Excavation

A friend and former classmate of mine has a standing offer to round up performers to record almost any chamber piece I send him. His job gives him access to microphones, many musicians, and even an Orff ensemble.

Before I left Missouri, I was working on a twelve-tone violin solo for him. Just this week I picked up where I left off.

There are a few other pieces I was going to finish composing for him to produce, but in the meantime I thought I should dig up some old pieces to send him. There are some pieces I’ve composed as far back as 2002 that were never performed or recorded, not even bounced in Logic using digital instrument interpretation. I dug them up and polished the scores, but I still have to do parts for some of them.

I found a few pieces I had completely forgotten I had written. I immediately rectified the deficiency in my portfolio in iTunes and bounced digital realizations of them. Many files are forever frozen in list form, because Finale can’t open them. They’re too old or corrupt, perhaps, but for some reason they have this gray box for an icon. Those are the really old files, from back before the music department’s big move from Baldwin Hall to Ophelia Parrish.

Also, I came across a complete libretto I wrote in grad school. Noah Taylor and I had big plans for a two-act opera about Arthurian legend. In fact, that was the subject of my fourth blog post ever. Arthur is the name of our opera.

This wasn’t some starry-eyed pipe dream—it was a valiant effort, a serious effort, that was stymied for the same myriad reasons and conditions that derail the Captain’s grand schemes, if I may be so bold as to speak for his experiences. It wasn’t a rough draft—it was revised and ready to go. But things came up, and even though we knew we had a narrow window of opportunity to collaborate on this if we were ever going to actually follow through with it to the end, we didn’t realize just how narrow that window was. Another epic idea was boxed. I feel the Captain’s pain.

Within a single conversation, Noah had outlined the entire overture for the opera. It was that easy to work with him, to inspire ideas in him. Very similar to how the Captain can extrapolate an entire film at the drop of a hat. We would have made a good team. Wait, who is “we”—the Captain or Noah? Either.

I’ll have to read over it again. I deliberately avoided verse writing, so none of it rhymes. I was hesitant about this approach at first, but I liked how it read like a good translation of a German Romantic opera, and I didn’t want it coming off like a Broadway musical, so avoiding verse rhyme was the way to go. Also, the opera was intended to be largely through-composed, so having the text reflect that was ideal. Other than that, I have to read through it all again before I email Noah about this find.

Arthur, a two-act opera. How did I forget that I wrote a complete libretto for a two-act opera? I think somewhere I might have some sketches on the thematic material, too…

”I don’t seem to remember ever owning a droid. Very interesting…”

My hard drive is a dark, dank, ancient, mysterious place. You could get lost in the catacombs and no one would ever find you.

Okay, now I’m going to blow your mind. I’m going to connect this to Halloween. Under the comments of my old, old blog post “Arthur,” the Captain proposed a zombie opera, a genre that has been thus far ignored. We need to tap that well. Who’s up for a zombie opera?