Getting through

You will recall that in our assessment of our productivity last year through the lens of the Nine Precepts, I decided I need to be more rigorous in my RITUAL practice, i.e., have one. So far, I’ve been semi-assiduous in sticking to it, and the results are encouraging.

Part of the daily work is to watch training videos on making the transition from Finale to Dorico, and then to open up a file and practice all the billions of things you have to do to get the music out of your head and onto the page. Last week I skipped to the last one, the lesson on importing .xml files into Dorico and what might go wrong.

The reason I did this was that I had imported a piece I had forgotten about, ABANDONED, never finished, and I decided that this would be the piece I’d futz around with. But when I opened it, the way Finale exported its data was misinterpreted by Dorico, and each instrument was out of line. Somehow, where I hadn’t pasted actual rests into the piece, Dorico just slid notes over into that space.

It occurred to me then that this was an even better opportunity to practice setting up a document and inputting notes: Print out the score from Finale (while I still can) and reconstitute the whole thing in Dorico by hand.

Turn, turn, kick turn — yes, it will work!

The piece, Excitato, was originally for Getting Through, Getting Over, the dance suite I wrote for Southern Arc Dance back in 2018. I eventually decided against it for some reason — and there are far more ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS in that folder than I recall — but after listening to it recently almost by accident, I decided this piece had distinct possibilities.

The opening is exciting and spot on, and the gentle interlude shows great promise. It shouldn’t be too hard to finish this one, right?

RIGHT?

Excitato, for clarinet, violin, violoncello, and piano: score [pdf]

Note that there is actually no bass drum in the piece. And notice in the mp3 how it just wanders off, the clarinet playing what sounds like wrong notes and quitting, and then the piano just vamps some chords. This, class, is how ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS —> GESTALT —> SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION works.