The day before the concert

So I just had one of the last rehearsals for my new piece "Fire and Ice" based on the poem "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost. I am very happy with how it went and even the unexpected guest (Dr. Liebel) thought it was great. She made the comment that the two characters were different and that the piece took you on a coherent musical journey; which is what I was definitly going for. It took a while to get to this point but it seems as if everything is finally worked out, a lot of the chamber music spots are fixed and things transition pretty smoothly. I have great players for my piece so that really helps a lot, they make it sound great and flow great.

Last week in class was the first time I was able to present and I was happy with the comments, and lack of criticism. Everybody thought it was great and no body had any big criticisms which meant that I didn't need to make any big changes.

After the concert is over I definitly have a bit of work to do in fixing the score. From the players suggestions I will make things easier to read, make tranisitions smoother and also I will make the ensemble aspects of it much easier.

I cannot wait to perform this tomorrow, I think it will be awsome.

Even though I do need to go through my piece, tweak and change some things I have finally set the whole poem to music. The task of setting text to music was harder then I had first expected because I really didn't know and wasn't sure of what I wanted to write for the ice charavter. I had lots of ideas down but it was only until recently that I felt okay with what I had written. I have changed my idea a little bit. In stead of using just one whole tone scale the half way through I changed to another whole tone scale. Unfortunately where there is less then a week left before the preformance I can't make to many changes because I would only make things a lot more challenging for my players; it is bad enough they are only going to get their part either tonight or tomorrow.

I think that my two conrasting ideas are quite different and am, for the most part happy with how it turnded out. Later on this evening I have to make some final adjustments and add the final touches and hopefully things will be all set.

Composing my new piece for voice has been an exciting challenge. I have seperated the piece into two seperate characters, "Fire" and "Ice" and each character is supported musically by different scales. The Ice character is based on a whole tone scale (starting on C) giving a very airy, glassy feeling, there are no semi-tones, meaning no leading tone. The Fire character is based on an octatonic scale starting on a. This scale helps me produce a bruding effect and helps create a darker, contrsasting character compared to the ice. Since the octatonic scale is based on two diminished chords I plan to use this idea and develop it (ex. using both diminished chords to create a polychord/ or using all the notes of the chord). The challenge right now is to figure out how to switch back and fourth between characters without making things boaring and predictable.

setting text to rhythm

When setting the text of my poem to rhythm I wanted to set it naturally, but with expression and with some elements of coherence and surprise. I created coherence by using the same rhythmic figure (a triplet) on the words that rhymed, and I created some surprises by proloning some words and delivering words later then expected.

After showing the text to my class I recieved some good comments, they said that it seemed to be set naturally, but they also mentioned some things that could be changed. It was brought up that singers like long notes so they can show off their sound, so it was recommended that I put longer note values when I write my piece. I also learned how to set the text under the notes in terms of dashes bewteen broken words and lines between words.

My next step is to dig in and start composing.

New Project

After a lot of searching and reading I have finally found a text that I like to set to music, I finally decided on a poem by the poet Robert Frost. I found it difficult to find a text that I liked to set to music, I searched many different resources and I had a lot of texts that I liked, but I found that music would not enhance them. I searched through a lot of Edgar Allen Poe, I looked on the internet and through a bunch of different compliation books consisting of poems. I eventaully went to greek theatre as a resource and I found some really cool text from Oedipus Rex and after finding this I had made up my mind that this was the text I wanted. After spending a few days with this text I started to lose interest in it and I quickly put it aside and turned my attention back to a Robert Frost book. After reading the poem "Fire and Ice" I knew that this poem would be great to set to music, I thought I could do a lot with the two contrasting characters, fire and ice. My next step now is too set the text to a natural rhythm that I will use in my new piece.