Double Barline

I’m not just all talk and no action, you know.

I finished a piece I conceived as far back as July ’06, titled Shapes in the Glass. I sketched the idea after listening to some Steve Reich and Philip Glass with Aaron Marx in the conference room at Grounds for Thought. I soon abandoned the project, but recently I unearthed it because I wasn’t impressed by my other projects. I finished it, but I’m sure one day I’ll revisit the piece and “fix” it.

The idea was to start with a punchy, Reich-like “brightness,” and gradually, after an extremely slow-moving chord progression, by the end of the piece it evolves into a neo-Classical texture. That was the idea, anyway. It was a great concept in my mind, but it wasn’t executed quite as well as I would have liked.

For a piece that’s so heavily reliant upon brilliant transitions, it doesn’t seem to have very many of them. The kicker of it is that I’ve always been commended for good transitions, whether in music or in writing term papers—in fact, sometimes my transitions are the only things people like about my work! But in this case, instead of writing transitions, it’s more like the players of the ensemble all throw their instruments aside and jump off the stage to punch the audience in the teeth. Well, it was like that, but I think I made it a lot better now. That’s why I’m calling it “finished.” Although I sincerely doubt the flute parts are even possible…

I’m not saying I can’t write minimalism, just that this piece doesn’t sound representative of what I think I can do. And yet I did write it. But I don’t think I want to try to get it performed at BGSU, as was the original plan. And I’m not particularly interested in workshopping it to make it better. The piece is done—I just don’t like it very much.

Was it a learning experience? Of course. Everything is a “learning experience.” If ever there’s an experience you didn’t learn something from, then it’s time to take a good hard look at yourself.

All right, maybe the piece isn’t quite that poorly executed, but screw it anyway. I’m moving on to another project.

No, I don’t want a cookie. I just want to write some more music.