Finished Editing!

I am now done, done and done. I added a million dynamic markings, pedal markings, ritardandos, a tempos, slurs, tenutos etc.. I'm sure it would have been helpful for the performers to have had a copy like this at the concert. Sadly I was still mulling over and agonizing over little details so a lot of their performance indications were just given verbally. Now I hope to have little ambiguity in my score. I was very specific about when to change tempo and dynamic but the speed at which the performer grows or falls back can be free. It is not long before another indication appears so the liberties that can be taken are limited. I also provided a lot of places for performers to breathe, re-group and take said liberties...within reason.

It's really exciting to have another composition finished and very close to getting bound. Although, I think it might be a good idea to show it to a singer before I do to double check if a couple markings make sense or are placed in the right spot in the score.

CMC 50th anniversary concert

It was definitely cool to see a concert of entirely music from the only the past 30 years and it is probably something I would not have necessarily been interested in before this course. I even tried at one point to listen to the pitch clusters that would ring out from the instruments and, thinking back to earlier in the semester, would rate them on their tension level. I found that although the pieces were atonal for the most part, a lot of it was still "catchy" and only select parts involved extreme dissonances.

I also paid close attention to how the pieces were each constructed. ( In the future I would like to try and write more cohesive pieces that have a common thread throughout the whole piece. I think, my concept of a tonality/ rhythmic freedom is almost limiting because I don't want anything to be predictable.) Anyways, my point is that the pieces that night were not predictable and the returning material was more enjoyable every time it came back and things were still different and interesting to my ear. I thought the pieces were really charming, even humorous at times but also very beautiful and atmospheric.

Concert time!

I also just want to write a quick word about the concert. Everybody sounded really great and seeing all the ideas well prepared and presented was awesome!

Besides it being great to see the pieces come to life, I know for my piece it also pointed out some parts that needed clarification in the score for the performers to be able to learn it. It helped point out some accidentals or rhythms that would be more easily read in a different way. Also, because my piece was quite disjointed in some ways, the transitions were particularly difficult to stay together on. When they were done in time, I then discovered that I did not like them quite as much. Practically the entire piece is meant to feel quite free and breathy so I ended up adding about 3 fermatas in places and allowed for either the clarinet part or voice part to breathe and start again. I think it worked well in performance!

Thanks again Mary-Beth and Emily!!

Finishing the piece

I realized I never concluded talking about how I came up with the ending. I wanted to continue dealing with each line of text uniquely. I was definitely trying to have a very free-feeling vocal line that was never really predictable, and almost sounded as though the singer was composing it while singing. I think that probably could have been accomplished with more cohesiveness in the music as well but I am still quite fond with the overall result.

I felt like the second half made more sense with the clarinet, or at least felt more like 3 equal parts than the first half. I think this was because I wrote the first half just trying to get an outline for chords and melody which turned into an established piano part and the clarinet had to fit in there somewhere. The solo, in the second half, and a lot of the duet-like motifs between the clarinet and the voice are probably my favourite parts. I love the way the timbre of voice and clarinet blends together. Also, Emily (singer) said that the second half was much easier for her to learn because of the interplay between the two instruments.

I chose to end it with a bit of a question mark, as opposed to a very satisfactory resolution which the uplifting last line of "dancing with the daffodils" might suggest. I like this poem and how it suggests either finding simple pleasures in life and thinking happy thoughts but I thought I would just conclude with the piano and clarinet having a last word after the daffodils to maybe point out that the narrator is still alone. This is not necessarily a depressing reminder but just a recall to the many times I characterized solitude throughout the piece, especially since that is how the poem and piece began!