Music – Page 4 – An Echo That's Reversing

Suite for Orchestra, “Figures in a Landscape”–Working with limited resources

I’ve just started the 5th movement, Fire, in which our heroes are trapped in a conflagration in the field of local villagers. (In my research notes, I have it covering pages 94-115 of the 2020 Penguin/Vintage edition I use as reference.) At this point I am struggling with the idea of program music in contrast with soundtracks. A few months back I had an abbreviated, stumbling Twitter conversation with an individual Much Better Informed but we ended up having the same opinions of soundtracks-as-pure-music. That is: a low one. In these days of a renaissance of quality composers, it’s admittedly a bit unpopular to get all academically scoffy about music written for movies.

Three new paintings that I’ve purchased from an English artist

I became interested in the genre of New Complexity in modern music, then became familiar with the Major Names of that genre in both composition and performance along with those I appreciated the most, then–this being the world that it is–found that some of those Major Names are online, then I “kept informed” on social media of those that are active on social media. (Side note: I often contemplate with the gravity of history the fact that as a boy of five or nine I could have met Stravinsky or Shostakovich, respectively, despite my oblivious and underserving status at the time and their importance to me today.)

Ian Pace is a pianist and composer (see A week of “The History of Photography in Sound”) who is one of the above artists who are active online and who has at several times referenced the artist and composer Jim Aitchison. Mr. Pace had commissioned several works from Aitchison and posted photos and, though I can’t find those posts right now, they resonated strongly.

Jim Aitchison, *Architecture of Landscape (psychiatric hospital and gallery)*, oil pastel, ink, and acrylic on heavy paper, ca. 2021

Suite for Orchestra, “Figures in a Landscape”–Finishing the first two movements, intent

Working on the 2nd movement, *Village I*

Suite for Orchestra, “Figures in a Landscape”–Writing for untuned percussion

One lesson I learned back in 2019 when I was experimenting with orchestral writing was that–one personal revelation that is–I love writing for percussion. From college-and-after-days I’d always admired the drummer and their skill of body-wise coordination rather than hand coordination; admired it likely because it was simply of equal competency to a pianist yet foreign. And that sounds really arrogant, but I think it’s just more naivety of the percussionists’ milieu. No offense, but you’re awesome.

The current state of the second movement, *Village I* from *Suite for Orchestra, “Figures in a Landscape”*

Suite for Orchestra, “Figures in a Landscape”–Beginning research

I finished the book by Barry England, Figures in a Landscape, maybe a year ago and it tore me apart.

It, and it’s ideas, came back to me recently for no particular reason, but the story immediately felt like a primal source of expression for something current in me. As inspiration, you look for the internal emotions–those that are the wordless–that you hope to express to others so that They Can See the Importance of those subjective ideations. More to the point: I look for those aspects of what’s in me to be important out of me… but I think it’s uncontroversial that this concept is universal w/r/t artists in general.

That’s a sloppy way of pointing out that: you say what you want to, and have to, say, and hope others enjoy it.