First Semester in Indiana
Happy Fall!
Hope this finds you enjoying a pumpkin spice latte or apple pie or acorn squash with maple syrup, or whatever's your Fall food of choice!
I am eagerly awaiting the changing leaves out here in Bloomington, Indiana, where I just started my Masters degree in composition. I love the campus, the school, and am making lots of music (I already have about ten minutes of piano music, a couple minutes of songs, and about 15 minutes of electronic music from the last month!) There is nothing like being surrounded by people who love what you do, so I hope you are able to find that too wherever you are now.
I finally got around to fixing up the audio on my last two movements (and fixing the music too), so I've attached those drive links below. If you are brave, you could technically listen to the whole 60 minute symphony now, though I don't think even I could survive the midi for that long :P.
Third movement
The opening is built around the material originally meant for the second movement. Two conflicting scales, one bright and one twisted/dark representing the struggle with Nihilism that the piece starts with - optimism keeps getting shut down at first, but this piece encompasses a revival and synthesis to form my current philosophy: optimism and gratitude despite meaninglessness. I worked really hard to build new textures that I was less comfortable writing, including using the percussion a lot more. There is a fun section in the middle where every note the orchestra places is punctuated by percussion, creating another character whose presence or absence is felt. If you have any questions about what instruments are in there, let me know!
Here we struggle between the optimism and joy we dream of and the dark reality of the world, a conflict that is overcome by gratitude, love, and force of will. This non-linear journey contains moments of epiphany, anguish, and frustration, along with absolute joy.
Listening note: Written over the course of about four years, this movement moves like an odyssey, episodic with a through-line. Listen for the theme at the very beginning, it comes back in various forms throughout the piece, a living motive that punctuates the climaxes of the piece. This is the most rhythmic movement, built on groups of odd-numbers: sevens, fives and threes - you can listen for that too!
Fourth movement
This is the movement most dear to my heart. The whole second half is almost untouched from when I wrote it five years ago! The first half is basically the only music of mine worth writing down from the whole Fall and Winter of 2022, which was a hard time for me compositionally. But I'm proud of what it produced - sadly it doesn't sing the way I'd like with the midi, but I promise it will give chills in a live performance! I was really inspired by chorale-style textures and simple melody, and wanted harmony to come back to the foreground. If you listened to the first and second movements, you will be rewarded here with flashbacks to those movements. The second movement ending comes back in stronger and more complete fashion, while the first movement material serves as a final obstacle to overcome before the glorious ending.
Enjoy harmony, chorale texture, and souring melody in this cathartic movement.
Listening note: Listen for textures from movement one and two, you'll find both in the second half of movement four. As you listen to melodies, try singing along in your head - this is a great technique for most classical music to really feel the emotional power in your heart.
Keep an eye out for my piano music, which I'll hopefully have recorded by the end of the semester. Thanks for listening, and reflect on gratitude this week, there's always more to find there.
Love,
Will
