Writing Music: January 21 - 26, 2007

Journal entries by composer and pianist Laurie Conrad

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Writing Music: January 21 - 26, 2007

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Writing Music: A Composer’s Journal Entries: January 21 - 26, 2007

Sunday, January 21
1 a.m.

Have been thinking about the third movement of the piece for choir and orchestra; I keep rereading the Prayer of St. Anthony. Tonight I changed all the “I”s in the saint’s prayer to “we”- and I think now the music will fall into place. The text must speak for all of us, & all the choir members - or the choir will be speaking for someone else, & not for themselves & their own lives. Now I can stand in the choir as I write, stand in the hearts of the choir, let the choir speak for me and for us all ...

Monday, January 22

Cleaned up the full score of the Piano Quintet with white-out & reXeroxed it for the Cornell group. Also Xeroxed the Piano score I completed Saturday. Since I will be playing the piano part at the concert, I put it on the piano rack, neatly in a folder. Next I must tape the pages together & decide where the page turns will be. Just now the Quintet score & folder is dwarfed by the empty ms pages & folders already on the music rack - but I will need them to write movement three of Trois Prieres. Now that I feel well enough to compose music again, I am almost obsessed with completing the scores I had to put aside all these months ...

Tuesday, January 23
4:15 p.m.

An e-mail from Carrie: the quintet has disbanded, they cannot make the recording. She will send me the individual scores used in the concert last year, so that I can put the corrections in the main score. I am disappointed, for one because I had paid them in advance with the grant money I had received. Will try to find other players.

An e-mail from the Cornell group: their coming concerts are not modern music concerts. Kristen suggested that I try Tabula Rasa, another performing group in town, for an earlier performance of the Piano Quintet. Which I will do. The Cornell group is still interested in performing my music in the future. Perhaps I will suggest that we do the premier of the Unsung Songs cycle as piano solo with baritone voice - as it was originally written ...

JF stopped by briefly. After she left I went to the piano & wrote a hymnlike section for Movement III of Trois Prieres, the outline only - voices will be moving against it or within it, either in the strings or in the choir. Scribbled a few motives, a stepwise passage in the treble with sustained harmonies in the bass. Little notes in pencil, some without stems, bravely forging ahead.

This only took a few minutes, but I decided to stop & write more later.

For some reason I wrote variations on the motive strangely placed on the page, over each other & overlapping, encroaching on the theme - the sketch is covered with arrows & almost impossible to read. I had better copy it out again more neatly, or it will be a struggle to expand the sketch later. When I was younger, I just left the notes on the page where and how they fell & accepted the struggle; older now, I more welcome a bit of order.

4:35
Copied out the hymn section, it is now a full page. From this theme will unfold all of Movement III. Went into the kitchen for a snack; Leonora & Sergei are curled up together in one of the cat beds. Oleg is asleep on the table. When I am writing, either words or music, often the house fills with peace & Light.

7:30
Wrote some inner lines while waiting for Chris & Sarah. I must finish this before spring, for I have no idea what next summer might bring me healthwise.

Wednesday, January 24

E-mail from the Tabula Rasa group: they are interested in performing my music, but their next concert is already programmed. Carrie e-mailed: the players will mail me their scores to String Quintet II so that Robert Spear & I can put the corrections in the main score. Bob wants a copy of the completed second movement of Trois Prieres; I already put it in a large envelope. JF & I can mail it off tomorrow, before my next NAET treatment.

If I do not receive a commitment for concerts & recordings of the Piano Quintet & other pieces I suggested to Kristen, I will look for other players. With my health as it is, I want to perform & record as much as I can as soon as I can, especially anything written for piano - so that if something happens to me, musicians will know the approximate tempi & phrasings I would prefer, the sound I envision for what I have written. Then they can add their own interpretation, their own style & ideas to mine ...

Friday, January 26

An e-mail from Spear: the string group in California hasn’t answered anyone’s e-mails in months. Not a good sign.

Sketched out another two pages of Movement III yesterday; wrote in some inner lines today. It is very cold out, bitter - a good day to stay indoors. Jf stopped by briefly, to drop something off. I have been continuing with the hymnlike section, although I already have ideas for what will follow it. Today worked with moving 6ths & changed the original countermotive a bit, for variety. Actually it changed itself, the music itself suggested it. I am pleased, I think this section will work well with the voices. Later I will add the choir lines; this section will first appear without voices. I will create a throne for the voices, before they enter - or at least a home ...

This quiet, hymnlke section is for the traditional prayer Come Holy Spirit, renew the face of the earth. The words renew the face of the earth might begin to overlap the hymn near the end with stronger dynamics, even though the music itself now decrescendos; the following section will crescendo to forte or double forte, with renew the face of the earth repeated throughout the voices. Once the voices are added I must decide if the first time the hymn appears it ends quietly in all voices; I will not be able to decide until I inwardly hear the notes to St. Anthony’s Prayer. This piece is appearing to me in pieces, in fragments - I cannot yet see the whole; the overall form remains a mystery in these initial days of writing. I could set the form & then squeeze all the notes & harmonies into the form I have chosen - but for now I will wait until more of the piece has revealed itself to me. Eventually, I must decide. But for the moment my idea is to allow the hymnlike passage to reappear throughout the last movement - either in its entirety or in fragments - as though the choir has never ceased to inwardly recite the prayer.

4:15 a.m.

It has begun: I can hear the choir singing now. Wrote in some voice parts.
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