a learning experience!

Composition recital yesterday - the premier performances of all our pieces! Congratulations, everyone! There were great moments in all the pieces!!

Overall, I'm happy with my composition. I do wish we'd had more time to rehearse, but we pulled it off! And, with this being a whole new experience for me, I learned a TON in the process!

• Composition is challenging and incredibly time-consuming, but also very rewarding!
• Writing for piano is difficult! Even for pianists! Especially in my third piece, with all the arpeggios/scalar figures, I learned (the hard way) not too write too much away from the piano. When I started practicing it, I found much of it awkward to play and spent a lot of time revising it to fit better under the fingers. No sense making it unnecessarily difficult when I could get the same effect in an easier way. 
• Balance. I hadn't thought too much about it until rehearsals. I found that the lower register of the horn can be easily drowned if the piano's also in the lower range. And there was a section with both of us in our upper ranges where I found the horn was better supported when I dropped the piano part an octave. 
• It's hard to know when to stop editing. It seems like in every rehearsal, I saw/heard things I could have done a bit differently, but it was too late to really make changes. I will fix some things now before I submit the final score. 
• Notation. I've thought a lot about how best to notate things - especially fingering - and mostly in my third piece again. What's the clearest way to indicate which hand should play what in arpeggiation... m.s./m.d. markings? Stem directions? Keeping one hand to each staff? Some combination of them all? Or just leave it up to the performer? Although fingering can sometimes be a matter of personal preference, it is helpful to have suggested fingering in the score. I found that all methods get messy in some situations, and so I've changed my mind a good number of times. I want to be somewhat consistent... Right now, I think stem directions are really useful here - but I'd like to pass it by another pianist or two to see what they think. 
• I am a very particular person. If I find silly little note-spelling things or inconsistencies in my final score, it's going to irritate me. But it's so easy to spend way too much time picking through the score. On Tuesday we're doing some score-editing for each other in class. Excellent!

I am excited to be finished this project - it will be so satisfying to have the final score in my hands!

And I am excited to get started on the next assignment! I'm probably going to do the second option - a piece for voice and 2-3 other instruments. So the first task will be to find a text to use!

DEADlines

We are all scheduled to perform our set of pieces next week Thursday! Exciting! But so soon! Yes, this means I need to: a) finish writing my third piece; and b) learn to play them.
I'm not too worried about finishing the composition - I have a good start on the third piece now. But putting it all together to perform in less than a week will be a bit stressful! As I've been writing them, I've taken the difficulty of the horn part into consideration, knowing that my horn major friend is doing me a big favour in playing them with me, and not wanting to add too much to the pile of music she already has to work on. I haven't been quite as thoughtful towards the pianist - because the pianist is me, and I figured I'd figure it out. And so I will. It will happen! It has to happen!
We discussed moving the recital back a week, but the vote was to keep it as is. I'm ok with that now - it will be nice to have this assignment done with so we can get going on the next one! And I suppose deadlines are a fact of life.

More about the third piece now. It has a straightforward melody in the horn on top of running scales/arpeggios in the piano. Someone commented in class that it has a Debussy-ish sound, and that it works well with the character of my first piece. Suggestions included freeing up the rhythm of the horn, and considering using the mute in some sections. I had thought about mutes but hadn't decided for sure. The general consensus was that the mute would work well here, so I think I will put it in. Also a formatting issue: where there's so many notes in the piano, Sibelius was fitting only one bar per system. I have figured out how to lock the number of bars per system so that I won't be constantly flipping pages.

One last note: I really need to come up with proper titles so I can stop calling them 1, 2 and 3! Any suggestions? :)

oh where is #3?

I'm struggling to get started on #3 - a third character piece using these same chords. I did fairly well with atonality in the last two pieces, but now my ear keeps trying to tonalize things. I'm feeling uninspired, restricted by these unfamiliar chords I've come up with, wanting to return to the conventional harmonic language that I know so much better... but I know that this is a good challenge for me. I will figure something out eventually. But it needs to sound natural, not forced. I've started about three times already, and nothing's going anywhere... Time for a break, I suppose. We'll see what comes tomorrow.

#2

First outing for my second character piece yesterday in class. This one has a bit of a quirky character. It began in my mind as a rhythm in 11/8, which I scribbled down and then played around with. I like the result - it's been fun to write. I still have to come up with a good ending and do a lot of detail work, but most of it is in place.

As for feedback: the class agreed that my current ending was rather abrupt. I didn't like it either - it was something I finished quickly the night before, so I was hoping for ideas on how to improve it. And of course, they did offer good suggestions and things to try (thank you!!). Ideas included:
- Maybe return to the pitch E. I was thinking more of my chords than of a specific pitch centre when I wrote it, but E is definitely a prominent pitch, so it would feel more final if I end there.
- Take a look at the hypermeter and make sure this is a logical point to end at (may need a few more bars...)
- Use a recognizable gesture to signal the end - like a short, high chord followed by a pause and then a low, sustained chord. Or maybe just stepwise resolution, as is common in cadences in tonal music.
- Just play around until I find an ending I like, something that fits the character of the piece, maybe something "cheeky"... something that will make the audience chuckle...

Other suggestions: 

- Explore more of the range of the horn, especially the lower register. It's a good idea - and I personally love playing in the lower range of the horn - so I'll see if I can fit any of that in. 

- Throw some more "wrinkles" into the rhythmic idea - change up the placement of the group of three eighths, use some syncopation... 

Lots to think about over the weekend! I want to get these first two pieces finished up so I can give the parts to my horn player friend who's going to play them with me :)

on repetition, variation, contrast

I played a much more complete version of my first piece last class, and got some positive feedback as well as helpful suggestions and ideas to consider as I do some revision:

• The section featuring melody in RH piano line is good. Ideas included:
• making this section longer - it's an different sort of figure, incorporating melody into a running eighth note line, but I only use it once in the whole piece
• adding a simple horn part here
• I don't think I'll extend the section - it would throw off my sense of structure/organization. But I'm thinking of using this type of figure in another area of the piece so it's not just a one time thing. If I can make it work. And I may add a horn line here - as long as it won't detract from the RH piano melody. 
• When the first section repeats, consider varying it to keep the audience's interest. 
• vary the accompanying figure so it's not as predictable
• use different octaves/registers
• change a few rhythms and/or notes...
• I agree - I lose focus sometimes myself when I'm listening to the repetition. I have considered taking it out completely, but now think I will keep it in with some minor changes to keep the performers and listeners engaged.

This raises the issue of repetition in music: in general, too much repetition makes a piece boring, but too little repetition makes it loses its sense of focus and logical structure. I suppose it's all about balance - finding the right balance of repetition and contrast or variation.
Of course, the performer also has a role to play in creating variation and capturing the audience's attention. They always tell us, "Don't play the same thing exactly the same way twice! Find ways to highlight different aspects of the material, subtle changes in character." Plenty of music in the core repertoire has a lot of repetition - pretty much any piece in sonata form repeats the entire exposition! It's up to the performer to present it in a slightly different way.
So the composer in me says, "Repetition is great. It's simpler for me and gives the piece some logic/organization. The performers will make sure it doesn't become boring."
But the performer in me says, "Hey, don't be lazy! Give me some more to work with here - make my job easier!"
And since I am both composer and performer of this piece... yes. I will write some more variation into the score.

Ok - too much blog writing and not enough music writing. Or practicing for that matter!