I’ve been working on the development section of the Moderato and have actually been making real progress. You may recall that I set aside several sessions to generate crap in a separate “ideas” file. Remind me that this is a very effective strategy: I have been able to use about a third of the material I generated.

However, there are still some issues with what I have so far. First of all, it seems repetitive and not organic. This may be due to the fact that I’ve lifted material from the ideas file and stitched it together, and my ear can’t not hear the seams. I keep listening for ways to modify those transitions, and I’ve made some changes, but on the whole it still sounds clunky to me.

The other problem is that the further I venture, the less good the recapitulation I’ve already written sounds. It finally dawned on me why that is. There’s nothing wrong with the recap. The problem is that the majority of the material I generated for the ideas file is in the same general key as the opening of the piece. The whole point of the development section is to lead the listener far afield so that when we hit the recap, it sounds like coming home again. How can we come home if we never left?

So my next session is going to explore moving some of the current development into other keys. You will probably hear the weeping, the wailing and the gnashing of teeth, not to mention the tearing of the sackcloth, from your house.