multiple solutions + currently listening

Over the last few days I've been working to get the proportions for this new movement of the French set down. It's a fairly placid piece but the piano has outbursts here and there that need measuring to make sure they don't take over the sensibility of the entire thing.

The Rilke text for this one is absolutely beautiful. Here's the English translation:

Perhaps it's no more than the fire's reflection
On some piece of gleaming furniture
That the child remembers so much later
Like a revelation.

And if, in his later life, one day
Wounds him like so many others,
It's because he mistook some risk
Or other for a promise.

Let's not forget the music, either,
That soon hauled him toward absence complicated
By an overflowing heart...

I love how he adds that ellipsis at the end. It delicately insists the entire emotional world of the thing up to somewhere you can't see. I've put one of my own at the end of the movement with the harp intoning the 5th and the 3rd of the tonic chord in succession (maybe with harmonics...haven't decided yet).

And remember that math problem I blogged about an entry ago? I came up with what I saw as two viable solutions. First is the one notated in 6/8 that I didn't end up using:








I decided against this one because notating the vocal part above it made the relatively simple line appear incredibly complicated. So I pulled up stakes on my 6/8 riff and re-notated it in 2/4.

This puts the complicated-looking-but-not-actually-that-hard music in the hands of the pianist. However, I think instrumentalists have come to expect this sort of thing so there shouldn't be a problem.

We'll see how this all fleshes out as the work continues, of course. At the moment I'm trying to bitchslap Finale into letting me notate the vocal parts in 3/8 above this 2/4 without any funny business. It's either that or I've got to figure out a way to notate that 2/4 thing in 3/8 with all sorts of weird bar crossings. Stupid Notated Music! It would be so much easier to just teach this by rote.

The Singers have been preparing the entire Rachmaninoff All-Night Vigil for their fall series (check out the Dale Warland Singers' live recording of the piece...the ninth movement is incredible) and someone called that work "the grand choral symphony" within earshot of me. I had never thought about it that way and, after stewing about it for a while, I've come to the conclusion that there really isn't another a cappella choral work with that dramatic scope and sterling reputation. Maybe Frank Martin's Mass for Double Choir but that still only clocks in at circa 25 minutes (versus Rachmaninoff's full hour). Can anyone think of any other pieces like this?

So with that in mind I'd like to make a nomination to the Grand Choral Symphony Club. How about Joby Talbot's Path of Miracles?

Haven't heard of it? Well, then rundon'twalk to iTunes or Amazon and order it right now. There's an incredible recording by the commissioning choir, Tenebrae, that you've got to listen to. Abbie Betinis gifted me the album a few years ago and insisted (like more than she usually does) that I listen to it. She felt so strongly about it that she actually went out and spent money on me.

And, as it turned out, she was completely right. It's an amazing work that serves as a musical treatment of sorts for the most enduring route of Catholic pilgrimage, the Camino Frances ("The French Way"). I won't go into too much depth about all the specifics of the piece (because--seriously--find out for yourself) other than to mention here that its four movements are named after the major staging posts of the route: Roncesvalles, Burgos, Leon and Santiago, respectively.

It's rainy and cold here in Minneapolis today and this piece is perfect for sitting down with a hot cup of coffee and some engraving to get done. For me, it cultivates the same sort of warm-and-cozy devotional aesthetic as The Rock's Vespers does. Give Sergei some company and go get it!