Cuckoo - poem by Hilaire Belloc

I think I'm done with these rummy songs for a while, but they are fun to write.

 

started a thing, will continue tomorrow!! (bari horn quintet???)

i wish i had a baritone horn so i could record this super slow and then speed it up in audacity and see if it sounds like how i wanted it to sound 

Emily Dickinson on Bees

This one's the second in some April Songs I'm starting with.

Computerised audio:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/m99ls9ixuc5w1uv/Emily%20Dickinson%20on%20Bees.mp3?dl=0

Month of Music Collab 1 - Andrew London, Horn

Hello everyone,

Some generous musicians have agreed to do a set of composer-performer collabs here within Month of Music, and I'm thrilled to introduce the first.

Andrew London is a brilliant horn player from Sydney, developing quite a reputation for playing some of the trickiest repertoire written for the instrument. He's a lovely guy and has set the following parameters:

- duration of up to 2-3 minutes

- please avoid multiphonics & microtones, but all other extended techniques are good to go

- no high C's would be appreciated but one or two is probably doable if the context demands it

- low range bottoms out around the D two 8ves below the D at the bottom of the treble stave (horn pitch)

- Due date: Thursday 26th of March


After Thursday, Andrew will record these and may wish to get in touch, so please indicate your preferred method of communication when you add your piece to the blog.

Following the recording, I'll seek the go-ahead from everyone involved and, if ok, do a bit of posting on socials. There's no pressure on this and you're also welcome to do the posting yourself if you wish.

Let me know if you have any questions in the comments!

Next one to come in a few days...

Not knowing when the Dawn will come

Hello friends! I had a couple of whacks today and this is the one that landed. It feels so good to write.

Here's the Emily Dickinson poem I set:

Not knowing when the Dawn will come, I open every Door,Or has it Feathers, like a Bird,Or Billows, like a Shore –

hopscotch (a bopscotch) - score only

hi andrew (and i think josie???) am i doing this right whooooo

EDIT: 

i forgot to say that vln speeds up a bit and vc slows down a bit over 4 of the x5 bars near the end, then they play the last repeat of three notes in unison

nothing but text!!

hello! I started by recording Andrew's piece, but got annoyed at my own piano/vocal limitations so stopped. Then I started a piece for voice+not sure yet solo instrument that just ran into the obvious 'what is this solo instrument' limitations of writing - only so much you can do when you don't know what you're writing for UGHGHGHHG so I only wrote as much as I knew. None of that is worth publishing so I feel, so I'm publishing a poem instead.

I hope I am kinder to myself in the coming days and weeks - I want to be writing music, I'm just not used to it just yet. I hope the days are treating you all kindly.



OPEN YOURSELF AND YOU OPEN YOURSELF TO
THE WORD
THE WORD IS NOT NECESSARILY DEFINABLE
NOTHING IS STRONGER BY BEING DEFINABLE
BUT INSOFAR AS YOU HARMONISE AND IDENTIFY
AND SING ALONG TO THE DEFINITION
THE IMMUTABLE GREEN OF TREES
THE IRREPRESSIBLE SONG OF SONGS
YOU ARE STRONGER FOR THEIR SINGING

THIS IS POEM MADE TRUE BY ITS CAPITALISATION
AND EMOTIONAL BY ITS READING
AND LOVED BY ITS BELIEVING


.

Morning - with a poem by Sara Teasdale

Hello everyone!

Full disclosure, I began this a few days ago, but it seems timely for this April's MoM. I wanted to be able to sing and play this one myself, but I think I'm a bit out of practice for a recording just yet.

Looking forward to doing more April songs.

Final post for this month!

Congrats everyone on the 80+ pieces of music, uploaded to this site this month!

It's been a lovely part of my day, logging in to this page and seeing what you've all written, I'm a little sad that it's going to be over for a while

Much love to everyone,

Andrew H

Yuletide Chorale

I thought a fitting final post would be a solemn Yuletide Chorale for four clarinets :) 

Listen to Dorico's playback here: https://instaud.io/2ZoS

(yes after 30 days I've learned how to make my first mp3 on this software haha it's too fast but at least it exists!) 

Final post!

Hey everyone
My final contribution to the month of music! It’s a first draft of the third variation in my fiddler on the roof variations.

 (Technically it’s December already but oh well)

I want to thank you guys so much from the bottom of my heart for having me as part of this. Although I wasn’t able to upload every day (lord knows that life can get in the way), I thoroughly enjoyed composing again and feel super motivated to continue it into the future. I finally wrote some pieces that I’ve wanted to write for ages, for example this fillder on the roof variations that I have been putting off for years. Now I’ve drafted around 3 variations and am so excited to finish it and perform it!

I think next time I do this, I want to plan a bit more ahead in terms of what I want to explore, or ideas of pieces, instrumentation etc. Once I had any kind of idea then the music came quite easily (generally) but the majority of the time I would get home at 10:30pm from a performance and struggle to come up with an idea for a piece. I’d also like to explore more unfamiliar instrument settings, I didn’t write anything with brass and tried my hand at writing for strings, which I’m slowly getting used to.

Anyway, this was definitely a pretty full on experience but I enjoyed the experience of all of us sharing our music. Thank you for being supportive and so friendly! I can’t wait to hear all of your works in concert!!

All the best,
Ollie

a piano piece

I took some things I wrote before and made them into a very hard piano piece!

Second last day... you're right, Lyle, time does fly!

Score and Audio



p.s. the audio is an experiment with East-West's steinway instrument... I find it hard to tell the difference, compared with the Logic piano

Very cheery piece

I can't decide if this is for tenor recorder and string quartet or tenor saxophone and saxophone quartet. Either way this is a very cheery piece. Tempo is a basic Allegro. Everyone gets to stomp their foot while playing :) 

Also – this is my second-to-last post! Tomorrow we post our last pieces… the month has really flown by!

another computer test

listen here

This one's quite unpolished - a tester of the East-West string library. 4 Chords...

co-composed with Christine Elise Chen

Who needs copyists anyway …

This looks perfect. I hope the Song Company likes it. LOL!

Name that composer

Hey everyone, I’ve been playing a lot of a particular composer this week and love their music so wanted to try and write a melody in their style. I purposefully didn’t write their name - who do you think I was trying to emulate?

Playing with a new toy

I just purchased a subscription to east-west's composer cloud - this was an experiment, using east-west's Symphonic Choir instrument. It's fun that it makes words, but apparently the Hollywood Choir makes better ones. Downloading that tomorrow.

warning: very very cheesy

listen here

Action music (Carnival)

I've had to write some 'action music' or incidental music rather than themes for the narration of Carnival. This is largely unison music for woodwinds and cello.

More religious text setting

This one comes from the epic of Baal, one of the texts that inspired the writers of the bible - as the Lord of the Rings series is to Game of Thrones, if you will. As well as being an important supporter of good, Baal was a storm lord, and these words come from a proponent of his, the lady of the sea, mother of all gods.

I've read some sources who claim that the Baal cycle was 'sanitised' by its translators, removing some of the more sexual content. This seems pretty sexual to me - and it's worth remembering that the bible's writers rewrote his character into the literal devil.

I finally finished the Chris Gordon orchestration...

and here it is! Score and Audio too

It's for the leichhardt espresso chorus' Carols on Norton program this year - go see it! I won't be there, unfortunately, but it's always a lovely community event.