It just dawned on me that I have about two days to complete a choral composition that I have barely started. Only a minimal amount of time to complete this one. It's for this year's Good Friday service, though, so it will be very fun to write!

New developments

First, what's already happened: the three unaccompanied tenor duets were premiered unceremoniously but successfully last spring. I'm very glad to have performed them and to have had such a high-quality singing partner. It really was a lot of fun, though I'd like to sharpen them and give a better performance sometime.

Now, at last, I've begun working on a practical minimalist piece that is to be sung outdoors while walking to Crystal Lake, across its frozen water, and to the island. I am scoring it for a male quartet (a cappella, of course) and am hoping to have it performed in January sometime. I've been thinking about this composition, or perhaps just the act of performing it, for several years and am very anxious to get it off the ground. This is very much intended to be music for the performers' sake and for fleeting audiences only.

In non-practical minimalist news, I am working on a composition for symphonic wind ensemble that will be premiered in February. What an exciting development! It's my first composition for this medium, I'll be using some fun devices that I've been eager to whip out since 2006. I am truly blessed to have the opportunity to have such a work performed.

Marching ahead

Practical minimalism, as I am terming it, may make its debut this spring. I'm VERY excited! My three unaccompanied tenor duets, as well as an unaccompanied tenor-bass duet, are now in the rehearsal stage. At last, the first bits of a dream are starting to approach reality.

The prairie cantata, which is not a practical minimalist piece, is also making steady progress. With most of the other choral material finished, I am now working on the most substantial movement and parts of the instrumental interludes before and during this movement. It's all finally taking shape, and for this reason (among others), I can't wait for May to arrive.

Great things yet unseen: glacial progress

Progress, at times, is very slow. Especially when I'm accompanying ten-ish people and teaching eleven piano students, all as a lowly undergrad. Were I a more accomplished pianist and educator, this would hardly be daunting, but all this collaborative piano and all these lessons will surely sharpen my skills and leave me with a greater capacity for each in the future. And, as busy as I am, and as far off as excellence may be, I'm looking forward to it. I really want to be an exceptional educator.

The other side of this is that being so busy leaves me with precious little composing time. I am, however, making progress each week. Perhaps in this regard, I am the glacier and my cantata is the prairie—or, what will eventually become the prairie. I am working slowly, advancing little by little but creating yet-unseen eskers, kames, and kettles in my music. I'm very excited to see where this composition takes me.

Labor Day reflections

In the past week I've devoted some much-needed time to reading and composing for the prairie cantata. I've found some terrific poems by Kathleen Norris and Tom Hennen and Bill Holm. The trouble I'm facing is the task of putting my observations into music. Norris and Hennen and Holm all have made their observations, so that's helpful. But what about my interpretations of them? Or my own observations for the instrumental passages? How can I describe the prairie?

There is both an abundant freedom and a smothering dauntingness in knowing that there is no right or wrong way to express the prairie musically. There is no ideal way to express it. One possible solution to the prairie's vastness is to express it in layers that interact harmoniously in some way. But here's the problem: the sky is high above us and the ground just below us. They are two very different worlds, and while parts of one will occasionally come into contact with the other (birds and rain, for example), they only meet at the horizon. And the horizon is defined by the observer. This work is therefore necessarily subjective. It can't be a snapshot or a book report. It must be a thesis. An assertion. But of what?

A New Project

As the title suggests, there is a new project in the works. On the horizon. As it were. A different project than the one mentioned a few months back. That never got off the ground. This one will, though. It's the big multi-movement choral and instrumental piece that will be premiered next May. I've begun researching, and I am now charged with finding the texts for this project. I've read the journals of Thomas Thomasson, one of the first Norwegian settlers in Stevens County, as well as correspondence to and from Ida Hancock, and early resident of Morris, and some of Bill Holm's writings. Between these sources, and likely others, I hope to be able to gather the texts I need to compose the choral portions of the composition. Truth be told, I don't need a whole lot of text; the daunting part is finding the few small passages that will be of greatest use to me.

Now that I have my keyboard back at home, I will hopefully feel more motivated and inspired to compose smaller works. Or sow the seeds for larger works. Anything. I have composed very little this summer, and I am now finding myself yearning every day for something to compose. But nothing has been coming to mind. Perhaps I should approach things differently.

Remarks on the tenor duets

The tenor duets I've been composing are simple, musically speaking. Although the harmony is quite ambiguous, it is built on Western scales. But it does have very obvious and simple musical patterns. Anyone who can read music can learn this music, although it requires a degree of aural aptitude because of the lack of accompaniment.

Still, the main barrier I've put up to learning these pieces is that one voice is in English and the other in Chinese. Not only that, but I am providing only the Chinese characters for the Chinese part—no transliteration, no pronunciation guide. Having studied Mandarin, I know that Romanizations of the language are extremely misleading, and pronunciation guides are tragically ineffective. Instructions on how to pronounce the language would, in my opinion, be completely useless because Chinese has so many sounds that simply do not exist in English. For Mandarin syllables like shi and zhi, to name only two examples, there is no English equivalent. None whatsoever. There is no point of reference. Even with tutoring from a native speaker, a person with no prior experience with Mandarin would have difficulty getting the pronunciation right. Everyone has the capacity to pronounce Chinese, but it demands a lot of practice from most nonnative speakers.

Therefore, in the exeedingly unlikely event that these compositions are learned or performed by anyone else in the future, I am safeguarding them from being butchered by making it very difficult for non-speakers to learn the Chinese part. It's not that I feel people shouldn't attempt this music. In fact, I'd be tickled to death if I were to learn that somebody somewhere had taken an interest in it. My concern is for the beautiful sounds of Chinese. These pieces were composed with these sounds in mind; these sounds are a part of the music.