mozart wishes he were me

When you spend hours and hours alone in a practice room, sometimes playing the same five notes over and over and over again until you think you’ll go insane.

When you hear such beautiful music in your head but you can’t make it come out, no matter how hard you try.

When you’re your own harshest critic, and there’s nothing you can do to make yourself happy, and everything you’re doing is wrong.

And worst, there are those horrible days when your very best is simply not good enough, when all you can so is go back into that practice room and aim for a perfection that’s impossible to attain.

But it’s all worth it. For that one perfect play-through, even if you’re in the practice room and the only person to hear it. For that one passage or harmony that twists your heart just so and reminds you why you’re a musician, sending you right back into that practice room not because you fell short but because a million different opportunities just opened up and you can’t stand not making music right that second. For that utterly complete exhaustion of mind and body, burning hands, that only comes after a performance that took everything you have and a little bit more. For the realization that THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS PERFECT, that ‘right’ is an infinity of possibility, that there’s no such thing as ‘wrong.’

I’m personally of the opinion that there’s no point in talking in terms of “rip-offs” in the context of traditional Western music & the 12-tone equal temperament scale. Worrying about originality to such an extent is something I’ve chosen to set aside, both for judging my own compositions and for judging other composers. I really used to get worked up about ‘having to make my pieces completely original’ to the point it messed with my musical output and mental health. Writing the music I hear in my head without scrutinizing it so much is kinda liberating and enables me to properly enjoy composing.

Yeah, I can’t say that it’s not very close in instrumentation to Stravinsky’s original. I think my point is more that I can distinctly associate that bit from Star Wars and the Rite of Spring as separate pieces of music - that to my ear at least they’re different enough (even though I do recognize the homage/inspiration on Williams’ part).

Also, there’s no way that what John Williams does is “ripping off” other composers. Honestly, I’d challenge almost anyone to try and do what he does with a single motif, chord, rhythm, or small melody taken from another composer. What he does is completely transformative, both in the ways of development and orchestration, and honestly if he can pull it off that well, then all the power to him!

Plagiarism, in classical music, really isn’t the same issue that it is in many other areas of art. If, however, John Williams took significant inspiration from another living composer and passing it off as his own work, then that would absolutely be an issue. But imitating well-known, famous musical works really isn’t the same kind of intellectual transgression. Williams found musical sounds that created the desired emotional effect for a specific track, consolidated what it was about the original score that caused that emotional response, and then applied it to his own work. It’s a smart way of composing that (like I mentioned before) we’re encouraged to do. 

And wasn’t it Stravinsky himself who fathered the saying, “Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal”?

Random Piano sketches

PIANOWRIMO 2020

November is nearly upon us.

What is Pianowrimo?  

in November 2017 I decided to write 30 pieces during the month — short pieces, just piano, but they had to be finished, recorded, and neatly presented.  And then I did the same thing the next two years.   And I ended up with some pieces I was actually really proud of, the sense of achieving something, and a bit of insight into both my favourite musical elements/fallback habits and what happened when I was pushed past them.

And that’s basically all there is to it. 

(Also it’s a pun on NaNoWriMo, to which it has absolutely no affiliation.)

But really what are the rules

If you want to keep to my rules, then it’s compose 30 piano pieces, make both a recording and a sheet.  In 2017, my challenge to myself was particularly the notation; I was coming up with a lot of little piano pieces and not writing them up neatly, and I’ve since got a lot better at that.  But you might want to change things.  Maybe you’re not actually much of a pianist or aren’t able to record things so you wouldn’t do that part.  (Or maybe, your challenge would be to write music to your own level that you can play!)  Or maybe you want to add a themed element, borrowed from an art month, there are many lists around.  You can set your own rules .

The main things, I think, are to have fun and to challenge yourself to write some music.  To write what feels like a lot of music, enough that you don’t have time to worry too much about whether it is ‘good’.   At the end of the month you’ll have a whole heap of pieces, and then you’ll surely like some of them, if not all of them.

On an appropriately rainy day in Auckland, NZ, here is the new scrolling score video (with NotePerformer sound patch) for my 2016 piano composition ‘Untitled Piano Piece No. 1 “Lament for a Rainy Day”’. 🌧️☔

“The piece was inspired by being stuck indoors on a rainy day, when I noticed how the rain started and stopped, and varied from full-on downpours to light showers. I have tried to reflect this in the piece.

The piece starts with the beginning of the rainfall; large drops, represented by the steady left-hand arpeggios, fall from the dark sky, increasing in intensity and then fading away as the bands of rain pass over. A second heavy shower passes over; in its wake is a sunshower, the sun breaking through the clouds even as the rain continues to fall. Shifts from major to minor and back again represent the sun being hidden and revealed again by the ever-changing clouds.

i’m laughing os hard oh my god

but yeah no all the composers were pretty out there one way or another. for more ridic shit about some other composers including hte classicaloids

erik satie refused to eat anything that wasn’t white. he only wore grey suits. he hated the sun. he also named some pieces some of the weirdest shit, like “veritable flabby preludes (for a dog)” or “desiccated embryos”

arnold schoenberg had a fear of the number thirteen. like a ridiculously wild fear, despite being born on the 13th… and dying on friday the 13th on his 76th birthday, 7+6 being 13

hector berlioz was an opium user, so you end up with pieces like “symphonie fantastique” which basically follows the story of an artist who poisoned himself with opium because unrequited love sucks and then experiences witches and Dies irae. this is just like… one of several other things. berlioz did some weird shit

mozart fucking loved potty jokes. especially about farting and poop. like they’re found everywhere in his letters

also another thing about mozart, one of his most beloved operas, don giovanni… well, some of it was literally written the day before and day of the premiere because #yolo

j.s. bach once pulled a sword on a bassoonist who accused him of slander and supposedly called him a “nanny-goat bassoonist”

he also ended up in jail for a month or so because he pissed off his boss by illegally looking for a job somewhere else while employed

joseph haydn was cheeky af and wrote a lot of music that kind of showed that (surprise symphony, farewell symphony, to name some)

or there would be some high class drama like

johannes brahms had the biggest crush on robert schumann’s wife, clara schumann (who to be fair, is a total catch because she was a fab pianist and composer). it was pretty unrequited tho so he was left just pining for her

the ever popular story of how igor stravinksy’s rite of spring starting a riot (literally) on the day of its premiere. people were so angry with the music that they just started… punching and shit

or the fact that richard wagner went off and married franz liszt’s daughter (and they’re from different schools of thought), and liszt was so livid that this all happened

The time Beethoven was performing and his piano accidentally caught on fire and he just kept fucking going

Schubert was arrested for backtalking a police officer. Schubert also supposedly met beethoven once. He brought his music along and was so nervous to meet his idol. When bee pointed out a single error in his music Schubert got super flustered and left.

His letters are also a fucking trip and solidify him as “world’s most relatable composer”

Chopin was turned on by the sound of the female voice. He was also Liszt’s drinking buddy even though they could not be more different (exceptionally highlighted in Hark! A vagrant’s Chopin / Liszt comic)

Lisztomania. Just fucking lisztomania. The fact you could tell where the women were seated apparently by the dampness of the seats no i am not kidding. People would try stealing his hair.

Tchaikovsky’s mother fucking CANNONS. Also he hated the nutcracker.

Chopin and Liszt were not drinking buddies, but rather frienemies, who were competitors who also hung out and played together (the drinking buddies thing is something made out in pop culture); Chopin was very ill most all of his life, and he and Liszt were opposites in aesthetic and music style (as can be heard in their compositions). Liszt even wrote a biography about Chopin after Chopin died, though it’s overtly wordy and very Liszt-style (Kate Beaton does a good job on that, agreed, but they weren’t really what one would call drinking buddies). While Liszt was flamboyant and literally broke pianos (and figurative hearts of women who would faint at his concerts), Chopin was decidedly private, introverted, and preferred playing parlor “salon” concerts and making money through teaching as to concert halls. His health, depression, and past trauma from leaving Poland, his sister dying, being ill, and heartbreak, certainly worsened his depression/mental state, and made him more closed off to many people, except for his close circle of friends and family.

The “turned on by the female voice” thing seems to be an internet fave when talking about Chopin, certainly he was fascinated by it, had unrequited love for at least one female singer, and the vocal-style came out in his piano style (which is v cool Classicaloid used Vocaloid for his pieces), but I honestly believe the man was asexual or on that spectrum based on his own writings and others’ accounts, including that or George Sand (with whom he was with for around nine years) saying how he repeatedly turned down her advances. In the show, his total introversion, and not showing his past kind of makes sense, as he died of TB at the age of 39 and suffered quite a lot in his last few years especially, physically and emotionally.

Tchaikovsky was VERY GAY and also VERY TALL. I’m still sad we didn’t get his Cannon piece because gosh dang that would have been awesome. This is a very good article. He had an honorary doctorate from Cambridge along with Saint-Saën, with whom he is recorded with having lunch there with. He also had depression, especially it would seem when it came to dealing with his love life and sexuality vs public appearance.

Beethoven, like in the show, enjoyed cooking and coffee, both facts I did not know until watching. Also, the state of his room in the show, according to contemptuous accounts, very much matched his IRL counterpart’s appearance as he got older, and his room and habits most of his life.

Tekla Badarzewska was a Polish woman composer in the Romantic era who did write more than “Maiden’s Prayer” (the song Bada features in the show as a “one-hit wonder”) but that is the one which really took off and she was known for during her very short life (1834-1861). She had five children—one of her daughters even had been enrolled in a music school later on. Tekla Badarzewska apparently has a crater on Venus named after her.

Schubert was a cinnamon roll of a person and the anecdote about the police sums him up from what I know. Also, he ended up buried (I think per request) next to Beethoven, after dying broke and from and illness (typhoid and/or STD. Apparently, though broke quite a lot, he was generous when he disnhasve money and a fun person to go out and drink with where this man who was about 5’ tall would just shout out stuff like “I am Franz Schubert!” to like a group of musicians (yes, there is an account of this). He relied on family and friends for support and was using his brother’s piano for composing.

I honestly don’t know very much about Bach but I know he was looked to by the above-mentioned composers as a father of music.

Richard Wagner in real life was more like DICK Wagner. He was Liszt’s son-in-law later on, even though he wasn’t much younger than Liszt; I don’t think Liszt liked him very much at all. (Liszt also mellowed out a whole lot when he was older including becoming a religious man). Wagner was one of Hitler’s favorites and I think that says a lot. Wagner was eallyball about “OVERTHROW FOR THE REVOLUTION” in real life, and made pamphlets at one point and organized rallies to actually contribute to revolution. He had very strong views on what “art” was and wrote a lot of opera. Cosima, his wife and Liszt’s daughter apparently tried to burn as many copies of his autobiography as possible after he died.

Ephira

Tamra Baca, cello

Jessica Cordner, harp

One secret I’ve been keeping is out! I hired musicians to play one of my pieces!

William Tell Overture- Rossini (Most famous part at 8:45, but why not listen to the whole thing?) I’m adding hints, at least to the ones I recognized culturally. This one is “go, horsey, go!”

Also Sprach Zarathustra- Strauss Slow, dramatic entry scene, IN SPAAACE.

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik- Mozart People running out of a fancy wedding or something. Also known as DUN, dun DUN, dun DUN dun DUN dun DUUUUN.

Symphony 94, Mvt. 2 “Surprise Symphony”- Haydn ?

Toccata and Fugue in d Minor-Bach Halloween organ!

Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2- Chopin Picture a tiny old woman playing piano in a sunlit room with lots of flower vases, about the spill the tragic secrets of her past to some timid young visitor.

Rondo alla Turca- Mozart the babysitter from The Incredibles: “Time for some COGNITIVE ENRICHMENT!”

Sinfonie de Fanfares: Rondeau- Jean-Joseph Mouret Royalty is coming. Or someone is getting married. Or royalty is getting married. Also the PBS Masterpieces theme.

The Four Seasons: Spring- Vivaldi (I just linked to the whole thing because it’s great) Again, someone is getting married, but this one is strings instead and a lot less frumpy.

Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring- Bach That one that amateur guitarists love where the notes are all up and down but all the same length. Also used in movie weddings.

O Fortuna (from Carmina Burana)- Carl Orff SONG OF DOOM. Also song of “baby on fire!” in The Incredibles.

Funeral March- Chopin ?

Orpheus in the Underworld: Infernal Galop (A.K.A. Can Can)- Offenbach Well, “aka can-can” says it all.

Pomp and Circumstance (You probably graduated to this)- Elgar Oh yes, Baaaa dun dun dun duun duuuuun… Also if you were a bandie you had to play it for 3 years before graduating to it.

Gayane: Sabre Dance- Aram Khachaturian Comically hectic productivity, a circus clown juggling while standing on a ball, or perhaps a rapidly-approaching termite infestation. Could go any way, really.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Wedding March- Mendelssohn The song movies play right AFTER they both say “I do.”

Carmen: Les Toreadors- Bizet I can’t be the only one who remembers when ‘Hey Arnold’ did this. “Bullfights and swordfights, rolling in manuuure!”

The Ride of the Valkyries- Wagner Good song for a naval battle I guess? I can only think of the mini golf course I went to as a kid with the creepy castle on Hole 18 that played this.

Für Elise- Beethoven That one every amateur piano player loves to play because the beginning is just E and E-flat over and over. Also ballet and piano recital scenes in movies.

Dance of the Hours- Ponchielli Hello mudda, hello fadda, here I am at, Camp Granada…

Rigotello: La Donna e Mobile- Verdi More than a few sophisticated movie villains (or snobby good guys) have this playing on a Victrola. Also, tell me you don’t picture Pavaroti no matter who’s actually singing.

Night on Bald Mountain- Mussorgsky ?

Romeo and Juliet: Love Theme- Tchaikovsky More movie-love, usually building up to admitting they live each other.

Entry of the Gladiators- Julius Fucik I have one word for you: CIRCUS.

Lakmé: Flower Duet- Delibes OMG ALIAS. Nadia’s spy  backstory in Film Noir!

Peer Gynt: In the Hall of the Mountain King- Greig Mischievous Tiptoeing in Movies song. Also something growing out of control, slowly at first and then quickly, and (comically) exploding.

Rodeo: Hoedown- Copland The title says it all tbh.

Peer Gynt: Morning Mood- Greig Sunrise/waking up Movie Song du jour.

New World Symphony Mov. [2][4]- Dvorak Well now I’m thinking of “An American Tail” and I’m crying…

Ave Maria (You knew this, but did you know that it was by Schubert?) Nothing to add. I’m not a music snob, really, but if you didn’t know this, YOU SHOULD.

Canon in D- Pachelbel This is the one that the pretty Trans-Siberian Orchestra Christmas song comes from. :-)

Flight of the Bumblebee - Rimsky-Korsakov Oh come on, everyone knows this one! It sounds too much like the title for you to forget what it’s called! Also: Drumline.

Finale to the 1812 Overture - Tchaikovsky Naval battle! Cannon! Fireworks! 4th of July in ‘Murica! Even though it’s about that *other* war going on in 1812!

Der Holle Rache kocht in meiner herzen (aka the Queen of the Night aria) - Mozart The one that fancy ladies in movies use to try and break champagne glasses.

Libiamo ne’ lieti calici - Verdi ?

Largo al factotum - Rossini Does your cartoon need a classical tune for your rotund Italian chef to sing while tossing pizza dough? Have we got a song for you!

Overture to The Barber of Seville - Rossini Fast-paced, sneaky-things-are-afoot movie song.

The Blue Danube Waltz - Strauss Da-da-da dum dum. *plink plink* *plink plink*. As heard in Jack’s entry to First Class in “Titanic,” and a million other places. (Veggie Tales “Stuff Mart,” anyone?)

Moonlight Sonata (mvmt. 1) - Beethoven The ultimate pretty-and-sad piano and/or ballet scene song.

Symphony No. 5 - Beethoven dun dun dun DUUUUUN.

And

The viola has a very special place in my heart. So does this piece. It’s my longest and my most unabashedly romantic. Unfortunately, because I submitted it to a call for scores, I worked too hard near the end and burned out, leaving myself unable to enjoy it for what it was until a few weeks had passed. Here it is at last. Please pray, cross your fingers, or use your good luck ritual of choice in hopes that musicians will choose to play it, and please tell me how the music makes you feel!

If you’re interested in the sheet music, use this link. I won’t post it in screenshots like I usually do because it’s 14 pages long, so here’s one of the more visually compelling passages:

My signature is hidden somewhere in the music, though not necessarily the measures pictured. What do you think it is?