Category: music

A Muncie Miscellany, mkIII

Tomorrow begins the second week of classes for spring semester. “Spring.” That’s what they call it, at least. When it’s not wet and cold out there, it’s generally dry and cold (rain or snow being generally ubiquitous lately). No matter, such is January back here in the midwest. Ah, how distance makes life out west all the rosier in retrospect!

There have been some changes for this semester. I am no longer tutoring a small army of theory students, but now am actually in front of their class talking. It’s been 5 years since I last taught in a classroom, so it’s taking a little re-getting used to, but I really enjoy it. This is what I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I’m teaching two sections of what is informally referred to as “Sight/Ear,” and which has many other possible names–aural theory, or ear training and sight singing–, along with a few composition lessons. This also means I’ve picked up another 10 hours of work each week, which means a stipend on top of tuition. Definitely welcome.

Over December I managed to find a final barline for my De Profundis, although I’ve been letting it percolate for the past few weeks without looking at it because I know there will be some tweaking and revisions to be made. Overall, I would say this is the most ambitious, and probably best executed, piece of music I’ve written, and I’m anxious to hear it performed (hopefully this spring). The next project is in the brainstorming stage, the only detail decided for certain being that it will be orchestral. I’ve been thinking thoughts about it, but that, dear reader, is all you get for now.

Classes this semester: Analytical Techniques (music theory), Principles of Music Theory (music theory pedagogy), and (of course) composition lessons. That, along with my teaching load, is enough to keep me quite occupied.

And away I go…

One down

One semester, that is.

Exam week is officially and finally over! The last bits were an exam for Psychology of Music on Thursday evening and a counterpoint project and analysis due last night. That project was a four-voice fugue, which I wrote for wind quartet, and on which I actually started over mid-week after a while of struggling with too many loose ends. The end product is, I believe, considerably better. Tracy and I have joked recently about the Dirt Devil “Kone” commercials, and how I should do my own (with equal pretension, of course): “I’m Scott Blasco, and this is Fugue.”

De Profundis is very nearly done. I have a tentative final barline, but not everything up to it is entirely complete. It will be soon, though, and I have some performers interested in it already. I’m hoping for a March performance. Feedback from people who have heard what I have has been pretty uniformly positive, and I have one person down in Texas waiting for the final product to consider for his new music ensemble (more on that when/if it materializes).

That’s my story. Where I have been out of communication when I should have been in, that would be why. Sorry about that.

Karlheinz Stockhausen, 1928-2007

I just read (two days late) that composer Karlheinz Stockhausen died on Wednesday. I’m not about to get all “Ye sacred Muses” here or anything, but he was an important (if controversial) composer. I remember being distinctly weirded out by his vocal works as an undergrad, along with the peculiar mystico-universalist sort of spiritual leanings he wrote into many of his works (Stimmung, for example, calls out by name to a plethora of gods–“magic names,” as Stockhausen called them). His recently completed 7-opera cycle, Licht, was structured after the days of the week (employing all sorts of symbolism and [mis?-]appropriating spiritual and ritual traditions from all over the world), and the (to my knowledge) in-progress (and hence, now, incomplete) cycle of instrumental chamber works, Klang, similarly took their bases from the hours of the day. It remains to be seen what importance these rather ambitious projects will hold in the future (it is my guess that Licht in particular may have been intended as a modern take-off from Stockhausen’s long-departed fellow countryman’s most famous work).

Regardless, he will be remembered (for better or for worse) as an innovator in electronic music, and in odd sorts of performance practice (as in the Helicopter Quartet). He had fascinating, if unrealistic, ideas about performance space and time, specifying that some parts of music should be performed simultaneously with others, but completely removed from one another geographically. It was like a music-drama to fill the world–an extension of Wagner’s Gesamptkunstwerk?–rather than merely the concert hall. Over the years I have come to a limited appreciation of some of his works, although I’ve never devoted the time and attention to him that I have to Messiaen or Ligeti (who died last year).

It appears the old guard is leaving us.

fin

A pictorial reprise:
Tracy and Scott actually do rule this time

I’m scratching “theology student” from my little “about” deal over there. It’s hard to believe, but the wife and I are both done with everything for Fuller. Everything has been mailed off, e- and otherwise, and any theology reading following today will be uncoerced.

The big final paper took me most of yesterday and today to finish (not to mention the past few weeks of slogging through Balthasar and Hart); but, despite my earlier predictions, I don’t think it is actually all that bad. Parts are even good, although given another day/week/month I would have polished/expanded/rewritten others.

My attention turns now to catching up with work I was able to postpone for BSU, which I expect will be comparatively relaxed and easy going. I hope to finish my De Profundis before the end of the semester and get started on something new, and it looks like an arrangement of one movement from Separations (which I have extracted as the standalone Elegy) will be given a performance in November by the BSU graduate string quartet.

Going to Fuller was an amazing experience and a great blessing, and I am very grateful to have been able to do it. All the same, with it now complete, I’m exquisitely happy to be diving into my musical life again with both feet. This is what I studied theology in order to do: be a musician, a composer, with a strong theological foundation to my work.

I hope, too, that I can fill out this blog according to its original purpose. I’ve written a lot about theology over the past two years, and less about music. It is, after all, new mus(ings)ic, and perhaps I can better unite the two now that my attention will be differently focused.

So congratulations to my lovely wife for finishing a day ahead of me–and what the heck, I’ll congratulate myself for finishing, as well. Onward!