ACOF 2003 Participant - Padma Newsome

Padma Newsome

Padma Newsome's A Vulgar Concordance, was a composition written for ACOF 2003.

 

 

...A difficult time, difficult politics, propaganda media, and a quiet reading of a Plato passage regarding 'men of genius' and their abuse of rhetoric: these things and my own personal musical musings have formed a rather disjunct and very rarely restful piece...

Program Notes - A Vulgar Concordance

A difficult time, difficult politics, propaganda media, and a quiet reading of a Plato passage regarding 'men of genius' and their abuse of rhetoric: these things and my own personal musical musings have formed a rather disjunct and very rarely restful piece.

Composition Diary - April 2003

The gig
A great opportunity to write for an interesting and vibrant ensemble, in a beautiful part of the world, peopled I might add, with a few lovely musicians from my remote past.

Instrumentation
Somewhere between a chamber orchestra and a full orchestra, intimate strings, double winds, no piano, single percussion and timpani. A question remains re- picc. v. alto flute, I would prefer the latter.

Length
Short- 4 minutes currently pondering a single idea, mutating and winding around itself.

Subject matter
Attempting to plot a group of pitches around an ellipse, from which to generate pitch material, which I will then love to death.

Issues
Received notification of inclusion in the ACOF on Feb. 20th. The draft score, (definition of 'draft' as yet unclear, seems to mean complete score if communications are interpreted correctly) is due July 15th.Hmmm!! Well, to be honest I usually plan my writing at least a year in advance, and even then get behind a couple of weeks. Hope I can keep up. Received notification of inclusion in the ACOF on Feb. 20th. The draft score, (definition of "draft" as yet unclear, seems to mean complete score if communications are interpreted correctly) is due July 15th.Hmmm!! Well, to be honest I usually plan my writing at least a year in advance, and even then get behind a couple of weeks. Hope I can keep up.

Mentor
Have been speaking with Ingram Marshall, a sweet and kind composer living in the quiet suburbs of Hamden, the next town over, New England woods and all that. Best known for works like Fog Tropes (1982) and Kingdom Come (1997) which display the composer's love of mixing live instrumentalists with taped sounds.

Composition Diary - July 2003

Summary
Most of the music is as yet clouded but I do like the end and the beginning.

The biology of writing
That's the problem with playing too much, the physicality is so different that the body forgets. Mind you it is also a sin to forget the action of the sound maker.

Language and arithmetic
The vertical language is organized in free-range geometrical behaviour. The pitches are a series of linked beads, symmetrical and mostly chosen at will. Meanwhile my mathematics is poor and my spectacles wonky.

Touring in the rain
Spent most of May in Europe, visiting and meeting and playing to smiling fair-haired Nords in communal squats, laconic French on a Pirate boat, sparkly English in the theatre, age-wise Dutch (I have always thought of myself as 'post-punk') and a crazy old speeding German. No writing this month.

Current reading material
The French Baroque, James R. Anthony.

Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition in the German Enlightenment, Nancy Baker and Thomas Christensen, ed. Rameau and Musical Thought in the Enlightenment, Thomas Christensen. (This is a great book)

Recent scores perused
Lully's Armide
Rameau's Pygmaleon
Couperin's Apothéose….de… Lulli, Les Goûts Reunis, Le Parnasse ou l'apothéose de Corelli
(Also check out his l’art de toucher le Clavecin, some great dissonance treatment here)
Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, and Don Giovanni
Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle
Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande