I recently explained how Classical musicians understood harmony in terms of characteristic gestures. For my first demonstration of this gestural approach to harmony, I present the Latter-Day Saint hymn “Father in Heaven, We Do Believe.”
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Author: Joseph Sowa
Have You Heard?: Summer Has Ten Thousand Stars
My first performed orchestra piece was inspired in part by Walt Whitman poem “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer.” The piece captures some of the wonder of staring into the star-filled sky on a dark summer night. Continue reading
Learning Harmony as Gestures
Lately I’ve been studying how the Italian and French masters taught harmony and counterpoint. It’s fascinating. They didn’t analyze chords or study Byzantine diagrams. They learned to perform complete textures from a single musical line.
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James Horner on Film Music
I was sad to hear that James Horner died this week in an aviation accident. His music has been an inspiration to me. I was browsing YouTube listening to his old scores when I found this interview he gave a few years back. Several parts of it stood out to me. Continue reading
“Like Day and Night”: Solos for Oboe and Violin Now Available
I’m pleased to announce the recordings and publication of two very different solos for oboe and violin: one for the instrument alone, the other with piano accompaniment; one comprising a variety of moods, most fast, the other composed of a single, slow mood. Continue reading
On Debussy and how some contrasts have more than meet the ear
Last week we looked at “Brouillards” from Debussy’s second book of Preludes. In this performance by Krystian Zimerman, you can hear Debussy’s interesting use of juxtaposition, which is the subject of this post . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhdXnMHqsEU
Movement is the soul of music
Of all my artistic influences, musical and otherwise, the most impactful has been Yoko Kanno’s soundtrack for the anime series “Cowboy Bebop.” At first listen, Kanno’s music is striking for its stylistic variety. Although jazz forms the core of the music, it branches out to blues, country, rock, heavy metal, and even late Romantic opera. Yet underpinning this seeming hodgepodge is a unified rhythmic sense. In every style, Kanno nurtures a rich ecology of rhythmic relationships. The music moves and flows in complementary streams, and that harmonious interpenetration resonates to the core of my musical aspirations.
In technical terms, what I’m feeling are its polyrhythmic grooves, the meaning those grooves create for surface syncopation, and the sheer energy all this movement generates. More artistically, this music affirms that, for me, movement is the soul of music, that music is first a corporeal — rather than merely aural or intellectual — experience, and that, because it increases awareness of both your physical existence and your interconnectedness, music is fundamentally a celebration of life, a religious experience.
Now “Cowboy Bebop” doesn’t have the only music in which I hear this textural richness. I’m attracted to it as well, for instance, in the music of Anton Bruckner, Elliott Carter, John Williams, Stevie Wonder, and, of course, J. S. Bach. But though I value that music, too, I always return to Kanno’s work as a touchstone for the feeling of life that I want my music to carry.
“. . . Ring in the new”
2012 was a good year, but 2013 promises to be even more exciting.
Certainties
In 2012, blogging was my neglected step-child. This year, expect a steady and frequent stream of posts as I keep you in the loop about how my music is progressing, what I’m listening to, and what other thoughts and cool things I find over the coming year.
The next couple months I launch into my largest project ever: an hour-long Easter oratorio for choir, soloists, chamber ensemble, and dancers. The text comes from the Bible, primarily the four gospels. I’ve already started work on the music, and in the coming weeks, I’ll blog more details about the work and its upcoming performance.
Once that piece is done, I have several other projects on deck. For the AWEA Duo, I’ll be integrating fangled contraption into a set of bagatelles for flute and saxophone. I’ll also be writing a flute duo for Amber Seeley and Nicole Okeson. Later on, I intend to dust off my performing chops and write myself a piece for violin and electronics. All this composing should take me through spring, which brings us to . . .
Possibilities
In addition to those for sure pieces, I have at least half a dozen other ideas and requests. In the coming months, I need to sort out how serious they and I are about those plans. Could this be the year I finally write the tuba ensemble piece I’ve been imagining since 2007?
So far I’ve attended three different summer festivals: EAMA, Brevard, and highSCORE. They’ve all been great, but I’m still not sure where I’ll be headed this summer. Will I go back to one of those? Will I go some place new?
This year I also hope to expand my exposure by applying to more contests and calls for scores and by reaching out to create more collaborative opportunities. This year might be the year I start my doctoral work. In any case, it’ll certainly be my year of “how to stay happy and fed while establishing a career.”
So, stay tuned for news on these and other escapades. Do you have any suggestions for the coming year? Pieces I should write? Places to go? People to see? What are your dreams for 2013?
“Ring out the old . . .”
It’s been a good year for composition. It hasn’t been such a good year for blogging, so it’s time to highlight the best of 2012 and the opportunities coming in 2013. I’ll start in this post with 2012.
Second Performances
My biggest milestone this year was finally having pieces enter performers’ regular repertoire. I wrote “Icarus and Daedalus” in February for Arianna Tieghi, who since performed it twice this summer.
“night flocks of angels trumpet” was an excerpt from A Field Guide to Natural History that I arranged for violinist Katie Jensen, who performed it earlier this month. It’s my favorite movement from an otherwise long, difficult, and unusual quartet (read “unlikely to be performed”). Field Guide was performed twice in 2011 in its original form, and now with this arrangement for violin and piano, I hope the music will have a continued life. (Violinists, I will soon post an excerpt from the performance. Seriously. Check it out: it’s really pretty.)
Finally, “fangled contraption” continues to be my surprise hit. It was performed only once in 2012 but already has 5 performances scheduled for 2013 by the AWEA Duo, at which point it will have been performed 10 times. Sure, the New York Times won’t be picking up the story any time soon, but it’s sure cool (and reassuring) to see my music starting to have a life among performers.
Master of Music
In other significant news, in April I finished my MM in Composition at Brigham Young University. Seven years of study later, my time as a BYU student is finally over. Studying at BYU gave me exceptional performance and teaching opportunities and honed both my musical perceptions and my ability to articulate them. Perhaps in another post, I’ll give more highlights.
Since then I haven’t really gone anywhere. I still work for the College of Fine Arts and Communications as an editor. But being on campus doesn’t feel the same when you’re staff. Considering the lack of finals (or any assignments), great checkout priveldges at the library, employee discounts at the Bookstore, etc., it’s better.
highSCORE Festival
Over the summer, I attended the highSCORE Festival in Italy, where I made some good friends, heard their great music, and got to have a new string quartet performed. I also got to have some inspiring lessons from Amy Beth Kirsten and Dmitri Tymoczko.
Collaborations with Neil Thornock
Some of the most fun I had this year was in collaborating with Neil Thornock. Dr. Thornock was my composition teacher for part of my undergrad and much of my grad work. He’s also a great organist and carillonneur. In January, he commissioned me to write “Marginalia” for organ, which was premiered on a Salty Cricket concert in March. Later in the summer, I wrote “Under an Orange Sky,” which we recorded in November.
All in all, 2012 was a good year for me. I was able to work with some great performers, expand my network, and grow as a composer. Stay tuned for what’s coming in 2013.
Music of our Time
Stumbled across the following in an article about teaching jazz within an historical context:
A musician, even a great one, has far less control over the general course of his art than we might think. The broad outlines of a style, it seems clear, are shaped by ideas in society. Thus, a player like (Marion) Brown (who claims to have no outside influences) cannot escape tapping into the social currents of his time, and if enough listeners hear those currents in his playing they ate just as ‘right’ about his music as he is.
Food for thought as I continue to refine what I mean to do and be as a composer.
Now, a self-conscious composer could ask, “What are the ideas of our times?” But what Harker implies in this passage is that you don’t have to go looking for those influences. You don’t have to play journalist or historian or pundit for the times to speak through your music. They’re already in you. They don’t take any special reflection to reveal themselves.
Thoughts?
