Re-return

Hello interweb.

It’s been a while since I’ve visited this page (which, I now realize, is a sad and recurring theme), but never the less I am here, and with much to tell.

Those of you who know me know that I’ve recently graduated from PSU. Those of you who don’t know me – I’ve recently graduated from PSU. With much finagling, crying, begging, pleading, and groveling, the powers-to-be decided that it would be in their best interests to grant me a Masters of Science in Music degree (how’s that for some fancy alliteration?). Although I don’t know what was specifically “scientific” about the degree program, I still feel really good about this accomplishment.

Those of you who know me also know that I’ve been on the job hunt for a while now. Well, I can happily say that that search has come to an end. Aramark has determined that I’m sufficiently qualified to serve wine and sell candy bars, so in the coming weeks you may see me at the Schnitz, or the Newmark Theater, or the Keller Auditorium concession stands. Who doesn’t like a Snickers with their Pinot?

This is all well and good, mainly because this new found security is going to be very useful on the musical front. I’ve recently completed a brand new commission for Evan Kuhlman; a trio for Violin, Bassoon, and Piano titled Factions. The title, like the entire piece and it’s main subject, is a portmanteau of the words fact and fiction. The  main melody, introduced by a solo bassoon in the opening passages, is essentially two separate melodies linked by a common tone – G# (or Ab depending on the context). The over-all form of the piece also reflects this binary quality in mood and pitch centers (or lack thereof in some parts). Factions is divided into seven continuous movements played without pause:

I. Terra Firma

II. Fisticuffs, part 1

III. Fisticuffs, part 2

IV. Becoming…

V. Violet Crepescule

VI.  Two.

VII. Re-intention.

I’m going to try and aim for a Spring premier, but the piece is hot off the presses and not even in it’s finalized form yet, so this is still TBD.

In other news, I’ve teamed up with Brandon Conway and we’re going to be resurrecting the Portland New Music Society. We’re still in the talking stages, but we just met this morning, and we’ve got a plan. I’ll announce more details as they emerge,  but for now I can say that I’ll be putting out a call for composers, performers, and improvisers… so stay tuned.

The end of my beginning

My time as a student is coming to a close.

Next term is my final term, and it promises to be a crazy one. I am about to embark on my exit project which is going to be my Master’s Thesis. I don’t want to spoil the details of its subject since I have yet to get it approved (which is my plan for today), but on the whole, it’s going to be about new ways of constructing musical forms based on the physical objects that surround you in your daily life. It’s precedents are inherent in the roots of serialism, but the key differences will be discussed in the paper. These new forms will be elastic, recursive, and developmental, and will open up entirely new possibilities in ways one can utilize extra-musical resources.

In other news, I am playing on the first night of the NACUSA festival happening this weekend. I’m suuuuper excited about this. The piece I’m playing with Stella is one I wrote for her late last year (I wrote about it in my last post from November.) If you’ve got nothing else going on a Friday night, you should stop in… it should be a fun and memorable concert.

More to come…

 

New Sounds Abound

Greetings.

I have returned to the composition desk. Why you may ask? Well first, that’s a silly question… because I can and have to. Secondly, because my friend and fiddler extraordinaire Stella Roshi-Moles has asked me to write her a new tune for her senior recital. How could I say no?

We’re both a fan of cyclic things. This has partially fueled my love for writing musical palindromes, or pieces that simply end as the begin as they end as they begin as they end as they begin (ad nausium). With this in mind, I started to think about ways of taking something ancient and making it new – a kind of cyclic recurrence of things. I eventually decided that this piece should be an adaption of the oldest completely notated piece of music: the Seikilos Epitaph.

I love this melody. I have a hunch, deep down in my brain’s heart, that the very eternal and simple timelessness of its beauty has something to do with how it has survived for so many centuries. It’s an ode by a man to his deceased wife, Seikilos. The text is as follows:

Ὅσον ζῇς, φαίνου,

Hoson zês, phainou,

While you live, shine,

μηδὲν ὅλως σὺ λυποῦ·

mêden holôs su lupou;

don’t suffer anything at all;

πρὸς ὀλίγον ἐστὶ τὸ ζῆν,

pros oligon esti to zên,

life exists only a short while,

τὸ τέλος ὁ xρόνος ἀπαιτεῖ.

to telos ho chronos apaitei.

and time demands its toll.

Something about it tears my heart apart. The fact that this piece, a simple ode, can survive so long seems to me a testament to the power of love. This is not meant to exclude other expressions that have occurred in history: no doubt other people loved other people, especially when you see things like this. But for me, as  a musician, the fact that earliest complete example of my art is a love song seems to reinforce my belief that music as a mode of expression is able to transcend its own medium. Music, like any other art form, moves outside of itself when it becomes something that is beyond any individual. It is an essence, both with and without form.

It’s my personal hope that the essence of this sentiment is not lost in my setting. Can a man living 23 centuries later truly capture and express the feelings of someone so distant in time and space? Does time change the inherent meanings of simple gestures expressed in the written word, in sound, or paint? Or is it like water… it can take many different properties yet retain its identity.

Something about it tears my heart apart. The fact that this piece, a simple ode, can survive so long seems to me to be a testament to the power of this man’s love for his deceased wife.

Whoops

I keep forgetting about this page. I guess the lack of musical activity in recent weeks has snuffed any inspiration for posting, but there has been some good things going on…

Back in July I got to be a part of  Bus Stop Opera: Portland. It was probably one of the most frantic and rewarding musical experiences I’ve had in a while. In two weeks I was commissioned to I write, rehearse, and conduct a little musical number. There were twelve performances in four days – a new P.R. for me. We would begin at around 9am each day at a certain bus stop or public place in downtown PDX, perform as if we were coming out the crowd (which never failed to draw some interesting reactions), and then scramble for the next bus to go to our location. We did this for about 4 hours at a time over a few weekends. Way way cool/scary/exciting. All the musicians and personnel involved were awesome and hopefully I’ll be granted the opportunity again if the project ever comes back to Portland.

In other musical news, I’ve dedicated my summer to writing the last two movements of my symphony out. They have been swirling around in my head for the last 9 years or so, so it was nice to finally write them all out. Another P.R was set while I was writing them… 57 pages in 4 weeks! I’ve been editing and inking in the score ever since. I’ll write more about this when I’m done inking them in.

In academic news, this will be my final year as a graduate student at PSU. I am just under the halfway point for my Masters of Science in Music degree, and I’ve worked out the remaining requirements for the year. If I continue at the rate I’m going at, I should be able to graduate in the summer of 2011. As part of my requirements, I have to do an “exit project.” I’ve given a lot of thought to this, and I am thinking of doing a music circus. I’ve been talking to Fletcher Nemeth about this for some time, so this would be a good excuse to finally realize the idea. More to come on that as the story develops.

Meta-music

I’ve recently finished working on a project that I started in late 2007. This project is for a string quartet, and it contains some dualities in its structure.

The idea was to construct a sort of musical meta-narrative, in the sense that it is somewhat self-referential. The form is about forms. The piece is a continuous set of six movements, and each movement is split at the middle and flows into the beginning of the next piece before finishing.

Think of it like this:

A1, B1, C1, D1, A2, B2, C2, D2 etc…

Each half of these self-contained pieces appear at different points during the course of the work, which is where the duality presents itself.

Since these pieces are split, their “narrative” or flow of events are broken, but when these halves are placed along side each other (A1 going into B1 etc), they still flow continuously. On top of this, since I love symmetry, I have made each one of these self-contained pieces a palindrome (whose mirror half only appears later in the piece).

So the piece is more accurately represented like this:

A1, B1, C1, D1, E (A2), F (B2), G(C2), H(D2)…

It bends my mind just a little bit, and is probably the most difficult challenge I have given myself to date.

This piece is decidedly both linear and not… so it raises the question: which way is up? What is the meaning of musical narrative, and how does it relate to the content vs form?

In all, I’m really glad I finished this piece. It’s been in the back of my mind for nearly three years now, and to finally expunge these sounds is both a relief and bittersweet. The next step is finding an ensemble who is willing to take on a 24 minute essay on symmetry and narrative. Any takers?

Clearance

It’s been a while since I posted here, but then again, time waits for no man.

I just completed (as of a few weeks ago) a new piece for soprano Helen Funston entitled Milky Way. It’s scored for soprano, cello and percussion trio, and it incorporates fragments of text taken from Fernando Pessoa‘s poem Milky Way from the Book of Disquiet. I’m very proud of the work, as I ventured out into a lot of new territory (percussion writing is very overwhelming to me, as is vocal writing) to accomplish it. There is some fun textural moments, and a lot of fun choreography for the percussionists, some lovely lyrical moments, and to top it off  it has two alternate endings!

It’s also time for awards submissions… and guess what? I don’t know if I can send this piece out.

I’m pretty unfamiliar with copyright clearance in the use of texts for music, and I have no intention of publishing this work anytime soon so I won’t have to deal with it this time, but from what I gather it’s a tricky set of hoops to jump through. Just about every award there is requires you to submit documentation that the text is either in the public domain, or that you have clearance from the publisher to use it. Makes sense, except I have no idea as to how one would get permission.

I poked around on the publisher’s website and when I tried to submit a request for permission, the publisher’s website told me that they do not have rights over the material. Apparently, the UK branch of the publisher may have it, but it doesn’t seem certain. For the moment, I seem to be stonewalled.

I want to submit this piece to competitions, but if I can’t get clearance from the publisher to do it, how can it be done?

Any thoughts/suggestions as to how one would go about this?

Or would it just be easier to write the text myself or have a friend do it for future works?

New ground

It is time to return to the composition desk.

Over the past few months, life has been busier than I care it to be. Moving, starting school again, working etc ad nauseum.

Fortunately, things have returned to a calmer state, and I have just started a brand new project for soprano Helen Funston. She approached me a few weeks ago asking me if I’d be interested in composing something for her graduate performances, and I jumped at the opportunity.

I wrestled with what the instrumentation will be for quite some time since she specifically asked that there NOT be a piano involved. I wanted some sort of melodic support, but also something that could accentuate melodic statements with a multitude of different colors. While I was mulling this over, I had Tan Dun’s Elegy: Snow in June playing in my ears (a fantastic piece for percussion and cello, if you haven’t heard it). Eventually I decided on a modified version of Dun’s instrumentation: 2+ percussionists, cello, clarinet in A, and soprano.

There are two things that are very frightening to me about this: first is that I’ve never written for solo voice before. Second is that I’ve never written for a percussion ensemble before. I’ve written for marimba and vibraphone, and some miscellaneous percussion instruments in a chamber setting, but not a full-fledged percussion ensemble with their dozens upon dozens of instruments. I am so used to seeing one person with one instrument per stave on a score that the idea of one person with a whole arsenal is quite over whelming. If there are any percussionists that read this, we need to talk.

In dealing with the human voice, it’s a whole new can of worms. I am really going to try and tailor this piece to Helen’s unique sound, but I also want to have plenty of wiggle room to play around in. I know she’s a fantastic singer, so I’m not worried that she’ll be able to whatever I put in front of her… but still it’s quite foreboding. You have to deal with the text and it’s syllables, the sound of the consonants versus vowels, the rhythm of speech, the different colors in different parts of her range, phrase length (they like to breathe at some point)… but I think I can. Like the little engine that could.

If there’s anybody out there who has any suggestions about writing for voice and/or percussion, I would love to hear it. This is going to be an adventure for all.

On The Argument for Tonality

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been preparing for an upcoming concert I’m performing in on the 16th. The work I’m premiering with pianist Scott Brazieal is a new duo for guitar and piano titled Roundabout and is of the post-minimalist idiom. One thing I noticed about this piece (and several other recent works of mine) is that my language has been gravitating towards certain pitch centers. While I love consonance, I also love dissonance. I feel that both are equally beautiful and have immense value in a composer’s tool box. Some would say that this would be a natural move for me to make, and that it’s only natural for someone to gravitate towards consonance since it is pleasant, and aesthetically pleasing whereas dissonance is unappealing, inaccessible, noisy and not what audiences want to hear.

Hmm..

I strive to make my work as access able as possible, and I strongly feel that any sound you can imagine can be incorporated provided you have the right context. This includes the most jarring and piercing dissonances in juxtaposition with simple triads and major or minor scales. One common argument I’ve heard for the reinstatement of tonality as a common practice is that the major triad is a reoccurring part of nature. The 2nd through 5th partials of the harmonic series spells out a major triad, and thus is the grounding for this argument. The problem with this argument is that it disregards the rest of the harmonic series and their amazingly beautiful dissonances that define the timbre of the pitch.

Dissonance and consonance are of equal merit and equal beauty.

The amount of dissonant intervals in the harmonic series in proportion to consonant ones are staggeringly high. In fact, I would go so far as to argue that the very dissonances that some are so opposed to are the very things that color their beloved triads. Beauty is born out of “ugly sounds”. A trumpet sounds like a trumpet because certain overtones in the harmonic series are more prevalent than others. The same can be said of any sound conceivable.

Consonance is born out of dissonance, and dissonance complements consonance.

Time and all that it implies

I have recently started a few summer projects, and one of them is a fantasy piece for orchestra that is centered on the idea of time travel. One challenge I find myself facing is the idea of expressing the idea of traveling back in time through music. The funny thing is that it’s an idea that should shows us going backward, but we wouldn’t know that if it were not for the forward progression of time.

Music is nothing without the passage of time… that’s very obvious. We only know of the passage of time because of what happens in it. There have always been expressive musical devices that allow us to bend and stop the clock. We have ritarando, fermatas, rubato… all of these interpretive techniques are ways of being expressive while bending tempo and time.

Ives began to mess with our temporal perceptions by music that contained multiple tempos. Elliot Carter went in his own direction with metric modulation, and writing rhythms that gave the illusion of multiple tempos. All of this, to me, are interesting and illuminating takes on simultaneous temporal realms.

Can we illustrate different moments of time simultaneously in music? Can we warp and bend time like the gravity of celestial bodies?

It would be an interesting challenge to further develop the ideas of Ives and Carter and others to progress and even challenge the very foundation of what makes music a unique medium. Time itself could very well become a new expressive dimension to consciously bend and shape.

Quick plug…

Double premier coming up!

On June 4th the Portland State University women’s choir is singing a new vocal piece of mine, Solace of a Dream (as an octet). On that same program, a new piano piece of mine, Variations on Constellations is also being premiered. The whole shinding goes down in Cramer hall room 453 at 8pm and is free to all.

On June 9th, badass of the bass Fletcher Nemeth and crew will premier a new bass trio of mine, Druid Chant on his senior recital. 7pm at the Old Church on SW 11th and Clay, FREE.

Be there or be rhombus!