if our memory serves. This is our fourth visual
scholarship. I'm really pleased to have Dwight Bigler with
us today. Who is the director of choral activities
here at Virginia Tech? We've been featuring books,
of course, for a visual scholarship initiatives. This
is our first music entry. Although the music is
based on a book, Of course. So why
is we've been library anyway? This will be very
good to hear, actually gonna hear a little bit
of music this as well. But I'm not going
to say a whole lot at this point to turn
over to Tom Ewing from cloth and talk a little
bit about whites work. And then, of course
, we're gonna hear from God himself about the musical
score. Thank you. Um, if I talk
here, Is that loud enough for you? Yeah
. So I always enjoy doing these and getting to
talk, but it's always a bit of a challenge
to figure out what exactly I'm going to say.
So today, I actually I feel a little bit
like a traitor because I've actually read some problem novels
at various points in my life. But I had
not read Miss Mackenzie and it was not in the
small collection of paperbacks I have, which I've been
carrying around and moving from house to house for many
years. Uhh. And so it occurred to me
I should I should read it before the session.
Um, you know, that was sort of in
the back of my mind for a few days.
And then I thought, Of course, I can
get one on Kindle. And so in probably less
than three minutes, quite honestly, it occurred to
me while I was brushing my teeth. And before
I got to bed, I had a copy of
the novel on here. Um, and I crossed
. This raises the question of why do we need
libraries, Right? You can get books for free
, because again, it's American century knowledge. Get
those free. That's actually one of the main reasons
ways of I five books for free. I'm here
. Why do we need why? Um but of
course we do. Because if you look at all
the books on here that are necessary for scholarship,
you can't get unrelated products advice. You need to
have those in the library that basically in your own
library or through inter library loan or some other access
. Yeah, maybe some of them are on Google
books, but probably not. So I think there's
some sense in relation. This is something that anyone
involved involved in scholarship or anyone involved in libraries knows
what seems to be a kind of free and easy
access to. Everything really is pretty easy access to
some things, like classic 19th century novels. But
it's not a lot of the work, so I
think that's it. In some ways, thinking about
how I got this book and what it means for
library was actually even more of a reminder of why
it's so important that we have the scholarly resources and
to be able to get things that again, you
can just talk about looking at the display. Here
you go back to my this novel was published,
but then fill in the scholarship and the biographies and
the critical writing and the other conditions that you can
have emerged over the decades and then right up through
the press. So I think that those are ways
in which again, this is a reminder of how
important the library is for the kind of scholarship that
we're doing in the Lord. The other problem with
this device, of course, is that it tells
you how much of the book you read. And
I believe I'm at 29 so I haven't finished it
yet. But perhaps the music, thank you very
much. We'll turn it over to thank you.
It's great to be here. Thanks for thanks for
showing up. My friends from the music department to
, uh it's great. Well, how did I
come up on this text? I thought I would
share with you a little bit of the whole process
that I went through, discovering the text, why
I selected it. And then how I worked with
it in the composition process to get it to where
I have on a CD. Uh, now that
I'll play for you at the at the end of
the lecture today. So as a choral composer,
I'm always looking for texts, interesting texts to set
to music. Uh, and I purchase well,
so I'm always going through books, poetry, collections
, mostly poetry collections. I have a number of
the Oxford collections and and then collections from some of
the main poets throughout time, but I bought at
one point an Oxford Book of English prose, and
I thought, Well, this looks interesting. So
I was flipping through that, and it fascinated me
, fascinated me the colours of language and the vocabulary
that was used and the interesting rhythm that prose has
on its own, Uh, and especially how it
contrasts with poetry. Because there's not a regular meter
. There's there's not that kind of structure to it
. Uh, and by the time I had read
about the entire book of these excerpts, uh,
I had written down the ones that I really liked
that caught my imagination. And then I discovered that
there were a few of them that fit into the
same kind of categories. Uh, namely, that
they talked about experiences in people's lives that were that
were soulful in some way that were interesting, insightful
, humorous or poignant or whatnot. Uh, and
And Miss Mackenzie, this little excerpt from that from
the Anthony Charles novel is one of them. Uh
, it ended up in a work that's five movements
long, actually, four of them set texts that
I found in this book. One of them is
an excerpt from from Henry David Thoreau Journal that tells
of a humorous experience of made in town that fell
down some cellar stairs and then everybody that went to
help her ended up getting hurt on the way as
well. And he draws a very funny conclusion that
the people were slipping in puddles and they went to
help, uh, get him something called a paddle
. Does anybody know what a puddle dock is?
It was a word I had never heard in my
life, but it was some sort of ointment that
they would wrap around bruises or something like that.
But this was one of those excerpts as well.
Another was an excerpt from a letter that that a
British, uh, pastor had written to a friend
about the death of his son, his little boy
and the language that he uses. You can tell
that he's just holding on. Uh, he's an
immense pain, but he's using his religious beliefs to
hope for, uh, to be able to see
his son again eventually, that kind of thing.
But each of these texts brought out something that I
found very interesting in these people's lives. So I
clump them together, gave each one of them a
movement in the coral work, uh, and and
set them hopefully appropriately, in a way to kind
of enhance that text and express musically what the text
was speaking of, uh, Miss Mackenzie caught my
attention because of the poignancy of this experience this woman
was having as she entered middle age. She's standing
in front of a mirror, and she notices that
she has a little bit of gray hair. Uh
, in fact, I thought I might read it
. Have you all read through the text? Would
you be interested in hearing the text straight through?
All right, indulge me for just a little bit
. So this is the text that I that I
found. She moved up her hair from off her
ears, knowing where she would find a few that
were gray and shaking her head as though owning to
herself that she was old. But as her fingers
ran almost involuntarily across her locks, her touch told
her that they were soft and silken, and she
looked into her own eyes and saw that they were
bright and her hand touched the outline of her cheek
. And she knew that something of the fresh bloom
of youth was still there and her lips parted and
there were her white teeth. And there came a
smile and a dimple and a slight purpose of laughter
in her eye and then a tear. She pulled
her scarf tighter across her bosom, feeling her own
form. And then she leaned forward and kissed herself
in the glass. I just love it. I
think it's so descriptive and so poignant, so tender
. Uh, there's a little bit of pain,
of, of sorrow, of recognizing that youth is
beginning to pass. Uh, but there's still a
little bit of that in here, and she recognizes
that, and she accepts it as part of her
reality, and she moves forward. She still likes
herself. She values that. I just loved it
. So how did I get from there to a
peace with choir and chamber orchestra? Uh, the
process that I go through is I'll write the text
out or I'll type it out and group the lines
into, uh, just little groups of lines that
I think belong together. That makes sense. So
I kind of turned it into poetry, but it's
without the rhyming and all of that. But I'll
group things together in thoughts or expressions, and then
I start to make a map of it. This
is this is one of the other movements in the
piece, but but But it's descriptive of what is
typical with what I do. All right, the
text out. And then I'll start writing the rhythms
of the text above the words giving those words that
are more important a little longer. Note rhythmic values
. Uh, etcetera. Uh, I will write
some shapes. Occasionally. You see a little bit
of up and down kind of things here, just
visual kind of shapes of musical lines that I might
want to have or include in it. Uh,
what kind of accompaniment? Action in the orchestra,
How much activity I want in the orchestra. What
kind of rhythms? If I want constant motion or
if it needs to be calmer or whatnot. So
I go through the text all the way through like
that and figure that out. And then I sit
down at the piano and start fiddling just trying to
come up with something. Uh, and in this
piece, it was it was interesting for me to
look back at, uh the compositional process. And
if any of you are interested, I have my
early sketches of some of the just the manuscript parts
. Uh, but early on in the peace and
it shows it on this piece, How many of
your musicians play an instrument of some sort? A
little bit. Well, you know about poetry.
So meter and all of that kind of thing.
Yet we understand that that will work. Uh,
my initial concept for this piece was, uh,
in 44 m, so it had kind of a
square field, had a 12341234 had a little accompaniment
figure. I had figured out particular harmonies that I
had started with, and I began composing. And
it was it was kind of interesting. It was
kind of the direction I wanted to go, but
it wasn't really lighting on fire ran into some blocks
, and eventually I thought, Well, why don't
I change it into a three triple meter? It's
more like a Walt, and I thought, Oh
, that kind of works. She's obviously on her
way out. She's dressed up. She's on her
way out somewhere. Uh, so perhaps 19th century
she's off to a party, waltzing dancing, this
kind of thing. It captures this kind of youthful
feel as well. So I switched the media,
kept the notes the same, just adjusted the meter
of it, and all of a sudden the peace
came to life. It just made sense, Uh
, which is an interesting experience to have while composing
because it feels like when I make those kinds of
discoveries that I'm finding something that's already there. It's
a little bit like what Michelangelo talks about with his
blocks of marble, although I'm not comparing myself to
Michelangelo in any way. But it's He described that
as he has this big rock, and he's finding
out what's there. There's already a shape inside of
that that he's discovering, and I feel the same
way with music is that as I compose, when
I finally figure out something that works, it feels
like I've discovered it instead of created in an odd
kind of way. But it's kind of fun.
Oftentimes, at the end of the process, I
look back and I think, well, I'm not
sure if I could do that again. That works
really well. I like that uh, anyway,
so I go, I just fiddle at the piano
. I work through melodic ideas, melodic shapes,
rhythmic motives, overall structure of the piece. Where
do I where do I want it to go?
Uh, this piece in particular starts out in a
harmony that's rather unsettled. Uh, you know,
typically a piece will set up a harmony that you
know, his home base, and eventually you get
back to it at the end. But this piece
starts somewhere else and stays a little bit ambiguous.
You never really know where home bases until the very
end. Then it finally resolves, which I think
fits the text because she's kind of up in the
air, doesn't know where she's going a little bit
. So the structure of the piece, you get
a melody at the beginning, she expresses these first
thoughts. It moves harmonically with a little more emotion
. And then towards the end of it, the
melody comes back, but only in the orchestra and
the choir than kind of comments and and and the
commenting parts are what after she has noticed all of
these things about herself and she's put her scarf back
on, wrapped up and she's on her way out
. She's kind of moving on. So it's an
interesting way to bring back that melody. But then
a sense of moving on, And then at the
very end, the choir just sings, uh,
these oohs and aahs just to express a little bit
the feeling of what she was talking about. So
I don't know how long I've been talking. Would
you like to hear a recording of it at this
point? And then we'll have any questions you might
have? Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mhm.
You notice there's lots of use of harp. Mm
. Can you hear it? Okay. I can't
hear the words very well, but you can kind
of follow along, if you can see. Yeah
. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Mhm
. Yeah, Yeah, yeah. Mm mm.
Yeah. Mhm. There you go. Thank you
. Uh, if you would like to hear it
a little closer up for them, uh, to
be able to hear a little more to the details
, you can visit my website, Dwight Bigler dot
com. And all five movements of the work are
on that website on the compositions page. The work
is called glimpses because it gives glimpses into these people's
lives, Uh, that I just found particularly insightful
and moving in some way. Any questions about the
the work about the process about reminds me just ever
so faintly of the English melodies influence in your definitely
I love on Williams. Uh, and the British
tradition. The British choral music tradition, folk melody
, tradition, orchestral, traditional colors that he would
use an orchestra Britain a little bit as well.
Yeah, yes. We're very concerned with publishing today
particularly. How does a composer I know composers very
often often work in response to a request from right
? Right. And you're an academic, so you
probably are, Yes. Uh huh. How do
people get works like this published today if they're not
affiliated with her university? Yeah, Great question.
Uh, usually works for Coral works. There are
a number of choral music publishers that specialize in that
I have a number of works published with Hinshaw Music
, for example. They specialize in choral and instrumental
music, and the process they go through is to
make sure that the text is either public domain or
I've received permission gone through all of the legal hoops
to be able to publish that text with the music
Oxford Press. I had I had one piece published
by them. They have a music department that publishes
musical works as well. They go through that same
Oxford University Press. They have editors that review and
yes, yeah, So I submit music to the
publishers and then wait to hear It's the the waiting
game. They review them. They have a committee
usually that will review review them. Copyright. This
piece is actually now published through the National Collegiate Coral
Organization. Uh, just this movement of it is
last fall last summer, I submitted it for their
publishing contest for their publication series, and, uh
, and it was one of the four winners that
they selected to be published and presented at their national
conference last November. Uh, thank you, thank
you. It's very exciting, especially because it was
selected by a group of peers, choral conductors across
the country that that reviewed the submissions and and selected
it. So they've started their own publication process.
Now their own peer reviewed journals and things like that
that that I pursue as well now, yeah,
to answer your question. Good. Yeah. Yes
, just wondering much What role does the publisher of
the original to extend that you work with? What
? What role do they claim? The actual proposition
other. They're just giving you permission to use their
tax. Do they sort of come in and other
status of the process? I usually not, Usually
not. If they If they agree to let you
use the piece to set it to music and and
seek permission to publish it, then usually that's That's
it. Uhh. So, what has the response
been? For instance, on this piece, the
response from it's a public domain text. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, He's He was a
contemporary of Charles Dickens, Way back. So that
that helps. It's free use. He hasn't even
turned up in my dreams. Yeah, there are
all the post pieces you used from that kind of
contemporary period. I mean, you mentioned thorough.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Thorough. Uh,
have the date. 17th century, 18th century.
Most of them. Yeah. Oh, and felt
him if English philosopher, British philosopher, uh,
and then Jeremy Taylor is the is the British religious
guy that I quoted. Yeah. Yeah. So
they were all public domain. It's quite a process
to get permission from a poet who's living to get
their permission to to not only set their peace.
I've occasionally gotten permission from them to set the piece
. But then they clarified that I do not have
permission to publish it. That's a whole other ballgame
. Uh, so if I wrote a piece and
it worked really well, I would have to go
back to them and ask them for permission to to
submit the piece for publication to include their text.
Uh, and occasionally they will let you. But
sometimes they won't. And then you use split royalties
and you have to figure out all of that.
It's a mess, and you don't make a living
by composing choral music. I get about 10% of
every piece. Uh, that's sold. Usually about
16 cents a copy. Living high tell you it's
great. It's good stuff. Yeah, another question
about the process. You compose the peace and is
it finished before you start rehearsing with a choir?
Or does it change in the rehearsal process? Ideally
, it's finished before I get there, Uh,
but they're always almost always are adjustments I'll make once
I get it into the rehearsal process. Uh,
I was reminded of this just over the weekend.
I was in Madison for the premiere of another work
of mine with the Madison Festival Festival Choir. Madison
. Yeah, that's her name. Uh, And
whenever I write a piece and then I hear it
in real life in performance, there are oftentimes things
that I think, Oh, that worked better than
I thought. That was really cool. And then
there are other things that I think, Oh,
I need to adjust that a little bit. So
there will be little adjustments as I go through the
rehearsal or performance process. Uh, but not many
at that point. Yeah. Yeah. Any other
questions? Well, thank you. Great to be
here. Thanks for being here yourselves. Thank you 404 --> A:middle L:90% .