In the Beginning ...

Since last summer I have been contemplating writing a piano concerto and even wrote a few notes. In fact, I have about ten pages of sketches, but about a month ago, I decided to start over. I've been too busy working on a novel to think about music, and to be completely honest, nothing was coming. I was even considering giving up composing altogether.

That was until 3 am this morning.

I woke up with ideas, ideas other than just a little double bass figure that began the first movement. Suddenly wide awake, I was afraid to allow myself to fall asleep in fear that I would forget everything. Around 4 am, I decided to connect it with a diary, this blog, which will document the steps and thought processes I go through as I write this piece. Some of it may prove boring and mechanical, but (as you will read below) it will have a literary basis, some of which will appear here.

My big problem over the past few years is that my writing has eaten up my composing energy, and it is my thought that this blog will correct that.

Out of mind, out of sight.

That's the problem. If I'm not thinking about composing regularly, ideas are stillborn. I sit in concerts and come up with grand schemes that are forgotten by the time I've driven home.

Before I go too far, I should get the mechanics out of the way. This concerto is for Maya Irgalina and the Scarborough Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Shawn Matthew, an amateur orchestra that plays in the Spa there. It's a scenic venue overlooking the North Sea, and I've even written some fiction that starts there. The performance will be in March or May 2013, and Shawn is thinking of Brahms, Symphony No 4, and Stravinsky, Dance Concertante, as well as some chamber music to begin the programme. That sounds like a little too much music, if you add in my 20 minute concerto. I expect he'll revise his plans.

On to the concerto ...

At around 5 am, I decided that I might connect it to a novella I wrote a few years ago called An Angel's Kiss. In it, a famous concert pianist is about to give a recital when a woman with golden hair runs up onto the stage and kisses him. He finds himself unable to continue, and even touching a piano causes a panic attack. Not wanting to leave his audience cold (it was a gala charity concert), he summons a girl from the crowd who impressed him in one of his masterclasses. She plays the concert in his place and wows the critics.

It turns out that she is the sister of the woman who kissed him, but who had died in the WTC on Sept 11, a year earlier. The pianist and the girl become inseparable, but I'll leave the rest until I publish the novella. One other relevant fact is that the pianist has a dream to someday conduct Wagner's Parsifal. I'm considering using a few brief Parsifal references in my concerto.

I'm also thinking of connecting the concerto to another novel of mine, Diary of an Affair. The story is, of course, about an affair, but not the obvious one that spurred him to write the diary. The protagonist is a failed composer who works for a music publisher (in marketing), representing their composers at concerts. On the way back from one of his trips, he falls in love with a young American pianist (and composer) just starting at the Royal Academy in London.

Again, I'll stop with the plot there, but he eventually promises to write a piece for another composer who he has loved since he was twenty (who adores him). It turns out to be a concerto for the American pianist. Aside from the infidelity, a thread running through the story is his writing of this concerto. I'm not sure how I'll use it yet. Maybe just some of the gestures he describes.

Also, this concerto is about the night, perhaps a windy night. It's a dark room with twinkling lights. It's poetry (I hope).

The piece with be in three movements.

I. Seduction - I'm not sure what that really means yet, but it may mean some seductive melodies and sensual harmony. I've just written a few notes as a guide.

II. Romance - this is mostly an improvisation for the pianist. I'll set up a series of chord textures over which one or more soloist will play written solo passages. The pianist will improvise with the chords and outside the chords (anti-chordal). There may also be some wind and brass punctuation.

III. Tarantella - Several years ago I wrote a little 12 bar passage I called the "Yippee Tarantella" That will form the basis for the movement, which should culminate in a transformed quote from the trumpet tune at the beginning of Parsifal. I'm not sure that will work yet.


Next, I'm going to see if I can derive some pitch material from the Tarantella.