J. Lee Graham

Thanks guys.

I've been working on this all day...12 hours off and on. I can't leave it alone. It's only the first 40 measures of music, though...I can't go on until I have it "right." I'm doing what I "normally" never do...editing, adding, taking away, experimenting, revising. Based on your reactions, it seems my instincts outside of Classicism are good, but I've stepped way outside my comfort zone - that's what I mean by being "scared," I suppose - and for the first time in years, I'm having to work really hard at composition. Maybe that's a good thing. Hmm...is "comfort" what has been keeping me in the 18th Century for so long?

My last major project was an hour of 18th Century dance music, in which I stretched the idiom almost to breaking at times; I cut the project short because I ran out of appropriate ideas. Now I'm having trouble staying within the idiom long enough to finish my G major symphony properly. It's coming along, but what I've written lately is far more adventurous and doesn't match what I wrote before, which was textbook Classicism. I may be reaching the point where I will have said all I personally can say in a Classical idiom. Am I outgrowing it, finally? I never thought that day would come.

Your reactions to this sketch are interesting to me. The enthusiasm even in two comments is greater than it has been for most of my other Classical pieces, which don't usually elicit more than a "gee, that's nice."

Anyway, thanks for your encouragement. I'll keep working.