BIG day today. In spite of being a quiet day after the pressure of yesterday, I have posted the sound file for Diabolus to SoundCloud today:

Diabolus for unaccompanied violin by caitlinrowley

I’ve been getting some nice comments about it too, which is comforting. People seem to think it’s worthy of getting a real live, performance. Ooh I feel all glowy.

Did some listening & score reading in the afternoon – Nicholas Maw’s Life Studies, which my tutor suggested, which led to some reading about Maw which led to listening to Schoenberg’s Survivor from Warsaw, which is the piece that inspired me to write a 12-tone work for my HSC. Gosh it sounds pretty tame now, compared to other 2nd Viennese School stuff. I enjoyed it though. Also gave Gordon Crosse’s Thel another run through. Then changed tack entirely and listened through to Tansy Davies’ new CD Troubairitz because it’s, well, new. And awesome. Did a little drawing too, which always seems to consolidate thought.

I’ve also come up with a shiny new plan for The Next Piece. Tansy posted an amazing-looking opportunity to the ChaCoCo group on Facebook today – a residency opp with Manchester Camerata, which looks to be right up my alley, but requires 2 works to be submitted: 1 for up to 6 players (which I can do easily) plus one for 9+ players or chamber orchestra (which I don’t have). It hath a deadline of 18 April. Then I found an opp for songs for voice & chamber orchestra due in September, so I figure if I write a song (or start writing a set of songs) for voice and chamber orchestra, then I can hopefully kill two birds with one stone. Hey, presto! PLAN!

And after the plan was made I sat down and accidentally wrote almost a minute of said piece, which Djelibeybi seems to think is a promising beginning, as do I. Guess I need to settle on a text now. The Blake I was investigating as a possibility I think won’t really fit. Maybe Manley Hopkins? The sister-in-common-law has suggested I investigate Cavafy. He seems to be (just) dead enough to avoid copyright problems (although translations may be difficult and I don’t speak Greek) and sounds interesting. Considering…

Tagged with: composition, drawing, ideas, listening, music, organisation, publishing, reading, research, study, tools | Add a comment

A bit of a messed-up day again today – remnant flu meant I spent the morning struggling to breathe and had to cancel my lesson with my student, which was annoying, but gradually it passed and I was able to head down to TVU for my own lesson in the evening, albeit I didn’t recover soon enough to go and get my student card (again).

Well, the lesson was great. Just what I wanted – we had a bit of a chat, he asked about my Remembrances performance, we did some score reading (Gordon Crosse’s Thel and Nicholas Maw Life Studies I) and talked about ways of using some of the techniques in the scores in other works. He played a piece of his which specifically used techniques from Thel, which was very interesting. Then we looked at Diabolus and he made some excellent suggestions which I’ll definitely play with, and talked about what I should work on next. And kind of came to a conclusion, too! Or at least, I know which opportunity I’m working towards, exact instrumentation yet to be decided. I think I’d like to play around with the kind of space Maw achieves in the opening of Life Studies I – it’s just immense! SO wonderful. Anyway, ideas are percolating…

Tagged with: composition, conversation, learning, listening, music, study | Add a comment

HUGELY productive day. I may have to make a list to save babbling too much:

• Posted the new follow-up blog post I wrote yesterday online and told Twitter about it. I think I’ve decided to try to post once a week to caitlinrowley.com, with an occasional extra post. 2 a week seems like it could get a bit much when I’m working, but 1 should be fine
• Installed Google Analytics on caitlinrowley.com so I can hopefully properly track traffic and get a better idea of what approaches work and where the traffic’s coming from
• Drafted a new blog post for a new series of posts on caitlinrowley.com (part of a plan to have some backup, non-time-specific posts for when things get busy so I can continue the plan I just mentioned to post every week)
• Made Nigel Slater turkey cakes for dinner
• Caught up a bit with the laundry
• Finished reading Art + Money – some good ideas in there. I’m looking forward to listening to the interviews that go with it. Final issues with getting extended content still not sorted, but I’m giving it a few days – plenty to be working on till then
• Did some thinking about the opera and researched books on poetry-writing – it looks like books on lyric-writing are pretty much all geared towards the pop market, which is less useful to me. Might try to get hold of the new Sondheim book and a general book on writing poetry and then see how I go. I also wrote to my Da (who’s a fabulous poet) for suggestions.
• Started the violin piece! This has been kicking about in my head for a considerable period of time now, so I bullied myself into getting something down on paper, and no sooner had I started than it all flowed like water and the whole thing was mapped out in less time than it took Djelibeybi to go to the gym. Next stage is to condense it (I’ve worked it as three separate lines, with a goal of mooshing them together then cleaning up – there’ll probably be a post on this at caitlinrowley.com soonish), make sure the double- and triple-stops are playable and that it all hangs together. Could be finished by early next week though! Woot! (Mustn’t get too cocky)
• Did a little research on Twitter – after reading Art + Money (which is primarily focused on visual art) I thought that the equivalent of an online gallery for composers is audio-sharing sites, so I put the question out to my tribe on Twitter who have basically responded that SoundCloud’s the way to go. It doesn’t have a huge classical community yet, but it sounds like a good place to start, so I’m going to try to work up some of the MIDI performances I have in Pro Tools, make them sound a little more human, and post them up there and see what happens. I have to say: I love my tweeps. They were so helpful with this, and it was lovely to have people saying “add me when you do!” and “make sure you tell us here when you set it up!”. Awesome, awesome people.

Tagged with: blogging, composition, cooking, friends, ideas, learning, music, publishing, reading, research, study, tools, web | Add a comment

Today I made a pretty momentous decision: I’m not going to apply for the job at the Tate. Instead, I’m going to carry on focusing on my music and really put some effort into exploring alternative revenue ideas, audience-building for my music, that sort of thing. To that end, today I was a bit daring and bought two e-book packages from Chris Guillebeau who writes the Art of Non-conformity blog – Working for Yourself and Art + Money. Obviously I know a fair bit about business on the internet, but my knowledge is a bit scattered, picked up from here and there and not learned in a straightforward way, so there are bound to be gaps. Mr Guillebeau has been making his living from mostly small-scale internet projects for the past 10 years, so I figured I could learn something from him, and Art + Money contains sections on things like audience-building which, I must confess, is something that’s kind of eluded me a bit. Had a couple of small problems with downloading the packages, but these are mostly resolved and as Chris answers all his email himself, I have no doubt that any lingering issues will be quickly sorted.

I started reading Working for Yourself on the train to Surrey for tonight’s percussion workshop and it’s looking pretty good and sparking some ideas, so I’ll see where I go with it. Percussion workshop was, as always, good (although I’m beginning to wonder whether I’m developing an allergy to Surrey – I always seem to come away feeling coldy. It’s cleared itself up within a day each of the previous times, so hopefully this one will too). Tonight we did drumkit! So we each got to have a play on a proper drumkit. Lots of fun but gee-whiz you have to be co-ordinated. When it comes right though, it’s grand. Next week’s the last one, which is a shame, but I think it’s been worthwhile to do, even if the travel has cost me a fortune (£14 each time!). Note to self, though: Do not miss the 6 o’clock train because the 6.30 is packed and makes you late as well.

Tagged with: experimenting, ideas, learning, music, study, tools | Add a comment

This evening was the second of the London Composers Forum percussion workshops so I trekked out to deepest darkest Surrey for the evening. This evening we looked at snare drum basics – we were taught how to hold drumsticks properly (actually harder than it sounds) and do (very slow) one-stroke rolls, two-stroke rolls and paradiddles. Our tutor is very keen to demonstrate the difference between drummer thinking and other musicians’ thinking and so we did an exercise where he conducted, starting off in strict time and then introducing rubato – amazing how difficult it became to keep track of what was needed without the phrasing of a melody (or even an inner part) to guide. And of course with drums, there’s no fudging the timing like there is with a sustained note – it’s either on the beat, or it’s not. Very interesting. Tonight’s score-reading was Bartók, which was great. For some reason, I’ve never got around to listening to any of his music before – evidently, on tonight’s showing, he’s well worth listening to – going to make an effort there.

Tagged with: learning, listening, music, study, tools | Add a comment

Today I did something a little different – I took myself off to the Royal Academy of Music for a free seminar/workshop/presentation thingy by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. For those of you who don’t know of Max, he’s the Master of the Queen’s Music, which is the composer-version of Poet Laureate, and a very prolific and fabulously interesting composer.

Well, I have to say, that was certainly 3 hours VERY well spent. The talk had been billed as him talking about creating opera, with specific reference to the new opera he’s just finished writing, so I’d thought it could be useful as preparation for the Richard III opera, but it turned out to not really be about that at all. He did talk about a couple of his operas and some music theatre stuff, but mostly it was about the way he uses drama and theatricality as a structural force in all his music, even the concert music that has no obvious connection with the theatre at all. Really fascinating. I took a ton of notes.

He talked a bit about his very first opera, Taverner, on the life of the 16th-century composer John Taverner (as opposed to the composer John Tavener who’s around today), and specifically about how he wrote it simply because he wanted to. He never expected anyone to ever perform it (although they eventually did), and so he just basically let rip and did the whole thing the way he wanted to do it, with no reference to what anyone else might think. This led to what I think was the most inspiring quote of the morning:

If you’re going to do anything, go for it – for God’s sake, go for it! – you’ll get there… if you’re any good. And if you believe you’re any good, you probably are.

Amazing stuff. Really confidence-building. As anyone who’s followed my journey online over the past few years knows, I’ve had (possibly more than) my fair share of self-doubt, but the one thing I’ve never doubted is that I’m good at what I do. So let’s hope Max is right and that that means I probably am!

Tagged with: artist date, composition, events, ideas, learning, listening, mentalhealth, music, study | Add a comment

This morning I was in Edinburgh. Then I sat on a train for several hours and then I was in London in the afternoon. Then I sat on another couple of trains and went to Surrey.

For tonight was the first of the London Composers Forum percussion workshops – every year they do a set of workshops for composers to learn about an instrument or some aspect of composing (last year’s, which I missed, was on the organ) which they then follow up with a project to write for that instrument. Anyway, this year’s is percussion, so three of us went along to our tame percussionist’s house where we were regaled with tea and chocolate biscuits and taught the basics of how to play the djembe and a little bit of African drumming. And there was some score-reading too: Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, which is always a hoot. It was a little random, but all in all, a good first session – very much looking forward to next week’s. Oh, and some sleep.

Got a fair bit of work done on the train back from Edinburgh at least – all the notes for the string quartet Pieces of Eight are now in Finale, so I just need to finish the layout, and I did a bunch more work on the orchestral arrangement too, although that’s not really feeling like it’s coming together yet.

Tagged with: composition, events, learning, music, study, travel | Add a comment

Always a good feeling, that. I still didn’t get everything done I wanted to do, but I sure made a hefty start, most noticeably spending most of the day test-driving Drupal modules in preparation for a quote I need to send out tomorrow for a rather complex site for a non-profit organisation. I’m really rather impressed with Drupal, I must say. Today I’ve played with user permissions, an email-list module, search, adding images to user profiles, installing a security upgrade, implemented rich text editing (rather than plain-vanilla HTML) and a bunch of other stuff – and I haven’t once had to touch any code to do it. Obviously theme-creation is a completely different kettle of fish and I haven’t even looked at that yet – saving that for tomorrow. But so far, very impressed with what it can do pretty much straight out of the box.

And in the lulls while I waited for files to upload and delete as I performed the security upgrade? Well, I arranged the first four movements of Pieces of Eight for string quartet, which I’m thinking will be my submission to Sequenza 21′s current call for scores (I’ve abandoned the cello tango I was writing for this as too complex for the time I have – I still want to write it, but it will probably take several goes to get to a point where I’ll be happy with it). I was tossing up between arranging it for string quartet or piano and percussion but the quartet won out in the end – limited time and I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted the percussion to do but I didn’t want it to be just a bong or bang here and there.

I also sent off a bunch of emails that have been lingering and sorted out a survey for the composers from Durham – we’re setting up a Facebook group and wanted to give ourselves some semblance of authority, so we’re voting on a name… results by the end of the weekend, I hope.

Oh! And my next round of Amazon-junkie-goodies arrived! Alex Ross’s new book, Listen to This, and the next book in my pre-opera reading round, Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time. I’ve rethought that idea about keeping the subject of the opera under my hat – in the light of it probably taking me several years to actually produce any part of it, it seems a bit lame, so here’s the announcement: It’s to be (loosely) based on Tey’s novel (yes, I’ve read it before) which focuses on the revisionist history of Richard III (the one that says he wasn’t a deformed tyrant who murdered the princes in the Tower). As an opera plot, I think it’s up there with the best of them: murder, slander, rumour, illegitimacy, deceit, pretenders to the throne – it’s got the lot!

Tagged with: composition, dayjob, experimenting, gtd, learning, music, reading, research, shopping, study, tools, web | Add a comment

Well not quite. Today marked the one-year anniversary of my accident, so I’ve been doing some thinking and basically come to the conclusion that it’s been a positive experience. And I’ve had a great day working that out. I started out by writing a blog post about the good stuff that’s happened because of the ankle injury, some of which is pretty huge and even, dare I say it, life-changing. I made a Facebook page for my composition because I’m about to have to make one, I think, for the London New Wind Festival so wanted to know what went into it (answer: not much) and see if I can make it work for me. I bopped (on one leg) around the house a little to the Blues Brothers soundtrack which I haven’t listened to in ages, then made myself a cheese sandwich and finally took myself off to the V&A to make a start on the Diaghilev & the Ballets Russes exhibition there.

And ‘make a start’ was the right term! VERY glad I had already decided to sign up as a member. I suspected it would be big and I wouldn’t get round it in one go. What I hadn’t suspected was that it would be VAST and that I wouldn’t get past the first room of the first section in today’s attempt. I seriously think, with the dodgy ankle, that it could take me eight trips to see the whole thing! So it looks like membership has been a sensible way to go.

Then on the way home, I pulled out the score of the first-ending version of the quintet and did a bit of analysis. Harmonically it’s a bit messier than I can fathom with any degree of musicological confidence but the conclusion I’ve come to is that the nice tail I thought I’d have to cut should actually be able to work. It all depends on what surrounds it and what it goes on to. The figuration comes from earlier parts and the melody there, which I’d thought just wasn’t going to work, also has its roots elsewhere in the piece. What’s new is that the harmony is straight major harmony whereas everything else has had a hearty dose of other-key dissonance. But it’s comforting. Now I just need to get in there and make it work!

Tagged with: artist date, blogging, composition, exhibition, listening, mentalhealth, music, research, study, thinking | Add a comment

Today has been mostly devoted to wrestling with the counterpoint. I’m finding it almost mind-bendingly hard at times – it’s almost like I’ve never done it before (fairly sure this is because the counterpoint course I did at uni was compressed into half a semester and I never quite managed to come to grips with what I was supposed to doing), but I’m finding as I’m working – very slowly – through the exercises, that I’m gradually internalising the rules and almost unconsciously applying them – no, I can’t use that note because the previous interval was a perfect interval and the bass line does this, therefore I have to move this bit by step. I’m finding as I’m playing through my work that I really can hear where it’s gone wrong and I’m picking up errors this way, which for me is a fantastic leap forward because my aural skills have always been a little on the rubbish side. I’m not done with the first species counterpoint exercises yet (the second one has an absolute cow of a cantus firmus – really hard to set) but I’m getting there. I’ll pick up where I’ve left off tomorrow. Right now it’s time to make an early dinner and get ready to go out and hear what Stephen Sondheim has to say for himself at the Southbank Centre…

Tagged with: events, learning, music, study, thinking | Add a comment