A Composer’s Journal Entry December 12-15, 2004

Journal entries by composer and pianist Laurie Conrad

Moderator: figaro

Post Reply
figaro
Posts: 535
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2005 12:45 am
Location: Ithaca, NY
Contact:

A Composer’s Journal Entry December 12-15, 2004

Post by figaro »

Sunday, December 12
1 p.m.

Feeling better today. Went to the piano & read through to the end of Mt. I (of Bob’s printed version). Some pages will need to be rewritten, the accompanying lines in the lower strings. My clairvoyance - I was seeing through to Movements II & III. In fact, I even used a theme from Movement III in Mt. I. The theme can stay where it is, as a glimpse into the Dance of Mt. III, but the lower voices must change. At the slow tempo of Mt. I, the accompaniment figures I used in Mt. III will just not work.

There is no time or space in clairvoyance, as we generally experience time & space. Just layers, layers of realities.

Bob e-mailed that the ending of Mt. II seemed out of place. That was another bleedthrough to Mt. III. Another glimpse, and I will leave it as it is. There are no breaks between the movements, another inadvertent experiment in form. The piece just didn’t have them & it does have a life of its own ... He figured out how to notate quarter note = 70-76 on his machine, finally (he needs to put a space on either side of the hyphens.) He is trying to type in 100 pages of score each day.

M. won’t be back from N.Y.C. until 11 p.m. tonight, so that leaves me many hours free for composing.

10:30 p.m.

Managed to get the house looking like Christmas while M. was in N.Y.C.. Wrapped all the presents for Carolyn & the children, neighbors & friends, other relatives, & a few boxes of various size for M. carefully placed near the far stereo speaker. Got the wooden wagon down from the attic & piled it up with presents in their newly papered boxes & candy canes & ribbons. The usual plush rabbit in his red velvet vest is on the driver’s bench next to a small teddy bear. I connected two long strands of small, clear lights & strung them over the presents & wagon & floor - the reflection off the wood floor is quite magical. From where I sit in the living room, it looks like a meandering path of stars leading into the distance. Ian’s presents are up front, near the grand piano - a brightly colored & large farm set, nicely boxed, with a barn that opens & eventually houses the other figures, including a cheerful fellow wearing a straw hat on a green plastic tractor. The barn has a handle, for carrying it around, a portable life & farm, including (plastic) vegetables & some fencing. Next to the farm set is a large metal tin with a picture of a teddy bear on it & a bright red lid. Inside the tin are his other presents, & I think he will be a very happy little boy.

In contrast to this well-ordered & idyllic scene, the piano rack is strewn with sheets of blank, filled & half-filled manuscript paper, thousands of notes on their fragile stems strewn over the sheets of paper as though tossed there from a great height; most are hastily scribbled, some on torn pieces of ms. paper & scotchtaped to Bob’s printed score - a maze of corrections & additions to be sorted out later, when all the ideas are in & accounted for. Most of the changes are small, a note here or there. Some are missed flats or sharps or misplaced or omitted ties, or pitches Bob read incorrectly off my original score; some are notes I wrote down incorrectly, or recent changes to the score. But in chamber music, one note held instead of repeated, or placed an octave higher or lower, one change in pitch - can alter the entire geometry & sound. It is more than that, but I cannot find the words to express it. Holiness comes to mind, the sacred ordering of the tones is disturbed.

The more simple the writing, the clearer the ideas & overall form - the more this is true.

So often one agonizes over a quarter note rest or the inversion of a base note or the octave placement endlessly. In the end, every decision has its own life & truth, profundity & being. So one decides, also regretting the paths unchosen, unlived, unexplored. As one small decision in life can alter our entire future, so one note can sometimes determine the rest of the piece.

I think that is one reason why Monet painted his water lilies over & over again. Each painting was truthful & beautiful, but something was left unsaid. If one goes deeply enough, one finds a Truth that can then express itself in many ways & in many directions indefinitely. If one stands in that place, ideas become secondary & something else far more Real & important & ungraspable arises - & it is that ungraspable something that the artist then unfolds into all his work.

This string quintet that I am writing, all the notes in this 64 page score, in a sense could be reduced to two notes - a descending whole step. (Bob would be surprised to hear that, I am sure ... Maybe I should send him this page from my journal.) That one interval is the frame on which all else rests. I see it almost as a mobile, with all the chords & themes & counterpoint & other geometries suspended from that one simple, descending interval.

As I get older, I use many more notes & write many more pages of score - some of my early songs were only two lines long. Yet the overall conception becomes more & more simple, less complicated - & more tonal.

Just checked the back porch, & there was Mt. III, on the shelf next to the flower pot. It was still in the original paper bag it came home in from the Xerox shop. At some point I had written “For BOB SPEAR” with a black calligraphy pen & circled it, with an arrow pointing to his name - & this was superimposed over “for Laurie C.” in Bob’s handwriting in red ink with another arrow, this time a red one pointing to my name. The overall impression is a bit like my clairvoyance, i.e. the entire history of that bag seen all at once, at a glance. This time Bob did not rewrite my name with another arrow, probably assuming that by now I would recognize the bag - & that I know my own name.

I will begin working on Mt. III later tonight.

1:30 a.m.

Just finished correcting Mt. III. Very few mistakes & no changes on my part - undoubtedly because I had time to read through it before giving it to Bob to print up. Now back to Mt. I.

First a cup of decaf.



Monday, December 13
2 a.m.

Woke up to Carolyn & Ian today. Because of the Christmas presents lined up in the living room, we went into town & Christmas shopped on the Commons. Ian blew kisses through the car window as they drove off, & then a little hand waving ...

An e-mail from Bob. He has finished printing Mt. III. His subject line said: “Finished Mt. III (thud)”. Poor Bob. I have known Bob since college. One thing that has remained steady through the years, besides our friendship, is his sense of humor. I looked at his printed version of Mt. II tonight - not many corrections or changes, thankfully. My present plan is to correct Mts II & III & then go back to Mt I. I wrote the piece so quickly, almost everything is new to me, as though someone else wrote it. (Perhaps someone else did, hopefully an angel ... or Mozart.) As I rework it, I begin to remember the themes & various lines & choices I made & why - but the initial reading is always a mystery. The ideas come in so quickly, they go onto the page before I can even register them consciously - or better stated, before they make an imprint on my daily, normal consciousness ... So when I first hear the piece in normal, waking state consciousness - I am really like any other listener hearing the piece for the first time.

Tuesday, December 14
1 p.m.

Woke up feverish & sick today. Finished the corrections to Mt. II last night. I am still not sure of one note in measure 324 of Mt. I. That page was up on the music rack when I first went to the piano today, left there from last night - & I still cannot decide if it should be an e flat or a g - maybe it’s the fever, my fixation with that one poor note. (Well its Destiny is in my hands, or rather pen.) Karel (Husa) used to say in lessons that the particular notes one chose didn’t really matter. Which is true, from a certain point of view - Mozart could have put that little phrase ascending instead of descending. The music is larger than the individual notes & choices of the composer. And yet, from another point of view, the individual notes do very much matter. Balance, it is always a matter of balance. If the composer focuses too intently on each note, the larger ideas get lost. And yet, to best express those larger ideas, the composer must pay careful attention to the craft of writing & every sound.

Iraq is in about the same state as Mt. I of the quintet. Today there are more pages scattered on the piano rack, more measures written on stray fragments of paper, taped to Bob’s printed score. Mt. III should arrive today - I checked the back porch, it’s not there yet. M. won’t be home until 8 p.m., which leaves many hours for composing.



Wednesday, December 15
1 p.m.

The early results from my latest poll is very encouraging. 96% of the people who voted say they are either first time readers or that they read all the entries or intend to read them. (12% said they read all of them & print them up & send them to friends.) 4% said some entries were enough & no one said one was enough, thankfully.

So I will continue posting them.

Over a thousand people have read some of the entries. Judging from the numbers (we can monitor how many people read each posting) it does seem as though most people read all of them - which is many pages to read, especially the interviews. Perhaps my next poll question should ask if people read the Journal Entries from beginning to end - or if they work backwards. I suspect they read the newest one first, & then go back to the first entry & work their way up to the present chronologically.

12:30 a.m. Finished all the corrections to the score. Wrote Bob a quick e-mail: “Done!. We had better work on the corrections together soon, before I forget what all my squiggles & arrows mean.” The score, at this moment - is pretty much a mess to look at.

I am pleased with the result, however.

Even though Movement I was written before dear Cindy so suddenly & tragically died, the first movement was always intended to be a slow movement, an elegy - which is an unusual way to begin a three movement piece. Ordinarily, the slow movement is placed second, between a faster first & last movement. Now I understand. The first movement was an elegy for her, & reflects all the personal, human grief that the people who knew her are feeling. And it does hover, stylistically, between Heaven & earth. Some of Movement I is very human, almost Baroque in nature; the rest is in my more recognizable sad, fragile style & not very earthly.

The human & the angelic.

The other two movements are the unfolding of the soul’s journey - Mt. III is entirely in another realm, angels or sprites dancing. Interesting, even before Cindy’s death I had decided that this quintet was the unfolding of the soul’s journey.

All of us that knew & loved Cindy, on some level of their being knew that she was leaving for other realms soon. Even though I am clairvoyant & often see into the future, this information was hidden from me consciously - because I was not supposed to prevent her accident. Coming & going, incarnating & “dying” are well planned in advance, before we even incarnate. So to put the Elegy first makes much sense. It is only the beginning, the grief that follows the apparent separation from someone we love, a separation that does not truly exist. Being clairvoyant, I saw her in other realms even as I heard the news of her “death”.

I do not experience these realms as being “separate”. Other realms are not a million light years away across the galaxy. The realms all coexist, they ARE. They are not “here” or “there”, there is no here or there in true Reality.
Post Reply