Author Archives: john.mcdonald@tufts.edu

Aphorisms For Composers – September 2019

September 4, 2019

As you hurry to complete work under pressure, consider that “the corn still grows overnight” as you sleep. Let the pace set itself naturally when possible…(pushing too hard inhibits growth) (paraphrasing Thoreau’s Walden, Chapter 4; 04.09.19)

Are we “awash in electronic hallucination?” (quoting Chris Hedges [born 1956; journalist])

Aphorisms For Composers – August 2019

August 26, 2019

Weed, walk, work

August 6 , 2019

NINE-TWOS
David Dovetails Domenico: Dynamic Deliberations. Downhearted Douceur. Despite Despondency: DETERMINED DASH. (August 26, 2019: program note for piano composition written as a tribute to composer David Macbride [1952-2018]; Domenico is Domenico Scarlatti [1685-1757])

August 22, 2019

More often than hoped, works in progress don’t progress. Stay calm.

Composers are content providers; yet provisions can be rough. User unfriendly?

August 19-20, 2019

REASONS FOR HAVING WRITTEN THINGS

It came out.

Didn’t hear it when playing or listening to things by others; thus had to supply it.

The hands fell there, went from there.

The atmosphere of the day yielded something; impulse can’t be further clarified.

Thought about people—wonderful performers, other composers, wonderful non-musicians—and writing something made otherwise silent or poorly-worded sentiments appear more fully expressed.

Someone asked.

A striking phrase in some else’s music takes hold; you re-shape it, and in so doing it gets out of control and lo(!) behold(!) a new piece has formed.

Pen was attracted to paper.

It couldn’t be helped.

Failed to quit.

August 19, 2019

‘Finished’ barely exists in composers’ vocabularies.

August 18, 2019

Why would you actually want to find what you’re looking for? Keep things provisional. Keep looking.

August 2-14, 2019

MORE FOURS
String fiber, porous boundaries. (August 14, 2019)
Composer resigns, music flows? ( August 13, 2019 )
Work safe, compose dangerously. ( August 7, 2019 )
Aged cheddar; aged composer. ( August 6, 2019 )
As though we know. ( August 2, 2019 )

August 2, 1019

Can there be TOO MUCH professional sheen to your scores? Can a piece be TOO well-crafted? When are mistakes advantages, rough edges more human and touching, and foibles welcome?

Composing To Learn/Learning To Compose

Tufts Music Department Pre-Orientation Workshop
Tuesday, August 27, 2019, 10-11:30 AM
Granoff Music Center Room 251
Tufts University, 20 Talbot Avenue, Medford, MA 02155

INTRODUCTIONS

THREE ACTIVITIES

1. Listening Exercise (courtesy of R. Murray Schafer [born 1933]; from A Sound Education: 100 Exercises in Listening and Soundmaking) 15 minutes
[Julia Moss ’21, Group Leader]

Almost everyone carries a set of keys. Would you recognize the sound of your own? All key rings are passed in and everyone listens, eyes closed as the group leader shakes each in turn. Put your hand up if you think you detect your own and it will be dropped behind you. Have all sets of keys found their rightful owners at the end?

2. PLAY ME SOMETHING: Short Composition Project 30-40 minutes

TJ Anderson Jr. (born 1928) celebrated his 91st birthday on August 17, 2019. He was the First African American to be a successful Composer-in-Residence for an American Symphony Orchestra (Robert Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony; 1969-71); Three Firsts in One Year (1972): first African American to chair a music department in a predominantly white university (Tufts University); first composer to orchestrate Scott Joplin’s opera Treemonisha; first chairman of the Black Music Caucus (NASPAM); First African-American to conduct the Boston Pops (1973); First Music Department Chair to create a joint degree program with two independent institutions: Tufts University and New England Conservatory. The program continues to this day (since 1976; 42nd Anniversary); First Composer invited to a residency at Wolf Trap, Vienna, VA (Milton Babbitt [1916-2011] was the second); First composer to receive a fellowship at the National Humanities Center, and more.

Anderson’s Play Me Something (1979), for solo piano, “small hands,” was composed for the Rivers Conservatory in Weston, Massachusetts, which sponsors a Seminar on Contemporary Music for the Young each year. The dedicatee, Kathy Mortenson, was a young student at the school when she premiered a version of the piece.

Play Me Something (“hey—you’re a musician?—play me something—do you take requests?”) is really more of a menu from which to choose a sonic meal than a “piece” in the accustomed sense. The composer writes:

              Play Me Something is not a piece or etude though it contains elements of both. The composition is a series of musical gestures or events which may be performed in any order. The gestures which repeat may be played as many times as the performer wishes. The pianist may or may not use all events and an attacca or slight pause may be placed after each gesture. Once an event is completed, the performer may not play this episodical material again. Multiple performance possibilities can enable the total work to have a duration between five seconds and five minutes.

Our task is to make our own playing menu that embraces:

  • a novel performance plan that uses all or some of what you write down—figuring out how to engage performer choice is part of the mission
  • “gestures” or “events” that can be shaped, repeated, ignored, celebrated
  • an exploration of varied styles of playing
  • a questioning of continuity and the meaning of “development”
  • more (to be discussed); your “scores” can be in staff notation, prose instruction (or bullet points, lists, etc.), visual cues (pictorial), or in a combination of formats

Protocol for today:

 After hearing a short demonstration of TJ Anderson’s piece in one or two versions, take 20 minutes to devise/write something of your own that will become part of a group composition. You can go anywhere in the Granoff building to do this. Then we will all return to Room 251 with our excerpts, briefly discuss them, and perform what we have for each other.

3. CLIME CLIMB (in-progress project for discussion)

Clime Climb—Music for Solo Traverso or Modern Flute [with optional/encouraged Flute(s), Piano(s), and Speaking Part(s)]

Draft Proposal and Description (sent to potential participants/commissioning parties)John McDonald, composer/pianist
July 30, 2019

Na’ama and I met to talk last week, and I think we’ve come up with a general plan/proposal for a piece entitled “Clime Climb”—(environment/climate—climbing as in “integral steps”).

I have some melodic material to work with to make a solo traverso piece that would be played twice. The second time through, students and/or other professional musicians would/could join with their own melodic and/or harmonic parts (as in flute parts and piano parts in short snippets to play in free repetition patterns). This “community section” of the piece will be planned with enough freedom to let people play what they have and be somewhat inventive with it—all while the soloist is playing a “second verse” of traverso music. A solo CODA will close the piece.

Every phrase in the piece will ascend, as if climbing steps. Some people climb stairs several at a time, others one at a time. Slower, faster, rushing, patient—but all these steps are incremental. In this way, the playable parts for community members can vary quite a bit. Much like the small things we do in our lives to make inroads in what we believe will make life more tolerable or livable. [My version is not having owned a car since 2010; walking, public transport, and urban car sharing have covered all of my local and some long-distance transport for nearly a decade].

The last and potentially crowning idea for the project is to commission a poly-lingual text to be recited during the above-mentioned second verse of the “solo Climb” (when all the other musicians are also playing). This text could be performed chorally or by soloists, or freely divided between speakers in some way depending on performance. Na’ama mentioned her daughter Shira as perhaps the ideal poet/author of such a text, which would minimally find its way into English, French, German, and Hebrew. My in-laws are Sri Lankan, so a short English text could also be translated into Sinhalese either by my wife or my brother-in-law (and read phonetically). Reciting Shira’s text in these several languages brings the participating community together with one purpose.

My thought is that the second verse is really where a lot could happen in terms of performative action. The first verse and CODA would be comparatively reflective, but the idea of a unifying ascent will permeate the proceedings.

What does everyone think?

Thanks for reading and considering!

CONCLUSION: Your Thoughts and Questions

[Handouts will include scores of “Play Me Something” by TJ Anderson; Orientation poster of Fall Tufts Composers events; sample Music 118/119 Syllabus; and “Aphorisms for Composers”]

Aphorisms For Composers – July 2019

July 28, 2019

The yeast of your creativity grows new culture. [with thanks to Leon Forrest (1937-1997)]

July 23, 2019

FOURS
Encourage creation by omission.
Going back over things…
…what does one find?
Assignments are really commissions.

July 7, 2019

If you take it, be sure to re-make it.

July 3-7, 2019

TWO MORE EIGHTS
Get the most you can into your space. [July 7, 2019; after writer Leon Forrest (1937-97), speaking of the journalist’s space limits]
Let’s excise the word “genius” from the language. [July 3, 2019]

Aphorisms for Composers – June 2019

June 27-28, 2019

LONG/WORDY PIECE-TITLE POSSIBILITIES
Only Retained This After Rubbing Out Most Of What Was Here [June 28, 2019]

“Everyone’s sure what’s going on. I don’t know what’s going on. And do you really know what’s going on?” – Quote of the pP afternoon June 2019 [June 28, 2019]

Just Because One Feels There’s Nothing To Worry About Doesn’t Mean Worrisome Things Aren’t Happening [June 27, 2019]

June 28-19, 2019

SLASHES AND SEMICOLONS
Attack/release; equally vital
Duration/articulation; doing close work together
Texture/registers; we need constant care! [June 29, 2019]
Advance/retreat; Reverse/repeat. Sine Fine. [June 28, 2019]
Hand over/hand under; thumb under/turnover for cluster: backhand chord [June 28, 2019]
Iterate/switch; Transpose a while; Re-iterate/Re-switch/Repeat. [June 28, 2019]

June 19-18, 2019

EIGHTS
There’s a big difference between “minimal” and “spare.” [June 28, 2019]
Might you prefer not recognizing where you are? [June 26, 2019]
Don’t write it all. Next day, enjoy restarting. [June 25, 2019]
Many musical parameters benefit from moving as one. [June 25, 2019]
Now you know how. But why? What for? [June 24, 2019]
Got up; tried composing; went back to bed. [June 19, 2019]

June 17, 2019

Your music is generally better when it’s NOT a PDF.

June 10, 2019

How you finish a piece is as important as how you start it. And all the phases in between must contribute fiber and shape to the way it moves.

You produce yourself when you produce. So why the ‘originality’ worry for composers? Worry about craft—about the way things are realized—not about your own potential iconic sound-images.

June 1, 2019

What do I always do? If I’m going to do what I always do, how will I always do it? Can I always work with what I always do so that it’s always not (never) the same?

More Pedal-Bell!

Aphorisms for Composer – May 2019

May 22, 2019

What do you know you’ll always do, no matter what?

May 21, 2019

Just because you know a thing doesn’t mean you should use that thing automatically in your music. Balance the known thing with unknowns.

May 17, 2019

As composers, when we proceed from wherfe we are and how we are, WHO we are becomes less important. Things we might call ‘identity’ and ‘originality’ emerge from the awareness and acceptance of what we do habitually and aspirationally, not as much from who we think we are or wish we could be. Knowing our habits—knowing how we are—helps us notice how to move to new where’s and how’s.

Aphorisms for Composers – March 2019

March 12, 2019

Where there is idiom, there is also type-casting. Does the musician want to be transformed? In a particular piece, perhaps the violist wants to be a trumpet player, the percussionist wants to sing on the snare drum, or the horn player fades away like a vulnerable low piccolo phrase… Can the composer make this kind of transformation happen? What techniques do we need?

Aphorisms for Composers – February 2019

February 3, 2019

I think we (composers) should bring back hand manuscript for its viable professional advantages. Not because it is old, or tried and true, but because it is flexible, personal, and represents a tactile relationship with the page (with pencil and paper) that translates to touching the music.

Have I created a new genre: the Dinky Singspiel? (continue here…) After writing two series of “scenes” for working life in the offices of the Tufts University Music Department,

Dinky Singspiel:

New form?
Sing, play
Future way.

Quick fix?
Small thrall,
Concert hall?

A composer lives symbiotically through performers.

Tufts Sunday Concert Series – Work and Life

Thank you for these great remarks, Thomas Stumpf:

“Yesterday afternoon there was a deeply affecting concert at Tufts, beautifully curated by John McDonald on the subject of work and life. John played the piano throughout with his usual brilliance, his playing of the amazing Poulenc cycle on painters was particularly strong… Julia Cavallaro used her gorgeous mezzo sound and total emotional commitment all afternoon – and turned out to be a very fine composer with the guts to set Anne Sexton’s take on Van Gogh!! The (as usual) amazing Philipp A. Stäudlin’s alto sax matched her timbre astonishingly… And then there was the ending. A glorious performance of Schubert’s „Nacht und Träume“. And just when the last chord had faded, John started to play his P.S. on the song. Which turned out to be no post scriptum at all, but an incredibly courageous extension and exploration into emotional areas Schubert only hinted at. Philipp played his heart out all the way to the irresolute ending that left us all hanging….
All the consummate skill and immense courage and emotional thrill that was missing in the Super Bowl game (despite the fact that of course the right team won) – here it was in abundance. I’m deeply grateful.”