Travelogue: Part III "Whirlwind Tour"

I’m afraid this isn’t Thursday. It’s Friday. But Thursday went by too quickly, and I was on tour (not really). It felt like a whirlwind (this is true). Without any further ado, here’s Part III of Travelogue, which will now be in at least four parts.

Download the PDF here.

Travelogue Part II "Waiting"

Here’s the second movement, Waiting, of Travelogue. The title refers to many different kinds of waiting during travel, many of which are less than pleasant. I wrote some (possibly cryptic) quasi-poetric instructions to the pianist, in lieu of expression markings:

This movement is not a fugue, but at times resembles one. Ideally, its harmonies would help to invoke impressions of a psychological fugue state, but the MP3 below, computer-generated and un-tweaked as it is, does not achieve this goal:

This is the first piece on this blog that’s more than one page long. See the entire score here.

Travelogue, Part I "In Transit"

This is the first movement of a piano work entitled Travelogue, which will consist of at least three movements. The title refers to the fact that I started writing this while driving through Nebraska last weekend, but the music ended up fitting itself to the title – I fancy that the gently-rolling rhythms and out-of-sync repeated melodies adequately depict the experience of interstate driving. Call it Nancarrow-lite.

I had some more fun with notation: Sibelius isn’t very good at notating polymetric music, so I compromised by delineating phrases with dotted slurs, and I decided to use lots of key signature changes instead of accidentals.*

Listen to an MP3:

A PDF of the score is here.

*This might have a been a mistake – avoiding key signature changes would be more readable, but I like the looks of multiple key signatures. An alternate score, without any key signatures, is here.

Untitled No. 1 for Recorder and Bassoon (or any other two compatible instruments)

Almost exactly one minute long. I’m calling this Untitled No. 1 for Recorder and Bassoon (or any other two compatible instruments), a variant of the visual artist’s standby title Untitled.

I had some fun with the notation*, but the style seemed to require it.

Listen to the MP3 below,

and download a PDF here.

*Mensurstriche  (the funky barlines) are used for Renaissance and Medieval music, but my chosen font originated in the jazz world. Also, the combination of tenor clef and a jazz font is unheard of, at least by me.

—Paul Hertz