The Thesis
It has been a while since my previous post, though I feel completely justified in having not written recently. I’ve been working on my thesis for my masters degree, and it took far longer than I had wanted it to, but I’m happy to say it’s done minus a few revisions, there is a beautiful cover being created by a friend from middle and high school named Heidi Patterson (same artist that did The Dwindling Twilight), and a defense and potential performance of it in the works. Allow me to tell the tale of the development of my thesis:
Last spring, I was studying with Rodney Rogers. He’s the orchestration man at ASU, and a student of Joseph Schwantner‘s from back in the day, so naturally I was inclined to work on a piece that exhibited some rockin’ orchestration techniques. It was designed to be “research” for my actual thesis, mostly trying to figure out how to write for a wind ensemble without utilizing that terrible sound that inundates the wind ensemble repertoire. Don’t get me wrong, the wind ensemble is one of the most colorful, powerful, and delicate large ensembles on the planet. They’re often willing to play anything, will usually play it quite well, give the piece much more rehearsal time one would ever get from an orchestra, and have funds that can help sustain and support the development of new music. The problem is not with the ensemble, but with this weird stigma towards the ensemble. Traditionally, the ensemble has consisted of large amounts of the same types of instruments (clarinets, saxophones, trumpets, flutes), all of which double each other to fill out the sound. As a result, the orchestration is typically quite bad. There are some exceptions, such as Gustav Holst’s Suite No. 1 in Eb for Military Band, several of Aaron Copland‘s transcriptions of his own works, Darius Milhaud‘s Suite Française, among many others, but the bulk of the rep lacks in good orchestration. As a result, the more successful composers for wind band are abandoning the “traditional” orchestration techniques to help develop the wind ensemble into everything that it could be, while everyone else still looks down their noses at the awesomeness of such an ensemble.
The piece was never finished, but was developed enough to earn a name: Supernal Dragonfly. I arranged to continue my studies with Roshanne Etezady, who has her hands very deep into current wind ensemble culture, and began on a work entitled the Irony Mark. This was going to be my thesis, but the more and more I worked on it, the less and less I was able to get done. Every week I would go into my lesson with basically nothing past the first 2 minutes of music written, and it was painful to work on! I had no idea why I wasn’t getting anywhere, but it needed to stop. I finished out the semester trying to come up with something for the piece, but never broke through that wall. Over the break, I had to work on my fourth string quartet for a collaboration with the Phoenix Art Museum, so I was able to get away from the Irony Mark, but I still was not happy with how it was going.
At the beginning of the Spring semester, prior to having any lessons with Dr. Etezady, I dug up Supernal Dragonfly once more and looked through it. The last time I had touched the score was when I was applying for the ACCBDA Grant, and despite it being incomplete, it had a lot of direction and interest in it. After debating with myself, it became apparent that this piece needed to be my thesis; my culminating experience project that would represent everything I had covered during my masters. I checked in with Dr. Etezady, and she was game, so I dusted off the insect and began putting it back together.
I’ve spent nearly the entire semester on it, reworking previously written sections, developing newer ideas, and ultimately carving out a duality within the personality of a the supernal dragonfly. The piece itself is for a larger wind ensemble, though not with the massive amounts of percussion that is so often found in 21st century works. It focuses on the twitchy aspects of a dragonfly, as well as the much more elegant ones. The tempo is consistent with no fluctuation at all, and the speed of the piece is altered by harmonic progression and rhythmic activity. The orchestration ranges from extremely thick and contrapuntal to thin and transparent, though – as pointed out by my teacher – there is rarely a moment where the motion and energy completely subside. A score will be posted soon once revisions by my committee are done.
All in all, it’s a good piece, and I hope others will think the same.