My mother’s favorite movie of all time is Steve Martin’s The Jerk. If you haven’t seen it, put it in your Netflix cue right now. You won’t regret it.
In the film, there’s a very funny scene in which Navin Johnson, played by Martin, ecstatically proclaims “I’m somebody! Look! My name in print!” even though the “print” in question is the local phone directory.
I had that experience the other day when I discovered my name in the iTunes store, where the H2 Quartet’s new album Times and Spaces is now available. Yes, I know. Just about anybody can put music in the iTunes store if they’re willing to jump through the right hoops. But I’m really proud of this piece and the recording, even though I had very little to do with the recording. In fact, maybe that’s what makes me so happy about it. It’s one of the few times in my brief career that I haven’t had to beg for performers or herd metaphorical cats in rehearsal. Yet there it is, my name in print.
Incidentally, the CD is also available as a digital download from Amazon, but they don’t list composers over there. Check it out from your preferred download dealer.
Despite spending a week or so being nervous about Saturday’s John Corigliano masterclass, I think it went pretty well. I presented Falling up the down escalator, a saxophone quartet that H2 has recorded. The format of the masterclass was very different from the one John Adams described on his blog last week. Corigliano was not interested in his or anyone else’s opinions about the music. “That’s meaningless,” he said. He wanted to demonstrate to us what musical material people were able to observe and retain after one hearing. After all, in most situations, that’s all anyone is likely to hear a new piece of music.
He separated the audience into two groups for each piece: a group who had heard the work before and a group who hadn’t. The latter group he liked to call “the innocents,” and the masterclass mostly took the form of a focus group discussion. After each piece, Corigliano asked, “What did you hear?” He wasn’t interested in what anybody liked or didn’t like. He wanted their empirical observations about the materials, their development, and the form. It was a nice little experiment that proved one of the things that Dr. Lorenz has told me before: anytime you feel like you’re really beating the audience over the head with an idea, you’re only beginning to make it clear.”
Toward the end of the observation discussion for each piece, he allowed himself to slip into a few opinions. He told me the disintegrating ending of my quartet was “really quite lovely” and that it was a “great piece.” Not much to snip out and put on a website or anything, but I’ll take it.
Composer John Corigliano (winner of an Oscar, a Pulitzer, and three Grammys) is in residence at Michigan State this week. The band, orchestra, and choir programs are putting together a program this coming Saturday night of his works, including Pied Piper Fantasy (feat. Prof. Richard Sherman, flute), DC Fanfare, and Circus Maximus. I’m looking forward to what I’m sure will be an excellent program, and I’m also planning to catch some of the rehearsals with Corigliano this week. On Saturday morning, Corigliano is giving a masterclass. I, along with my colleagues Kevin Wilt and Victor Marquez-Barrios, have been invited to present a piece in the masterclass for Corigliano and the rest of the assembled hoard to critique.
If you don’t know what a masterclass is, or if you’ve only been to performance masterclasses, composer John Adams just wrote a humorous and thoughtful essay on composition masterclasses that you should read. As a summary, I will tell you that he calls the student composer “the victim” and the process “ritual disembowelment.”
I find masterclasses to be a bit nerve-wracking in the best of situations, but this will be something else altogether. This will be a masterclass given by one of the most prominent American composers of his generation, and I imagine it will be attended by several members of the faculty from outside the composition area. Thankfully, I will be presenting a rather short (6½ min.) piece, Falling up the down escalator. Also, I happen to have a stellar, recently-released recording by the H2 Quartet.
I’m hoping to come out of the experience smarter but not in too much pain.
It is right that the historian should indicate the summits of achievement in art (the poetry, architecture, and sculpture of ancient Greece, sixteenth- and eighteenth-century music, Renaissance painting, etc.); but in a sense this is of little use to us. The claims of life are stronger than the sublimest art; and even were we to agree that we had achieved the best and most beautiful it is possible to achieve, we should be impelled in the end, thirsting as we do more for life and experience than for perfection, to cry out: ‘Give us something else; give us something new; for Heaven’s sake give us something bad, so long as we feel we are alive and active and not just passive admirers of tradition!’
-Carl Nielsen
Sam and I made it in to Athens, Georgia on late Tuesday night. Wednesday, we got up early and headed over to the University of Georgia Hodgson School of Music. First things first: the school itself is beautiful. The campus as a whole is really nice, but the music buildings are amazing. They have at least four really great performance halls. MSU has zero halls that aren’t embarrassingly terrible.
We checked in. Right away, we were reminded of our little scheme by my name badge: “Folio Publishing: David MacDonald.” Game on.
In the morning, we heard some great performances and some awful performances. Sam heard two guys play that he really wanted to have play his sax and electronics piece, simony. Later in the afternoon was Sam’s piece, trying it at home, played by the Iridium Quartet. Phillip and Nate got in just in time to hear the performance. At the end of the day, we were all pretty exhausted (especially Phillip and Nate, who had been in transit for around 18 hours).
Today, we got to set up our Folio Publishing Cooperative booth. Several people stopped by and looked at our stuff. A lot of people listened to our recordings (some people listened to the same piece more than once!), and a few told us they would be back tomorrow to buy things. Tomorrow we’re going to take credit cards. Yeah, we’re that cool. Unfortunately, though, the bottom line is this: We sold two things today. Two of Joe Lulloff’s CDs. If things continue this way, I’m going to feel really stupid. I was the one who convinced all of my friends to shell out some cash for the table and put together loads of scores for this silly thing. But again, it’s important to contextualize the definition of success. Sometimes that takes a bit of perspective and reflection. We had plenty working against our success as well. Not many people had heard of the composers at our table, no one had heard of our company, and as I told the composers involved, I would be a bit hesistant to give money or my credit card number at a seemingly fly-by-night conference vendor. Folio Publishing Cooperative will evolve the same way trying it at home will probably evolve. And when we get to where we’re going, we’ll have a different definition of success.
On a brighter note, H2 played my piece, Falling up the down escalator. They played it around 10 clicks faster than I’ve ever heard them play it before, but it sounded great. Even better: the hall was packed. Several people came by the table afterward to check out the score and tell me how much they enjoyed the piece. We’ll see if that turns into any sales in the next couple of days.
Sam Merciers and I left East Lansing at 7am this morning headed south. Way south. We’re going to Georgia.
The goal of our voyage is to narrow the gap between composers and publishers. We’re headed to the North American Saxophone Alliance Biennial Conference. Each of us have works being played, but we’re also going to distribute scores. We have a trunk load of scores, parts, and CDs from our colleagues at Michigan State that we will be selling (hopefully) to saxophonists at the conference. We think our music is valuable, and we think we can convince others of its value as well.
This is a bit of an experiment. We don’t really know if anybody will be interested in our scores, or how much they’ll be willing to pay. But if Jacob Ter Veldhuis can sell scores by the bucket, what’s stopping us?
With the de-mystification of computers and the internet and the decreasing price of high-quality printers, the list of things that publishers can do for composers that composers can’t do for themselves is getting smaller every day. Perhaps the biggest thing remaining is distribution. The two of us, along with the rest of the Folio Publishing Cooperative, are trying to take that one as well by taking our music directly to performers.
Next on Folio Publishing Cooperative…
Will our heroes arrive in Georgia safely?
And will anyone spend real money on their scores?
(dramatic music)
I had a student today ask this question: “What do you do when you’re in the middle of working on a piece, and you get an idea about another cool piece?”
It’s a tough question, and it’s one that I know a lot of composers deal with, though not one we often talk about. I’m a one-thing-at-a-time kind of person. That’s bad, because it means if I get side-tracked by one of these “next projects,” I put off my main project and it loses momentum. There are some people that can successfully work on two pieces at once, but I’m not among them, and I think most of the composers I know would say the same thing. This can cause some problems. One of the most frustrating is that working on large-scale projects means that you can’t take on any new projects for a long time. Right now, I’m working on my dissertation. By the time I finish it, I’ll have been working on it for at least a year and a half. The worst part is when somebody says, “Hey, we should work on a piece. I want you to write something for me.” This doesn’t happen very often, and when it does and I can’t act, it’s pretty maddening. I have to tell them to come back in a year and ask me again.
The good thing about the one-piece-at-a-time policy is the moment I get the new idea. Nothing gets me more excited about finishing the piece I’m working on than the allure of diving into a new one. (Admittedly, the diving in can be painful, but in a hurts-so-good kind of way.) I know some composers that keep a written queue of pieces they want to write. I keep a mental list. Sometimes I bump things up and down the queue. I’ve been meaning to work on a one-act chamber opera for the better part of 5 years. But when things start to stagnate, it always helps me to start thinking of that next big thing.
not this NASA
Next Tuesday morning, I’m leaving East Lansing and heading south to Athens, Georgia for the North American Saxophone Alliance Biennial Conference. They claim to have been NASA before NASA was NASA, but I don’t believe it. Anyway, the H2 saxophone quartet will be playing my piece, Falling up the down escalator. Hopefully, they’ll also have copies of their new CD, Times and Spaces, on which they’ve recorded some really excellent new saxophone music, including my piece. I’ll also be there with a few composer friends, Sam Merciers, Nate Bliton, and Phillip Sink. We’ll have an exhibit booth, and we’ll be selling our scores there. Look for Folio Publishing Cooperative.
I’m looking forward to the conference and the performances and the networking, but more than that, I’m looking forward to a little pseudo-vacation from the frozen hinterland.
People that know me know how much I love WordPress. It’s taken a while, but I’ve finally ditched my old static site in favor of this fancy, new-fangled, dynamic one. New pages and designs are on their way. This blog will become a repository of news about what cool projects I’m working on and the occasionally brilliant (though, usually not) ideas I have about music, art, higher ed, and culture. Stay tuned. I promise not to use any tags…except for that one…and .
