Last week I wrote about rejection, and it was when I found out that my second competition piece hadn’t won, that I found out about another call for scores. It had been my intention to submit a movement to that competition this week. Well deadline was tonight, and I got really sick on Wednesday. I was lying pretty useless on the couch for a couple of days, and then today I got to hold my feverish child most of the day.

Thankfully, there wasn’t a lot I still needed to do to submit the piece, and this evening, with less than two hours to spare, I got on my computer and handed off kid-duty to my awesome husband and gave kids hand signals to leave me alone while I focused on the last minute things I still had to do to send it in.

There was one thing that stood out to me, and it was towards the end of the movement. For some reason, I had the second clarinet cut out in the middle of the building up to the end, and it just looked funny to me. So I decided to write a part for that instrument by doubling the second flute, and it just looked better, and I’m sure will feel more satisfying for the person playing that part.

I added a cover page, added a couple of notes that make it easier to read for the conductor, and fixed some funny looking slurs that were artifacts of going back and forth between transposing score and score in C.

I wrote some program notes, which I am seeing most competitions like to receive these days, and realized how much this piece actually means to me, and this time, I really hope it goes better than the last two competitions.