live performance

I went and played my six studies in harmonics for guitar at the local guitar society open mic last night. I played to an audience of about nine people. The pieces went mostly well, though I fumbled on the second study (contrapuntal works for solo guitar are fraught with peril even when they DON'T consist of counterpoint written entirely using harmonics). But to play six pieces entirely in harmonics for an audience consisting of classical guitarists meant I was playing for the most sympathetic and understanding audience I could have asked for. The pieces went over well.

This is the third or fourth time I have ever played live in the last three years. I tried playing some work at the Seattle Composer's Salon a few years ago and while they were nice I felt as though what I played was not a very natural fit for the stuff they are into. They were nice enough to not say anything bad about my piece but, other than a local music journalist who told me my piece was very good and a welcome change of pace from what he usually heard at those events, I didn't remember anyone saying they really LIKED the piece. Music either appeals or it doesn't and while a person can acclimate themselves to understanding and appreciating music I realize this can be a steep learning curve and a long process, a process and learning curve many people don't bother with because the effort is great. I can understand this because time and repeated exposure have not led me to like The Doors anymore now than when I heard them twenty years ago. I still don't like their music!

So I'm still applying for different jobs and while I do that I am dusting the cobwebs off of my badly atrophied chops and playing music. I had originally intended to play my prelude in B flat minor last night but realism prevailed and I quickly prepared the studies in harmonics, which was the wiser move to make. In a few months I hope to have more preludes and fugues from my set ready to perform live. The B flat minor one could be particularly nice because it evokes Bach more readily and, dare I say it, successfully. It feels the most Baroque and developed as a combined prelude and fugue. It is also going to be much easier to prepare for public presentation than my prelude and fugue in G major. The G major pieces are easily my favorites but the fugue ... the fugue is a nearly five-minute long juggernaut.

For now it's better to start small and be happy with small. It is too tempting to try to go for broke, think big, and do more than needs to be done. Years ago my composition professor said one of the common temptations of young composers is to try to say everything they want to say in just a single work. I feel fortunate my first serious forays into music were in rock and pop. I mutated the impulse to say everything big into cyclical composition. For me the big statements are not in giant movements or even in multi-movement works, for me the big ideas and big statements are what happens as a thing that emerges from the sum of the parts and goes beyond the sum of the parts. My big statement is something woven into multiple sonatas that you would have to see as a unified cycle of works. That probably means that no one is going to notice that stuff. When your big ideas are a gestalt that emerges from within a body of work there is a good chance the forest will be missed for the trees.

Oh well, I'm an unknown so I can have my metatheme worked into individual works and so long as the individual works at some point get some traction with listeners and musicians I don't need to worry about whether or not people "get" what the sonatas for guitar and woodwinds are moving toward as a unified whole. Now it is more important to get up in front of people, overcome anxieties, and play music.