of Allerton High School–England–on the cover. A note pasted on the first page: Frank Snape Music Prize, Marilyn Smith,1960-16, J. J. Morton (?) Head Mistress.

Anyway, cut to a month ago when one of the classical stations I listen to on the way to work was playing a Haydn symphony. Thinking of the 100-plus that he had written, I decided to try to write a piece for orchestra every month this year. Learn by doing, etc. Although I will commit the offense of not fully allowing the pieces to develop their themes and structures, I will benefit from frequent fresh starts, and will be able to grow out of the previous works’ mistakes. I had this idea on January 15th so I’m on target for 30-day composing sessions, but behind for the year. It’s a soft target.

I started unsure what my orchestral style would be. Rock musicians turned orchestral generally produce tonal works similar to their songs but without any of the edge that electric guitar, studio processing, etc. adds to the music. I didn’t want to fall into that. Inspirations are the Russians: Shostakovich and Prokofiev, the sonorists: Schnittke and Penderecki (5th Symphony), and works like Sibelius’s 5th Symphony (for its discursive fluidity) or Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony.

In this first study, I started with the general intent of opening with a section of chattery, fluid strings, then leading to a more homophonic section dominated by brass, and developing off of those. The result is 5 sections and a coda, generally:

1. Polyphonic theme A for string
2. Homophonic hymn-like theme B for brass
3. Theme C derived from the texture of theme A, progressing with more dissonant brass
4. Theme B in the string section while the brass references theme C
5. Theme A and C interwoven, closing with coda referencing the simplified texture of theme B for brass and strings

At 3:12, it does feel a bit rushed as if it’s 30 minutes in a 3 minute span, but I feel like it did achieve what I set out to express. (Musescore used for scoring and PDF/MP3 output.)