Posts Tagged writing
Program notes for tonight’s performance…
I find one of the most difficult things a composer can be asked to do—right up there with starting a new piece and coming up with a title—is to write program notes for his or her music.
My teacher is trying to convince me that what my next piece really needs is some kind of extra-musical concept to tie it all together. A program, a story, a poem, an image, a character, a game, an object. I don’t buy such things. They’re fine for other people if they want to organize their thoughts, but I’ve never listened to Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring and thought to myself, “Hey, that sounds just like the rolling hills of West Virginia and parts of twelve other states.” Have you? I just got home from the premiere of my friend Matt Schoendorff’s wind ensemble piece The Standard Model, which is a set of character pieces inspired by the standard model of particle physics. It was an incredible piece, but never did I think to myself, “Wow, so that’s what the Higgs boson would sound like if it existed!” (+5 nerd points if you got my quantum physics joke). I think of music as a complete abstraction. There are exceptions, obvious among them are songs with words. But in general, I think the only thing music is “about” is music.
I have a piece being played by the incomparable h2 quartet on their program Thursday night at 6:00 in the MSU Music Auditorium. If I had a concept like Aaron’s or Matt’s program notes would still not be easy, but at least I’d have somewhere to start. Compounding my problem is the way I come up with titles. I write most of the piece, and then I think to myself, “You know, this kind of reminds me of …” and I come up with titles like Falling Up the Down Escalator and Inner/Outer Monologue (which for about a year, my mother thought was Inner/Outer Mongolia).
The first of those titles is the piece being played this week. I can’t say, “This piece is about some guy falling on an escalator that is moving down, but somehow he’s falling up it, against gravity.” I can’t say that because 1) It’s not true, and 2) It doesn’t really make much sense. Here’s the problem: if my music is as I posit, an abstraction, how can I write meaningfully about it in a program note? It’s not impossible, but it’s very very tricky. Considerations of audience are key. No one wants to read a theory paper in their concert program, not even a theorist. Also, you don’t want to spoil any surprises. My piece has a section (which for the sake of mystery, I will not name or describe) that I like to think of as a social experiment, but it wouldn’t really work if the audience knew it was coming.
Here’s what I came up with for the note. It’s short, but I think it’s solid:
Falling Up the Down Escalator was influenced by jazz, blues, and contemporary concert music. My hope is that the piece will reorient the listener’s concepts of what is musically “comfortable.” The piece presents musical ideas that are generally considered uncomfortable (groupings of 5 notes, for example) and uses them as though they are not, in some ways, inverting the senses of consonance and dissonance.
So, how do you feel about extra-musical concepts? What do you want to read in your program? Tell us in the comments!
Jump Writing
About a month ago, I met a Buddhist monk who came up to MSU to give a meditation workshop series. He is Sokuzan Robert Brown. The workshop was fantastic, and I was delighted to meeet someone who has a background in the fine arts talk about issues that matter to me. Often the image of a monk we have is that of a single, male ascetic living by himself in the mountains, a dry person. But then again, Bob Brown would tell you: “can you get me a cup of water, please?”
We’ve stayed in contact ever since and have started a creative activity by email, something he calls Jump Writing. I’ll let him describe it:
Jump Writing is a name I have given to an activity I came up with a few years back ( starting in 1969 though it has changed a lot) where you take a piece of writing that you feel connected with and “Jump off” so to speak. So, it can be a poem or prose from any source, or even the writing of a friend like I have done with Andrew and a few other people. One way I have people start is they send me two or three random words. I jump from that and maybe include the words or anything that arises. The idea is NOT to produce great literature but to break through the fear barrier to using language freely and inventively. It is also fun to make up stuff in both the form and the content sense. If you would like to try it then send me three words you like the sound or meaning of. I will write back and “Jump off” those words. Then I will tell you how to proceed from there.
blue, panda, the world
