Saturday, December 01, 2007

Next

It's always about the next piece. Having placed thirty daily exercises into a more public sphere (well, not that public: from the response I've had, I can now imagine a reasonable retort to the old question: What if you threw an orgy and nobody came?), there is some sort of obligation to escort them further -- by either encouraging performances of the done pieces, finishing the half-baked, and promptly, if gently, disposing of the un-done-able. But there are always new ideas, and the old will have to wrestle with the newcomers to find their way forward into the works -- more substantial, and remunerated -- to come. It's a mad little Darwinian struggle sometimes.

Today's (December 1st) exercise will stay put in its sketches. You (readers, both of you) deserve the break.

3 comments:

Elaine Fine said...

I guess I have been one of your readers.

It is so easy to feel "at sea" as a composer, so I think that your November piece-a-day project was a great idea. So now you have what can be performed as a whole work made of 30 small parts for a varied ensemble. It is certainly too soon to get any distance and see the kind of "form" of the work as a whole, even if determining its "meaning" is kind of like looking at a set of Rorschach ink blots and determining what kind of imprint from one month of your life you might have preserved.

Do you know Fanny Hensel's "Das Jahr?" She wrote a set of piano pieces while in Italy with her husband: one for each month of the year. It is a remarkable set of pieces.

Civic Center said...

I don't think anybody's been commenting because they are a bit too much in awe of your accomplishment. Congratulations, Mister Wolf.

Anonymous said...

Hah. Here's a third comment. Therefore, you actually have three readers, not just two (a 50% increase).

Seriously, though, I enjoyed seeing the work -- quite fun for a non-composer to see a composer at work.

Dan