It's the piece I composed called, "It Came upon the Midnight Clear." Yes, it's the same text that we're all familiar with but with completely different music. Different melodies, different harmonies, different rhythms (although one is the same).
It composed it back in July. Don't ask my why I was writing Christmas music back in July, but I was. I composed it in a single afternoon (which doesn't usually happen . . . ever) and have spent some time polishing it up and making sure that it is represented in the best possible way. I used some impressionist and post-impressionist techniques in this piece, which is not all that new of a thing for me. Quartal harmonies, secundal harmonies, bi-chordalism (to some extent), pandiatonicism (to some extent), planing, ninth chords and the pentatonic scale. This piece is kind of a different direction than I've had in the past. Less function, more color and thicker textures. I'm not sure if this is the direction I'll take my compositions in, but it's a possibility. I know I talked about counterpoint versus stacked chords in a previous blog, but I just couldn't help myself.
In one of my previous posts I said, "Not sure when I'll actually hear this, but it's still fun to write. Maybe someday." Well, that day is soon coming! When I took it to Dr. Staheli, he really liked it and asked if I would promise it to the BYU Singers. I just about died. This is a dream come true: to write music for this incredible ensemble and have their incredible director interpret it. I'm over the flippin' moon. Dr. Staheli has been studying it and we're going to start rehearsing after our November Concert. I am beyond excited! Writing music is fun (sometimes painful), but hearing it is unbelievably rewarding.
Tickets for the Christmas concert go on sale tomorrow (November 2nd), and typically sell out very fast. Please come if you can. Here's page one from the piece that I posted a while back, it's actually different now, but my computer is in the shop so I don't have the true updated version. This'll do for now. Once I get a recording, I'll post it here.
Update: I finally got my laptop back! Here's the real page one with changes:
Posts
2 comments:
Wahoo!!!!!! I am so excited and privileged to be able to sing this piece. It is going to be incredible. Thanks for all your hard work on this and so many other pieces. You are so talented :)
Congrats! Is this your first?
Post a Comment