Whilst working on a third piano sonata I have produced a third Mazurka. The three main subjects that have all remained were produced within a few hours of improvisation. But playing these subjects repeatedly in my mind the following day I added a fourth contrasting subject that is used at the introduction and appears again in the middle and used prominently in the coda. This introduction actually takes a harmonic sequence that I invented recently while exploring ideas for the third piano sonata. The harmony simply moves down in tones while alternating between major and minor (for example E, D minor C, B flat minor, A flat, G flat minor, returning to E) while the inversions are chosen carefully to allow the harmonies to appear to move upwards rather than downwards. The effect is wonderful.
It is tempting yet foolish to begin notation as soon as a piece of music seems interesting enough to be surely kept as a composition and thus I played the subjects repeatedly over subsequent days and temporarily moved my third piano sonata to the back of my mind. Avoiding notating allows a composition, which could be seen as finished, to be kept moderately liquid and thereby made more substantial. When you finally write you will do it in great haste.
The new Mazurka subjects could lend themselves to a variety of rhythmic accompaniment. The length of phrases through the various subjects were kept in multiples of six which allowed the accompaniment to be in 2/3, 3/4 or 6/8. I occasionally had to disregard ideas that moved the composition away from being a Mazurka although generally such contradictions do not worry me and can prove useful.
When I was happy with the structure I attempted to add further variety by refining the inversions of harmonies, altered the relationship between registers (choosing which octave one phrase should be played versus another phrase, swapping left and right hands, etc) and generally aesthetically critiquing each second of the music. When preparing any work of another composer for performance a plan should be consciously followed within each moment of the music by the interpreter – there is always something that must be happening (even of making nothing happen is what was decided to happen). This approach can apply when refining a composition. The composer’s job in this mature stage of a composition is so similar to a performer making decisions of tempo, dynamics and theme and applying one’s good taste. The composer thinks exactly in such a way except note changes are taken as mere dynamics. As so my third Mazurka was refined over the last week and I can say more or less finished.
Today I had an interesting meeting with Philip Glass. He came into the cafe that I normally work (whether programming or composing) – Cibo on Gouger St in Adelaide – as he is here for the festival. He was simultaneously dreamy and observant, and when we started talking he was interested to know what it is like to compose in this environment, perhaps being taken by the extremely hot weather presently passing through Adelaide. He came across as very patient, gracious and warm and leaving me with a feeling as I would have enjoyed to talk with him much longer about any subject.
The 2008 Pilgrim Church concert was very successful. Both radio 5UV and radio 5MBS were recording and the CD will be available through 5MBS. The concert programme follows:
In addition to the second Mazurka composed last year, all five Romanian Dances (edited recently) and Ondine (by Maurice Ravel, 1908) the audience asked for an encore. For this I played an improvisation based on a recent subject brewing over the last few days which I will develop into a composition over the next few days.
While practicing my fifth Romanian Dance for my public concert only one week away (in which I play Ondine from Gaspard de la Nuit by Ravel, my five Romanian Dances and my second Mazurka) I could not withhold myself from launching into this improvisation immediately following the optimistic ending of this dance. The subject is elegant and full of symmetry and worthy of being developed later within an orchestral work – thus I recorded it immediately.A similar variation using the piano.
I have now played five improvisations, one straight after another, although only three could be linked to – somehow the [audio] tag feature here works with some files and not with others.This improvisation uses various common themes developed recently – mostly exploring capriciously the second subject of my 3rd Romanian Dance, and contains almost nothing unique in my mind for today. It generally applies the trick of staying in the dominant and providing the listener insufficiently with the tonic, and thus a yearning. Immediately after playing the above improvisation I played this second improvisation with String Orchestra which introduces an entirely new subject that came to me three minutes before playing while making a cup of tea. Like the above improvisation it suspends the listener generally within the dominant.I later then played this fetal improvisation based largely on the concept of the major harmony extended nearly always with the minor 6th played in the lower register.
There is something wonderful about art, and in particular music – this purest of art forms – in that the art can reveal and define in a few seconds an aesthetic containing thousands of implications and assumptions that may take a great effort and much time to express with common language. Furthermore the ideas projected through sound can provide the shortest, and least distorted, tunnel between the artist’s imagination and the listener’s imagination. And like all art forms, the composition is an expression, affirmation and reinforcement of only one person’s aesthetic (a mixture of conscious decisions and subconscious inclinations), yet the object of art can be observed (or listened to) by one million other minds.
Some will occasionally create art with little thought or without past practice and the development of a great skill, or they will copy the art of another without criticizing it or making many further decisions. The great worth within a composition begins when what is written is written with thought and absolute conviction, and further it is refined to the artist’s final and most carefully decided opinion. The associated aesthetic (which is generally speaking the main message of any art) is thus automatically (and without choice by the composer) manifested – even if the composer tries to pretend something then the aesthetic still manifests to match their pretending. And so in creating art with such conviction the artist becomes aesthetically transparent. Their individual mind is revealed and their inner views become surrounded by windows and the more densely ideas are contained within the work the more clear these windows are. The decisions made within the art work themselves become the art, and outside of observing these decisions the art has no purpose. Thus prior to attempting to imagine what the artist was thinking when creating the art, it should not be surprising to see the work as an absurd construction with no purpose.
How often it is that people will ask “Do you like this piece of art?” or “Do you like this music?”. What do these questions mean? In common sense the observer is being asked whether they approve of the overall impression, or at least the first impression, that the work communicates. Even the first impression after all can provide a huge amount of information about the artist’s aesthetic judgment. Whether the observer answers that they like or dislike what they are observing the work should have succeeding in communicating the underlying aesthetic of the artist.
To achieve this the artist merely has to represent only his own thoughts within the art. In making each decision as the work is created the artist is alone and all of the decisions involved are his own. Thus in applying decisions densely within the construction, the artist has the best chance of creating great art. Without decisions being made, or without the art being based on problems solved earlier (and now subconscious) the art really has no long-term value. It could however be satisfying supply and demand and possibly exposing the work to a greater audience in the short-term.
The artist who attempts to represent the thoughts of the society around him, to presume that he can understand the varied sense of good taste of the population around him, I imagine will struggle to produce great art. The short tunnel between the observer and the artist’s mind is greatly distorted when the artist creates extra tunnels into the minds of his surrounding population.
And for the artist concerned about their work being original, the answer lies is presenting problems within the work and solving them. This will ensure plentiful ideas are applied to the work which are all forced from only the artist’s mind. Some of these ideas might be difficult to solve and will generally involve much of their time. After solving all of these problems the work is automatically original. A work of art is not an object, or a sound, but a collection of ideas. When this can be understood the artist can create more freely without concern for the originality of their work.
Great attention aroused the US-premiere of a Mazurka composed by Julian Cochran. The young composer was flying-in from Australia to attend the concert.
I have attached a copy of the notes given to the audience at the Carnegie Hall concert performed by Gil Sullivan 10 December 2008 concert. His standing ovation was very well deserved. I can say that he played my Mazurka so imaginatively. I was not surprised by this, as I heard him play it in Adelaide Australia at Elder Hall, and while I was impressed he said that he played it much better in Darwin a few weeks later. I am not sure how this could be possible, as there was not much he could have added or more variation of color he could have provided.
Oh, how it is remarkable how public recognition and actual level of artistry are so disconnected. This takes many years to pan out such that recognition and artistry to adjust to the ‘correct’ levels. It is easy to say that we have great artists such as Gil Sullivan who almost no one has heard of outside of Australia and we have worthless artists with far too much observation for the world’s good. However it is by definition that the ‘great art’ comes into being only when observed to survive through many fashions, and this simply takes much time and I am not particularly negative about the phenomenon.
Having returned from my trip to Moscow and the concert at Carnegie Hall in New York on 10 December 2007, where Gil Sullivan performed my Mazurka No. 1 very imaginatively and effectively, I have the time to concentrate on the orchestration of my Romanian Dances. Because of this goal I have been forced to review the piano versions of these compositions, and in picturing the possibilities of the orchestra in my mind I have had some arguments with myself to decide if the piano versions are as refined as they can be. The works were pretty strong however I have had the chance to make some small modifications which I consider important. The opening of the first Romanian Dance contained an accompaniment that did not relate to the rhythmic intentions of the composition as a whole, and although hardly noticeable as a problem, it was a contradiction that had to be changed. And so now I can bare to write the orchestral version to match the piano version. I intend to have no musical differences between the piano and orchestral versions, and also to avoid special effects.
Last night I mostly played my fifth Romanian Dance in order to clarify particularly the ending. And there were so many rhythmic accents in the accompaniment with various weights and so I removed the minor accents and kept the major accents, thus clarifying the main musical intention. This is why it is so important to perform my works in concert before considering them completed. When faced with the public audience it is easier to ask “Is this convincing?” and this creates an impetus for faster decision making over what is the most important. There is however a more restricted opportunity for experimentation and for this reason I would not want to give concerts too frequently.
