And next up...

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You may recall that last week I shoveled out a large storage tub of old church music (mostly) and posted that you — yes, you! — could have any and all of it if you wanted it.

The problem with going through old files like this is that you’re bound to find projects that you never finished for one reason or another. (Cras melior est.) So now, in the language of internet memes everywhere, what do?

According to Sun Tzu, unless I made this up, KNOW YOUR ENEMY. So let’s begin by listing the projects that I found and what I might choose to do about them.

  • Symphony No. 1 in f minor (c. 1995)

    • I honestly have no memory of this piece at all, but here it is, about 25 measures of music. It says it’s for “small orchestra,” which in looking over must mean it doesn’t have trombones? Or an oboe? I don’t know.

    • Next: The first 17 measures or so — the intro and exposition of the first theme by the English horn — are pretty cromulent, and then it falls apart. But that main theme is pretty haunting, so it might be worth picking up and playing with it.

  • a blue folder with the Mass in C in it (1980s?)

    • I don’t remember exactly how old this thing is, but it’s a vocal score, and the Kyrie is printed by a dot matrix printer and the rest of it is handwritten. It was from a session when friends met to record the thing for me. I had generous friends.

    • There are eight movements; I omitted the Credo. Of them, I have input into Finale: the Kyrie, the Sanctus, the Benedictus, and the Agnus Dei/Dona Nobis. Those are rock solid choral pieces and I used the Sanctus and Benedictus for the church choir.

    • Next: I could go through and examine the missing movements and either give up on them or brush them up and include them.

  • scribbles for the second movement of a symphony for band

    • The first movement was premiered by the East Coweta High School band, under the direction of the late and great Tam Easterwood.

    • One problem with Finale is that over the years the programmers kept changing stuff under the hood, so that files that used to play dynamics, etc., correctly now just blat out the notes, and often you can’t even get the instruments to register. Percussion is particularly bad here. There’s a moment in “Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way” that will probably always be missing the windchimes at m.38 because the Finale team borked something.

    • Which is to say: The first movement’s Finale file no longer plays all the percussion correctly and I’ve never been arsed to go fix it; after all, no one needs it, right?

    • Anyway, I started a second movement, all heavy brass in vast descending arpeggios, probably inspired by Carl Ruggles, and almost immediately quit working on it.

    • Next: I’ve always liked the opening gambit, so I could revisit that movement even though it would never be performed. (Also, it is uncomfortably reminiscent of Arvo Pärt’s Lamentate, even though I composed this long before Pärt’s piece was composed or recorded.)

  • Alleluia

    • Composers, learn to write the date on your files. I know this is an early work, probably 40 years old or so, but I have no specific date. It’s never been performed.

    • This is a handwritten score, and for one of mine it’s pretty tidy, in ink, even.

    • It’s a monster of a piece, starting in 7/8 time (!) with drums providing an insistent ostinato (redundant, I know). The organ and the choir start with long notes on the syllables of “Alleluia,” although soon the lines begin to subdivide, giving little twitches/appoggiaturas to the words. This process continues until the whole thing is a writhing, coiling mess of sound — which suddenly breaks and resolves into a serene landscape with my signature arpeggios sustaining the choir’s “Be still and know that I am God.”

    • Next: I am definitely going to get this one into Finale. Stay tuned.

More than enough to be going on with, given that I already have two pieces I’m not working on. Cras melior est!