<p>So, I had my meeting with Dr. Maslanka about my composition. Hrr. When I first met him on Monday, I got the impression that he didn’t really like me - I mean, he’s a nice enough guy, but he just didn’t quite warm up to me like he did to Elliott. Anyway, today I got to spend about 40 minutes with him talking about both myself and my music, and.. well, it was rather discouraging. We both have strict ideas on harmony, it seems, and while his is more minimalist, I tend to enjoy both stark chords, as well as those juicy enough to bite into. So we disagreed a little on that section. It’s mostly my fault, however, for bringing in two of my choral pieces in which I specifically wanted a rather rich harmonic sound. The real problem he seemed to have was with my use of scansion, though. I have a particular fondness for abusing the scansion of a poem as a color: putting accented syllables on beats that are normally unaccented. For example, in ‘To Sleep,’ I have a 9/8 bar “misscanned” purposefully to sound like a 4/4 bar with an extra eigth note at the beginning, sort of like an anacrusis. This followed by another 9/8 bar scanned with an extra eight note at the end. He mentioned readability, but, to me, I don’t think having a bar of 1/8 (or 1/4, if I want to stretch it), followed by two bars of 4/4, followed by a bar of 1/8 is any clearer. I suppose, if I wanted, I could do something like 8+1/8 or augment the rhythms to fit some larger meter. It still doesn’t change the fact that I like it misscanned >:E</p>
<p>Anyway, I was a little disappointed in him - he did have some very good suggestions for engraving, as well as some different textures I’d like to try out, but really, I don’t think I’ll take too much away from this personal lesson. I gained a lot, however, from his lectures on the source of music, for which I’m grateful. Good luck to him wherever he goes. :o</p>
