IncipitsA friend of mine that is learning a notation program asked for some hints, and I sent the following sampler of four recent pieces, all of which are barely started. I decided to go ahead and post the sampler here, which lasts just 2:15, to give you all an idea of what I'm working on now, and also what I typically work on at any given time. None of the pieces are finished, but all will be before very long.
http://www.box.net/shared/50sxpm4kkc
There are "incipits" - just the opening measures, or in the first two instances the opening sections, of four pieces.
1) Wow Pow. The most recent piece, sketched out in just 10 minutes on Saturday morning. Sometimes you get a piece of music stuck in your head and can't get it out, and then over time it metamorphoses into something else. The source piece was Eastwood Lane's piano piece "Powwow," and this is "Wow Pow," what it sounds like after it passes through my brain hour after hour.
2) Spohr Spore. One thing I do at my job is verify the spelling of names of composers and musicians, which can by highly variable from source to source. One of the best ways to do this is to find a document with the composer's signature. I looked up a signature of German composer Louis Spohr, who is also called "Ludwig" in a lot of cases. I found that he did indeed sign it "Louis," and the particular sig that I found was followed by a short musical incipit - a standard practice among some composers in signing autographs. My friend Patsy said, jokingly, "Alright, now your assignment is to compose an etude based on that figure." I decided to surprise Patsy by really doing so, and copied the incipit down onto a yellow PostIt note.
The PostIt went into my pocket, which got emptied out I know not where, and I forgot about it, frankly. I didn't reconnect with the incipit until Tuesday, when I found it attached to one of the socks I was wearing. I decided then and there to get a start on it. I guess it took a couple of hours to work out this first section.
The other two incipits represent continuing work on pieces that have been on the back burner for a long time.
3) Le Blues Hot. This is just sax and tuba parts for a piece intended for dance band written in a 1920s style. This thing has been bothering me since the mid-1990s, and I have an extended hand-made sketch of the piece from that time. Here I was just testing a score for the piece, and I have decided to discard this particular score and start over as I realize that my instrumental parts need some tweaking. But it is the first time I've heard this tune outside my head. This was done only in a few minutes, though laying out the blank score took quite ahwhile.
4) Violin Sonata mvt. ii. This is another one from the mid-90s, for a piece I've produced several pages of handwritten sketches for. All of those sketches, though, are for interior parts of the sonata movement - here, finally is the opening motto, repeated twice.
Uncle Dave Lewis