A bloviated blog (S1/E5)

In my short, opening blog below, I gave voice to my initial sense of nervousness at the prospect of making the right decisions about all these thousands of new notes swirling in front of me. “But then, this lack of faith beset the start of some 82 other works at this writing, large and small, all of which I eventually saw to completion!” In other words, the successes informing my previous experiences allowed me to lack faith in my lack of faith! How far behind me has that visceral doubt been relegated when the powers I have been blessed with asserted themselves with full force, and I brought my op. 83 to a rapturous conclusion just yesterday!

I did indeed adhere to the model in Beethoven’s op. 34 piano Variations in that the last of my five variations did come full circle back to the original key for the first time. But I stayed in that key and appended a fugue, which could conceivably be described as a very elaborate, sixth variation! That is to say, I turned to a different model: Beethoven’s op. 35 piano Variations (the ones on the same theme he treated in the finale to his Eroica Symphony). (It used to be true that spell-checkers would invariably change that to “Erotica,” but how things have evolved!)

I will be saying much about the music new since my last blog, but there is one point I wanted to emphasize today, when time is pressing. It’s a structural element I was aware of when I last posted (at which point there were only three variations), but which I hesitated to point out because I couldn’t be sure it would obtain until the end. But it did, and this is it; my Variations and Fugue, op. 83, utilize the following time signatures: 4/4, 5/4, 3/8, 3/2 (four times as slow as the preceding, I mention for the non-musician reader), 4/2, and 6/8. But throughout, the tactus or counting pulse remains the same. The opening metronome marking of quarter = 84, in other words, obtains for the entire seven-minute composition, for all its hills and dales!

Pressing? All the matters I let go when embroiled for six days (and one benighted wee-hours night, saints preserve us!). Top of the list is the publisher who will be putting out an early (just subtract 80 opus numbers from 83!) set for strings. He sent me proofs that I have neglected and must finish reviewing before returning here.

Here is a live performance of this essay from those promising, antediluvian student days.