“16 Jun 2020”. I wrote that down on the first sheet of staff paper I pulled out to start the project that I’d wanted to do for years: compose a symphony. Last year’s monthly orchestral studies were a means to this end.
Writing about the creative process at the same time that that process is being spun out has always been off-limits for me. That type of public self-reflection of creativity is appropriate for improvisation but little else. Everyone has their own means of extracting ideas, but the default is to create in the quiet because an audience, imagined or not, can turn creativity into exhibitionism (hey there Facebook, hello blog).
Years ago I’d followed pianist Jeremy Denk’s blog (Think Denk!) as he was tackling Beethoven sonatas or somesuch. This was before his fame or recordings I think. Periodically he’d drop in and lay out a recent struggle or enlightenment discovered in the current passage of whatever current piece he was working on. The real-time discovery was somewhat thrilling to read. Although I don’t think this will be a thrilling read–and may be abandoned at some point–I want to record the personal insights as they occur in order to look back and maybe allow my future self to gain insight into a process he’ll certainly have forgotten. There are lessons in what you forget.
The symphony’s subject and number of movements, along with their titles, came first. Before the music was begun, I knew I wanted to write a program symphony and these last four years lend themselves to symphonic expression.
(1) What if this happened?
(2) I am now
Interlude: Everything was forever until it was no more
(3) An occupying army
(4) Decades had passed
The titles explain themselves: 1. an unsuspected worst-possible-case, 2. the daily mental exhaustion, 4. a figurative and then literal occupation, and finally 5. a looking back decades hence. I added the interlude just a week ago. I envision it as a short piece quoting the Baroque style in the manner of John Zorn, post-modernist, though much less free than what he does. I don’t believe our situation will be fixed in my lifetime, but I’ve never been a good predictor and that’s a relatively vague prediction anyway.
Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation, Alexei Yurchak
I began with An occupying army and am using a full orchestra score with at times heavy dissonance. The combination of larger instrument sections and longer form will be the biggest challenge and one that was absent in last year’s works. After re-listening to a section, I start to see where I rushed ideas and then 20 measures become 40 or 60, with new music either inserted or continued from the end of a section. Seeing it’s been a month since I began, I realize that this is a marathon and may take a year or so.
Right now I haven’t been able to work on multiple movements at a time, but I will make notes on their form, orchestration, and texture. That may change, but I’m generally a work-on-one-thing-at-a-time person. And here’s hoping that writing this does not suppress even that.