Contemporary music composer Laurie Conrad lives in Ithaca NY. Cds of her "Early Songs" and "Nine Visions for Flute and Harp" are now available on www.figarobooks.com
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.
Because we have an opportunity to choose our attitude and focus our intentions in the present moment, the world and our own personal lives are a reflection of our thoughts. It is our 360 degree review on how we think. Put simply, our job is to fully
Because we have an opportunity to choose our attitude and focus our intentions in the present moment, the world and our own personal lives are a reflection of our thoughts. It is our 360 degree review on how we think. Put simply, our job is to fully
In today’s secular environment the two worlds of science and spirituality are alien worlds, distinguished primarily by a deep-seated antagonism in which the principles of spirituality and the pragmatism of modern science exist face to face in a peren
