The Decade of Chaos Part 2: 1995-1998

your blogger and family visit Bickleton, WA

During the latter half of the decade of chaos I spent a lot of time working on a cantata - The Abyss (1998) (since withdrawn) - for small SATB chorus, with an orchestra of five wind players and string quartet. It is based on several stanzas from Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Being flush with how well my first mod-17 piece - Psalm 130 (1994) - had come together I wanted to make something ambitious to see if it would work on a large scale. The resulting piece has some significant performance challenges, chief among them being ridiculously aspirational ranges for the singers. That aside I was struggling with what it meant for a music to actually be "in" mod-17, and not just some funky bespoke diatonicism. Although many parts may be quite effective from an expressionist standpoint, the whole is hopelessly wooly. But no work is wasted and I did accustom myself to thinking outside the mod-12 box. I also re-used some of the melodic ideas in other smaller pieces such as Two Pomes Play (1997) for clarinet and bassoon.

Neal and Karen in Bickleton, WA

In 1995 I arranged one of my fourpartsongs of 1992 - O Love, How Cheering is Thy Ray!- for solo voice and piano so that Karen could sing it for a church service. And for a while after that I was composing a song for that purpose every year or so, among which was Glory to God (1998), a setting of the first few stanzas of Charles Wesley's hymn, later stanzas of which appeared as the first hymn in the Methodist Hymnals of the last century as Oh For a Thousand Tongues To Sing.

Karen and I remained quite busy with our church choir through these years. We rehearsed in the choir's church-basement room, but would often work our way upstairs to the sanctuary to practice with the organ. Our organist, the fabulous David Di Fiore, usually got to the loft before the choir got themselves together, and would often accompany our straggling procession to the chancel with rousing quasi-calliope music. This amused me enormously so I wrote a piece for him, based on the hymn tune "Foundation" (popularly known as Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing) that, at one point goes into full calliope mode. I named it after one of my favorite lines in the hymn -  "Here I raise mine Ebenezer" - and being the clever lad I was I folded in an adaption of the hymn tune "Ebenezer" as a counterpoint. David played it magnificently and I treasure the recording I have of his performance.

In 1995 I gave another recital - Local Flavor - at our church. The program was:

Six Piano Pieces - Aaron Keyt
Short Forms - Ken Benshoof
Fifth Sonata - Lockrem Johnson
Oracle from Dark Wood - Neal Kosály-Meyer (with Neal joining me in a speaking role)
Sonata in 2 Movements - Keith Eisenbrey

your blogger with kids having a picnic

In August of 1996 we welcomed a second baby into the family, wisely deciding to stop right there. Besides our rapidly shrinking house, Karen made it quite clear that she now considered child birth to be a younger person's sport, and that she was done. In 1998 we travelled once again to Yellowstone, destroying the radiator in our car (a used Volvo with a turning radius to die for I had purchased from a co-worker). We met Karen's folks there, staying at a cabin at Canyon. Karen's sister, her husband David and their two kids also made it there, but Neal's little family were stymied by breakdowns and only got as far as Coeur D'Alene. 

your blogger in mid chaos

And Banned Rehearsal just kept right on making tapes. some highlights were two live performances - two 1996 sets at The Speakeasy Internet Café in the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle (a few months before a fire closed it down) and back at Brechemin Auditorium at the UW School of Music in 1997 for Banned Rehearsal 440. Shortly after that I bought a DAT recording device and we have been recording ourselves digitally ever since. We also put out our one and only CD - Teach Yourself to Drive (1998). It was a milestone for us, but definitely added some stress to the system on top of the general struggles of life with small children.

Banned Playout (1995):
Numbered: (380-409): 26:27:52
Peripherals: 15 Sessions: 07:31:01
Total 1995: 33:58:53

Banned Playout (1996):
Numbered: (410-439): 27:15:52
Sectionals: 1 Session: 00:46:05
Peripherals: 8 Sessions: 03:55:53
Total 1996: 31:57:50

Banned Playout (1997):
Numbered: (440-477): 34:49:45
Peripherals: 1 Session 00:25:58
Total 1997: 35:15:43

Banned Playout (1998):
Numbered: (478-517): 29:14:24
Sectionals: 1 Session: 00:28:01
Peripherals: 4 Sessions 02:06:54
Total 1998: 31:49:19

Grand Total: 613:58:22

Scores:

Two Pomes Play
O Love, How Cheering is Thy Ray!
Glory to God
"Here I raise mine Ebenezer"

Recordings:

O Love, How Cheering is Thy Ray!

"Here I raise mine Ebenezer" (performed on piano)

First Compositions 1973 - 1976

Percussion Trio (1973?)

The Dresden Overture (1973?)

**

Prelude for String Quartet (1974 or 1975)

Two Interruptions (1975-6)

Your blogger in a tie

In junior high, being able to read both rhythms and pitches, I was tagged to play percussion in the school orchestra. A fellow percussionist and I composed a short percussion trio for a district ensemble contest. We each threw in stuff that we wanted to do and strung them together so that there was a start of it and an end of it. We were probably the only group that wrote our own material, and I remember the adjudicator was impressed. Well, perhaps more intrigued that we had done it than impressed with the result. It is possible, but I doubt the score survives. My first attempt at writing a masterpiece resulted in a painfully earnest effusion for solo piano, inspired by Slaughterhouse Five, called The Dresden Overture. It featured lots of loud D minor chords. I'm pretty sure the score is gone and no recordings were made.

In both junior high and high school I got to know some excellent young string players. I also became acquainted with different chamber ensembles, simultaneously drinking deep drafts of the relative prestige the various configurations were accorded in our culture. String quartets seemed to be top of the heap, so I wrote a movement in E minor. I was playing lots of preludes (Chopin and Scriabin) so that's what I called it. My string writing isn't particularly gracious, though I got some excellent feedback on that from some of my peers who were game to read through it. On the plus side it's based on actual musical ideas - a melody, an accompanimental figuration, and a sequence or two. This was the piece I showed Dell Wade when we first met. I probably still have the original hand written score somewhere, and a printout of a score made with software long since unloadable. In 1985 I made a recording on a Wurlitzer Funmaker Sprite electronic organ that I had purchased for Banned Rehearsal in 1984 ($200!). There may be some overdubbing involved. The cheesy cruddy sound does the piece no disfavors.

I was dinking around on the piano one day when I chanced upon an impressive sounding but simple to produce figuration (a modified Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater pattern) that I worked into a blatant set of answering phrases in 7/16 time. In orchestra we had recently performed a piece by Alan Hovhannes that had a "senza misura" bit in it, so I strung together some juicy dissonant chords for a middle part, and marked it grandly "senza misura". Then I repeated the 7/16 phrases to bring it home. Thus was born Interruption, later Interruption #1.

Interruption #2 was my attempt to make lightning strike twice. This time the motor is a black note pentatonic figure in 5/8, set against a Ravel-ian melody in 2/4. The eighth note is equal between them, so that the meter lines up each 20 eighths. The tunes are pleasant and there are repeats, probably too many.

The Two Interruptions are the first of my pieces that I still rather enjoy. The focus is real, I'm starting to play with material in ways that I recognize as my own, the piano writing falls well under the hands, and I think the titles are great. I was quite pleased with myself. I played at least the first one for Lockrem Johnson when we met in the Spring of 1976. In going through my old papers I discover that the adjudicator who looked at my piece as part of the Washington State Music Teachers' Association Young Composer's Project was none of other than the late Bern Herbolsheimer, who wrote me a nice note. I played #1 in public several times back in the day, including as an encore at my Senior Recital. I picked them up again after many years to perform on a recital on November 5, 2011, at University Temple United Methodist Church, in Seattle. The score can be found here. 2 Interruptions

Greg Short, Dell Wade, Lockrem Johnson 1973 - 1977

Greg Short was the first composer I ever met in the flesh. He came to one of my piano lessons late in
1973 or early in 1974, a very tall young man with close-set eyes, a remarkable nervous intensity, and a large stash of scores. Mr. Smiley (I believe it was Mr. Smiley throughout our lessons, never "Vic" as it was later), probably through a local music teachers association, had met Greg, and somehow I was chosen to learn some of his simpler pieces as part of my program that year. "Knuckle Rag" was a fun and showy number featuring cluster chords hand slaps finger snaps leg slaps faceboard slaps and knocking. "Little Rose", "Rigadoon", and "The Fox", as easily as they fit into the student piece mode, are replete with Greg's deep knowledge of pianistic detail. In the spring of 1974, or perhaps the next year, I played some of them at a music teacher's association recital featuring Greg's and other local composers' music. I remember that one of those other composers was Lockrem Johnson, though I don't remember meeting him then. That meeting occurred through the auspices of Dell Wade.

Dell was composer in residence at the orchestra camp I attended, probably in the summer of 1975. He was, at that time, all of 19, but already hustling performances and collaborators. I shared some of my early pieces and ended up taking composition lessons with him. I learned about pens, inks, pencils, and staff paper, and picked up some nuts and bolts habits that are still with me today. I prefer, for example, sketching music on 12-stave 8.5X11 buff paper using #3 pencils. I don't know how much of his compositional personality rubbed off on me, though I'm sure there was a fair amount of style mimicry in my pieces from those years. At any rate, he taught me enough to make a favorable impression (I had a portfolio of music for various ensembles, orchestra, and some little piano pieces) on the composition faculty at the UW when I applied there in 1977.

In late 1976 or so Dell thought that I should enter one of my piano pieces in a statewide contest, but since he wasn't in the sponsoring teachers' association he brought me along to meet his teacher, Lockrem Johnson, who was. Lockrem listened while I played my piano piece (oh that Grotrian-Steinweg he had! magnificent!) and we looked at an orchestra piece I was working on. We listened to some music by others (it was through Dell and Lockrem that I learned about the astounding Swiss composer Frank Martin, and I remember a drop-the-needle game featuring one of Sullivan's concert overtures (Dell, if I recall, guessed it correctly, much to Lockrem's annoyance) and then he played a recording of his First Symphony while I read along in a copy of the manuscript score.

The fact that I was able to keep up, turning the pages at the right time, made an impression on him. He gave me a score of his 5th Sonata, and had suggestions about where I might want to study. He agreed to sponsor me in the contest (though he graciously called Vic Smiley for permission, since Vic could have done so also), and then called my parents, while I was still on the way home, to assure them that I really did have something going for me as a composer, and that it should be encouraged.

And, although he didn't want to take Dell's student from him, he felt that I would benefit from a more experienced mentor, offering to take me on the next year. Unfortunately, he passed away suddenly, far too young, before that could happen. At his memorial concert, at Cornish, I heard some of his 24 Preludes, and took some pains to acquire a full score from his cousin. I have performed the cycle all through once (8 at a time) and am hoping to finish the cycle again in a few years (4 at a time, in my recital series "Preludes in Seattle") along with those of Greg Short and of my first teacher at the University of Washington, Ken Benshoof.