Writing again!

I'm sitting down today with the task of writing pep music for football games. The pep music Penns Grove has is old, parts are missing, and there are a lot of errors. I got sick of it so I'm just writing a few tunes so we can actually sound decent at football games.

Picked up a gig finishing a show for a local band last night. I'm looking forward to getting started on that. I enjoy arranging a lot, and hope that for next season I can up my load. This year I got started so early on Centennial HS (MD), one of my loyal customers...January, in fact...that I was able to, for the first time, not really have to work on two projects at once. Generally speaking they all overlap. You write one band's opener, then go on to another opener. Finish the openers, and then work on the 2nd tune for each band. At least that's how I usually work if I have a lot of groups all lined up at the same time.

Ideally, enough bands sign on early enough that I'm able to schedule time to work on each show and not worry about any overlapping. This way I can just get myself in the mindset to write one show, then move onto the next. It's rare, but it's nice when it does happen.

This year I got into writing original compositions for two bands (Penns Grove and Crestwood). The shows aren't entirely composed, but a good portion of them are. I enjoy composing more than I remember. Coming out of college I tried doing it a bit, but wasn't in a real good head space for a long time. I found composing difficult and laborious...not artistic, and so I simply dismissed it as a skill I didn't possess. Over time it frustrated me, because I enjoyed arranging so much and the more I arranged the more "original" my arrangements became. They weren't transcriptions, but fresh arrangements and variations. I figured, if I could do that why couldn't I compose something original.

My thought at the time was that I couldn't write melody because, while I love lyrical melodies and lush harmonies, quite often my compositions tend to be more rhythmic. So, who's to say what's a better technique?  While some composers write lyrical melodies that flow from the instruments, others write more rhythmic motives and use the harmonic structure within those rhythms to construct their idea of melody. John Adam's "Short Ride in a Fast Machine," for instance, is rhythmic in nature, while the second movement from Samuel Barber's Piano Concerto is incredibly lyrical.

By the way, I love Samuel Barber's Piano Concerto. I find the second movement to be hauntingly beautiful. I'm not generally a big concerto guy. I love orchestral music, but the whole "you go ahead and show off how awesome you are" thing is just not my bag.

If you're a friend of mine and reading this, you're probably chuckling because you knew it was a matter of time before I started extolling the praises of Samuel Barber. So what! He's my favorite composer. I'll write more about him in the future, but here's an article I wrote for an online newspaper about Barber on his 99th birthday earlier this year.

March 12, 2009
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A very happy belated birthday to one of America's greatest composers, Samuel Osborne Barber! He would be 99 years of age.

Samuel Barber was born on March 9th, 1910 in West Chester, PA. The family home at 107 Church St. still stands and is just blocks from West Chester University. Barber is the composer of the famous "Adagio for Strings," which many people know from the movie "Platoon" and other films. In addition, Barber won Pulitzer Prizes for both his opera "Vanessa," and his incredible piano concerto

While Barber was born and raised in the rural and conservative West Chester, he was schooled in music at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. He was one of the first students to walk through Curtis' doors in 1924 and excelled as a student in piano, voice, and composition. It was here that he met his great friend, partner, and collaborator Gian Carlo Menotti. Barber's composition teacher at Curtis, Rosario Scalero, had great influence on the work of the young composer. Samuel Barber's music is unabashedly tonal and lyrical. He had an uncanny ability to relate to the heart and soul of the listener through his music.

Samuel Barber was a quiet, thoughtful man who stayed true to his musical convictions in an age of wild musical experimentation. While his relationship with Menotti became strained over the years, the two reconciled before his death. Barber died at the age of 71 on January 23rd, 1981 in New York. He is buried at the Oaklands Cemetery in West Chester with his parents and beloved sister. There is an empty plot next to Barber's that was reserved for Menotti, but when the composer died in 2007 he was instead buried in Scotland.

I should have written this for my first article because of my personal relationship with his music, but I did not think of it at the time. Samuel Barber's music has served as a great inspiration for me throughout my life, and to have lived so close to the childhood home of one of the greatest composers our country has produced was an amazing experience. In fact, I just took my wife to see his grave just a few weeks ago for the first time. I try to get there once a year or so to play some music, and clear away the leaves and grass...and just to say "hi."

Happy birthday, Samuel Barber!