Daniel Powers

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My lovely wife, Martha, and I celebrated our 15th anniversary on October 17, 2007. According to whoever decides these things, the 15th anniversary is associated with crystal, so of course I was looking around for something of a crystalline nature for her anniversary gift.

The obvious thing, since we’re both wine lovers, was a set of wine glasses. Then something gave me the idea to write a special piece for her, based on glass sounds. As it happened, I had in my arsenal several collections of multisampled glass instruments, including Vienna Instruments’ “Glass and Stones” (now discontinued, so no link) and Bolder Sounds’ “Crystal Glasses and Meditation Bowls.”

So, late at night before our anniversary, I got to work. I wrote and recorded this piece in about three hours and played it for her at breakfast. And now I share it with you!

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Some time ago, a friend let me know that my choral song Spring had been reviewed in the Choral Journal. I finally got around to tracking it down, and found it in the August 2007 issue, on page 78. It’s hardly an extensive review, but generally positive, and worth noting here I think.

Spring reminds one more of an art song than a choral composition. The music is exciting and descriptive with wonderfully chosen words. Although written for 2-part choir, the music is quite challenging. Intervallic interest abounds in the vocal line and the independant piano part requires definite technical ability.

I guess they liked it.

I found this story just now over at the Finale Forum. I might want to use it later so I’m copying it here.

The context of the story is a discussion of the rules of music theory and when it might be appropriate to break them.

Tom Williams had this to say:

I had the same difficulties some 3 decades ago. Reminiscing for the moment, it was a composing and arranging class, and my final project was an arrangement of a Broadway tune for concert band. I got a B, and though that was fine, I asked the prof what I should have done to get an A. He told me “It was very good, but the sax choir at measure nnn had parallel fifths and parallel octaves all over the place, and I had to drop it a letter grade.” My response: I wasn’t writing a chorale here — for Heaven’s sake, it was a 5/8 time signature in the style of a sort of jazz waltz. I wanted the saxes to sound like a pre-Jimmy Smith jazz organist.

He gave me the A.

Lest you misunderstand the moral of the tale: he gave me an A because I took the time to demonstrate that I knew the rules and broke them knowingly. Had I given him a blank look about the parallel fifths and octaves, or proclaimed myself to be above the rule, he would have — rightly — kept the grade reduced.

Know the rules. Know why they’re justified. Be able to defend them. Then break ‘em to little bits!

Thanks, Tom, whoever you are! Hope you don’t mind if I steal your story a little bit.

I have uploaded audio from my recital of last January. Listen here.

For a while I’ve been looking for a good theme for this site. In my searches, I came across Artisteer, a program for people like me who have no idea what they’re doing, but want some control over the appearance of their site. After messing around with it for a while, I generated a theme called “Blue Dan 1″ and this morning I applied it here.

OK, not the last word in site design, I admit, but not bad for a first effort. It’s kind of a fun program to use, so I may be changing the look several times for a while.

As part of the process of upgrading the site, I’m trying out an audio player for the new website. If I do this right, you’ll be able to hear Martha play Scherzino.

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It looks like it worked! So far things are going smoothly.

I’m also trying out the Thematic theme for a new look. It appears to have installed successfully (so far so good). Still looks a bit blah, though. Hopefully I’ll soon be figuring out how to tart it up a bit.

This week I’m beginning to convert danielpowers.info to a WordPress site.

Obviously I have no idea what I’m doing, so please bear with me.

So far I’ve been successful (apparently) in importing my old blog to the new site. The plan is that it will serve as a starting point for a whole new site. I plan to update the site frequently, and take advantage of the capabilites of self-hosting to include pages devoted to audio files and possibly scores as well. It’s a lot to deal with, but I’m learning fast. Hopefully the effort will be worth it.

For a year and a half now, I’ve been keeping this blog kind of halfheartedly. Mostly I’ve been posting about the status of my various projects, and not much else.

At the same time, I’ve been struggling with my new website, www.danielpowers.info, which needs a better name and has never looked right to me.

I’ve recently decided that I’m not really using the blog to its full potential. I’ve also learned that WordPress can be used to design full websites, a fact that I somehow overlooked all this time. It seems that I can solve both issues at once, by installing WordPress on my website and migrating this blog over to it.

Hopefully I’ll be doing that within the week. Over the next few days I plan to use this blog to prepare for the migration. Expect frequent changes for a while (if you’re a regular visitor!).

As I mentioned before, I want 2009 to be a year with the focus on composition. A few prospects are already in place.

First priority in the near future will be a trio for clarinet, bassoon, and piano. I’ve mentioned this several times over the last few months. The commission came from TriofuS several months ago, but I’ve been too busy to start it till now. I have a few pages of sketches done, and I’m starting to get a feel for the piece. I expect it to be in three movements, approximately 15 minutes long total.

Other prospects include a piece for flute ensemble and a short woodwind quintet, both of which would be for student groups here at ISU. These have been proposed, but aren’t definite yet.

Also, Martha and I have been discussing a new CD project for a long time now, and I’m making a tentative beginning on it. I may have alluded to it once or twice here on this blog, but never went into detail. The project will be all new music, for piano and possibly other instruments, with electronic and virtual instruments. It will be based on the Cantigas de Amigo by the 13th century Galacian troubador Martin Codax, and will alternate between my arrangements of his songs and original works. I am working on the first track of the CD right now, which is a treatment of Codax’s Ondas do Mare, the first of the Cantigas. The first track will be all electronic, and will be followed by a track for piano and cello. Beyond that, I don’t know much about what’s going to happen. Still, it’s a new direction for me, and I’m excited about it. More information as it progresses.

The Swan’s Wing Press site is back up! Of course the problem was with me completely misunderstanding simple instructions. But I finally had a big “Duh” moment, after which everything worked like it was supposed to.

There’s still work to be done on it; links to be updated, audio to upload, and so on. But at least the big problem that was driving me crazy has gone away. From here it should go smoothly. Unless, of course, there’s another big problem waiting for me.

And a small update: Unforgettable is nearly done. Mainly I just need to figure out how to end it, and fill in a few gaps in the string parts. Mack the Knife will probably come next.

I finally took the plunge and created an account at Soundclick. I’ve started the process of uploading music to it, and I expect it will take a few days to get it finished.

I’ve been wanting a way to let people preview my music free without downloading it, with an option to buy a download. I’d been trying to figure out how to do it on my own website without resorting to a third party, but the process is just too complicated for me to figure out, and I don’t want to take the time to do so just now. So I think Soundclick will be a good option for now.

It’ll be time for a new update soon, but until then, I thought it would be interesting to list a few ideas for possible future projects.

“Chamber Music” for tenor, viola, and piano: a song cycle on poetry of James Joyce. This one actually has a chance of getting done. I have the beginning written of a setting of “Strings In The Earth And Air,” which would be the first song in the proposed cycle. Assuming I see it through, the complete cycle will consist of eight songs. The idea is at least 30 years old. As an undergraduate composition student, I picked out the poems and started a setting for baritone and large ensemble, but never got very far with the project. Something recently reminded me of it, though, and now I’m reimagining the idea.

A couple of years ago, I wrote The Rain Is Full Of Ghosts, a cycle of three songs on poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay for mezzo-soprano, viola, and piano. If I’m able to finish the Chamber Music cycle, I will have written a total of eleven songs with viola, which as far as I know, will be a new world record! (If I’m correct, Loeffler holds the current record, with nine.)

“Death Carol” for chorus and orchestra, a setting of part of Walt Whitman’s When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloom’d. I have wanted to write this for years, and actually have a section of it sketched. But I don’t know when or if I’ll have the opportunity (or the time) to finish it.

Tone poem on “Gilgamesh.” I got interested in The Epic Of  Gilgamesh last year, and read several treatments of it. I thought of writing a large-scale tone poem on it, and sketched out a theme for the opening. Currently I have no other ideas for it, and I doubt that this will ever see the light of day. I may eventually use the theme in something else.

“Atmosphere,” electronic music. Several years ago, when I was first getting into software instruments, I started what I thought would eventually become a CD-length composition. I managed to nearly finish recording about 10 minutes worth of it, and wrote out another five minutes or so, but then the project fizzled out. I still think about it from time to time, and may eventually return to it.

Still-untitled CD project. Since this one is actually very likely to come about, and I don’t want to give it away yet, I’ll keep the details to myself for now.