Monthly Archives: January 2023

Video of Requiem up on my YouTube channel

I now have Requiem up on my YouTube channel.

I wrote this piece to commemorate my lost babies. Sadly, the idea formed in my head sometime in 2018 after my first loss, which really devastated me. It maybe was the most destabilizing experience of my life when I lost my baby at about 11 weeks. Thankfully, I had some very thoughtful friends who ministered to me during that difficult time.

I didn’t expect to have another baby to mourn before completing the piece, but in January of 2021, I lost another baby at about 11 weeks as well. This time, I was determined to finish the project and did so in a short amount of time afterwards.

Jason Bergman had scheduled the performance for October 12, 2021. I was looking forward to attending it. I went to a rehearsal the week prior to see that they were executing my ideas like I had imagined. The fantastic musicians – Jason Bergman, Monte Belknap, and Michelle Kesler – interpreted my ideas in a lovely way and I was excited about hearing the premiere on the following Tuesday evening.

On Friday night, my midwife detected something off about my baby, and I went to get an ultrasound scan the next day. Baby wasn’t doing well, and the fluids were low, so it was hard to get a good scan.

Monday night, which happened to be my birthday, my midwife came by again, and could no longer detect a heartbeat. I expected that I’d lose this baby quickly, like the other babies, and worried not only about the heartbreak, but also about attending the premiere, so long awaited.

But I went and listened to the premiere with my husband, and this piece really moved me. Baby ended up being born several weeks later, and although he had already passed away, his birth was glorious, and everything was as good as it could be. Again, I had the lovely support of friends around me.

When I was a teen, I had the opportunity to perform Mozart’s Requiem with my school chamber choir. That music is sublime. Mozart wrote it as his last piece of music, and he didn’t finish it before he died, so a student finished it “in his style,” and we can only hope it was much like the man himself would have written it.

The music from Mozart’s Requiem has stayed with me all these years, and whereas I don’t claim his genius, I have been inspired by his music throughout my life, in particular the Requiem. Another fantastic piece of music with the same name is by Gabriel Fauré. I recommend these pieces anytime you want to feel lifted spiritually, or need to grieve a loved one.

It is my hope that my piece will serve to help another person grieve and mourn his or her loved ones as well.

End of the first movement SQ1

Sometimes, a piece of music has a very imaginative title. Other times, it is more abstract, and I just call it “String quartet #1”, like so many before me. Maybe some day, I’ll have an idea that demands a change, but for now, that is what I call my work.

I filled in the last few measures of music for the first movement. I added in some more articulation where I thought it was needed, and some dynamics markings. The piece is at least a completed draft. As I was going through the parts I wrote today, I noticed several times I had had all of the parts moving in the same direction. Generally, that is frowned upon. So I changed a few pitches, letting the second violin go down as the other three go up, and letting the cello later stay on the same pitch when the other three go up. Last instances, I just let the viola go higher than the second violin, because the chord was pretty tight. Now the second violin goes down when everyone goes up, and the viola gets to go down when all the others go up on the next instance.

I think it can work to have all move in the same direction, but it really sticks out in a piece otherwise adhering to counterpoint rules as best as I can, which is why I try to eliminate most of my rule-breaking voice leading.

I’m a little nervous about giving out the parts to my friends, but also very excited to hear a better rendition than my software does. Live musicians breathe their own life into my ideas, and it is such a lovely feeling when you hear your ideas with their fantastic sound.

Surprising move, or not

I’m picking up the string quartet this morning again. I write some notes for the first violin, and then I work on the second violin. I find that this time the second is leading, and it’s a fun change. I had the viola part extending the longest from last session, and it just seemed like the line should be repeated (nearly) but with an octave higher, and the second violin naturally took that line. It seems that next, I should develop the line in the first violin, and let that instrument take the lead.

But instead, I catch the vision that the cello and second violin play contrary motion to make for an expansive section.

Small essay –

Contrary motion is when you have two lines, and whenever one line is getting a pitch that is higher than the previous one, the other line is getting a pitch that is lower than the previous one. If I have one line that is consistently climbing upwards, the other line climbs downwards on the staff (and in this case, you would expand the span of the interval between the notes, little by little – which is why I call it an expansive section). If I have lots of up and down alternating, they would be alternating opposite. It makes for more interesting lines, more independence of lines, and I like the way that harmony works out that way too. –

End of small essay.

When I get back in the evening to put some more notes on the page, I on impulse add in a few notes where previously there had been a rest for a couple of the instruments. I add in an accent for the violins to match the viola in one place where it looked like I had just forgotten to do it.

And then the line flows out of first violin at the place where I’d left off this morning. I have the three lower parts in what amounts to the viola playing a melody with the others accompanying for a few measures, and the first violin adds more harmony to the accompaniment, and then moves over with quarter notes accompanying the second violin. When the second violin part ends, it seems very natural to keep going with melody for the first. All I had was a cello bass line to relate to, and I try to remember to use contrary motion a lot, because I like the way it sounds. Sometimes a line gets to repeat the same pitch, but I’m thinking about the melody like a line you have to hold on to for dear life, or you might drown. The first violin is kind of holding on to a hope that she or he has to keep going up, or they will go under water. So I keep going up, sometimes repeating pitches so the harmonic span doesn’t get too wide too quickly. Once I land on the high A, which I know is kind of high for the violin because my software marks it red (I have confirmed that the violinists I work with have played this pitch and higher in concert, so I’m not worried). But I decide to leave that idea there, and move on to playing a kind of counterpoint with the cello line. Until that ends, and then I just improvise, and write the ideas I had that came while I was listening through the entire piece.

I often start my composing sessions by listening to the piece I’ve been working on. That way, the improvisation that is part of composition seems to flow more easily. I have this section with rhythmic unison (all the instruments on the same rhythm) that comes to give the listener a break from all the busy counterpoint, and I feel like it is very needed now. I just need to hear those accents again, all the four instruments together. As many times as my ear requires a rest, and then I can start on counterpoint again.

When I’m getting to the viola part again, I have to write lots of sixteenth notes again to make the counterpoint right. I have been listening to Cristina Cordero’s rendition of Weber’s Andante e Rondo ungarese today, and I was following along with the music. She has really beautiful tone, and I’m inspired that there are musicians like her that can play so many notes so sonorously on this instrument. She was only 18 when she made that recording, and I actually listened to several others of her videos today, and I try to keep this lovely sound in my head, and trust that the viola can play the notes I’m putting down, even though I know it will be a challenge.

It can be helpful to imagine someone better than yourself playing the music you’re writing. I’m imagining I’ll be better after working on this piece as a performer, and I’m ok with that prospect.

I’m getting tired of working on this piece. I think it’s getting close to ending though, so that is a good thing. I just need to wrap up this movement, and then I think I should probably write three more. But they will be contrasting enough that it shouldn’t feel like I’m working on the same piece.

So I write a few measures for the second violin, imagining the general environment that the other instruments will play against that line, and I decide to make an ending. It’s nearly seven minutes, and I think I can be pleased with that length. I’ll end for tonight and look at it again tomorrow.

The middle part of the first movement

Continuing work on the string quartet today. I add in the remainder of the cello part that was missing from last time, and I decide to pick up the tempo a little bit for the next part. I’m feeling like another five measures of mostly unison rhythm is enough, and I decide to start on the repeat of the beginning part. The question that lingers is – how exact of a repeat am I wanting to include, and where does it diverge to something that’s different?

I decide to go for six of the opening measures to start the fast section, and then it just starts flowing. There’s a first violin part stretching out four and a half measures, and I decide to move on to the second violin. I have found that it’s usually easier to work from the top part and then down, as each part contributes to the spread of the chord and the sound. There are exceptions, especially in a piece as contrapuntal as this.

The second violin part flows four measures past the end of the first violin part now. As I work on the viola part, I kind of dread having to learn all the fast notes! It stretches two and a half measures longer than the second violin’s line, and I move on to the cello part. The last two measures of the viola part I have written, thinking of another rhythmic unison part, and I write the cello part up until the end of the viola part.

But when I go back to the piece, I hear the viola part inside my head stretching forward into the next little bit, and I write down what I imagine real quick. I just have to quit now for today anyway because I have something else I have to work on. Until next time!