Done (I think)

[kenjari]

I sent off what I think is the very last of my grad school application stuff this afternoon. It was just a few things I had inadvertently forgotten to give to U of Oregon. Thankfully, their wonderful graduate admissions coordinator e-mailed me to let me know about it. All I have left now is finishing up the U of Oregon scholarship application (1 essay, 1 recommendation letter) and filling out the Fafsa. I feel pretty good about it all, I think. And I had a much easier time dealing with the schools than last time.
I have one complaint about all these applications, though. So many of the forms I encountered were clearly designed with college seniors in mind, not people who had spent a few years between undergrad and grad school working full time and living a regular adult life. I had to contend with being given only two lines in which to list my employment history, and not-quite-applicable-or-relevant questions about extracurricular activities. It's hard to feel like you are giving an accurate picture of what you've been up to since graduating under these circumstances. It makes me extra glad that I went and visited my top two schools and got to talk to the professors.
At least now I have more time to devote to my composing. My new project, which I was only able to get a little ways into during the fall, is a collection of short piano pieces. I have no idea how many I will ultimately write - it will end up being as many as I come up with before I move on to a new project. So far I've finished two and am nearly through with a third.
The idea was inspired by Chopin's Preludes and Satie's Sports et Divertissements. I've been working for so long on large projects: a multi-movement work for orchestra; substantial pieces for chamber ensembles, and the like. Things that took weeks if not months to finish. I started to want to do some pieces that I could write from start to finish in a matter of days. Brief pieces that wouldn't require tons of material or large structures. Simple things that required no more than two or three ideas. I also wanted to have some pieces that I could sit down and play for people myself, on the fly. Pieces that wouldn't require a huge time commitment to learn, play, or listen to. I also wanted the pieces to be relatively easy. One thing I've noticed, being a pianist myself, is that learning music as a student is one of the primary vehicles through which pianists become familiar with the work of various composers. My first contact with the likes of Chopin, Bartok, Prokofiev, and Debussy came not through recordings of their monumental works, but through learning to play a few of their smaller solo piano pieces. Contemporary music has for so long put such a premium on producing difficult pieces that will catch the fancy of virtuoso professionals that I think it's missed out on a very important channel for dissemination: instrumental students. So that's another of my goals with this project: to provide some pieces that are appropriate material for piano students.

Comments

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

I suppose that is another symptom or result of the premium on difficulty: composers who write easier pieces don't get much attention. Yeah, there are people writing for the non-virtuoso, but somehow there is less value placed on that. It's strange, because I can think of several piano pieces that are not at all difficult to play yet nonetheless are beloved staples of the repertoire (the Moonlight Sonata, Chopin Preludes and Nocturnes, Mozart sonatas, etc.).