Thursday, July 31, 2008

Oh the Rats, Rats, Rats, Rats, Rats!

Mr. C left this morning on a long trip to New Hampshire, but before he left we had two days of meetings about Draft IV (he's calling it draft III* but it's sufficiently advanced for me to call it IV) and what I've been working on since Italy.  

In the new draft, the tertiary characters of rats take on a much larger and creepier role.  Apparently some daddy rats eat their children shortly after they are born.  It's a metaphor.

The mystery surrounding the rats comes to a head in a song that Roderick sings while going mental during the storm sequence.  It's called "Ode to Rats" and is in two movements.  As Roderick describes it, "it is to be performed by a choir of a thousand counter-tenors and castrati."  For the purposes of the show, Roderick sings in falsetto.  I have written the first draft of the song, and it varies wildly between a childish little tune about rats and  an increasingly darker refrain which simply goes "Oh the rats, rats, rats, rats, rats, rats, rats!  Oh the rats, rats, rats, rats, rats!"  By the end of the song I was able to use the marking "scream/sing" which was my first use of that indication in music and quite a lot of fun.  

My favorite marking I ever used was in "A Suite for the Children, by the Devil, for Wind Symphony" in which I wrote, above a first trumpet line "struggle for survival," followed three bars later by "you lose."

I expect, at some point in the storm sequence, to be able to use something like that.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Flow Chart

I tried every way I could think of to post this in a way so that you could actually read it. Oh well. Think of it as abstract Usher art.







Thursday, July 24, 2008

Last Day of Pavia

Tonight I see my piece performed, and tomorrow morning I go home. I've been debating whether there will be any sleep between those two events. I doubt it.

I've had an amazing time these past ten days, and I feel like it's going to really change my compositions for the better. I've made some good new friends, and I even have some new projects (secondary to this one, of course).

One of the composers, Steve, from Las Vegas, has told me that if I reorchestrate my band composition "A Suite for the Children, by the Devil" (just a ten minute piece that I did almost two years ago) then he could just about guarantee a performance out there by a band that he has close ties with.

The soprano, Amanda, and I started started spontaneously composing a country song while on the long walk back to our dorm (which is great fun and occasionally involves climbing over fences). So when we got back we sat down and wrote out some lyrics and tunes, and we're trying to get together a country song cycle sometime in the next year.

And, of course, Giovanni wants to write a dialogue-free opera/ballet/thing about zombies. I think that's the idea, at least. So I might be working on that, too.

But, in all of this, I haven't forgotten about Usher. If I could access the internet with my own computer, I'd show you a flow chart that I've been putting together which details the relationship of the songs to each other. It will help me know which songs to parallel and what elements to place chronologically. And I've gotten several new tunes down as well. I'm not sure I'll make the August 11th deadline, but I'll be close.

I'll be working with Mr. C early next week to determine our next move.

My Sunday post might be a bit rambly and incoherent (more than usual?) because I might be writing it on very very little sleep. Maybe I'll just post my flow chart.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

I had a beer with a guy who was hit on by Aaron Copland

For real.

After amazingly full days of learning and concerts on both Thursday and Friday, we got a day of rest on Saturday. Though I was originally hoping to go somewhere outside of Pavia, we got back to our dorm at 4AM on Friday, so I decided to sleep in.

I wish I could say that I was out until four having fun with my friends, but in fact we started our trek back to dorm at the reasonable hour of two. There's a long story in this one, but to sum up: when there are no busses and you can't find a taxi, you walk, even if you don't know where you live. Eventually, you find it... eventually.

At 2PM my roommate Jason and I woke up and headed into town. We got some lunch, did a little bit of shopping, and then sat down at a cafe and talked with Dr. Hulse and our visiting composition lecturer, Karl Korte, for a few hours. Professor Korte is about eighty years old and was there at many pivotal moments in music history. He was present (I think) at the first performance of Cage's 4'33", he was friends with Bernstein and Copland, and he was a pioneer in the field of synthetic and electronic music. Definitely a very interesting man.

This festival so far has fired me up about different ways to look at and write music. Many people think of contemporary composers as being eccentrics and arrogant academics locked up in some ivory tower. What I've actually found, though, is that every single person in this program is probably more culturally aware and appreciative than the average person. The killer soprano loves country music, the composition teacher quotes South Park and Borat, and the moment you start to sing or hum any given pop song, half of the participants join in instantly.

My favorite part of the program is still working with Giovanni. We have very similar feelings about what makes a good piece of music. I'll see if he has a website, because I think that you all might be surprised by how accessible his music is, even though it is still very contemporary.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

What day is it??

After a long and arduous journey over the ocean and Alps (which really make you go "what was Hannible THINKING?!" as you fly over them) I have arrived safely in Pavia, Italy.

The flight was uneventful, except I was sitting next to a very nice woman who was actually from Transylvania, which I thought was really cool. She tried to tell me a Transylvanian joke about Vlad the Impaler (Dracula) in which Vlad's troops capture a Turkish guy (apparently they were at war) and impaled him on a stick as a gift. They then covered the body and stick in a cloth and, when Vlad pulled off the cloth, his men gathered around and started singing "happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you..."

As with most jokes translated out of their original language, I feel that this one must have lost something important...


Already I have had a day of classes, and I've learned, as always, that I know far less than even the little I thought I knew about music. One of my new professors, Giovanni Albini, is a brilliant contemporary composer who also put me to shame with an amazing catalogue of commercial music that he's written for films and other things in Italy. Because he is Italian, he always manages to fit in a metaphor relating a musical concept to a woman. Our favorite so far has been "I believe you must have an idea and then stick to it and develop it. We do not need many many ideas. If I say that I would like to see your beautiful girlfriend, I do not also want to see her mother."

Last night he also told us a story (that much have been translated poorly) about hanging out with mobsters and their model girlfriends at a club in Milan and drinking communally from what could only be described as a "chalice, filled with champagne and fruit and I think extacy(sp? my spellcheck doesn't work here) because I could not go to sleep and I was shaking."

On the musical front, Giovanni has promised to show me lots of mathematical concepts which relate to music, from which I should theoretically be able to choose a method of composition for "mad Madeline."

I have my first lesson with Professor Hulse on Wednesday.

Oh, and I also got to sit in on a rehearsal of my piece for four-hand piano. The girls playing it are fabulous musicians and very kind to indulge me whenever I can't think of a musical term and replace it instead with a dramatic one.

"I want you to... uhh... fill the atmosphere with a sense of growing dread."

"Like... play it progressively louder?"

"If that's a dread-filling device, absolutely."

"At the end would you like us to stand up and scream 'there she is, outside the door!' like Roderick Usher?"

I think they understand me.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

EPIC!

It's about 3:30 AM on Sunday, which I consider Sunday enough to go ahead and post.

I'm up because I was attempting to finish a first draft (again) of "Mysterium" - the little tune that has kept me occupied for longer than any other 3-4 minute musical piece I've ever worked on.

Except for the last 30 seconds, which I'm going to fix, I'm happy with how it turned out.

Now I have to get ready for Italy on Monday. Ten days of composition at the Soundscape Music Festival and not much else. You can check out the Soundscape website here.

I'll try to update on Thursday while I'm there, but if I don't then you'll know that I don't have internet. Or I'm just having way too much fun to post. In any event, I should have lots of songs to talk about when I get back.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

The Mystic Chord

Alexander Scriabin, the inspiration for Roderick Usher's musical direction, based many of his pieces off of a series of fourths that he called the akkord plemory and we have since taken to calling "The Mystic Chord." From his wikipedia page, I find that this chord

"was designed to afford instant apprehension of-that is, to reveal-what
was in essence beyond the mind of man to conceptualize."

Which I think is a particularly fitting description that I can pass down to Roderick Usher.

I've been doubling back to work on Mysterium before doing some of the easier pieces that I now have pretty good ideas about. It has not gotten any easier to create a piece that will match the fervor of its description.

"Ten thousand strings- like only the Gods have heard before."
"Two-thousand cannons!"
"And a chorus of fifty-thousand to silence the cannons and drums of war once and for all!"

Most of my composition process involves staring at these words and thinking to myself "seriously?"

There is a chance I'm looking too far into it- but I feel like Mysterium is slowly (VERY slowly) writing itself. It knows what it wants, and I'm just here to click in notes until it tells me I can move on. It lets me know almost instantly if it is not happy with a note, but it gives me very little guidance as to what sounds it WOULD prefer.

We've got thirty seconds. We're looking for between four and five minutes. We've got eight months. We can do this.

Once I get to Italy in a few days, maybe I'll be able to crank out some of the other pieces that I need. I've only got until the very arbitrary date of August 11th to submit draft 1 of everything.

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Stretching Realism

The initial concept of the intro to the show was to have the lights rise on a single street performer plucking out some haunting tunes on a guitar.  A listener arrives, and the performer demonstrates the different influences of the tunes- classical, folk, romantic, whatever.

I've decided to alter this very slightly for dramatic and timing purposes.  Now, when the listener questions the source of the particularly beautiful compositions, the performer will simply play it again and ask the listener to pay closer attention.  As he is doing so, strings, flute, and piano will quietly come in one at a time from the edges of the stage- filling in the song, expanding it, and making it complete.  The listener will not register that he is hearing these new sounds, but he will understand that something very interesting is going on in the piece.

This allows for more powerful music at the start (an overture of sorts) and it also means the performer won't have to play six different songs to make a very basic point- that music is the product of a multitude of influences, both stolen and inspired- and if you know the whole story behind a song, it usually makes it that much more poignant.  

As an aside, but to continue the above point, take Beethoven's Third Symphony- aka the "Eroica" symphony.  As the story (as far as I know it) goes, this piece was inspired by Napoleon.  It was a symphony to exalt a great man whom Beethoven admired greatly.  Around halfway through the composition of the piece, though, Napoleon declared himself emperor of the world and Beethoven scratched off any mention of him on the manuscript.  The piece then became an ode "to a once great man."  

Now, if you do listen to Beethoven's Third, I promise that the sounds will take on entirely new meanings as you try to understand Beethoven's feelings throughout.

That's all for now- didn't get to write much because I was in DC for the Fourth of July.   I was thinking that maybe the fireworks might inspire something for "Mysterium."  We will see.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

A Funny Thing Happened

Though Mr. C was supposed to take this week off, he has e-mailed me to say that the characters wouldn't let him sleep unless he corrected some things and wrote a third draft. We are now at 82 pages (18 shorter than draft 2) and I'm very excited to read it whenever he allows me to.

From what I can understand, what he is trying to do in this third draft is create stronger characters with larger motivations. Madeline and Roderick have to be working on a cure for death (her scientifically, him musically) far before anything happens to Annabel Lee. Roderick's drive to write a symphony to end the world should be even more a part of his daily conversation. Madeline has to be even more psychopathic and potentially dangerous.

There is a giant ice machine that was in draft two (invented by a Dr. Gorrie in the mid-1800's), but I think that its presence has been diminished in the latest draft. Too heavy-handed, perhaps. There is a great allusion, though, that you can make to "The Tell Tale Heart" using the thumping of the ice machine as a constant annoyance. And WHY is there a gigantic ice machine in this New York seaside mansion? There is a fine line between making the audience curious and blowing the climas three or four scenes in advance.


On the musical front, I have worked a bit on a song that Madeline writes to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Annabel's death. It is very simple- a huge departure from her atonal experiments of the first act- but still progressive, with constantly shifting keys AND a shifting refrain that strikes different parts of the melody each time it is repeated. I'm not sure that makes sense in writing, but if you could hear it, you'd get it.

As I was writing an e-mail back to Mr. C about my various thoughts for future redrafts, I had an odd idea that will probably come to nothing but I thought interesting enough to pursue for a few days, at least. In the show, so far, we have happy songs and we certainly have sad songs, but we don't have any FUNNY songs. I know... I promised that this one wouldn't be funny- but I figured out a way to put it in and keep it internally consistant with the characters' logic. Basically, it would be Madeline singing the song of love that William can't because of his fear. She would be singing it as though she were him but to herself, if that makes sense, and in doing so would be mocking him and flirting with him at the same time. I'm not sure what I think yet, but I'm working out some ideas in my head. It's not knee-slapping funny... it's subtle.

Which reminds me that, last summer, my actors used to make fun of me by suggesting we re-title "Tragedy!" as "Subtlety! (A Musical Comedy)."

I'm just now starting to feel recharged on wanting to write comedy. Maybe by the time we're finished with "Usher" I'll be ready to go for another farce.