The 2nd movement (I am now), interlude (“Everything was forever until it was no more”), and 3rd movement (an occupying army) are done.
I have this fear that when everything changes on Tuesday I’ll no longer be able to look at this work, the work that’s left, in the same light. No matter the outcome.
I finished the interlude and it feels very good that there’s a stopping point. I don’t know what our state of mind will be on Wednesday. Being in mid-music would be at the very least fragmenting.
I can’t say that the oncoming anguish helps or hurts or strips any possibility of creative expression because of a fight-or-flight panic.
Musical observations feel less-than-important right now. Here they are from the last few days:
There is a curve in the ear’s response to the greater or lesser differentiation of intervals. a curve that may be established in relation to listening-time; duration and pitch are linked–‘measurably’–by this phenomenon. In the case of very small intervals time must be considered as stationary, rather as though the ear were listening through a magnifying-glass.
Boulez, Orientations, Sound, Word, Synthesis, page 178
Moments will appear when time feels different from one measure to the next–even though the measures are of equal time–based on harmony either preceding or current or based on their tonal their relationships (or maybe orchestration?). It’s notable and unexpected and one of those happy coincidences that I both appreciate and hate. I hate that it came about unexpectedly, but know that it is now a tool that I will use in the future.
A composition is no longer a consciously directed construction moving from a ‘beginning’ to an ‘end’ and passing from one to another.
ibid.
Here, Boulez is writing in the late 50s early 60s w/r/t his foray into improvisational composition. The details of those ideas are another story etc., but a compelling idea he presents is of a composition that has no beginning or end. A composition where the listener doesn’t hear the start as a start, but a continuation of something they missed, and the end as something they have (not so much) been denied and can only suspect is about to happen. This is very modern. TV series that you stumble on. Tuning in to the middle of a song; leaving the car before it’s end. Reading a book excerpt. Fragmented experiences.
Notes from Interlude, written on a scrap of paper:
eliminate the sense of time, put it in 4/4 because there is no time, you can’t read music without time
Time is relevant in several ways.