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.
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