So apparently I'm not busy enough, so I have to pick up another project. A little over a year ago, I wrote a piece for flute choir called "I Couldn't Sleep At All." Every person who's heard it has told me it's impossible to perform, so I'm rewriting it... again. For the fourth time. This time, I'm recording everything and leaving holes for one flautist and the soprano vocalist, thus making it a piece for soprano, flute, and electronic audio.
My friend Lisa Duke stopped by last night to lay down some of the flute tracks. It is amazing how much more powerful the music became when Lisa played it compared to the soft synth. I definitely have my work cut out for me with this recording project, and I'm looking forward to finishing a very powerful piece of art music by the time I'm done. I'll post something here when I get a good 'draft' of the piece bounced.
Additionally, I'm finishing up my clarinet duet and setting up my senior recital on November 22. Yes, it is the day of a football game. I figure I need to get a good performance, and if this is the only good date available, well...
And for those of you who don't know, Outlaws goes up every Thursday night in the basement of the Arts building. Check out http://outlawspsu.com/ for more info. If you are a Penn State Student, you HAVE TO SEE THIS! This organization does some incredible things!
Under the 2006-2007 show schedule on the Outlaws website, you can see a performance of a piece I wrote called "Princess of Suburbia." This piece is technically the predecessor of my senior honors thesis, "SadoMasochism." Both shows are somewhat surrealist and combine theater and contemporary classical music in a very unusual way. Both are also heavily influence by social problems, "Princess" concentrating on our overly conservative and possibly tragic views of feminism and drama, and "SadoMasochism" on my generation's view of socialization and interpersonal relationships, as influenced by the Marquis de Sade and Hegel. And, to add fuel to the fire, both are completely different.
I'll post a more definitive post about it later, but "SadoMasochism" is my first fully conscious endeavor into post-modernism. The piece is actually a convoluted violin sonata, with the added electronics and a couple of actresses. The drama of the stage interacts with the music, but neither directly affects the other. Rather, they stay in their own little circles. I also placed myself into the show as an indirect character. I'm not sure how the show will come out yet, but I'm a little skeptical of my characters this time, although perhaps I've left the script open to interpretation.
Justine, from the Marquis de Sade's book of the same name, appears as a tragic character who travels and is controlled through lightning. I say controlled because while she believed in finding peace after death, which seems to be a common theme for the Marquis, she is still tortured by demons in the physical realm and has not yet ascended. To me, this, not the sexual innuendo or even the murders that occur, is the darkest part of the script: the fact that there may not be peace after death, and that mankind's injustice may very well cross over. Like the Princess in "Princess", Justine appears to be the heroine, but is simply another victim in a list of tragic characters.
And this is what I'm getting at. We see ourselves as being controlled by other elements, whether it be people, parents, god, the economy, the government. They may or may not be affecting us, but we cannot live in a truly free world until we take responsibility for our own existence, and recognize that other people are capable of doing the same. To me, this is 'the human condition': not the uncontrollable tragedy of our mere existence, but our ability to do something with our lives.
I'm sure I have more thinking to do on the subject(s) at hand. Trust me, the current script is the fourth or fifth in a series, and while I think this is the one I'm going to stick to, the meaning of this piece will never quite settle into one definite form for me, and I kind of like it that way.
So that's what I'm doing. Among other things. Many other things...
My friend Lisa Duke stopped by last night to lay down some of the flute tracks. It is amazing how much more powerful the music became when Lisa played it compared to the soft synth. I definitely have my work cut out for me with this recording project, and I'm looking forward to finishing a very powerful piece of art music by the time I'm done. I'll post something here when I get a good 'draft' of the piece bounced.
Additionally, I'm finishing up my clarinet duet and setting up my senior recital on November 22. Yes, it is the day of a football game. I figure I need to get a good performance, and if this is the only good date available, well...
And for those of you who don't know, Outlaws goes up every Thursday night in the basement of the Arts building. Check out http://outlawspsu.com/ for more info. If you are a Penn State Student, you HAVE TO SEE THIS! This organization does some incredible things!
Under the 2006-2007 show schedule on the Outlaws website, you can see a performance of a piece I wrote called "Princess of Suburbia." This piece is technically the predecessor of my senior honors thesis, "SadoMasochism." Both shows are somewhat surrealist and combine theater and contemporary classical music in a very unusual way. Both are also heavily influence by social problems, "Princess" concentrating on our overly conservative and possibly tragic views of feminism and drama, and "SadoMasochism" on my generation's view of socialization and interpersonal relationships, as influenced by the Marquis de Sade and Hegel. And, to add fuel to the fire, both are completely different.
I'll post a more definitive post about it later, but "SadoMasochism" is my first fully conscious endeavor into post-modernism. The piece is actually a convoluted violin sonata, with the added electronics and a couple of actresses. The drama of the stage interacts with the music, but neither directly affects the other. Rather, they stay in their own little circles. I also placed myself into the show as an indirect character. I'm not sure how the show will come out yet, but I'm a little skeptical of my characters this time, although perhaps I've left the script open to interpretation.
Justine, from the Marquis de Sade's book of the same name, appears as a tragic character who travels and is controlled through lightning. I say controlled because while she believed in finding peace after death, which seems to be a common theme for the Marquis, she is still tortured by demons in the physical realm and has not yet ascended. To me, this, not the sexual innuendo or even the murders that occur, is the darkest part of the script: the fact that there may not be peace after death, and that mankind's injustice may very well cross over. Like the Princess in "Princess", Justine appears to be the heroine, but is simply another victim in a list of tragic characters.
And this is what I'm getting at. We see ourselves as being controlled by other elements, whether it be people, parents, god, the economy, the government. They may or may not be affecting us, but we cannot live in a truly free world until we take responsibility for our own existence, and recognize that other people are capable of doing the same. To me, this is 'the human condition': not the uncontrollable tragedy of our mere existence, but our ability to do something with our lives.
I'm sure I have more thinking to do on the subject(s) at hand. Trust me, the current script is the fourth or fifth in a series, and while I think this is the one I'm going to stick to, the meaning of this piece will never quite settle into one definite form for me, and I kind of like it that way.
So that's what I'm doing. Among other things. Many other things...
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