I\u2019ve read praise for composer-bloggers who share their struggles and rejections. It\u2019s the inside story that people want to read. Readers won\u2019t find much insight if all you write is self-promotion and self-praise.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s really tough for me, however, when I\u2019m working on a project, to think of anything to write about. I don\u2019t want to write about a work-in-progress that I\u2019m not sure about yet. I don\u2019t have creative bandwidth for writing about other topics either.<\/p>\n
While I\u2019m searching for the core of a piece — the right melodic elements and harmonies, or even the right text, I\u2019m in a private phase of my creative process. I can\u2019t describe ahead of time what the shape of the music will be because the search is what molds the material, and re-shapes it, and finally refines it into something I want to show performers and present to listeners. Usually, I don\u2019t even have a name for the piece.<\/p>\n
On Christmas Eve day, I put the final edits on \u201cWalden at Evening\u201d, a three-movement piece for solo horn, 2 percussion, and chorus, with words by Henry David Thoreau. I finally chose the name too. The music is for the August 2013 Symposium of the International Horn Society, which will be in Memphis, Tennessee, USA.<\/p>\n
In the previous two weeks I finally shared the scores of the three movements with the commissioner and performers, calling them almost-final drafts. I always think that I will share the work-in-progress with performers, but I don\u2019t feel like I have anything worth sharing until the piece is nearly complete.\u00a0 The chorus director gave me some good feedback, and I made minor adjustments in vocal ranges. I went back to each movement for final revisions, especially of accompaniment harmonies. I finally decided I was done when the whole piece resonated for me.<\/p>\n
After wondering, all through November, whether I had something worth offering, I\u2019m finally very happy with the result. And I can rejoin the online community of friends and fellow musicians again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve read praise for composer-bloggers who share their struggles and rejections. It\u2019s the inside story that people want to read. Readers won\u2019t find much insight if all you write is self-promotion and self-praise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[12,13,30,15],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-composing","tag-commissions","tag-composing","tag-creativity","tag-horn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":229,"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions\/229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}