Blog Assignment: Composing on Piano

Since I've only written music for guitar before, I've never used a piano to compose. However, recently, I have begun using the piano as a compositional tool. I found that when writing music for a monophonic instrument, like flute, that it is much easier on piano compared to the guitar. I have more range and I feel like I have a easier time visualizing what I hear. However, since I have virtually no piano skills to speak of, piano is only useful to me when composing single line melodies and things of that nature. When putting chord progressions together, I still turn to the guitar as I actually know how to construct chords other than root position major and minor triads. As I get more comfortable with the piano, I think that as I continue to write for instruments other than guitar, that it'll be my main instrument to compose with.

Music Resume?

Happy Friday everyone, I'm applying for the Aspen Summer Music Festival to study classical guitar and as part of the application process, I need to submit my current resume. Can someone help me construct a good music resume? I have absolutely no idea what to include or how it should be formatted.

Thanks homies,

Ian Jennings Rowe

Neo-Baroque/Neo-Classical

I'm currently in the midst of writing a neo-baroqueish piece for flute and found this guitar player/composer to be particularly helpful to my process. Yngwie Malmsteen is a household name amongst guitar players but his musicianship goes far beyond the world of popular music. Check out some videos of him playing with the Japanese Philharmonic. Mind you, he composed and scored everything.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtP1B_U-ia8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXsSXeaGQxw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omjHXGhEa50&feature=related

Blog Assignment: Eugene Bozza

For my first piece, I decided to write for solo flute. I've never written anything for flute, or any other instrument other than guitar so I looked around for scores and recordings of solo flute pieces to get a slight idea of how it's done. One piece I found was a solo by 20th century composer, Eugene Bozza.

Bozza was born on April 4th, 1905, in France. He studied at the famed Paris Conservatoire, where he learned about composition, violin, conducting and chamber music. He composed many works for woodwind/brass ensembles as well as symphonies, operas and ballets. Although his pieces are rarely performed outside of France, his works for woodwind and brass remain a mainstay in the modern repertoire.

The piece of his that I am looking at is his flute solo "Image." This is a beautiful and well written piece that is actually quite famous amongst flutists. Although it is a tonal piece, there are some sections that are quite dissonant. However, the dissonance, unlike in many pieces, doesn't subtract from the melodic aspects of the song. This helped me to realize that you can be both melodic and dissonant in the same piece. This piece also showed me that the flute sounds good when played both rapidly or slowly as well as the basic range of the instrument. Despite the style of my piece being more baroque-esque, it was still helpful in my understanding of the flute.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JYl8UTCNmY

Who is your favorite composer?

As cliche a question as it is, who are some of your favorite composers? Who do you draw influence from? I think it'd be interesting to see what everyone else in the program is in to.

As for me, I am a huge Tchaikovsky fan. His work on the Nutcracker, Romeo and Juliet and Swan Lake is absolutely mind blowing to me. I also like Federico Moreno-Torroba, a 20th century composer for guitar as well as Isaac Albeniz who composed many pieces for piano that were later transcribed for guitar.

Blog Assignment: Leo Brouwer

For my Blog assignment, I was asked to do some research on modern composer and guitarist, Leo Brouwer.

Classical guitarist and composer Leo Brouwer was born on March 1^st, 1939 in Havana Cuba. Brouwer’s father, a Cuban doctor, was the first to offer musical encouragement, urging him to learn works by Heitor Villa-Lobos, Francisco Tarrega and Enrique Granados by ear on the guitar.

Soon after, Brouwer began taking more formal guitar lessons from renowned Cuban guitar master, Isaac Nicola. He then traveled to America to continue his study of music. He studied at the Hartt College of Music, the University of Hartford and eventually the Juilliard School. He studied composition under Vincent Persichetti and Stefan Wolpe.

If you look at Brouwer’s work over the years, you’ll see that it has progressed from Cuban folk music to a more modernist style similar to Luigi Nono or Iannis Xenakis. Brouwer continued to write very famous guitar pieces including Sonata, a piece written for the Andres Segovia guitar protégée, Julian bream.

Over the years, Leo Brouwer has held numerous positions in the Cuban government’s music branch. He was even the director of the Cinema Institute of Cuba’s music department. Currently, Brouwer is actively involved in the International Guitar Festival of Havana and travels extensively to other guitar festivals all over the world.

Leo Brouwer has contributed much of the modern classical guitar repertoire having written well over fifty pieces for solo and guitar ensemble. However, he has composed many pieces for the orchestra as well including forty movie scores. His pieces continue to influence the next generation of classical guitar players and has become a mainstay in the modern guitar player’s repertoire.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFqgVfZhJmY&feature=related

This is my favorite Leo Brouwer piece, the title, which translates to “Cradle Song,” is a very gentle tune. You can really hear the Cuban and South American influence in this piece, especially during the theme. However, since it was written so late in his career, it has a lot of characteristics of more modern music too. Also, unlike most guitar music, it isn’t written in the standard ABA form.

What do you want to do with your composition degree?

Hey guys, just curious to see what you guys want to do when you get out of school with a degree in composition. As for me, I think it'd be awesome to write movie scores seeing that I've always been infatuated with John Williams scores(Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Schindler's List...)