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Just try and guess

I have an exciting premiere at Tanglewood on July 30, so as I just finished Hila’s arrangement, and a euphonium sonata, I’m scrambling here to get the piece off the ground.

As usual, in the beginning of sketching a piece, I do quite a bit of listening and score study. For a couple of reasons, really…to get ideas from stuff I’ve never heard before, sure, but mostly I’m dealing with works I already know, where I’m keen to emulate (that’s a fancy word for steal) a particular sound-world, harmonic language, groove, or singular moment. I suspect everyone does this, but I make lists of the kinds of musics I’m thinking of, and searching my memory (and score library), try to find their sources. The final step, the reverse-engineering, is significantly more difficult.

I invite you to figure out what I’ll be writing from the pieces I’ve been studying:

Górecki: CONCERTO FOR HARPSICHORD AND STRING ORCHESTRA
Barber: FIRST ESSAY
Lang: HOW TO PRAY
Schuman: SYMPHONY NO. 6
Mackey (not that one, the other one): MICRO-CONCERTO

Good luck. At this point, your guess is as good as mine.

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One Comment

  1. You’re forgetting hair bands from the 80′s. I wanna hear some Quiet Riot in there!

    Posted on 18-May-10 at 11:50 AM | Permalink

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