Progress Report: Composing Halbierte Abbildung Part 1
How long will this piece go on? It was going to be somewhere around 10 minutes long. A little piece for orchestra based on a tone row. Nothing much.
It’s now over 30 minutes long and I don’t see an end in sight. And the end is now a thing. If you’ve got a work that’s relatively short you can end it well enough. But once an audience has invested 20 or more minutes into listening to a piece your finale has to be worth hearing!
A further interesting dilemma regards the formal qualities of the piece. It isn’t a symphony or an overture or a series of variations. Rather, the original row is put through a of progression of permutations and constantly developed. It’s sort of like a theme and variations…but it isn’t.
This new work is non-tonal. Terribly out of style! Non-tonal stuff is ancient, being of a kind with pleated pants, wide lapels and Go Go boots. Still, this was the style the music needed to be. That’s the piece. If someone doesn’t like it they can listen to something else. It doesn’t pay to get self-conscious.
The orchestration is odd. It fits, though, a particular orchestra in Madagacar called The Royal Califa Philharmonic Orchestra.
I’m intrigued with using an orchestra that has so many bass instruments (including two euphoniums and two tubas…though I did not write anything for their two trombones. And why? Because…I didn’t have an idea for two trombones. A good rule of orchestration is: don’t use instruments as a matter of course. Use what is useful).
The work is called, Halbierte Abbildung, which simply means something about a bisected figure. The title, as far as I can figure, doesn’t mean anything. It does not describe the method of composition nor does it poetically relate to the experience of hearing the music. That said, I did not randomly pick a name!
http://www.myspace.com/califaphil
