Daniel Powers

Archive for May, 2009

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.

The trio is still my main project, but I took a little time off from it to write a couple of songs for male chorus and piano, to texts by James Joyce. This was a sudden thing, precipitated by an invitation from Andrea Maria Ottavini, a fine composer himself and director of a new male choir called MADGear (I’d link to them, but they don’t appear to have a website of their own yet). Andrea is a cyber-acquaintance of mine–we both post from time to time on the Garritan forum–and when he wrote a post asking whether anyone had written anything for male chorus, I made a spur-of-the-moment offer to write something.

For texts, I returned once again to James Joyce’s Chamber Music, selecting “I Would In That Sweet Bosom Be” and “Who Goes Amid The Green Wood”. I wrapped up work on the second song this afternoon, and e-mailed Andrea the PDFs. Some editing is still possible before I release it to the larger universe, but I hope to have something more to say soon.

This was a fun project. I haven’t written a choral piece in a long time, and I’ve never written anything for male chorus before.

Now it’s back to the trio. For some reason, it’s proceeding rather slowly. Not badly at all, in fact, it’s turning out quite well, but progress on it is slower than usual for me. I have no idea why.

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.

For orchestra.
3(pic).3(Eh).2.Ebcl(bcl).2.cbn / 4.3.3.1. / T 3P / hp / piano / strings
Duration approx 10 minutes.
Composed Summer 2001.

The Starry Messenger was commissioned by the Terre Haute Symphony Orchestra as an opener for the 2001 season, which happened to coincide with their 75th anniversary. As a point of interest, the Terre Haute Symphony is the oldest continuously operating orchestra in the state of Indiana, a fact we are rather proud of.

I began the piece with a gesture that had been at the back of my mind for several years; a short, violent explosion of dissonance, which sets into motion a long stream of rapidly flowing pianissimo notes, gradually expanding in pitch range, volume, and textural complexity. I have since wondered if I was subconsciously inspired by the idea of the Big Bang, the creation of the universe in a huge explosion of energy followed by a constant expansion.

It is entirely plausible that I was influenced by the fact that I knew my piece would be sharing the program with Holst’s The Planets, a work I’ve known and loved since I was quite young. Also, since astronomy has always been an interest of mine, it’s easy to understand that inspiration would strike from that direction.

On a purely musical level, the work unfolds as a moto perpetuo, built on a stream of sixteenth notes, broken only during a brief climactic passage near the middle, and at the end as the momentum gradually fades away into the vast infinity of space.

The scientifically literate will recognize The Starry Messenger as the title of one of Galileo’s most important scientific books. Despite the poetic nature of the title, the book itself is rather dry, dealing mainly with Galileo’s improvements to the telescope, and the surprising things he discovered when he trained the new instrument on the heavens, discoveries that paved the way for a completely new understanding of the universe.

My appropriation of Galileo’s title owes itself to an unlikely coincidence. While I was working on the piece, I was also reading a biography of Galileo, which I had received as a Christmas present from my parents. It struck me that The Starry Messenger was far to poetic a title to be used on a seriously scientific work. Something about it, though, seemed to resonate with the orchestral work I was writing, and I decided to borrow it.

In 2006, The Starry Messenger was recorded by the Prague Radio Symphony as part of ERM Media’s series of recordings Masterworks of the New Era. It was released on volume 12 of the series in 2008. The recording below is taken from that release.

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The May update is pretty much a carbon copy of the April update. Still working on the Trio for clarinet, bassoon, and piano, and am hoping that Summer will give me time to build up a little momentum on it. Currently, I’m well into the first movement, and yesterday, I filled a page with sketches for the third movement. There are only vague ideas for the second movement right now.

I’m also hoping for time to work on several pieces that have been on the metaphorical back burner for a long time. Like Strings In The Earth And Air, as well as the still untitled piece for cello and virtual instruments.

Other projects include finishing up the editing of the Concerto Piccolo, and getting the Rejoice and Be Merry book out the door. Also putting the final touches on this site, then getting started on updating the Swan’s Wing Press site.

Some potential new projects are waiting in the wings. None are definite yet, so I’ll hold off on announcing them.