Handfuls

For soprano, tenor, flute, soprano saxophone (or Bb clarinet), and double bass.A setting of Carl Sandburg's collection of 11 short poems by the same name (found in his volume "Chicago Poems"). Each poem forms a meditation on a trichord.This will be performed in the summer of next year as part of a concert of settings of Carl Sandburg poems.NOTE: Please follow along with the score, as there are some score events that do not play back as they are written.

Handfuls

Hey,

I quite like the ideas that you've presented throughout this piece. The music that you give each instrument is never more than what it needs to be, and there is a very clear link between each poem. This allows for a lot of fluidity. However, I personally believe that the piece got a little monotone as time went on. A live performance obviously would change this. I liked the textural/timbral things you've done in particular. The texture of interaction between parts is varied adequately and would be really striking in a live performance. Especially with vocal music, any small change in interval is quite obvious (in a positive way) when put to good use.

As for the vocal writing, it's really good, and I'd expect nothing less from you, given your previous works. It's difficult to match pitches when there are a lot of tritones (as in the first poem), but you know this. Any well-trained singer would overcome that. As for the non-vocal instruments, I think you've treated them fairly idiomatically. Your double-bass writing stands out because it is a lot more that harmonidifficult than what you would normally see for this instrument (and double bass players love this apparently) and effect you added with the gradual change to harmonic/full stop would come of great live.

Congrats on finishing this work, though. It was a wonderful listen.

I agree that the piece did have a very constant feeling after a while. I got a little bored listening to the midi rendering, but I think live this wouldn't be a problem as much (although maybe for people with short attention spans).

I found some of the text setting a little awkward, but maybe (again), the performance with cover this up enough. I don't really have time to go through and find all the examples (forgive me), but a few: page 32 measure 253 "of years" is awkward both because it's stranded from "thousands" and because of the placement of the "of" on the beat, page 35 measure 282 "es and" shouldn't have that much emphasis as they are not particularly important words or syllables, page 38 measure 318 "tonight" that accent doesn't save you, it makes it seem more awkward (to me at least), it's hard because you that quintuple in the sax to deal with, but I'm sure it can be worked out. There are more, but as I said I don't have the time to point out all the specific spots, and also some of this might just be a matter of opinion.

I'm very much looking for to hearing a recording (?) of the performance.

I agree that the piece did have a very constant feeling after a while. I got a little bored listening to the midi rendering, but I think live this wouldn't be a problem as much (although maybe for people with short attention spans).

I found some of the text setting a little awkward, but maybe (again), the performance with cover this up enough. I don't really have time to go through and find all the examples (forgive me), but a few: page 32 measure 253 "of years" is awkward both because it's stranded from "thousands" and because of the placement of the "of" on the beat, page 35 measure 282 "es and" shouldn't have that much emphasis as they are not particularly important words or syllables, page 38 measure 318 "tonight" that accent doesn't save you, it makes it seem more awkward (to me at least), it's hard because you that quintuple in the sax to deal with, but I'm sure it can be worked out. There are more, but as I said I don't have the time to point out all the specific spots, and also some of this might just be a matter of opinion.

I'm very much looking for to hearing a recording (?) of the performance.

Thanks for the comments!

The thought with the accent in bar 318 isn't to rectify the stress patterns on the word - it's more sort of an "articulation crescendo" - rather than increasing the dynamic, each syllable increases in weight; so you have (I'm going to try to approximate with font size):

"flashes the frost tonight"

We'll see how it works out in live performance; I may just need to go back and normalize the speech accent patterns with the music, though I'm hoping that the singers will be able to negotiate the difference and make it an effective gesture.