A Composer's Journal: Entries October 22-November 17, 2004

Journal entries by composer and pianist Laurie Conrad

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A Composer's Journal: Entries October 22-November 17, 2004

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A Composer’s Journal Entry Friday October 22, 2004
3 a.m. Ithaca, NY

JF bought me this notebook today - I must have mentioned to her that my other notebook was almost done. A nice surprise, stuck in a paper bag, light mauve covered with white hearts ... I helped her bring in plants today, the big pots.

Looked at my old sketches for the string quintet and will begin working on them tomorrow. The inner excitement and intensity builds with each page. So many ideas again, I can barely write the notes down fast enough - so I assume this new quintet will be good; this quintet is, in some ways, beyond the crossroads I have recently felt. A new voice is somehow arranging itself and emerging, even within the old inner frames and old sketches. One day I will write a truly 12 tone string piece, & revel in the sounds and pictures & sonorities - I can already see & hear them - but not now. This piece, even though based on twelve tone rows - is very tonal. An experiment in tonality for me, even more so than in Visions.

After I finish scoring Chansons this winter, then perhaps I will write this other string quartet or quintet - in my mind, it has a clarity, this other string piece, a piercing clarity and simplicity of form. And so inwardly I look forward to writing it. Interesting, either both came into being together - or inwardly seeing this other atonal piece released, somehow released the ideas & notes for the current quintet. Creativity is as big a Mystery as Life itself ...

Mystery or not, tonight I am very happy & looking forward to tomorrow, when I can scribble more notes for the fast movement. I am too exhausted from my day to do more work tonight. I think instead that I will tackle the Sunday New York Times Crossword, which I haven’t looked at yet.

Carolyn and E. plan to come on Sunday, so that I can teach E. to meditate.


Monday October 25, 2004
4:20 a.m. Ithaca, NY

Carolyn couldn’t come yesterday, I spent the day alone working. M. got in around midnight, from Boston. Fell asleep early tonight and woke up around 2 a.m. Wrote more of the quintet. I am working off sketches I wrote a year or two ago for the fast movement - & inwardly I still see a different quintet, very atonal - in Light. Long tones, decrescendoing & crescendoing, made of and surrounded by brilliant Light. It is visually & spatially very very clear and very beautiful - & I can’t tell if it is a new piece entirely - or if it is the inner framework, the inner “Life” of the piece I am now writing, the substratum or “germ” of what I am now writing.

This has never happened to me before when composing. Often, I will visually “see” the entire piece in a flash before I begin - or I will hear melodies in my Heart. This - is an entirely new experience. Almost as though I am seeing the “core”of the music, a template of sorts, and all the notes and phrases of the quintet are manifesting from that.

Or - it is a future piece to later write down.

Perhaps it is both. Both pieces will sound entirely different - and yet be the SAME PIECE. They will each work within their own separate harmonic and melodic structures and tempi - and yet - they will be, on that distant & clairvoyant level - the same piece.

A new way to look at music. Layers of existence, unseen and unheard perhaps - yet the essence of what we hear, & almost opposite in meaning to the overtone series. The overtone series is thrown off, manifests from the bass notes & follows natural, physical laws. What I am seeing now is beyond this physical world, beyond the overtone series.

I am thinking that the true task of the composer is to get the written notes to line up with that vision - & this is the interpreter’s task as well. Suddenly something very basic & true begins to make sense, whether I can accurately express it in words is another thing ...

But without this other realm schema, this template, there is no depth or cohesion to the music - any music. For this template must exist in all music. It is like lining up our personal vision with the soul’s vision in our daily lives. Without that alignment, our lives will have no meaning, no depth, no cohesion ...


November 10, 2004

Yesterday I saw (heard) a new section for the fast movement of the quintet as I walked into town. When I returned home, I went to the piano & covered a few ms pages with notes. However, when I had finished the musical thought, I could not figure out where to put them, these new notes. They were a very different style than the rest of the quintet, and didn’t seem to fit anywhere in the piece. I finally became so confused & discouraged that I decided to stop composing altogether for the day & do other things instead. Raked leaves into the gardens to protect them from winter, played with the cats, washed the dishes, cleaned the kitchen. Caught up on phone calls & e-mails and letters. I meditated for a long time before going to sleep & asked for help - for suddenly & inexplicably the fast movement seemed to be unraveling instead of gathering cohesion and & meaning.

Today, when I awoke, I went to the piano and played what I had written yesterday in such haste and ease. And when I finished, I was as baffled as ever. I began the pages again, & after a few lines I realized, with astonishment, that these new pages were a different piece, a new piece entirely. Moreover, they were the basis of a piece that I had wanted to write for many years, for choir & orchestra, to St. Michael the Archangel - the prayer that begins: “St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle ...”. When I was a child, this prayer was always recited by the entire congregation, aloud, at the end of every Mass.

As I played through what I had quickly scribbled down the day before, I began to inwardly see the choral lines forming & arranging themselves on the score. Perhaps even more quickly, the rest of the piece fell into place & I jotted down some rhythms and notes as a future reminder of what I had just seen.

A nice surprise! All these years with no concrete ideas at all for St. Michael, and then suddenly the entire piece appeared. The day before, in my deep discouragement, I had almost thrown out the new pages and my old sketch for the quintet’s fast movement. As difficult as the outer world can sometimes be, often I think that the inner world is more baffling. In my experience, we are generally more blind to what is closest to us & right in front of us.

Then I thought: If this can happen to me in music, which I know so well & in many ways have mastered - then how many worlds have I thrown away in the rest of my life I wonder. Worlds that would have unfolded into being had I but noticed them.


November 14, 11 p.m.

M. returns from Seattle tonight. Brought another coal bucket up from the basement, for the ash, & emptied the coal stove. Cleaned the window so that I can watch the flames as the wood burns and put the kettles, without water, on top of the stove. Put wood in & now it is ready for the next cold night. I was covered in coal dust, as usual. There is something about the warmth of the coal stove that our modern heating systems cannot achieve. Cold and clear tonight, the moon stark and brittle against the night. Several visitors today, but tonight I will meditate and write music as the world sleeps.

November 17, 3:20 a.m.

Am finally taking a break from composing. Have almost copied out the second movement. No name for it yet, I have barely sketched out the third movement. Hopefully, a name will present itself. The first two movements will be about 44 pages of ms. I should have the entire piece finished, at least fully sketched out by the end of next week.

It takes about an hour to make final corrections & copy out each page. It is easy to see why J.S. Bach went blind - after some hours of work, the notes start jumping around on the page, like fish or school children during recess. My teacher, Karel Husa, once said that if you turned the manuscript paper sideways, it’s like looking at the bars of a prison cell.

I don’t mind the drudgery of copying out the main score, I just hope that I survive it ... It is a good feeling to look down & see all the notes neatly copied out in black ink, tracing patterns on the page. In a way, it is like being an architect, building edifices in ink. When I was younger I used to work until I fell asleep on the floor & once woke up in the morning with my head on the vacuum cleaner. Luckily, this house doesn’t have rugs. I tend to at least land on the couch. One almost has to push on past natural endurance in order to keep the ideas & intensity flowing. If one leaves a section before it’s done, the next time you look at the blank page all the notes in your head might be gone - or the piece might have taken an entirely different turn in your absence. A wrong turn. And most often, the ideas do not come back, they are gone gone gone. They come in on a tender thread, twirl around and then vanish. In my case, at least. That’s why my sketches are a bunch of scribbles, I can barely write the ideas down fast enough. The concept, the overall form - that is generally embedded in my being, deeply, & barely changes. But the individual notes and phrases - are elusive & transparent, ephemeral.

This was not true of Mozart, who supposedly kept entire operas & symphonies in his head, & carried them around with him until he had the time & energy to write them down.

No, I live in a much more fluid & elusive world, creatively. It is more like catching the leaves in autumn, as they drift in the wind ... Once they touch the ground - I cannot find them.
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