Has It Really Been Since June?

Apparently I'm not very good at keeping up a blog. Maybe that's a good thing though, as I've been spending just about all of my time doing music since last time I've updated. Here's what happened this summer:

1. Graduated UCSD, degree in music and political theory. Cool!

2. Moved to Paris, to study for summer at L'Ecole Normale Du Musique Du Paris. I spent most of my time doing counterpoint and harmony and ear training and the like in the Nadia Boulanger method, but got to compose a bit under Michel Merlet, who was a student of Messiaen's. Also made some great friends, from all over the place. I wrote a string trio, that I started during an all-nighter on the sidewalk in pouring rain in a small town called Arras, after seeing Radiohead and Sigur Ros there. You can hear it from the Paris show at the end of July here.

3. Went back to California for a couple of weeks, where I helped out some friends in The Honest Iago Music and Arts Collective with some recording and writing. I'll put a link up to their site when the songs are released. Also had shows with them, which went very well.

4. Said a very sad but hopeful goodbye to my friends and girlfriend and family and moved to London. I'm now here and studying composition with Rob Keeley for an MMus at King's College London, and generally enjoying the music scene and meeting people. Finally saw the Rite of Spring live and it was a religious experience on Wednesday, especially when coupled with Ligeti's Atmospheres and performed by the London Philharmonic. This is a great town for music, as that concert was only 4 pounds, and they seem to have something similar almost every day. The next night (Thursday) my friends Tom, Nil, and I went to go see Strike Anywhere at the Camden Underworld, also a great show. I did get a very solid kick in the face, but it feels a bit better tonight. It looks like we are starting a composers'/new music ensemble at King's with some of the other people in the program, and I'm getting close already with a guy from Cornwall named Tom, and an Irish guy named Donal, who are both composers and really great guys.

5. There's a duo for violin and viola on the way, and it's going to be entirely new territory for me. That's all folks.

Framed Silence

A couple of days ago my good friend Candice asked to see a piece I had written, so I showed her my piano piece, called 88 (above, in case you want to play it). She asked me to explain what was going on in it (theoretically) and I did, and then she asked why there was so much silence in the middle section. I answered that it felt right, given the rest of the piece, and caught the listener's attention.

I've been thinking about that answer for a couple of days, and now have a far better understanding of why the silence seems "right" there. The piece is written to a set of serial parameters, as far as pitch is concerned. This is nothing new; composers have been trying out different ways of writing music mathematically for about a hundred years now. Something that has always fascinated me is how these composers have managed to put their own voices into predetermined, mathematical structures. The silence in my piece, I realized, is my way of inserting myself into something that is predetermined and cannot be changed. The pitches are going to continue in the method that the formula prescribes, but by pausing that formula, I find a way to break the system while operating within its limits. I could have held the rest indefinitely without breaking any of the rules I had set up, but I think if I had done that the audience probably would have walked out at some point. In the most melodramatic of phrases, the silence is me screaming that I exist.