pateceramics

Thanks, Henry! Yes, the beginning is a jazz minor scale (melodic minor ascending used for both the scale up and the scale down) with fourths raised for a bit of extra leading tone (leading tone to the fifth). And then we flip around a bit between Mixolydian and eventually a nice bright C Major. One of my bigger challenges with this piece was being sure that Whitman's lovely text would be heard through everything that is going on. It's a long and wordy text and I knew I wanted to work the "all flesh is as grass" in as well as a second idea. The text ends up similar in length to the "credo" section of the big masses, so it presents the same problem of how to fit it all in. I ended up doing a fair amount of homophonic writing in the early parts of the piece to keep the text clear and understandable and using the piano part to keep things lively, as well as having different voices come in and out to add emphasis to certain lines and keep things interesting. But by the second half, the singer may have a disorientingly fragmented experience, since I was often needing a voice part to switch back and forth from the poem to the biblical text in mid-thought to try and keep the lines from becoming too tangled with each other. To avoid some overlapping of people singing different texts simultaneously, I chopped the lines into little pieces and stitched them back together as a quilt to get the important words to punch through. Hopefully it's not too jarring an experience. The Catholic Church's Council on Trent (1545-1563) apparently specifically condemned this kind of polyphonic tomfoolery, feeling that interfering with the understandability of a text was missing the point of singing as a mode of communication. But of course, then what the heck do you do about the credo section of your choral mass to keep it from being boring and ten minutes long if you are composing for the church?

How wonderfully brooding!

Excellent! I love the way your ARJUNA theme skips along rhythmically in the violin part; the whole piece has such a lighthearted feel to it. I would have liked a little more bold variety to the repeated wind blows fair, wind blows cold theme that we see in the violin at measure 62, since it comes up several times. It feels like you could have pushed the harmonic surprise there a little more in those places, but I know you said you were also trying to simplify your ideas in this piece. Excellent job keeping both parts varied for interest and letting them interact with each other in diverse ways that will let the musicians enjoy bouncing off each other's musical ideas. This seems very fun to play! I hope you'll enjoy it!

This piece contrasts an excerpt from Walt Whitman's preface to Leaves of Grass with 1 Peter 1:24 "All flesh is as grass...", otherwise known as the best part of the the thoroughly excellent Brahms Requiem. Whitman's text urges us to think for ourselves and do the right thing, letting our lives speak for our morals. The biblical passage reminds us that our lives are beautiful, but short, lending urgency to Whitman's words. There is only so much time. “…read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body...” -Walt Whitman For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: 1 Peter 1:24

I like this so much! His poetry is so evocative of a time and place, while simultaneously the speaker could be someone you pass on the street today. The rocking rhythm of your piano accompaniment feels appropriate to an evening spent lying on the carriage roof, soul twirling along with the smoke. Your harmonies around 1:10 work very well to inject a little melancholy and mystery to "pourquoir me comprenez-vous pas?" You do an excellent job of turning your musical language to follow the narrator's emotional journey, while still producing a cohesive piece. Bravo!

Thinking, "I should write a theme first and then a contrasting one," is exactly the sort of thinking about form that he is discussing. You sound like you are well on your way to thinking about the large scale issues with a piece, rather than just writing note by note. It sounds like he's talking about how beginning composers just sort of work from one note to the next without any rhyme or reason. There may be no theme at all, just a random succession of notes that they liked for five minutes straight. Everyone works one note to the next, but the more experience you have, the more you'll be thinking ahead about how to organize yourself in the choosing of those notes. Thinking, I have a fast section, so next I should have a slow one for contrast... that sort of thing. Or, I'm going to have range issues if I give this bit to that instrument without modulating. Do I want to modulate, or do I want to give it to a different instrument... And he wants to suggest some simpler exercises to get you started thinking about these sorts of things before you decide to write a whole symphony. Use fewer instruments. Write a short theme and see if you can turn it upside down. Practice writing a fugue. Also, Schoenberg is writing in a way that makes him sound like a big smarty pants so he can scare you into doing your homework, so don't be intimidated into a state of confusion, just do the exercises. (My best guess at what he was going for at any rate).

How many takes do you need to get a recording of this length to your satisfaction? Bravo! I really enjoyed the transition at bar 63. (The "crazy" section). It works well as a bridge between the classical beginning and later jazz styles. I also particularly enjoyed the 130s (Allegro agitato) where you switched back in the other direction. And I heartily agree with Chopin's comment above about the value of structure and storytelling in music. To tackle such a lengthy project that becomes perhaps the most important concern. How can the same material be brought back and developed in a way that tells a story? You are further along on that journey than I am! Well done!

The text for this piece is often attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, who died in 1226, but the earliest known published version was much closer to our own time. It may have been written by Father Esther Bouquerel (1855-1923), who wrote much of the content for the small religious magazine in which it seems to have first appeared. A popular English version of this prayer is as follows: Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy. O Lord, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, It is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

I've been going back over old files and refreshing the formatting and sound files so the scores look a bit less dated. This piece is from 2012.

This is fantastic, and I can only imagine it doesn't have more reviews because people like to be able to suggest something that should be improved upon, and this is perfect as it is. I agree with Henry that the 5/8 is an excellent fit here, partly because it rushes things along, and partly because it feels slightly off-balance, like a mad love affaire. Well played and well sung! Now I want to go look up some Jules Laforgue poetry. Are there other texts you particularly recommend?

Thanks so much, Henry! I know that parallel 5ths and octaves aren't harmonically exciting when one is looking for independence of line, but that wasn't what I wanted for this piece. I wanted a sense of rain-washed green hills with clear air above, dotted with sheep all saying their prayers to the land together like little nuns. So homophony made sense, and open harmonies, with the sopranos floating above like birds taking in the scene below. And since that could be a bit boring, particularly given the repetition in the text, some changes in rhythmic emphasis seemed wise. The tricky bit is remembering to read ahead so you actually do them, but thankfully, the conductor doesn't have too much to do, so they can free an arm to dictate triplets and other patterns if people are watching. Thank you for your thoughts and I'm glad you enjoyed it! -Maggie

That's what would make it fun for teachers to inflict it on their students. 🙂

Excellent! Needs to be given to beginning music students so they can learn to follow repeats. 🙂

The one thing that didn't quite work for me were the initial shifting rhythms in the piano in the opening bars. (Measures 5-7 in the right hand). It felt like the effect you were looking for was more like just a rit. and having everything written out into different triplets didn't quite give as smooth a change in tempo as perhaps you were trying to achieve? I really like this piece very much though! Sterling work! As neither a pianist nor a clarinet player, I can't speak to issues of playability. It seems like it would be a challenge to learn, but well worth the work! Very lovely!

I'm curious to know who made that comment. I can't really think of anything that you can't do these days, at least through manual adjustment. Maybe if you are doing really funky contemporary scores that deviate from standard sheet music styles, but that's not going to be a problem for most people. Then again, I'm not a publisher or a professor, and they are allowed to have a standard program that they prefer to receive files in to make their lives easier for marking up scores, editing, etc. Sometimes something is the standard just because at some point it was the most commonly used, and it's annoying to switch between different programs all the time which aren't compatible with each other, not because one is actually better. That said, I'm annoyed at Musescore every time they come out with an update and they move all the features around so I have to relearn where to find things.