Wallitner Weekly 40
Hello everyone!
A lot of productive things happened recently
I finished setting the poem “Do not stand at my grave and weep”! I am very happy with the way the piece turned out. So much so that on Tuesday I gave a copy of it to one of the choir directors in town. He loved it and wants to put it on the fall concert. He then asked me if I would be willing to write a piece for the wildcat chorus at CWU. So I will be doing that in the near future!
I’ve got lots of plans for next week too!
Some of my ideas for the trumpet solo are starting to take shape. Because this piece will also be written about, I want to make it smart and hide little Easter eggs all over it. It’s sort of backwards thinking to be writing a piece of music based on what people will say about it. But if it makes the music good then I’ll do whatever it takes.
I have an idea.
There are two pieces of music that I adore at the moment. One is “A silence haunts me” by Jake runestad ( Link: https://youtu.be/nFluVe3mNJ4 ). The piece is about a letter that Beethoven wrote, bu never sent regarding hs struggle with going deaf. One of the lines in the text is “Take my wings mid-flight but let me hear the searing roar of air before I score the ground.” The music is so moving when you think about how great Beethoven was as a composer, regardless of his inability to hear. The composer expertly uses Beethovens own music in his piece too. Mainly the “Ode to joy” theme. It is a wonderful piece of music if you get the chance to listen to it.
The second piece I have been enjoying lately is “Leonardo dreams of his flying machine” By Eric Whitacre ( Link: https://youtu.be/FzMD-boO6Fo ). This piece is about Leonardo da Vinci’s desire to build a way for people to fly. Da Vinci kept a journal in which he said the spirit of flight seemed to be calling out to him. The composer captures this idea perfectly.
Both of these pieces of music have been on my mind as I have been listening to a book about Van Gogh. Van Gogh is one of the most interesting people to me because he never was successful while he was alive, but now he’s regarded as one of the greatest painters of all time.
He wrote a lot of letters to his brother and several art historians have compiled them and written books on Van Gogh using them. I bought one of the collections of his letters in hopes to write a piece of music about him. While I wait for the letters to show up i’ve been watching documentaries about him. He lived such a tragic life.
Before the Vincent Van Gogh we know today was born, his mother had a stillborn child whom they named Vincent Van Gogh. It is a theme in the documentaries I’ve watched that Van Gogh felt like there was this “perfect version” of himself that never got to live. He was constantly afraid of bring shame to his family.
It is remarkable to me that THE Vincent Van Gogh struggled so much in his lifetime when now his paintings sell for tens of millions of dollars. I’d like to write a piece of music describing that inner struggle that he feels. How he could look at impoverished coal miners eating and paint “The Potato Eaters” (Which was sold for $39.9 million at auction). And how people HATED it when he showed it to them. They critiqued the message of the work. They criticized the technique. They HATED this painting. Yet Van Gogh continued to paint until he couldn't take it anymore.
Van Gogh ended his own life. After he died Vincent’s brother Theo set out to make Vincent’s work known. It is an incredible story of not knowing what we have until it’s gone. Vincent was so concerned with not being a burden to his family while he was alive. If only he could see what the world thinks of his art now.
