At some point words become frail. I could say so much about what I'm doing as a composer, yet nothing but silence would come close to that by which I'm confronted in the act of composition. I could fill reams of program notes about formal method and procedures, but never be able to describe the terrifying (awe-inspiring) intimacy of the moment that music gets written.

I think why so many composers in computer music hide behind technology is because without an instrumentalist to be shielded by, they're completely exposed. Every fault and failing is blasted to the world. Elements of themselves, which may or may not exist, are splayed for all to see and consume or vomit back in disgust. Real intimacy with one person you know well is scary enough. With people one doesn't know? Horrifying.

Walking along the main street by my studio, words and actions become raw. The suffering of panhandlers contrasts the bacchanalia of fraternities and sororities. Mundane errands, lunch-seekers, and drug-pushers collide. Their humanity is too much. Nothing I can actively do will fill the gaping void formed from everyday life.

This is not the place prepared for me. A composer's music, a contemplative's prayer (if the two were ever separate), this is the bread of my life for others and my vocation. If, as critics of contemporary music alledge, we only write music to be ellitist, then if not for others, why would we expose ourselves (lovingly) in such a vulnerable way?

Receive, O Lord, this all-embracing host which your whole creation, moved by your magnetism, offers you at this dawn of a new day. This bread, our toil, is of itself, I know, but an immense fragmentation; this wine, our pain is no more, I know, than a draught that dissolves. Yet in the very depths this formless mass you have implanted--and this I am sure of, for I sense it--a desire, irresistible, hallowing, which makes us cry out, believer and unbeliever alike: 'Lord make us one. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, "Mass on the World"

An update of the dissertation meter (in seconds):

705 / 4,500 (15.0%)

I keep going back and forth about whether or not I should talk about the metaphor behind the piece--the mysteries of the rosary. On the one hand, (from gender theory) there are some things that need to be reclaimed--Latin, the rosary, etc. On the other hand, I'm going to get blamed for everything bad that's happened in the past 2000 years, by virtue of being a member of that group. (Never mind that ad hominem is always a logical fallacy.) I guess if a hiring committee ascribes political beliefs to me that I don't personally hold it's not my problem (and illegal.) I know I can't get away with making some sort of political statement with this piece, so it might as well be the one I intend.

I really wish more than just the uptown/downtown crowd blogged on music. I'm getting weary of reading their glorified pissing contests. The 1970's are over, people. If you have a Ph.D,it doesn't mean you write good music. If you don't have a Ph.D, it doesn't mean you write good music. I think the one thing we can say with any certainty is that a person will (at some point in his/her life) write good music. He/She will also write really lousy music.

Another reason why I probably should discuss the ideology in my dissertation piece (pieces, really) is because those with any kind of metaphysics aren't getting much exposure. I get so tired reading blogs like new music box, and have everything be about the surface, making money, and whether or not pop music should be used in classical/new/postmodernist/whatever music. If this world and ontology is all there is, it would be a pretty depressing place to live.

I think that's why I like the music theory as model of musical experience people (Boretz, Randall, Barkin, Rahn, et al.) When you deal with theory as a model of experience, there are multiple possible takes on a given piece. It also lets the music exist as it is, in all its power. Plus pissing contests, like what exist on some new music blogs, aren't as important. We're all seeing a small piece of something complex (and ultimately beyond us). Diversity of opinion can't be a bad thing, in that case.

"Or a dream that will fade and fall apart..."

I found my jazz recordings today. They were shoved away in a box, plastic dusty and liner notes faded, as if they belonged to someone else. I couldn't listen to them until now. The grief was too new.

Growing up as a violinist, you don't get many opportunities to play jazz. The orchestra teacher doubled as the jazz band teacher, since budgets were getting cut every year for arts. Since I couldn't play it, I listened. During college, I started playing in jazz combos. Improvisation unlocked a forgotten floodgate--composition--and my first piece (a little jazz waltz) terrified me. But composing for jazz ensembles--my real love--was frustrating (I didn't want to play it, although I enjoyed it; and jazz musicians can be the epitome of stubborn, when it comes to new ideas--things existing classical music for the past few decades.) I took a chance at a classical composition department--my Master's--and they took a chance on me. I hadn't listened to or written jazz since then.

Constant discouragement and fighting took its toll. Once I left my undergraduate school I was too burned out on the violin to keep playing, and jazz was an unfortunate casualty. Busy in my new world as a "classical" composer, I tucked away my jazz compact discs, instead discovering Lou Harrison, Colin McPhee, Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, Ligeti, Berio...

But these old recordings--their music as familiar to me as my fiancé's face--never left me. Everything I am today as a composer existed then--I learned to orchestrate from Billy Strayhorn and Gil Evans; the serialism in Miles Davis' album, "Aura," was my own because I didn't know the right way to write serial music; the sheer walls of raw ecstasy and timbre of late 'Trane; the displaced canonic metrics of Pat Motian and Bill Frisell, the wordless poetry of Kenny Wheeler's "Music for Large and Small Ensembles, the counterpoint in the microcosm of jazz voicing--these are my roots.

If you truly love something, it's so much a part of you that a little time, dust, or absence isn't permanent, an old friend you run into after decades of silence. After a little awkward silence, you find out they never went away.

(Whoever emails me with the correct standard the title comes from will get a surprise...you may have to bug me to mail it, though.)

Deliverance

There are moments when the Divine Office is oddly resonant. Thanks to Rev. Mommy's postings of her morning and evening prayer and finding a copy of the Benedictine office, I've gotten back in the habit. Tonight's psalms at vespers were one of those odd moments, when it seems to leap up and speak to your situation.

"Circumdederunt me dolores mortis:
et pericula inferni invenerunt me.
Tribulationem et dolorem inveni:
et nomen Domini invocavi.
O Domine, libera animam meam:
misericors Dominus, et justus, et Deus noster miseretur.
Custodiens parvulos Dominus:
humiliatus sum, et liberavit me.
Convertere, anima mea, in requiem tuam:
quia Dominus benefecit tibi.
Quia eripuit animam meam de morte:
oculos meos a lacrimis, pedes meos a lapsu.
Placebo Domino in regione vivorum." Psalm 114:3-9

I've been working on the dissertation, and for some reason, I was thinking of how my situation was back in college. For many, college is a time where one flowers and discovers the things which form one's vocation. My time as an undergrad was no exception: I discovered that I could compose music and I discovered the Rule of St. Benedict.

At first I was quiet about both of them. I composed music in middle and high school and was forbidden to do so, since it took time away from the violin. Composing was considered a further waste of time in college. My interest in the Rule of St. Benedict was similarly not something to be encouraged: my parents had left the Catholic Church shortly after my first Communion, and they had an irrational fear of my being alone, that I would crack for being "too cloistered." Getting into CalArts for composition seemed like a miracle come true. I didn't know how things were going to work out, but it felt like someone was looking out for me.

My relationship with the Rule of St. Benedict and my process of becoming an Oblate was another story. To say there was resistance was an understatement. When I was to become an oblate novice, there was no way I could've gotten to the monastery where I would've been affiliated. I was imprisoned at my mom's for that summer, since she refused to let me take the car anywhere (I couldn't afford my own), nor would she take me anywhere. There was no public transit between the towns in south-central Illinois. My interest in Benedictine monasticism was met with ridicule (to the point of cruelty), and whatever I did (Divine Office, lectio) had to be hidden. By the end of that summer, I had memorized most of the psalms. That way if my books were taken from me, I'd have some semblance of the liturgy.

"For He has delivered my soul from death; my eyes from tears; and my feet from failing. I will please God in the land of the living."

Thinking back to how things were, I'm overwhelmed by the fact that I can both compose and recite the Divine Office openly. I don't have to hide my composerly or contemplative dimensions. I don't have to live with the false fear that my mental health will suffer for being who I was called to be.

"Turn, my soul, to your rest; for the Lord has been good to you."

And here's another blog passed to me by the same friend who found the Warcast for Catholics podcast: Street Stories. The minister who runs it is with Operation Nightwatch.

I'm happily watching csound code compile. A sneak peek at the second piece of the first set (the joyful mysteries) can be found here. Please no putting it up on limewire just yet...

Thinking about the dissertation...

I tend to forget who knows me in real life (and has heard about this), and who doesn't, but my dissertation is "a substantial piece or pieces" of music. (Thus sayeth the program sheet.) So I'm doing a set of pieces on the mysteries (only the original 15...luminous ones are optional, not gospel, and I hate how they break the symbolism of rosary as "little psalter," since there are 150 Hail Marys and 150 psalms.) of the rosary. They're not exact literal settings. If you're familiar with Biber's "Mystery" sonatas, it's sort of like that. I'm not exactly sure how much of it I'll talk about, and hopefully it won't be necessary to understand them. (It's more like one big poetic metaphor.)

I've got the last one done (the crowning of the BVM.) I should work on some of the Joyful ones, since that's the season we're in, but I've never been attracted to the joyful mysteries. Maybe it's the insistence on the Holy Family as something perfect and saccharine, and as a model to those of us with broken families. That insistence of the Holy Family never seemed overly fair to them (I'm sure they had their fair share of squabbles and troubles like the rest of us), and isn't overly fair to the rest of us (we aren't fully human and fully divine, our fathers weren't saints, and our mothers weren't immaculately conceived.)

But I don't want to go very far on the Glorious mysteries, because another facet of what I'm doing is exploring canonic technique. One thing I think that's been lost in computer music is melody. I was listening to some early computer music out of Princeton, and what struck me was how musical it was, as if the composers were playing an instrument, not typing punchcards. (The music department there in the 1960's and 1970's gets much maligned...but oddly enough the students I know who were there write really great music.) I've always been a melodic composer, and I love counterpoint. So far I've got functions written to make any kind of conventional canon. I've got some more tricks up my sleeve for things computers are good at, but people aren't. (Have I mentioned I like Nancarrow?)

And I don't particularly want to do the sorrowful mysteries just yet, because the last big piece I finished was conceptually based upon the seven dolors chaplet. So logically it's one of the Joyous mysteries I should be working on. I started the first one, but I don't like it much.

The other thing that's got me moderately stuck, is that I keep thinking about my recital. Most people these days don't have the attention span for 75 minutes (in 15 pieces). I know...first things first, and write! (Local folks will probably hear more about said recital when it's closer to happening...I'm shooting for next winter.)