Happy Fourth of July

Yesterday was the best day yet at the Oregon Bach Festival Composers' Symposium. It was what I called "OBF Part II." We had the first day of gamelon, improvisation, and our workshop series.

I particularly enjoyed the improvisation group. Our leader had us working in duos. I played with a clarinetist from Atlanta. It was only 45 seconds, but a lot happened. I let her start. I countered her playing with consonant sounds and then went all the way up and sat on a high G for a few seconds. Then, we looked at each other and ended, all without conducting or saying a single word. During our duo, I wasn't thinking about "What do I need to do next?" I was watching, listening, and responding to another musician. Our eyes locked as we concluded our duo to a wonderful a niente ending. What a trip.

Afterwards, we listened to Dr. Kyr's oratorio called "A Time For Life." It was over an hour and thirty minutes. It was a great piece. His music strikes me as very similar to the music that came out of the early Renaissance and also has other facets that make it very gorgeous. There's more there, though, than just the notes on the page and the sounds...there is the very essence of music making.

The question that has been circulating around my mind a lot over the last year is, "What do we do with music?" There has been the job hunt and other things, but really, I've been asking the wrong question. I should be asking "What can we be with music?" Music seems to be this doorway to our inner selves and a nexus to other things that answer more enticing questions.

"A Time For Life" had some really cool things going on in terms of texture, voicing, and pacing. Most of the music is very slow moving. It has this slow moving texture in the strings and the text seems to be moving all around you. Also, the orchestration technique of overtone reinforcement made the string trio feel much larger than it really was.

I had a very good experience of the piece. After a while, I started wondering, "Where is the fast music that is going to counter this slow music." I got what I needed right when I asked that question. Part III of the oratorio has a significant section of a passage from Ecclesiastes, hence the "Dance of Life." This passage had the fast music that created the fulfillment I needed from this beautiful oratorio. We were listening to the oratorio in the Collier House. The lights were off and it was just about ten to thirteen of us who were listening to the music. When we were done with the piece, we had a discussion with Dr. Kyr about just a bunch of spontaneous things that the piece evoked in each of us.