A Composer's Journal Entry: October 31, 2007 by Laurie Conrad.
The Composer Prepares for Work: A Composer’s Journal Entries: October 31, 2007
Image: If you click on the image of my scores, you can see it more clearly. It's a composite I made, using several photographs of my sketches and corrections.
Wednesday, October 31
Received an e-mail from Mark today:
Dear Laurie,
Apologies for the long delay in getting back to you - I will post my reply later today - I have had a chest infection lately - probably caused by having to work far too much in the office.
I will also be giving some thought to other issues in the twelve-note domain, especially after your comments about moving away from the tonality/twelve-tonality sphere of discussion. I am interested in knowing how composers respond to writing harmonies that are not 'tonal' how they feel about these chords and how they might sensibly combine them in composition.
I have also be refreshing my memory on the work of Le Corbusier - especially with regard to the principles of proportion and form. Form is fundamental to music, and architecture, being the interplay of three-dimensional formal elements, invites comparison with music.
hope you are enjoying these days of the Fall before Winter rolls in,
kind regards
Mark
I answered Mark, saying that I needed to think on what he had written and thanked him for his e-mail.
Weather cooler, although we haven’t yet had a frost. Unusually warm, in the sixties tonight. Am getting ready to compose music again.
Last night I began cleaning up the back room; cleaned all the books on the shelves, individually; straightened them up, reorganized them. Washed the wooden box down. Windexed the photos on the walls. Took the oversized Chansons score that I want to finish orchestrating this winter, sheets of empty ms paper & written sheets of ms paper that have been sitting on the wooden box in the back room for almost a year, outside & aired them out a bit, dusted them all off. Decided to buy a container for all the cats’ toys.
Today I tackled the Steinway grand in the living room. Took all the pieces of ms paper & folders on the music rack outside & aired them out, dusted them. Did the same with the stacks of music on both sides of the music rack. Found notes to myself on yellow post-it notes & torn, dusty pieces of ruled paper; a note to contact WSKG; Sarah’s architectural plans for new houses; a note about musicians for my mother’s memorial service; the twelve tone square I used for the Prayer to St. Michael & some scattered sketches scrawled in pencil; volumes of Chopin Ballades & Etude; Rachmaninov Concerto II; J.S. Bach & Prokofiev piano scores; unlined paper with some rhythms written in pencil; empty legal-sized ms paper with small rectangles cut out of them, undoubtedly from when I was cutting & pasting revisions; more notes to myself: Myra changes to #7 & #5, record Visions; make recording for grant (i.e. String Quintet II). A flyer for Windgarth. Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes; some of my favorite transcriptions: Paraphrase uber ein Thema aus der OperLucia von Lammermoor, a very difficult & wonderful virtuoso rendition I probably found at a garage sale; a transcription of Wagner’s Walkure; Jeaux d’Eux by Ravel; volume II of Beethoven Sonatas, Schnabel Edition; a Cadenza by Bendel for Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody II; untold original scores & fragments of scores - some quite small, on torn pieces of ms paper - of my own music, some marked up & corrected, others mere sketches, some in folders, some random pages in various stages of writing; in pencil, in pen; a few measures; entire pieces. Words for songs. Found a piece for flute & piano I had started, themes & motives; decided to finish it.
Threw out a nice pile, I hope nothing of value. Made a few stacks to go into the music studio, on shelves; put some of the piles back on the piano.
Personal journals are full of potential, waiting for you to add the color! Pages for you to fill in the blanks with tidbits and trivia about New Mexico
Personal journals are full of potential, waiting for you to add the color! Pages for you to fill in the blanks with tidbits and trivia about North Dakota
