Over the weekend, I released for public consumption my first composition ever, “Fantasy in E Flat Major”, subtitled “Dream Requiem”.
If I’m being truthful, it is not really as good as I want it to be. I wanted it to be… more… somehow. More of what, I’m not sure, and that’s why I’ve released it as it is. If I don’t know how to improve it, then there’s no point keeping it back in favor of some potential improvements in the future, even as I’m sure there could be.
I was raised as child in a religious cult. Too much of that cult was negative or forgettable, and I still bear many scars. But I’m a firm believer that there is absolutely no experience from which something can’t be taken, no matter how ephemeral. And for me, the beautiful things from this cult were two: the religious conventions we’d attend every year, and (some of) the music.
The hymn on which this was based, “Declare His Works to All Nations” by Dwight Armstrong (public domain), has particularly strong memories for me. In fact, they are so strong that it would not be an exaggeration to say that this one hymn has shaped many of my musical tastes, and of all the songs and other pieces I’ve heard, the ones I love the most all have something in common with this hymn.
Specifically, the secondary dominant in the third stanza.
See, this hymn would always be played on the opening night of the convention. It became associated with so many things for me. Excitement, fun, beauty, happiness… everything that I seem to have forgotten anymore.
Recently, I watched an anime called “Hibike! Euphonium”, or, in English, “Sound! Euphonium”. I’m relatively recent to the world of anime, but in my short experience, this is hands down one of my favorites. In it was a piece that was composed specifically for this anime called “Crescent Moon Dance”, and it reminds me a great deal of some of the concert bands I would be a part of as a high-schooler (I played second, and sometimes first, B-flat clarinet). This inspired me, for some reason, to write my own.
And what better piece to start with than one that was so influential in my life?
It’s not that I have no experience with music. I’m a pretty decent pianist, having been a professional accompanist in the past, and I have some formal education in music. But I’ve never been any good at composition. I remember sitting in front of a computer thirty years ago and barely being able to get past two whole notes. It was frustrating. So starting this up, now, felt very much like an exercise in futility. But, I started anyway.
My first draft sounded absolutely nothing like the finished project. It was a trumpet fanfare that stretched for about four measures, and then I ran out of inspiration. I ended up trashing it, and went through quite a few iterations before I came up with the final framework. One of the most important things I learned about the process is that when I strayed away from the source material, it became impossible to write, and only when I returned to the main theme in some form did the piece start to take place. You’ll find that theme scattered all throughout the music, mostly in the woodwinds, and the fugue section riffs on it. The third and first stanzas of the source hymn often play off each other, and at the end, the fourth stanza plays in the brass while the woodwinds play with the first stanza. It all worked out, though it was very difficult.
I think this piece was successful. Not because it was a particularly good piece of composition – it’s nothing nearly as good as “Crescent Moon Dance”, or if I’m being honest, even “Prelude and Dance” By Elliot Del Borgo. I’m a little ashamed of it from that perspective, so many others have done such a better job than I feel I could ever hope to technically. But, I do feel like I got across the emotion that I wanted to. I wanted to express the way this hymn makes me feel, even if in a very small way, and write a requiem, both for some of the happiest times of my life, and for the dreams that the cult which this song represents, destroyed.
I think I succeeded at that. And therefore, I have published it, as is, and made it available for you to hopefully enjoy as well.
I hope you enjoy this piece. If you don’t, I understand. Maybe I wouldn’t either, if I didn’t write it. But, here it is. If, someday, somebody decides to actually perform it, I cannot think of anything that would make me happier. Well, one thing. If I’m there to see it. I hope, before I die, that someday this comes to being. I don’t really have a bucket list, but if I did, this would be at the top.
I am currently trying to decide what my next piece will be. It might be concert band. But, if I’m being honest, I had a difficult time with the medium. It was difficult giving every instrument “screen time”, as it were, and it was very tempting to cut some instruments out as useless. I would prefer, for example, to not have included the saxophones, and some of the bass woodwinds weren’t really useful. But if I didn’t include them, then I’d feel bad for making some poor high school student somewhere play one note and then sit there looking pretty – or awkward, or whatever high school band students are these days. I am considering a chorale piece, another medium which I am particularly fond or, or going the other direction and writing a piano concerto.
I’m nothing if not ambitious.
Either way, that’s how this came to be. I will continue to blog about my composition experiences as I continue to write. Because, I think, that’s the one thing I’ll never truly be able to stop doing. I must write, in some form. That has always been, and probably always will, be the case.
Thanks for reading. If you wish to listen to the performance, you can on this page, and also the full score and all the parts are available for download, licensed such that you are free to use for noncommercial purposes without remuneration.
