A long-lost piece resurfaces.
/Y’all. A young friend of mine just graduated with his degree in music education, and I’ve been thinking about what I want to inscribe in the book I’m giving him. At one point I thought about making a joking/not joking offer to compose a band piece for him whenever he likes.
And then I remembered that 35 years ago I wrote at least the first movement of a symphony for band.
Tam Easterwood conducting the East Coweta high School Marching Band in the 90s
In 1991, I was media specialist at East Coweta High School. We were in our then-shiny-new building, and the late, great Tam Easterwood was the band director. Under his leadership, the ECHS Marching Band went from a ragtag rural school band to a fighting force terrible to behold. We’re talking Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, Rose Bowl Parade, etc. I think they went to London, but memory is fragile.
Likewise, I don’t remember whether I asked Tam or Tam asked me for this piece. I do remember that the Concert Band acquitted themselves admirably in the performance.
Also likewise, I can’t say that I have had that piece firmly in my head for the last 35 years. After all, it was never performed again after its premiere, and I moved on to other projects. I went to find it on my laptop and give it a listen. I was honestly afraid that I didn’t have a copy of it that was salvageable, after Finale’s stupid self-inflicted demise.
However, I discovered that I had at least opened it one last time in Finale and exported a .musicxml file which I could at some point suck up into Dorico and torture myself with bringing it up to date — so I did that.
I have to say that I was very impressed with my 37-year-old self. At that point I had not written anything this major, just a couple of church choir anthems, handbell pieces, and what were the beginning efforts at William Blake’s Inn. This piece was a milestone for me.
I remembered almost none of it other than the opening and the gist of the main themes. I was struck by how cinematic it was in approach, how interesting overall it actually was. It is in standard sonata allegro form (Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy, p. 91), and I’m pretty sure I STOLE FROM THE BEST with some of the motifs. The jumping octave bit that underpins much of the action and then rounds off the piece with a unison yawp: Stolen straight from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8. I’m pretty sure I was ripping off Philip Glass as well. (The roots of Lichtenbergianism run deep.)
Let us now take a moment and speak to Dorico’s ability to open .musicxml files from Finale. The file wasn’t damaged, and at least I had filled in all the blank spots with rests. (Dorico is actually looking for notes and rests; Finale let you leave rests blank, and Dorico simply finds the next note or rest and slides the whole line to the left to erase the blank space. It can be an utter mess.)
It sounded much as I thought it should, give or take the whackass way all of these programs deal with “percussion maps” — almost none of the percussion you will hear is correct — and at least some of the instruments seem to have been converted to chorus in the transfer, and the rhythmic drive is a bit muddied, but I think with a little work I can yank it all back into place.
Give it a listen:
We’ll see how this goes, up to and including some edits. Stand by for updates.
