Today we recorded the pieces from yesterday’s rehearsals. Each piece was permitted two hours of intense scrutiny from both the composer and performers. It is interesting to see how a composer may be satisfied with the sound, but the performer not and vice versa.
My rehearsal was today and it was a great experience. There was a discussion about how I could have gotten away with some sections a little easier by not including bar lines, which is something to consider. It seems I need to work on giving better feedback to the performer because I was satisfied with the first run of the rehearsal and the violinist, Rolf Schulte, didn’t feel it was the best it could be, but couldn’t tell me what about it was puzzling. Since I thought the performance was great, except a few details that I mentioned at the beginning, the rehearsal came to a few awkward pauses. The pauses then gave way to a discussion of aesthetics and where the line blurs when taking performers’ advice to change passages. There was a concern with the length of my piece and Mr. Schulte thought some ideas occurred too often for too long, where I thought it may be too often, but the length was the intention.
What I have a hard time with is that these issues brought up were intentions behind the piece, but if an exceptional new music interpreter has a difficult time with the conceptual aspect, could the piece cease to engage the performer and thus disengage the audience? Could it be one man’s opinion due to background and taste preferences from that background?
Some could say Feldman’s music is too long and doesn’t go anywhere, but to me, the isolated sounds occurring in space is what is captivating about Feldman. Is it that what I’m trying to do with these concepts are purely conceptual and lack the strong musical convictions required to convince a performer and through him/her, the audience?
These are things that I’m sure will be made apparent after the conference and once I get time with the recording and the score.
With the first day at an end and the second to begin shortly, a few things came to my attention yesterday during the first stretch of rehearsals. One was the incredible amount of musical diversity shown between the eight of us. There are people writing “neo-romantic” works, others built on sets, and the coming days will show more styles. Regardless of style there were a few things in the rehearsals that stood out.
One being the importance of a detailed, performance ready score for the rehearsal. A lot of time was committed to clarifying intentions and better word use for musical directions. This was extremely helpful to hear because I strive to produce very detailed scores and I sometimes feel it can be a bit fussy. Not the case. The more detailed, the better because great performers like to have clear direction. These performers here are world class, and it is such a great feeling to see that they know our pieces intimately and can truly bring the music to life.
I will be excited to hear these pieces in the recording session.
The past two months have been hectic between moving to Brooklyn and getting a job or two, but I will soon be getting relief. Monday, July 13, I will be flying out to Cleveland for a recording session of my solo violin piece, Cataclysm. This is an extremely exciting opportunity since the performers hired are all incredible and have worked with composers such as Elliot Carter and Milton Babbitt, to name a few. I am also excited to be able to talk about my music at a presentation during the week as well. I hope to make some great connections with some of the other composers there and maybe start a new project or something.
The session will last five days for each of us eight composers, so at the end of each day, I will be reporting/commenting on the performers, composers, music, recording process, etc. There will be many new pictures posted and by Friday, July 17, hopefully a commercial quality recording of Cataclysm will be up to enjoy.
On the work side of things, I’ve completed the chamber piece for trumpet percussion ensemble, and toy piano. All that is left is to type-set it and make small revisions as necessary as well as start sending it out to interested parties. I have also made some connections in the NYC theater scene, so quite possibly there will be more music for dance and other theater works in the near future.
