Just a reminder for everyone – next Wednesday (March 3rd, 2010, 10 PM) Zach Herchen is going to play a bunch of awesome new pieces for saxophone at The Stone.
Among them is the piece I wrote for Zach, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, which sets the poem of the same name. He’s going to recite some of the poem, and play the rest on the saxophone. There’s also a flashy introductory movement, Groove, to give you the feel for T.S. Eliot as a wunderkind rockstar poet, who then writes this giant poem that maps out a whole life.
For the real music dorks out there, whenever a chromatic solfege syllable appears in the text of the poem, that’s the pitch it is (I’ll let you figure out if it’s written or transposed). For example, the word “time” whenever it appears, is set as a grace note B-natural (ti) rising to Eb (me, which is flattened mi). The word ‘time’ appears a lot in the poem, and becomes a kind of motive, though a very strange kind. Maybe 10% of the notes in the poem were determined this way, and it was definitely a challenge to write with those notes already chosen, but it also made sure this very strange, and very beautiful poem had, when translated into music, a sound all it’s own.
Come check it out next Wednesday!