Yesterday I sent off the score and parts to my String Quartet No. 2 to the ensemble in Vancouver. They will be giving the premiere in three concerts in the third week of May. Gives me an opportunity to visit Vancouver which I haven't done in a long time. Last week when I was booking my airbnb the host messaged me that the weather would be nice then. I thought that was an odd comment out of the blue. Then I checked the weather and saw that at that very moment it was snowing in Vancouver!
After quite a few struggles with the first movement, which I rewrote a couple of times, I am reasonably happy with the piece. Or less displeased than I was before? With new music, you kind of put it out there and see what happens. The piece might be nicknamed "Landscapes" as the three movements each are inspired by my experiences growing up on Vancouver Island. The first movement is "Mountain with Birdsong," the second "Moments in the Forest" and the third "The Surrounding Ocean." I should be able to post a recording of it in early June and I will look forward to your comments then!
So I decided to start a new piece that has been on my mind for a while. The piece will be called "Hecate" as that was the inspiration. Hecate was a Greek goddess, a minor one I suppose, though quite popular in some regions. This is a sketch of how she was often depicted:
She has three bodies and this statuary would typically be placed at a junction of three roads where she would face in three directions. She was the deity of crossroads, of the underworld, of the passage to the afterlife but also of light, night, the moon, keys and, oddly, dogs. She is a liminal being, the goddess of boundaries, thresholds and borders. She mediates between different realms and therefore suggests disorientation and ambiguity.
This is going to be a piece for solo guitar, which I haven't written for in quite some time. I don't find the guitar an easy instrument to write for, but that challenge is itself a kind of inspiration.
Years ago, when I was a student, I workshopped an early guitar piece called Tesserae for the English composer Stephen Dodgson. He hated the very idea of the classical allusion of the title and I think he pretty much disliked the piece as well! He probably wouldn't have liked "Hecate" either. But who knows, it hasn't been written yet. I'm still at the rudimentary pencil sketch phase... Incidentally, Gilbert Biberian, who just passed away, was also at that workshop and I think he rather liked Tesserae.
Oh I look forward to both. I don't think I recall your first string quartet; is there a recording?
ReplyDeleteIt will be interesting to compare it to your previous scores for solo guitar. I find, for the guitar, the initial sketching stages are really hard. Finding an idea with legs is for me easier on most other instruments, or better yet ensembles.
Thanks! My first quartet I wrote a number of years ago and it probably counts as juvenilia. In any case, it has never been premiered. This second one is quite different. I have fragments of a third quartet that may or may not gel in the future.
ReplyDeleteMy problem in writing for guitar is that my ideas often don't fit on the instrument. But I am going to solve that this time! Right now I am just roughing out some basic material.
Yes I sympathise. And even harder than composing for the guitar, for last year I've been trying come up with a composition for ukulele, with not much progress! Four strings and half the range of a guitar, yet some recent composers have managed it with remarkable success.
ReplyDeleteman, BIberian died? I kinda liked his guitar sonatas but never got around to even mentioning them at the blog but Cristiano Porqueddu recorded them and a bunch of other late 20th and early 21st century sonatas in a big box set with Brilliant Classics a few years back that I recommend. It's worth grabbing just for the Gilardino sonatas alone but the Biberian sonatas are all worth listening to. Sorry that he passed.
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