A Composer’s Journal December 29- January 3, 2005

Journal entries by composer and pianist Laurie Conrad

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A Composer’s Journal December 29- January 3, 2005

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A Composer’s Journal December 29- January 3, 2005

Wednesday, December 29

Mailed off demo Cds of the Early Songs & Visions to reviewers & radio stations, in four countries. Ordered an additional 100 Visions Cds. Diana sent me the new graphics & they should arrive in a few days.

Hmm ... I notice that people on http://www.Buzzle.com are not finding all the Composer’s Journals. After reading an entry, scroll down & click on “Read more articles by Laurie Conrad” (under “printable version” & “mail it to a friend”) - then the entire list of all the articles I’ve written comes up.

The results of my latest Buzzle Poll were not as I expected - more people read the Journal entries backwards than forward!

Took out the pages I had written for A Prayer to St. Michael or whatever the title will be - they are not the opening pages. These are the notes & sounds I both heard & saw while walking into town the other week. Since I so hastily scribbled down those pages of notes, I have written pages & pages & pages of the string quintet. I hope that I can once again stand before that same open doorway to write this Prayer to St. Michael ... Hmm ... Should I now write the opening portion that I also saw appear on the ms paper, covering that first page - or should I continue working on the pages of notes I wrote down that day ...

I will start at the beginning. I can now hear the opening choir lines - quiet, humble, reverent & human. Profound but simple. And I will break many 12 tone rules. Octaves, repeated notes. The pages I already wrote are not 12 tone at all, they are not even atonal. The chord progressions are unusual at times, but I would say the passage is still tonal. Not many composers have experimented with unusual chord progressions within the tonal system - they jumped into atonality, polytonality & twelve tone; it was a leap & an unforgiving one - they never really looked back.

Being a “contemporary” composer I probably should not say this - but much atonal music, to me, sounds like the composer is wandering around in lower astral realms & bringing us with them. Rather unpleasant. This is not true of the great composers, of course. However, to write atonally - we composers must be very careful, or the music can descend into chaos very quickly. There is a clarity & a beauty to 12 tone which can not be found elsewhere - if the composer has mastered the system. And it is not an easy system to conquer. It is also an acquired taste, so the poor public has its work to do as well ...

I was attracted to the 12 tone system before I ever heard it. Schonberg’s concept of every note being independent of the other tones of the chromatic scale, like planets, heavenly bodies ... Not subservient to the traditional chord progressions, tonic-dominant, a key center. So, in that sense, this new approach, these unusual progressions - still follows the spirit that underlies the 12 tone system. Only I am replacing single tones with chords.

Carolyn once said that she thought her mother incarnated in order to sing my 12 tone songs. I often think I incarnated in order to write 12 tone music. To live in that rarified air ...

After this piece for St. Michael, I think that I will write some 12 tone songs again - to walk in those familiar landscapes of intervals & sounds ... That clarity & infinity.


Thursday, December 30

Must give Graham the scores to Unsung Songs so we can record them. Finish orchestrating Chansons. And then find a choir that can sing it.


Saturday, January 1, 2005
3 p.m.

Finished the introduction to St. Michael & wrote the first voice entrance. As usual, I am establishing new forms as I go, experimenting. Very tonal. The world is a mess & tragic, but peace still reigns on the ms pages sitting on the piano rack. Order & justice & protection for all voices & notes on those pages. What I am writing now is more than a sketch - it is almost the finished product. The voice parts will be doubled in the strings, & later, in the orchestral version, by other instruments. More often than not, I will use the voices as the countersubject - or as harmony rather than melody.

A new universe is unfolding.

I should have looked harder when the notes were appearing on the ms pages some weeks ago, the vocal & instrumental lines - but I did not yet know what they were & they were transparently superimposed over the notes I was then writing. What a Mystery this all is ...

2 a.m. Wrote a few more pages of St. Michael. I think I have more-or-less caught up to the pages I wrote a few weeks ago.


Sunday, January 2

Windgarth 4 p.m.

Very windy today, big waves & whitecaps. A pipe burst during the week & everything downstairs is soaked, including my shoes. We moved everything but the couch I am sitting on into the writing room, where the upright piano is. Larry’s present to us was still under the Christmas tree, a big unopened box partially wet. After moving the tree into the basement, I carefully opened the box. There were several smaller packages inside, wrapped in tissue paper. Photos. One framed, a picture of Cindy & M. & I standing on the dock, under a rainbow. Cindy & I are waving at the camera. A small photo album with a fern on the cover. Inside many pictures of Cindy & I working in the gardens. There we are, the morning we met, by chance, at dawn in the back gardens. Cindy is in her nightdress with the light blue fringed blanket thrown over her shoulders, I am in my pajamas, holding a shovel. Photos of my birthday party on their dock; the cake is in my lap, in its box - candles. A few of Cindy & M. on our dock, a hot summer day - I’m standing in the water cooling off, in my red T shirt. On the inside cover of the album is inscribed “ To Laurie & M. with love Cindy” in her beautiful handwriting. So I sit in this empty waterlogged room & look out the windows at a disquieted lake & grey day ... holding this little album & wishing M. would come back from her errands.

1:58 a.m.

Ithaca. Returned from Windgarth before nightfall. Watched CNN images of the tsunami disaster & decided these would be the last images of this tragedy that I watch on tv. Wrote many pages of music. The ideas are coming quickly now, & therefore the score becomes more sketchlike as I go - I do not have the time to fill in all the notes & lines. In some places instrumental & vocal lines are missing, other measures have only rhythms pencilled in. That can all be finished later - at this point I am trying to capture the overall form & ideas & themes & choir entrances. Just at the moment I have arrived at the connecting section between the opening pages and the pages I wrote some weeks ago. Bob does not want me to use timpani or brass with his octet of strings, so I face an interesting problem in these measures. For now I wrote only stems, rhythms - the notes will have to be put in later. When I arrange this piece for orchestra, the task will simplify. I understand Bob’s wish to have his instruments as soloists & not accompaniment. Still, this conflicts with what I inwardly hear.

I intend for the voices to enter in octave unison after this segue. The placing & timing of the words of the prayer bring more decisions. In some places I have retraced the words, to add power & momentum leading into the forte section. Mainly syllabic rather than melismatic, so that the effect is more like speaking. Simple, heartfelt supplication.

Even as I write these words, the music I am hearing surrounds me & the themes & rhythms seem to occupy the very core of my being. Which tells me that I will probably write many more pages tonight.

There are many repeated notes in the vocal lines, often the vocal lines are more a countersubject or harmony rather than melody. The effect of this, for me, is a quiet, a gentleness, a serenity - & something I cannot find words for. When I was a student with Karel (Husa), my first singer wanted to quit before the concert. (She later became a well-known operatic singer & sang all over the world.) She objected to my pieces because the vocal part was not primary, in her definition of primary. In my mind, no instrument ever invented can detract attention from the human voice. The human voice goes straight to our hearts, either as a dagger or a balm, in a way no other sound can. There are words within words within words in one note sung by a soprano or tenor - or any other range of voice.


3:17 a.m. Copied in the 5 or 6 pages I had written some weeks ago. Began to add voice parts to these older pages. I think that I am done composing for today. I need to think. I have come to that familiar stopping point when I look inside & the ideas are no longer clear. It is almost as though all the notes for the rest of the piece are knotted up into one tight little ball. I must now wait for them to clarify, unravel. This often happens after a rush of notes pours onto the page & that energy, that lifeline to ideas becomes spent. This temporary vacuum is good, it attracts more energy & ideas in the future. I think that I will have another big bowl of ice cream & tackle the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle.


Monday, January 3

2 p.m.

Used unison voices on “Be our protection” as I had decided last night. Today I erased the next line of text & instead repeated those words, for emphasis. I might run the remainder of the prayer through this section & then fragment the text later, to end the piece. This is another delicate decision, & much will depend on the music itself. In this case, I wrote the music before the vocal lines, & I am already making minor changes as I bring the voice parts in. Then the decision of when to break the unison into harmonies.

2:30 a.m.

Finished the sketch within minutes, it was all there waiting for me. The sketch is 16 pages long, written on the staff paper I had prepared for the string quintet. When fully written out for choir & string octet, it will be 45 or so pages of score.

Next I must fill in the notes & lines left out in the sketch - something akin to painting the house you’ve just built, putting in the windows & doors & staircases etc. The planks are there, sturdily built - now the sheet rock, the countersubjects, the details, the wood trim above the doorway. My mind is filled with changing sounds ... I abandoned the (12 tone) row entirely for huge sections of this piece, including the very end. The notes knew where to go on their own, so I followed them.
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