i’m sitting here in my lovely…i mean…manly apartment listening to mahler’s eighth symphony, the symphony of a thousand it’s called. it’s ridculously amazing and just huge and beautiful and glorious…i’ve forgotten how much “classical” music can move me. this is the first year since i was in high school that i have played in a real orchestra. back then i was in a very good community, youth orchestra. it was so wonderful, because we got to play so many staples of the repertoire, including beethoven’s fifth, overture to the marriage of figaro, sibelius’ second symphony…the list goes on. i remember moments throughout performances that would just cause me to nearly start crying in the midst of sawing away on my violin. the beauty, the genius, the intimate portrait of a man’s soul…i can’t even describe it right. music is just too deep for idle words.
this semester i am reunited with the orchestra after languishing in only wind ensembles for the past five years. sweet majesty am i glad. we’re currently working on haydn’s sixth symphony and mendelssohn’s violin concerto. that concert is on october 18 for anyone interested. then we start working on a bach choral work and…something else. it’s really very exciting. i definitely belong in an orchestra.
back in high school, i didn’t know jack about music, but i guess i had an intuition about it. i would listen to classical stuff here and there, but didn’t really know what i was listening to other than beauty. now, after 5 years of studying music, i know vastly more than i imagined there was to know, and there are still many, many things that i don’t know or understand completely. nowadays when i am listening to a piece, i often listen for specific things, like how the parts are interacting, try to follow the composer’s logic in going to where he goes…but it’s interesting how i’m still able to enjoy music. what i mean is, some people argue that learning too much about a subject (particularly music, it seems), causes a loss of enjoyment. not so for me, because i can choose to sit back and be absorbed with sound, ignoring any academic approach to hearing it, or i can attentively and actively study what’s happening in a piece. either way gives me great amounts of joy and the most superb feeling i know. i certainly love rock/folk/whatever, but there is something about the classical genre that moves me beyond those other styles. or maybe just in a different way. one that is closer to my soul.
the sheer amount of thought and design that goes into a classical composition is ridiculous. how do i know? i’m a theory/composition major. so not only do i write “fine art†music, i study how pieces are put together to better understand what is happening and to further develop my skills. i just never fully realized how much hard work it took to complete a piece that was worth something. ya’ll just have no idea. it’s torturing, really. a composer named john corigliano (who is still living) said this about the composing process: “i hate composing. i love having composed.” i’m much the same way. the process is so long and arduous cause i want everything to be just right; i can’t accept mediocrity. beethoven was much the same. it’s encouraging to read that there are accomplished composers who feel the same way.
last semester i wrote a choir piece for ouachita’s annual composers’ symposium, a showcase for student and faculty composers. the piece i wrote is one i’m proud of. it was such a labor to finish; i often just want to give up, especially when i go listen to someone like eric whitacre. his choral music just seems so far above what i could possible accomplish. while it does discourage me, at the same time i am pressed to succeed, to surpass, to achieve greatness. i have this dream that i’ll be in music history textbooks someday, but i’ve gotta finish some other stuff first.