I started writing something about a new composition. My focus when things got rolling was on whether or not one would compose differently for a live orchestra as opposed to a virtual one. What got me going was a particularly delicate harp passage that sounded lovely in the virtual world of Logic but that would never work in a live setting without amplification and other technilogical assistance. The path got a little blurry after a while because it became apparent that I didn’t really care if I was writing for the computer or for people, what I was really doing was trying to talk myself out of composing for the orchestra altogether.
That feeling goes back a long way. About 15 years or so. For me, that’s quite a while. There was nothing I loved more than composing for the orchestra. There is somethiing about taking on an ensemble of such magnitude. The are so many possibilities. It’s a playground and if one is particularly inventive there are so few real limitations. There is also a side to it that is like a puzzle. Some ideas are better suited to certain implementations. What solutions can be divined that bring out a given sonority or melody is engaging and addictive. It’s fun.
When I think back on it, I clearly see myself in a practice room well after midnight on a Saturday. The conservatory building was officially closed but those few of us who worked on the custodial staff during the summer knew some things. I sat there in front of a freshly tuned baby grand piano with my notebooks and pens (never pencils! Erasers are for the weak and kill ideas!) with only the vile yellow sodium lights pouring in from the streets to light the room. The sound of the room. The stench of the steam heat. And the absolute focus I was able to summon. There was nothing else in the world. Only those tones coming from the piano and the scratching of pen on paper. My responsibilities were limited to that page and passage. The importance assigned to each stroke of the pen was incredible. It’s horribly naive and pretentious in hindsight, yet the attraction is so obvious to me even today.
Why did I stop? Why did I move on? Was it the fact that after my time as a big fish in a small pond I couldn’t face the reality that I would likely never have a work performed again? Did it have to do with the misguided notion that the orchestra is a creature of the past, a museum for the culture that was? Or was it simple creative wanderlust? That desire to try something new and forge ahead in search of uncharted ground.
In truth, it’s probably a little of each. As I sit and listen to the pristine but mechanical performance of my latest piece as rendered by sampled instruments, I’m struck that I can still imagine how it would sound live. Alive. It moves me to find that after so many years I still feel an affiliation with that art form. The ideas trickle out and they aren’t bad. They stink of unedited inspiration because that’s what they are. And that is how they shall stay.
Maybe I will copy out the score in long hand. An homage to a discipline I have not practiced in some time. An act of love for something that I never really left behind. A gift from that stubborn and pretentious young man in the halflight of a winter evening.
0 Comments.