{"id":1178,"date":"2017-11-06T12:16:26","date_gmt":"2017-11-06T17:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/?p=1178"},"modified":"2017-11-06T12:16:26","modified_gmt":"2017-11-06T17:16:26","slug":"lost-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/2017\/11\/lost-music.html","title":{"rendered":"Lost Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I\u2019ve had this happen to me before.<\/p>\n

My head is always whirling with music.\u00a0 For a long time, I assumed that was true for everyone, but it\u2019s really one of those phenomena we can describe to one another without ever being sure we are experiencing the same thing.<\/p>\n

What I constantly hear is sounds combining and recombining, heading off in simultaneous different directions, merging together again as something completely different.\u00a0 Typically, a single sonority heard in real life turns into an endless stream of variants as it bounces around my skull.\u00a0 Maybe that happens to everyone, I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

As a Composition Professor, I have occasion to assign my students to write for various ensembles.\u00a0 Working with them on their music always gets my head into a particular sound world, and the whirling begins.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been working with one of my students this fall on a piece that uses an ensemble I\u2019ve never composed for.\u00a0 Carefully guiding his efforts, I\u2019ve found myself caught again and again in sonority overload, as the music he is writing diverges from what\u2019s going on in my mind.<\/p>\n

Last week I sat down and wrote a piece of my own for this ensemble.\u00a0 It turned out beautifully.\u00a0 I could easily organize a premiere for it, but in doing so I would run the risk of taking rehearsal time away from my student or possibly showing him up, which I don\u2019t want to do.\u00a0 So, the piece goes into a folder and waits for a more opportune time.<\/p>\n

Just one problem: I\u2019m always focused on whatever piece I\u2019m working on, which means I sometimes forget about pieces that I\u2019ve written in the past, especially ones that have never been performed, so putting a piece in a folder for later sometimes consigns it to oblivion. \u00a0I have, by this time, quite a few folders full of that kind of thing.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, plenty of the whirling in my head ends up in compositions that people play, so these \u201clost\u201d compositions aren\u2019t anything like a serious tragedy — more like a droll joke at the expense of my creative time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve had this happen to me before. My head is always whirling with music.\u00a0 For a long time, I assumed that was true for everyone, but it\u2019s really one of those phenomena we can describe to one another without ever being sure we are experiencing the same thing. What I constantly hear is sounds combining […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1178","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1178"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1180,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178\/revisions\/1180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}