Updatification

As some of you may know, I'm graduating in December. One semester early. Whop-dee-do. It feels nice, I'll admit. Not only I'm I severing the bonds which have enslaved me since age 6 but I'm also cheating the system - almost no one graduates North Park's music program in 3 1/2 years and lives to tell the tale.

Ironically, one of my main asperations right now is to take up a brand new set of fetters under the guise of Northwestern University. In the last few years, trombone has been reduced from the main passion of my existence to the little more than bain of my existence (at least where NP is concerned) no thanks to the pitiful orchestra program that they neglected to tell me about before I came there ("Sure, Neil...we have an orchestra") and especially no thanks to the bitter wench I call my trombone teacher.

We used to get along okay. She had priority issues (where trombone consumed every she was, breathed, ate, and excreted) but that was okay. But then last summer, I started to realize that I had been ignoring composition, the flame of which had been ignited at a young age. For some reason, it got pushed farther and farther back into the musical skeleton closet of my life. Recently, my love and a few other close friends compelled me through their love and enthusiasm for my music to take up composition on a regular basis. I never really stopped but I wasn't composing in any set frequency.

I came back to school last fall resolved to switch my major to a plain old B.A. in music and ditch the already smoldering performance degree I had somehow managed to keep alive. I say that not because I suck at performing - but as time at NP wore on, combined with the two aforementioned factors, I stopped practicing.

My teacher didn't take this too well but to make a long story short. I switched to a B.A. and consequently, am getting out of North Park early (I feel like a prisoner talking about his pending parole). My trombone teacher has responded skeptically to my composition, like anything else I do musically but I still intend on attending Northwestern University in the Fall of 2009 in pursuit of my Doctorate in composition.

It's a two year program for those "especially gifted" youngsters who have just graduated with their Bachelors. Otherwise, they place in you the three year program. Phooey, huh?

I'd rather have them call me "especially gifted" and place me in the two year program but I think at this point, I'll be happy just to have gotten accepted.

The portfolio is due in December and consists of Finale files of 3 to 5 representative compositions for a variety of ensembles (one professors of mine suggested I should submit at least one handwritten scores since my desk habits strongly echo those of Stravinsky...apparently), optional but preferred recordings of said works, and to top it off, two analytical papers, one focusing on a work written post-1950 and another written on a topic of my choosing [cough, cough]...Mahler 10...that one's already been written.

Wish me luck.

Part of the work I will submit will be part of the song cycle I'm working on.

What is this song cycle I refer to?

Somewhere last February, I got the idea to write a cycle of songs on a theme. I had a few seed ideas that I heard as vocal pieces with orchestral accompaniment. I gave my mind a few more weeks and I had enough to start working. Within a month, I had all themes and motives that I would use. The theme of the cycle was simple: I was at North Park, a place I often vehemently dislike; the love of my life was 3 1/2 hours away from me; and I was too much of a bookworm to feel like making any additional friends...the theme would be "Vereinsamkeit" or the act of being Solitary.

It's a cycle of four songs. The movement of keys from movement to movement is G# minor - E minor - C minor (already an augmented triad) - and G-flat major (which is a tritone relationship with C minor, the key of the third song; incidentally, the tritone C-G-flat serves as the foundational motive of that song). But I hate analyzing my music. I like my music to speak for itself and let the analyists do their work later - I'm a composer after all.

I will say that the first three songs develop the idea of "Vereinsamkeit" (with texts by Nietzsche and Lenau respectively) and in the final song, we get a glimpse of light, of hope and most importantly, of love and that is the point I want to make. The text of the last poem by the way is by Goethe. I may post the texts to these poems here for you to read, as German poetry is exquisitely lovely, but to keep the spirit of a world premiere (maybe...I'm at the mercy of North Park's not so merciful attitude) I won't post them until after the premiere.

The first and third songs are finished. The second is finished in my mind. Only the fourth is the one I continue to labor on.

Knowing me, I will probably discuss the cycle at length later on but this post has gone on long enough.

Some possible titles for the whole cycle are:

Waldelieder

Waldeschatten

Schatten im Ruckblick

Vereinsamtenlieder

Waldereise (which sounds like Winterreise so forget this one)

pick one...