23 September 2007
Steve Reich fest
A couple of weeks back Amazon sent me a parcel containing the most recent order from my summer bonus gift certificate from last year. Boy have I had a lot of mileage from that one - and still not finished!. Said parcel contained a book which I read avidly while at uni and haven't dipped into since, even though it should have joined the collection on my bookshelf a good long while ago: Steve Reich's Writings on Music. So I've been gradually reading my way through its various essays (and some in there that are new in this edition, or at least I don't remember them being in the University of Sydney's rather well-thumbed copy) and of course have now embarked upon a Reich binge, loading my phone's MP3 player up with The Desert Music and contemplating taking a step backwards and consciously writing a minimalist piece. I'm not terribly happy with the two pieces I'm working on at the moment - a new psalm (no. 47) which is just being incredibly hard work to progress and another Walt Whitman song which is just feeling a bit lost. The psalm I think will pull itself together eventually, but the Whitman song I think I might have to start again from scratch, so the prospect of trying something in a different style, that will take me away from these difficulties is really rather tempting. Now I just have to find the time to do it. I accidentally got myself employed in mid-August and between the 10-hour days and the 3-hour daily commute I've kind of been left with no time at all. I had a stab at taking the laptop into work and working on stuff on the tube and in my lunch-hour, but it's really too heavy for daily lugging, even though it is still pretty much the lightest laptop I could find for the specs. So I'm back to attempting to scribble things on bits of paper and hope that my interval-guesstimates aren't too far off. Aural was never my strong suit... Still, lots of Steve Reich to keep me happy even if my own work is being contrary, and come mid-October I'll be off work again, probably till January, so hoping to make some real progress then.
Labels: composition, listening, reading, Steve Reich, strategy
