SB – Page 12 – SCOTT BLASCO

Back to it

Almost a month since last post. Oops.

Classes for the spring quarter started today, in which I’ll be continuing my thesis work and taking two classes: Ethics of Bonhoeffer (with the mighty Glen Stassen), and Hebrew Prophets. Tracy and I are taking the Bonhoeffer together, as well as the thesis cohort (which meets seldom and informally). Last quarter I took my first pass/fail class, which took a bit of pressure off during a particularly stressful couple of months, and I’m repeating the formula this quarter with the Prophets class. Normally I’m a perfectionist about class work and such, so I’ll probably end up doing the same work as I would for a grade… still, it’s a nice load off.

And I’ll need it this quarter! Late in April, the Arts Concerns Committee (which Tracy and I chair together) holds its annual Arts Festival, a week-long series of events, art galleries, and so on. It’s a mountain of work to organize, but it’s also very rewarding to see come together.

More to the point, I’m supposed to finish my thesis this quarter (although I have a potential grace period into the summer, I’d prefer not to take it). I keep promising to write about that, and then not doing so. The idea for the thesis project in this program is to begin integrating the theology we’ve studied with the art which we theoretically already practice. For me, obviously, that’s music. So my project is a fairly large-scale setting of the De Profundis–Psalm 130 in the English Bible. I had initially wanted to interject settings of poetry between the stanzas of the Psalm, but suitable public-domain lament poetry is nearly impossible to find, so I scrapped that plan. That turns out to be a good thing, because it would have been that much more work to try to finish on time. Maybe later I’ll explain the theological grounding of the work beyond the sacred text. There’s a lot more, really, and it ties in with classes I’ve taken here.

The setting is a new experience for me. I’ve set text, but not in Latin. That’s not such a big deal, though. The bigger deal is my instrumentation, for piano and four trios: voice trio (SAT), string trio, wind trio (flute, clarinet, horn), and rock trio (guitar, bass, drumset). I’ve never composed anything for rock instrumentation, although I’ve written songs within a band structure. I’m attempting to avoid falling into writing rock music for “classical” instruments, or vice versa–a problem I always had with Gunther Schuller’s “Third Stream” work, wherein he claimed to be fusing classical and jazz, but in my opinion actually ended up with one of two results: jazz played by an orchestra, or an incongruous pastiche of casual-sounding swing and dissonant orchestral moments. I’m sure some people would have my head over that. So be it, but I’ve never liked his music.

At any rate, I’m attempting to balance the two worlds, although it is primarily a contemporary composed work. I haven’t gotten close to as much work done on it as I would have liked to at this point, however, and it will be a challenge to keep up with my own timeline for completion. Getting it performed is another task. I know people for almost every instrument here, but getting them all in the same room enough times to rehearse and perform might be a challenge. When we did “In C” last year I had the same problem, but as long as people knew what they were doing it didn’t particularly matter which instruments showed up for a rehearsal. This one’s a bit different.

I’m also back to it on the doctoral program front. Because my time was so tight in the fall, I cut back my list of intended applications from nine to three, and applied to the three for which I had the most work done and was able to complete. Having not gotten into any of those three, I went back to my list of possible schools to see what deadlines I might not have missed. There weren’t many, but there were a couple, and I added a couple more by looking around again. So I now have applications in to Ball State University in Indiana and Catholic University of America in D.C. These might be followed by University of Arizona, but they don’t seem too communicative over there. West Virginia University is another possibility, but although I haven’t missed their deadline (there is none), I believe their grad spots in composition are filled at this point. Too bad, it looks like a good program.

That’s my update. Other things are going along to one degree or another. We had spring break last week, and drove up the coast to just south of Big Sur, looked at the ocean, saw a bunch of seals, some otters, and a couple whale spouts, and then drove back. Tracy posted some pics. It was nice, but too short (as breaks tend to be). I can’t wait to graduate and get out of here, SoCal is not my bag.

Update: a step back, some steps forward

I’ve not been keeping up on blogging lately, either writing or reading. For shame! I suppose my online activities take a distant… something-eth… place to things such as homework, family, and sanity (in short supply of late). At the same time, I did strongly imply an update on my activities a couple of posts back, and the few of you who read this might actually want to read that update. Sadly, this is not it. But it is a different update!

I received an email from my publisher recently, informing me of a couple of upcoming performances. My Concerto for Marimba and Chamber Orchestra, which has not previously been performed, will receive two performances this spring in Pennsylvania (both in the reduced version for soloist, two pianos, and three percussionists). Sadly I will not be attending either of them, seeing as how I live in California, am a full-time student, and have somewhere in the neighborhood of ZERO dollars for plane tickets. Feel like donating some money to the cause? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

The first performance will be by Richard Lee Bono, a student at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Rich is a senior music ed major, and will be performing the concerto on his recital at the end of March. He emailed me to introduce himself and ask if I had anything to say–and got perhaps a longer response than he bargained for! It was interesting to go through the score and remember what I was thinking when I wrote the concerto, which was nearly four years ago now. Perhaps more interesting yet was recounting the theological content built only half-consciously into the structure of the work. With eyes and language gained over the past two years, I was better able to articulate it than I would have been able to during the composing process itself–some encouragement in the artistic wasteland of a full time theological education!

The second performance, in early April, will be by Frank Kumor, professor of percussion at Kutztown University. I keep intending to write Dr. Kumor an email and introduce myself, say hello and such, but have not yet done so. I am particularly excited about this performance given Kumor’s long experience as a performer, and commitment to new music. There is apparently potential for a further (very significant) performance coming out of this as well, but I’ll save that for the future to see if it materializes.

I also talked to my friend and former percussion teacher Judy Moonert today. She was excited to hear about these performances, especially since the concerto is dedicated to her and she has not had the time to perform it (Judy keeps busy by playing in three professional ensembles, one of which frequently plays in NYC, on top of her position as professor of percussion at Western Michigan University… she’s a busy lady). But she did premiere my marimba quartet, Momentia/Minutia, with her percussion ensemble in 2005, then performed it again in 2006, and apparently there is a possibility for another performance late this year… also one which I will wait to see what happens before getting too excited about. I should be getting recordings of the previous performances soon, to which I am looking forward.

I miss percussion. I miss performing. I’ve been listening to a bit of percussion music lately, but it’s unfortunately difficult to find very much that’s really exciting musically. Composers tend either to be intimidated by writing for percussion (so they don’t), or to write really “typecast” music–high on bombast and exciting rhythms, low on musical content. It’s too bad, and it’s a big reason why I’ve written as much percussion music as I have, despite the fear of being typecast myself as a niche composer. But I love the instruments, and I write well for them because I’ve spent so much time as a performer myself, so in many ways it is a very natural fit. I was looking over some sketches I had for a piano work recently, and realized that they are perhaps even better fitted for marimba… so who knows, there may be something new in the works soon.

That’s a long post of stuff you’re probably not all that interested in. But it feels really good to write it. To be able to write it. It’s nice to feel like a composer, not a theologian. I can’t wait to be back in a music program (God willing).

Actually coming soon: an update on what I am currently composing, why, how, and what I intend to do about it! (Plus: minutiae of my life). For now you’ll just have to wait…

Concert review

Saturday night I went with a few Fuller folk to a concert at the Armory Center here in Pasadena. Southwest Chamber Music performed Luciano Berio’s Sequenza I for solo flute (holy fluttertonguing, Batman!), Rain Dreaming by Toru Takemitsu, and a premiere by a composer I didn’t know, James Newton. The evening was topped off beautifully by Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto #5. Very nice programming, and beautifully performed.

James Newton’s piece was the Credo from his recently completed Latin Mass. We made it to the pre-concert talk, where he was interviewed by the music director for 40 minutes or so. Mr. Newton himself is a virtuoso flautist, as well as a jazz and “classical” composer. He talked quite a bit about Takemitsu, who was something of the glue for the pairing of Newton with Bach (the Berio was supposed to be another Takemitsu for which the music never arrived). Apparently Takemitsu was a huge fan of Duke Ellington, and both of them were formative influences on Mr. Newton himself. Olivier Messiaen’s music served as another inspiration for the Credo, in both his densely colorful harmonic language and in his faith.

The Credo itself was very good, although our seats were uncomfortably close to the baritone soloist, which meant that, at points, I heard a lot of voice and not a lot of ensemble (which consisted of flute, clarinet, string trio, contrabass, piano, and vibraphone). Especially during the instrumental sections, however, Newton had a fine sense of the ensemble; wonderful interplay and pairing of instruments. I hope a recording is released so I can hear it again, but properly balanced.

During the pre-concert talk, he spoke at length of the role of his own religious faith in writing the Latin Mass. Given the hostility (or at best, the apathy) toward Christianity found in many artistic circles, his openness was a bit daring, and more than a few audience members squirmed their ways through it. I was in heaven: here’s a brilliant musician living in two musical worlds, describing how Thomas Merton and Messiaen both so elevated the Mass as union of the believer with God that it became everything to him in both his life and his music. (Interesting side note: Newton himself is not Catholic, although to hear him talk one could be forgiven for expecting him to convert any day now). I spoke with him briefly before the concert began, told him where I am and what I’m working on, and arranged to correspond in the future about music and faith and how they fit together. I’m kind of excited about that.

I guess that’s not much of a concert review. The concert was very good; the harpsichordist was absurdly good. I’ve heard the SWCM play before, and hopefully will again soon (William Kraft and Stravinsky next month!). Up next: just what exactly I am up to lately…

For a class: what am I passionate about?

It is easy for me to identify that about which I am passionate, but surprisingly difficult to write about it. I am a composer, percussionist, and guitarist, on top of being just plain fanatical about music in general. I am told that, as a young child, I used to climb on top of my parents’ stereo and dance whenever it was on. I took piano lessons for a few years before I got a drum-set for Christmas when I was 10. Soon afterward I took up guitar, and started a band with my brother and a friend. We played some pretty serious thrash metal, with the kind of “turn-or-burn” apocalyptic evangelistic lyrics one might expect from a group of over-zealous Bible Belt 15-year-olds. Nonetheless, the music got better and better until our friend took off to college. Soon afterward I joined another band that he had started, more of a progressive rock thing which we all thought we’d be in for the long haul. When I went to college, I started taking a couple of music classes, with the intention of becoming a better guitarist. By the end of my freshman year the band had split up, but I was hooked on music theory and for the first time began to listen to “classical” music.

I had been the biggest Iron Maiden fan you’d want to meet, and thought that rock was the pinnacle of musical art. Sure, I played in the high school orchestra, but never really paid attention to the music so much. Studying music, first Brahms pricked my ears with the pathos-laden slow movement from his Third Symphony. Then it was Mozart’s 40th. But it was in hearing Petrouchka and The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky that I was finally reeled in. I found in them a whole new musical world, but with a distant connection to my rock & roll past by way of its primitive impulse and elemental rhythmic force. I listened to Stravinsky almost exclusively for the entire summer, and when I began my second year I was truly converted.

That’s nearly ten years ago. I have a Bachelor’s and a Master’s in music composition now, and have written more for string quartet or orchestra than for guitar. My music is published and performed and commissioned and all of that good stuff. Yet I maintain a love for a wide range of musical styles: I focus on new composed music mostly, but I love jazz, I still rock out to Black Sabbath, I dig modern rock and old country and electronica and folk… I’m fairly omnivorous, I love it all. If, however, I were to try to say what it is in music that so holds me… well, I don’t know exactly how to approach that. It is many things all at the same time, and yet there is an overarching love of the art of music that is hard to put into words.

Perhaps from a pragmatic point of view, music is what I do best. It’s almost the only thing I’m good at, and certainly the only thing at which I really excel. I have been told by many people that I am a gifted musician, and have sometimes felt that way myself, and in the interest of stewardship I pursue it as a career. I used to think that meant “rock star.” Now I imagine it’s much more likely to mean “university professor.” Either way, it uses the gifts I have, hopefully to further God’s kingdom.

Yet beyond mere pragmatism or faithfulness, there is a deeper goodness to music that holds me enthralled. The Greeks spoke of the “music of the spheres,” that natural logic and coherence and interplay between all that existed, moving together in a symphony of inaudible yet cosmic consequence. That sense permeates all of creation—there is music in it all. How sweet, then, when that order and harmony become audible, when a composer puts pen to paper to draw up instructions for a new creation. It is the Big Bang blown afresh. It is a dream of a new universe, populated by both the strange and the familiar, the new and the old. It is colors borrowed from the dreams of others to form new lines, new shapes, new physics. It is imagining the other, exploded upward into whole worlds like a tiny spindle of a fractal set. Music mirrors creation, and as a composer I image my Creator, and in doing so I am brought closer to feeling the joy of creating, the sheer exhilaration of “Let there be…”