Compositions from 1995-96

Warning: this content is not for the sound of mind. Includes tributes to Machaut and Lovecraft.

From 1992-1994 and 1995-1997 I studied music composition as part of my undegraduate work at University of Saskatchewan. While not all of the recordings of my favorite pieces have survived, I have managed to recover recordings of five pieces. (And more might be on the way in the future, though probably only through reconstruction of the original pieces.)

When I say they’re not my favorite pieces, I mean that at the remove of a year, their value as experiments is very clear to me. I also think they’re interesting curios, such as they are, little guideposts to a direction in which my creativity once (abortively) started out. (My jazz playing was a lot more accessible, I think, and a lot more, well, self-possessed.) Basically, yeah, this is where I got my weirdness out before I started writing SF, and once I started writing SF, I used up all my weirdness on that and didn’t write much music.

However, going through these pieces and posting them has been a good experience for me. I’ve rediscovered an interest I thought dead, and I’m even thinking of returning to composing, or at least, reworking an old piece that for years I thought lost, titled “Landscapes of the Soul”. Actually, just the third movement — the first two weren’t very good, but the third one was what convinced me (and a number of others) that I actually had something musical inside me. Well, the recording in fact was lost, but I still have the score, and the most important bits have run through my mind, off and on, for years and years now. I’m thinking a reworking of the original (for electric guitar and two pianos) could profitably be expanded into a piece for two pianos and string quartet. Then I’ll have to find some musicians around to perform it, at the very least so I can get a recording of it (though it would be nice if it made it onto a real stage sometime).

I believe that all of these recordings were made at the Composers’ Forum, a recital put on by our professor Gyula Csapo for all student composers at the end of the 2006 school year. In any case, I’m going to try to dig up the recital information as soon as possible so that all the performers’ names can be listed. For now, memory is going to have to suffice, however.

Three Portraits for Two Bass Clarinets, 1996. This piece, commissioned by my classmate Lana Fribance for, I think it was, her 3rd year recital. (I can’t remember who accompanied her on the 2nd bass clarinet, but I can say with confidence that this was not performed at the Composer’s Forum. I’m pretty sure it was only performed at her recital, and furthermore, I think the person who did the copying work on it was actually thr person playing 2nd clarinet, but I cannot for the life of me remember her name.) It is actually in three movements, but they’re short so it’s all included in a single MP3 file. These three portraits were of music students in the department during my first year, and are titled as follows:1: Grace (for Grace Yip, whose piquant sense of humor and wonderful irreverence were the basis of the outbursts in this movement)
2: Jamie (for Jamie Shupena, of whom the tune reminded me)
3: Mo (for Mo Lineman, whose tendency to attempt to sing very high and very low notes, and to lope about oddly, were being emulated by the clarinets)

3:1:2:3, Hommage à Machaut, 1995. This piece was an experiment in a kind of modal serialism, using a repeated structure (3 pulses, 1 pulse, 2 pulses, 3 pulses) taken from some piece or other written by the great, long-dead composer Guilluame de Machaut. I was trying to capture some of the pulsating movements of the voices in some of his and other medieval composers pieces, while following a strict canonical form that Machaut himself managed to use to great effect. My effect was not so great, but the ensemble did a good job with what I gave them.The performers I can recall include: Melanie Funk on flute, Marie Sellar on bassoon, Annie Sellar on horn, Troy Linsley on baritone saxophone (replacing the cellist who dropped out due to an injury), Anna Bekolay on violin, and… um, I hope I find the recital sheet soon so I can find out myself. This performance was at the Quance Theater sometime in 1994 or 1996, I think.

Dervish, or, Heatstroke on a Sand Dune Three Miles North of Yazd, Iran, 1996. This piece was supposed to have been performed by some young guy who promised me he’d do a good job, practiced it (apparently) but insisted on not letting me hear his rendition until it was perfect. In typical flake manner, he backed out something like an hour before the debut of the piece, at my composition recital, leaving a note on the locked in which I stored my saxophones. However, Gyula Csapo practiced the piece and performed a pretty solid “rendition” of it. He refused to call it a performance, just a “rendition” or “impression” of the piece, understandably, since he was sight-reading it. A week or two later, he performed it and that’s what this recording is.

Yudhishtira’s Dice (1995-96) is the biggest composition I ever attempted. (Even to date, that’s the case, though a weird piece written in 1996-97 under the instruction of Robert Lemay outstripped it in length, I think this piece was more of a success than that.) This piece was originally called “Arjuna’s Dice”, because I misremembered it as Arjuna gambling away everything, including his own family, in that pivotal scene in The Mahabharata, of which I’d seen the Peter Brook “film” (it’s more like a stage drama filmed for TV) on PBS a few years before. The piece uses all kinds of effects from overtone singingYudhishtira’s Dice was for wind quintet, six voices, and percussion (including tuned water glasses). I swear, we took up the whole stage. A rough chop at naming who participated would run as follows: my sister Marie Sellar on bassoon, Melanie Funk on flute, I think Stacy Mortensen on horn, maybe Lana Fribance on bass clarinet and clarinet; Mike Murza, _____, and _____ on percussion; and vocalists Lisa Zmud, Carrie ___, Marie Vasquez, Anna Vasquez, Barry Ursaki, and myself. I think I’ve never made better use of percussion, nor have I ever made worse of voice in a piece of music. Then again, the Balinese kecak-like chanting seemed to have a more powerful effect when you could actually see people chanting in front of you. I do think some of the things I did with the winds worked, but I was mostly just diddling and testing ideas to see whether things would build up or not.

Readings from the Necronomicon (1996) for detuned harpsichord and electric guitar was one of the last pieces I composed during the 1995-96 University year. For those who aren’t SF geeks, it’s a reference to the work of H.P. Lovecraft: the Necronomicon was a fictional book that was referred to in some of his stories, a book transcribed by “the Mad Arab” Abdul Alhazred from the voices of demons heard speaking through insects in the desert. As with other pieces of the time, I was in a very experimental period — I never actually left my experimental period for the whole time I was composing — but I also experimented with traditional forms, like the canon. At least one Christian fundamentalist in the audience was driven to fear for my ostensible soul by the piece, which means that even if it wasn’t a musical success, it certainly succeeded in some small way. There was a very specific chart for detuning the harpsichord, but it was loosely followed. (I had a hard time choosing which track to post, since in the other version, the harpsichord is more audible.) This was performed by a harpsichordist named Kathleen Davis-Lepage and a guitarist named Darryl (I think). I’ll try to get more info on that soon. But anyway, this piece was praisingly called the “freak-out” piece of the concert by my recital by my professor Gyula Csapo.

Compositions for which I have scores but no recordings (though I may manage to turn something up in the next while…):