Thursday, December 13, 2012

Further Interruptions -- What Is This?

So, I thought I had my active work list narrowed down to about 8 pieces, when I had an idea to do another short orchestral piece for Christmas... actually, for Advent. I thought I'd do an instrumental setting of the Introit for the Third Sunday of Advent, even got a little of it done, but then decided that what I had so far was pretty good, but not good enough for the text it represents, and with Gaudete Sunday only a little over a week away at the time, I didn't want to make it a sloppy rush job, so it's on hold.

Back to the list of 8, then, right? Yep -- for about three days, which ended up being occupied by non-musical activities. Then, late Sunday night I for some reason decided to start a piece for woodwind quartet, without a theme or even a mood yet. Still, a weird bass line for bassoon materialized, then a melody for oboe, and some motion from the clarinet, leading to a second theme for flute, and by the time I went to bed I had about 40 seconds of something that didn't sound too bad. As I was trying to fall asleep with this new thing running through my head, it demanded to be more than just a woodwind quartet -- it has to be for orchestra! Fortunately, I had Monday off, so I was able to put in a few hours on it, and sure enough, that bassoon line morphed into the subject of an opening fugue for the string section, so I now have about 1'10" of the strings, and it's still not up to where the winds kick in.

Okay, so my list is now up from 8 to 9; not a big deal... that is, until yesterday on the way home from work when another idea popped into my head; I was thinking brass ensemble at first, but good sense prevailed and it became a piano piece instead. I worked on it for about an hour last night, then had it running through my head today at work, and when I got home today it didn't take much longer to finish it. But what to call it? I could've called it Perenepsis #6, but although it has some aspects of that, it's not quite one, and #s 4 and 5 aren't done yet, anyway. It's basically two-part contrapuntal writing, as with Prelude in B Major and Nota Brevis, or perhaps even a little like Anachronistic Rabbits, except this one isn't so much major or minor as based on fourths. Considering its brevity and how quickly it came together, I decided to just call it another "sketch" -- a quick, fun little thing, barely a minute long, with perhaps just a hint of the old Rocky and Bullwinkle theme:



Now, back to work on my real pieces...