I, like Mark, have unfortunately not finished my piece, but will be posting what I have anyway. Technically there was nothing in the rules about the piece being finished
...
Anyway, here's the text and picture, from Dr. Seuss's
Oh, the THINKS you can think!:
(ok, so I based a lot on the picture, but the piece was certainly inspired by the text)
Instrumentation: (large) String Orchestra...a pretty big one, too, as I have a lot of divisi.
Structure:
The piece will have three sections, an introduction of the scene, the person-who-meets-the-Jibboo meandering about the town, and then the Jibboo comes. Thanks to my incessant perfectionist crap I could not get past the beginning of the second section, after the scene had been set.
For the first section I started with some polytonal chords and lines, and having the harmonies, melodies, and meters not quite set (in keeping with Dr. Seuss's characteristic imaginative landscape(s) which seem to defy normal, logical thought).There is an obvious motif in the piece that goes with the setting, as well...
After the introduction has built up and resolved, the "hero" of the 2 pages is introduced, and I began with that motif transformed into his wanderings...after the first line of this part I was out of time. I planned to move it throughout the voices, violas next, perhaps, thinning the texture out and adding more lines as would be appropriate...and then...
The meeting of the Jibboo: I plan to use a variety of extended techniques to describe its coming, like random col legno and pizz. notes, percussion effects, sul ponticello, etc. I'm going for surreal, broken, and an eerie, hair-raising meeting...shivers up the spine of the one who meets it
. It's drawn rather disjointed, and I would try to portray that in the music.
I am still undecided on whether or not the piece will resolve after the meeting of the Jibboo, if it becomes friendly (as indicated by it's little wave) or evil or whatever.
Other comments...:
I wish I could've finished this in time for this competition, but I want this to be a big, well thought out piece (the idea of it took quite a hold on me)....better to refine it over a longer period of time than to rush it for a competition, I'd say. Still, perhaps the judges can judge what I have so far....
Oh, and though it's only two pages, it's a largo tempo and very textural/atmospheric, so though there aren't a lot of notes that doesn't mean I didn't take a lot of time to write them
MP3 of EWQL recording
(please don't base it too much off the EWQL recording, a lot of the dynamics and crap are screwed up...this piece really works best with a live orchestra)
(Finale file's 08)