July 29, 2018

Can’t Compose Just Now

              Must need space

              Can’t

              Get it going

              Can’t

              Imagine writing.

July 27, 2018

Composers necessarily live the saying “don’t stop starting.” The empty page beckons; the open mind and ear crave new input; the imagined realization lets performers spring into action…

July 26, 2018

Lunes* About Composing At Night
*[The “lune” is a three-line, syllabic poem-form (“the American Haiku”) created by Robert Kelly, with a variant created by Jack Collom; Kelly Lune is 5-3-5, Collom Lune is 3-5-3.]

Lamplight by window;
Keyboard sounds
New adventure starts

House quiet; cat out;
Sketchbook page
To be filled again.

Putting this to that
With other.
Dark while it happens.

Sundown calm
Internal unrest
Keyboard balm.

Cloud cover.
Moon lurks there somewhere

Keyboard closed.

Humid night
Upper register
Cools front room.

July 24, 2018

Fib* As Instruction for a Composition
*[A “Fib” is a form of syllabic poetry based on the Fibonacci sequence. Most common seems to be the six-line, twenty-syllable Fib: 1-1-2-3-5-8.]

This
That
Other Thing
This That Together
Other Thing, This, That: These
Three things in interplay make plenty of material. (at Apple Hill Fidelio Trio concert)

Sample Questions About Sensation

What is a ‘sharp’ vibration?
How can a ‘touch’ be ‘rounded,’ ‘pointed,’ etc.?
What does ‘unison’ mean? Hands together, people together, sung together, united effort?
How is ‘unison’ different from ‘solo?’

July 21, 2018

While enjoying where you are in the process of forming musical thoughts, you face difficulties with enhanced awareness. “Play with it,” as a colleague just told me. The sense of play will last; you will come back for more.

July 19-20, 2018

Five Fives

Walk; sketch. Discover a place. (July 20, 2018)
Tense spot. Delve further in. (July 20, 2018)
Blank page; think, fill, repeat. (quick description of composing continually; July 19, 2018)
Conceptualize, improvise, solidify, improvise more. (July 19, 2018)
Musical security comes and goes. (July 19, 2018)

July 18, 2018

Composing can be a vibrant illustration of your own never-ending story of trying to get it together (for Rebecca Sacks)

July 17, 2018

Maybe you never met, or only met fleetingly. Yet the time spent composing your memorial music, now that they are gone, is still time spent with the admired person.

July 11, 2018

How about writing preludes to the preludes?

July 9, 2018

The difference between many notes and too many notes is often incredibly small.

Sometimes the piece you’re writing feels like it’s all you’ve got.

July 8, 2018

Things just play themselves in my hands—I don’t know why [variant of an excerpt from A. Platanov’s Soul spoken by the girl Aidym; New York Review Books Classics; 2007]

June 6, 2018

To continually shape a particular rock, you chip away…To grow a plant next to the rock, you water, prune, add or subtract soil and sediment…An attention to texture and consistency rather like involvement in writing music (stacking chords, nurturing melodic shapes, removing excess, and so forth)

July 4, 2018

One gets at the center of a musical notion by hand; on foot; with lungs, back, arms, shoulders. Not as much with extensions like laptops, loudspeakers.

The crunch of a particular chord; the size/shape/sentiment of a melodic curve; a pianist’s varied touch or turn of phrase; the instrumentalist’s restraint or ability to cut loose while exciting the string, gauging airflow through reed or mouthpiece, rumbling or flam-ing with hand or mallet. Do we consider these subtle, everyday musical actions when we think of the vitality of “the arts?” What constitutes the nature of our education as musicians? Keep fine-tuning this question as you continue to ask it.

July 1, 2018

If chords thicken, can they still leave light footprints?