T. 50--Sunrise—A Reflection

This was one of two quartets I wrote for Music 188. We were given the instrumentation (flute, bassoon, violin, and cello) and our pieces would be performed and recorded by hired students. I found a place to use my full “sunrise melody,” and I gave it to the bassoon. I thought it would be fun to try retrograde symmetry; the second half of the piece is a mirror image of the first half. The melody sounded the same, yet different, when played backwards. I liked the differences in rhythm that occurred from this technique. The rhythmic cello part was inspired by a piece I played in a music class back in elementary school. One of the parts were in straight eighth notes (D-A-D-A-D-A-B-A) and the lyrics said, “Rise up, rise up, rise up morning.” I took that and gave it to the violin and cello in this piece (giving the D to the violin and the rest of the notes to the cello). 

In the student recording, everyone laughs after the class TA, announces the title and composer. The players must have been tired, and I honestly wonder if they got bored with playing my piece. I don’t enjoy listening to the recording. It’s not that the musicians did a poor job; I understand that they had over a dozen other pieces to record and couldn’t spend a lot of time on each one. It’s just that the recording brings out the weaknesses of my composition. I’m glad to know that I needed to give more spaces to breathe for the wind instruments, that the composition as a whole sounds rather uninteresting and static due to the lack of harmonic variation, and that the violin and flute parts are boring and don't seem to serve much of a purpose. 

Even though I recognize that it is a valuable opportunity to hear your own piece played by real musicians, it was still hard for me to enjoy hearing the human recording. I’ve gotten so used to a computer giving me "perfect" performances that it has been a challenge for me to get used to human performances of my work. It’s a very valuable lesson for me as a composer. 

Note: In the video above, you hear a MIDI recording of the piece as constructed by the Finale program. I couldn't use the student recording here because, unfortunately, I've misplaced the file.