Diary

charting the compositional journey as it happens

Nova

27th December 2021 : Movement 2 - 'Made From Dust'

Music drawn from 'a cloud of possibilities' The cloud, or 'charcoal dust', was inspired seeing an artist create a portrait using that medium and forming an image by reducing it with the use of an eraser. In an effort to 'get off the runway' with this piece I constructed an 'assembly' project and outlined a structure for Made From Dust. I filled in part of the structure and decided to concentrate on the 2nd subject rather than constantly tinker with the opening material. This music comes straight from the heart; some of the clarinet solo and supporting harmonies were found at the piano the old-fashioned way - trying to wrestle from my brain what I knew to be there. I deliberately quoted Naomi at the end of this passage and then cried copiously. I tried to imagine what she looked like when I held her little body. Next week I tackle the development. Sonata form? Who said that?

3rd July 2021 : An Explosion, Funky Poly and a Glass Harmonica

Sketches for movement 1 of Nova

Nova is a multi-movement project. Each movement is loosely influenced by the material of the others but I'm not convinced this is a symphony since the original conception was that the movements should be capable of standing alone too. Movement II, Made From Dust, uses material derived from Charcoal Dust III.

Nova

The Man in the Moon

8th April 2021 : Opening bassoon solo

Restoring a lost bassoon solo that originally started this work. Beware what you bin! I had to reconstruct this from a SoundCloud upload made October 2015 after I realised my mistake in ditching it. I felt free enough to develop the solo without treating the original too reverently. It means I need to rewrite substantial parts of the work - that's not a bad thing as it needed it anyway.

Original bassoon solo

From 2015. I ditched this solo and regretted later. I had inadvertently wiped all traces of the files from all my HDs and backups as far as I could find. This is the only record - a SoundCloud post from 2015

The Man in the Moon is a work which had a long genesis. Here I plan to revise and share revisions of the work as and when the mood takes me, alongside any old sketches I am able to unearth.

Charcoal Dust

August 2021 : Charcoal Dust III

The version of charcoal dust I am using as pre-composition material for Made From Dust. It has embedded in it a reference to 'Naomi', a three-note motif I used in my String Quintet (2005) and nearly every work since.

21st August 2021 : Charcoal Dust II

Another try before abandoning these initial sketches in favour of a more thematic based dust.

21st August 2021: Charcoal Dust I

Initial dust sketches intended for Made From Dust but discarded in favour of a more sophisticated cloud since this did not have enough embedded thematic interest. However it holds sufficient promise that I think it may resurface at a later stage in a subsequent project.

Charcoal Dust is not a complete composition as such, rather it's a musical 'cloud of possibilities' from which more defined music can be drawn. Some might mistakenly call such a thing a matrix, but the whole point of the dust is that it can be sounded complete in itself (in theory at least) and thus be enjoyed in its own right. It also means that music of disparate surface gestures, textures and styles - picked form the same cloud - will have at their core an underlying relationship. Charcoal Dust III is the version I am using as pre-composition for Made From Dust

Charcoal Dust

Diary

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