Three projects
Apr. 28th, 2006 08:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariI plan to have three pieces finished by the end of August or maybe Labor Day. It's a kind of ambitious goal, but I think I can do it with enough focus and discipline. It also helps that I already know exactly what these three pieces are going to be.
The first is a string quartet which will be called Burning the Harvest. The title is a reference to the Polish folk song "I've Slayed the Rye", upon which it based. This song appears on the Warsaw Village Band's newest CD, "Uprooting". It's an amazing thing of driving rhythms combined with long, drawn out yet forceful vocal lines. As I was first listening to this song on the CD, I had the strange experience of starting to also hear within myself another piece at the same time, a sort of transformation of the Warsaw Village Band's song. And now I am writing that piece. The compositional process is a little like feeling my way back to a fuller recollection of some dimly perceived yet vital memory of the past. It's slow going at times, but I'm not having too much trouble achieving the sounds that are in my head.
The second project is a set of three songs on poems by e e cummings. I'm writing them for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pantsie, who is a wonderful singer. She chose the texts, and I'm going to enjoy working with them. I have only just begun to work on this - all I've got right now is a set of harmonies and some half-formed ideas. This is the first time I've written a vocal piece for a specific person and specific voice. I'm excited about being able to work directly with the intended performer during the compositional process - it will be a completely new experience.
The third project is still in the hazy-idea stage. It will probably be a piece for violin and piano. I'm kicking around the idea of adding percussion. Anyway, it was inspired by The Grapes of Wrath. There is a passage in the last half of the book about dances held in the migrant camps. The way Steinbeck writes it, the words form a distinctive rhythm that pretty much leapt off the page at me the first time I read it. Plus, Steinbeck directly mentions two traditional songs in this passage. Thus, the material is all laid out in the author's words. It doesn't hurt that I greatly admired the book.
The first is a string quartet which will be called Burning the Harvest. The title is a reference to the Polish folk song "I've Slayed the Rye", upon which it based. This song appears on the Warsaw Village Band's newest CD, "Uprooting". It's an amazing thing of driving rhythms combined with long, drawn out yet forceful vocal lines. As I was first listening to this song on the CD, I had the strange experience of starting to also hear within myself another piece at the same time, a sort of transformation of the Warsaw Village Band's song. And now I am writing that piece. The compositional process is a little like feeling my way back to a fuller recollection of some dimly perceived yet vital memory of the past. It's slow going at times, but I'm not having too much trouble achieving the sounds that are in my head.
The second project is a set of three songs on poems by e e cummings. I'm writing them for
pantsie, who is a wonderful singer. She chose the texts, and I'm going to enjoy working with them. I have only just begun to work on this - all I've got right now is a set of harmonies and some half-formed ideas. This is the first time I've written a vocal piece for a specific person and specific voice. I'm excited about being able to work directly with the intended performer during the compositional process - it will be a completely new experience.The third project is still in the hazy-idea stage. It will probably be a piece for violin and piano. I'm kicking around the idea of adding percussion. Anyway, it was inspired by The Grapes of Wrath. There is a passage in the last half of the book about dances held in the migrant camps. The way Steinbeck writes it, the words form a distinctive rhythm that pretty much leapt off the page at me the first time I read it. Plus, Steinbeck directly mentions two traditional songs in this passage. Thus, the material is all laid out in the author's words. It doesn't hurt that I greatly admired the book.
