Monthly Archives: October 2015

Aphorisms for composers – October 2015

October 22, 2015

Returns, as in:

Returning/mirroring cloud and land (cloud formations returned as rock formations–where does one end and the other begin?); return to solitude in vast space, separation from trappings (except for the rental car, which of course must be returned); day and night, different/transformed each time they return; rock rabbit wood bird wind sun scattering, scampering, disappearing, returning; the Santa Fe railroad keeps on returning with more trains, more cargo; in badlands on foot in the morning, my return to silence, texture, distance; returning on the same path, not realizing I’d “been there;” had enough, can’t take it, so at the desk again, returning to books, manuscript paper, directed thoughts, (ok, laptop), processing the overstimulation from looking, being, moving and that’s the whole thing; in the music, ideas returning, not really leaving; a return “home(?)” to integrate/understand, if possible (6:15 am departure; leave the place as you found it)…[21-22.10.15; program note for “Returns, Op. 569b,” for solo cello; composed in Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona for cellist and artist-in-residence Rhonda Rider]

October 16, 2015

Everything is only something most of the time [i.e. don’t try to put “everything” in one piece].

Wei identity page-response. (Cleveland; black classical musicians; New England); core body—how is it dressed from day to day, intention to intention?

October 13, 2015

Get lost; stay lost. If we know too much, become too sure of ourselves, is not the point then…lost?

October 12, 2015

If you have fewer notes, do you pick them more carefully?

October 11, 2015

When dry, look back.

October 10, 2015

If you find an outlet for it and let it out enough times, will it go away?

October 8, 2015

Poem: Why My 2 Remaining Brain Cells Are Tired

Too many years
Of premieres

October 7, 2015

“Running”—as in despotic control—is uncomfortably close to “ruining.” The composer may do well to learn the right time to relinquish control.

October 6, 2015

When composers “go deep,” they must re-emerge to express the depth as shared experience.

Three Sketchbook Items

Premiered on October 18, 2015, by Jill Dreeben, flute, Todd Brunel, clarinet, and Elizabeth Skavish, piano, for Contemporary With Classic: Music with Flute Clarinet and Piano,
Brandeis University Concert Series, Slosberg Recital Hall, Brandeis Univerisity, Waltham, Massachusetts.

Commissioned by Jill Dreeben for the concert at Brandeis University, this trio casts (or recasts) some sketchbook materials, shedding new light on sometimes “pending” ideas and giving then the particular definition that the flute/clarinet/piano instrumentation suggests.

  1. Prelude is a version of a two part invention entitled Deux Mains Qui Penser; as the French title suggests, the piece is somewhat pensive (and a little capricious).
  2. Opa’s Twofer is a pair of similarly enrgetic (but also reflective) ideas smashed together to congratulate and celecrate pianist/composer Thomas Stumpf on his recent grandfatherhood.
  3. Trio Study in Familiar Style is a four part chorale; parts are underlined/doubled in ways that the instruments accentuate idiomatically.

The three pieces were presented together as a set due to their proximity in my sketchbook as well as because of their contrasting qualities.

Boston Arts Diary writes:
John McDonald’s Three Sketchbook Items immediately calls forth the image of “Cubist Copland,” an abstract array of sounds that still maintains, at its core, a kind of pastoral unity. The wandering sonority of the Prelude is short, quaint and angular, giving way, in Opa’s Twofer to tremolos echoing three ways, with an emerging lyrical piano line that seeks to sew the fluttering pieces into a quilt of sounds.

Three Sketchbook Items is dedicated to Jill, Todd, and Liz with gratitude.

Two Ways, One Place – The Zen of Petrification?

pefo

Petrified Forest National Park.
Photo: John McDonald

Op. 569a (2015), for solo cello:

  1. Through Which There Is No Way
  2. On The Way Or At Home?

Because of my delight upon receiving a commission from cellist Rhonda Rider (early in 2015) for her upcoming stint as Artist in Residence at the Petrified Forest National Park (PEFO), I started thinking and sketching almost right away. The present diptych is the result of that early creative excitement, and serves as a prelude to my own upcoming trip to PEFO.

As of this writing, I can only imagine the experience of the Petrified Forest, with its petropgyphs, wildlife, and storied vastness. It is from that imagined experience that Through Which There Is No Way and On The Way Or At Home? were fashioned.

A curious definition of “petrified” found in my still-trusty two-volume OED (Oxford English Dictionary), “through which there is no way,” suggested phrases like “can’t get there from here,” but also indicated that impenetrable strength and solidity might be a musical goal to consider. Thus, this first response to the idea of the Petrified Forest—of petrification—is made of three muscular, lengthening phrases divided by rock-like, double-stop chords.

roaring_streamTo get a little lost and stay lost is essentially the goal of On The Way Or At Home?, an almost entirely pizzicato piece inspired by a phrase from a Zen poem “Wandering” (by poet/monk Musō Soseki [1275-1351]) that I stumbled across while reading The Roaring Stream: A New Zen Reader (The ECCO Press, 1996):

…Traveling east or west
light and free
on the one road
I don’t know whether
I’m on the way
or at home

I wonder with this piece (and this poem) if I will feel at home hiking in the PEFO, or will I be lost? Or lost and at home? Am I lost at home?

After visiting the park, I hope to offer an afterpiece titled Returns, about the park’s migratory birds, items that park visitors have stolen and returned over the years, and my own return “home.” Stay tuned…

I dedicate these pieces, with admiration, to Rhonda Rider.

John McDonald
October 15, 2015