Big step forward today. I didn’t finish ACC6, but I did make substantial changes to one section, which will make this movement sit more comfortably alongside the rest of the piece. Basically, there’s a big solo section at the end which is heavily influenced by Bulgarian folk music, and I’ve changed it to fit better with the big solo section towards the end of ACC2. It’s still got the same feel, but i can just lift the work from the other movement and drop it into this. Unfortunately this meant I didn’t actually finish this movement today, but I went for a walk in the Phoenix park instead, which is twice as nice. Tomorrow morning I’ll be back at it.
I also knocked together a simple little set of responses for men’s voices in between things.
100 Days – Day 75
Some good work today. Finished 2 cryptic crosswords then came home and did a good bit of ACC6. Will definitely finish it tomorrow with one last big push!
100 Days – Day 74
Started off today by writing a song before breakfast – over the last few years I’ve been setting a cycle of poems by Maryanne Doyle to music, called In and out of Love. I wrote the first 2 as birthday presents for Dominica, because they deal with being in love, but the last two poems deal with break-ups, so this morning’s offering was just to add the next song in the cycle.
The piano right hand just plays the same 5 bar motif over and over again. This is because, in the poem (Mistaken) the speaker seems to be lying awake in bed, running over a situation in which her lover has mumbled some other woman’s name while sleeping. We can all identify with that feeling of lying awake, with a single thought spinning around and around in our heads.
Regarding ACC, I did very little work on it today, because I was dealing with a situation where I wasn’t at a rehearsal I hadn’t been told about, but I find myself unexpectedly totally free tomorrow, so I anticipate that I’ll finish it tomorrow on schedule as planned.
100 Days – Day 73
Properly finished that Christmas carol today – dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s. Then my plan was to do a lot of work on ACC6 in the evening, but I got some good news so I decided to have a bath and a beer and celebrate a bit with an evening off. I have made a plan of all the stuff that remains to do in that movement though, so I hope to finish it tomorrow or Sunday.
It’s unlikely (but not impossible) that I’ll be finished the composition part of my PhD by day 100, at this stage. There are 27 days left (holy moly where did the time go!?) and 4 movements remain to be completed. However, one will certainly be finished in 2 or 3 days, and the other three could all, in theory, be finished in a week. I have however extended my ‘completion’ goal to the end of August, which will technically make this blog #116 days, but then I did take days off here and there, and worked better as a result!
And who knows? Maybe I will actually finish on time.
Stranger things have happened.
100 Days – Day 72
I finished one of my Christmas Carols for CCI today. I still need to add dynamics and so on, but all the notes are there.
It’s a very short, very repetitive setting of the text I sing of a Maiden*. The text consists of 5 verses – 2 ‘container’ verses, and 3 middle verses, which are repetitive and formulaic. I’ve always been struck by this structure, and so decided to set the outer 2 verses as entirely separate to the inner 3.
I’ve treated verses 1 and 5 as a sort of angelic narration – altos alone, in 3rds. Then, for the middle 3 verses, I wanted to sort of ‘zoom in’ on the scene, and the music becomes Mary gently rocking Jesus, singing a repetitive little lullaby about how good and sweet and kind the child is. It’s a very simple idea, but I think it’ll be quite effective, especially as a lot of my other carols are quite boisterous!
Simply, lullaby tune in canon in the sops and alto, underpinned by some big chords in the tenors and basses.
*The full text:
1. I sing of a maiden
That is makeless.
King of all Kings
To her son she ches.
2. He came all so still
Where His mother was,
As dew in April
That falleth on the grass.
3. He came all so still
To His mother’s bower,
As dew in April
That falleth on the flower.
4. He came all so still
Where his mother lay,
As dew in April
That falleth on the hay.
5. Mother and maiden
Was never none but she.
Well may such a Lady
God’s mother be.
100 Days – Day 69
Well, I was hoping to finish ACC6 today, but unfortunately haven’t managed it. There’s quite a lot of formatting to do in this movement (argh, I hate putting harp parts into sibelius) and with an early flight to London tomorrow for an audition, I just haven’t got the mental energy to work it all out. I know what needs to be done, so I’ll do it before the end of the week.
Promise.
(N.B. Because of aforementioned audition I won’t be posting tomorrow or Wednesday.)
100 Days – Day 68
Some work on movement 6 today, before lunch and cocktails over the guardian cryptic crossword with Dr David O’Shea. I might finish this movement tomorrow, if I really knuckle down. It has very little left to do, and is texturally fairly uniform throughout. This will leave me with only 3 movements left to complete!
Fingers crossed.
100 Days – Day 67
Movement 2 completed
11 minutes, 34 pages, 214 bars of B flat minor tintinnabulating tremolo! I’m having a half bottle of champagne to celebrate, as this is the first movement I’ve completed* in over a year.
This brings me to a total of 3 completed movements, and 3 almost completed movements. I might be able to finish another one before I go to London on Tuesday if I really work my ass off. The 6th movement has very little left to be done, I think, so that’ll be the one.
*completed is a bit of a funny word for me. No piece of music is ever really finished. I just send out the best possible draft I think I can get to, without overworking the piece. In this case, what I’ve finished is the first draft of the 2nd movement. There are some things that will probably be tweaked, and all of the formatting needs to be done, but I’m not going to do any formatting on the piece at all until it’s completely finished.
I love this music. I actually can’t get over how much I love something I’ve composed.
100 Days – Day 66
Tremolo, tremolo.
Tintinnabuli, tintinnabuli.
2/5ths of the 2nd movement fully orchestrated. Might get another 5th done tonight. Then there are only 2 5ths left, but they’re the same, so it’s really only one 5th. I could pull an all nighter and get it all done today. Then tomorrow I’d only have 4 movements left.
100 Days – Day 65
Tremolo, Tremolo.