Last Post

I was just on my blog dashboard to check in with my personal blog and I saw that this post was labelled "DRAFT" So I guess I'll publish it here now just for the sake.

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I find it hard to believe that the semester is now over! It went so fast!

Now that the class is over I would like to take a moment to reflect. The first thing that comes to mind is how much I am impressed with everyone's progress over the semester. Everyone has improved so much. Often I would be sceptical of peoples ideas when they first presented them, but everyone blew me away with how they were able to let their idea grow into a work to be proud of.

We did two projects this semester, the three atonal character pieces and the final cliché work. To be honest I was not a fan of the atonal project. I have no real education in atonal music (yet), and it seemed sort of wrong that I would write something completely randomly and aleatorically. I don't know how much I learned about composition from it. Sure I made three pieces that I am happy with and that sound how I envisioned them to, I just feel that there is no scholarly merit to my pieces for someone without any education in music could have written my three pieces since it is all by chance. Sure it was a creative project, but I feel more scholarly merit could be found it writing something in strict sonata form, or harmonizing a dozen chorales. Just my thoughts.

On the other hand I absolutely loved the second project. I really enjoyed the freedom for creativeness and personality. I enjoyed the free choice of instrumentation and the guidelines to take something well recognize and take it somewheres we won't. I learned a lot about the strings through this project as well as more about baroque forms. I am really proud with the result and I plan on continuing work on it to make it better. I felt in control of every aspect of the music and everything I wrote was comfortably inside of my spheres of knowledge which I hold on the various regions of music theory I employed in my piece. I really enjoyed this project.


...and that is where the 'draft' ends.


Well, best wishes to all for the new year!
Michael