The Songs: Finding Waterfalls and Stars: April 20, 2007

Journal entries by composer and pianist Laurie Conrad

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The Songs: Finding Waterfalls and Stars: April 20, 2007

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The Songs: Finding Waterfalls and Stars: A Composer’s Journal Entry: April 20, 2007

Friday, April 20

Myra could not capture a clarinet player during her recent rehearsals, so we have not tested the harp effect with clarinet. As a result, I have not written further revisions to the first two songs, The Forest and the The Crescent.

Tonight I decided to proceed as though the effect worked - we can always make changes in the score later, after the first rehearsals.

Found several copies of the scores to Visions in the big oak box in the living room that the painter Vicky Romanoff constructed for me so many years ago - white oak, discarded fencing from when I lived on Black Road. I gave Myra two copies for the harpists she had met in Paris. Instead of spending some hours Xeroxing Visions, Myra took me to her apartment, to listen to the wind play her harp.

Myra was at a loss to describe the effect, except that it was extraordinary. She had come across this wind effect by accident, while carrying the harp outside without a cover or at outdoor concerts. Luckily today was sunny & warm, in the high 60's - & somewhat windy. We stood outside her apartment door with the harp, & waited - it truly was astonishing. The harp played only a few short minutes before the wind abated, but long enough for me to memorize the sounds. As Myra fussed with the harp trolley, I suddenly realized that I might be able to approximate what we had just heard - & I quickly plucked a few harp strings to find some pitches the wind had played. Possibly the most astounding sound - aside from the more ethereal sounds produced by the wind caressing the harp strings - was a pitch that began to emanate from the sounding of so many other fleeting & ethereal tones, or in some other manner, from some other cause - a single pitch that began to slowly grow in intensity until it dwarfed all the other pitches. This one pitch rang almost as a bell, although remaining one held sound, a sound magically growing in intensity & depth & breadth & volume, ringing & resonating without repeating itself, without tolling. This one held, overpowering pitch magically appearing & growing in power was nothing I had expected, nor anything Myra had described.

Once back inside Myra’s apartment, I suggested that we try a piece of cloth for the more ethereal pitches. She pulled various scarves of different cloth from her closet & lightly brushed the harp strings with them, up & down the harp - to our joy, they all imitated the sound of the wind on the harp strings. Myra then brought out a pair of heavy red cotton socks which seemed to work more easily, one held in each hand. I then asked if she would play the loud, magical, single pitch we had heard as a harmonic tone - to the best of my memory it had been an E, top space of the treble staff. The harmonic sounded very like the held tone the harp itself produced when caressed by the wind. For me, the exact pitch of the held tone is not as important as the overall sounds and effect - or I would have asked Myra to take the harp outside once again, & we would have waited for the wind.

I then gave Myra some patterns to try, using the whole tone scale - & the effect was more than I had hoped for. With more experimentation, a cadenza for either The Forest or The Crescent began to slowly emerge, either as the waterfall or as the stars. We added in the F flat harmonic tone, first quietly, each time louder. At one point I asked Myra to play the harmonic tone as loudly as possible, & we found that we could not imitate the volume the wind had produced, nor could we find a way to keep the tone ringing without replucking it at intervals. This was a disappointment, but aside from this one aspect of the held tone, I think I can fairly easily recapture the sound of the wind through the strings. As a solo cadenza for the harp, I will score it with the ethereal, soft sounds of the strings entering intermittently at first, little snatches, fragments of tones here & there. The harmonic held tone will begin softly & build throughout, to then eventually decrescendo into silence. The ethereal sounds will travel around the harp & gain their own small intensity for a time, to then dwindle and fade.

Armed with all these new ideas - from both today & the other night - I think I can proceed with my changes in the main score of the first two Songs. In the end we decided that more churning effects were more suited for The Forest, whereas the effects to represent the stars in The Crescent would stay high on the harp and either ascend or descend in patterns partially suggested by what I had heard by the wind, the initial tones of the established patterns at times ascending or descending stepwise, at other times randomly. These new effects were not that different from the ones we had already discovered the other night, even the patterns were similar - the main difference was the harmonic that emerged from all the other sounds ...

Along the way we happened on some effects and sounds that could be used in the Image, Dance - and also in the song The Storm. All in all I am very pleased at this new richness of ideas & new sounds for the harp. I am also very happy that now my friend & fellow musician Myra Kovary can reproduce the magical sound she loves so deeply - or something very close to it - whenever she wishes.

Outside, the moon a bright sliver, shaped like a cradle tonight - with one very bright, small star or planet a bit to the south, hanging like a small crystal pendant below it - radiant against the night sky ...
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