I’m calmer today, thank you.

As you will recall, I was a little freaked by how quickly I had gotten to the recapitulation of this movement. Tonight I went back to the score paper and sketched out a couple of strophes that might reasonably be inserted here and there in what I already have. But none of it seemed to fit.

I also listened to my favorite waltz, the “Delirien” waltz by Josef Strauss, Johann’s younger and to my mind more melodic brother. I wanted to hear more of how he structured it. I mean, it’s all pretty formulaic, and I might as well use the formula. I don’t yet have a flutes-with-pizzicato strophe, and I don’t really have a Big Grand strophe, which ought to come second or third in the lineup. I’ve got the cute little twittery one (it’s about third), and a couple of the smooth, legato ones.

(At the moment, you can’t really tell how some of my bits are going to fulfill your expectations of a concert waltz, because so far all you’ve heard is the sketches in the strings. Some of those are going involve brass leads, cello variations, etc.)

I listened particularly to the end, where Josef has the return of the first strophe, followed by the return of the second, followed by the coda. I think I’m going to vary that. Instead of following the recapitulation with the second strophe, I’m going to toss in a new one, followed by the Big Grand Finale.

The new secondary strophe is in place, and before I share it I want to tweak it a lot, because I want to do a lot of interesting stuff to its repeat before heading into the BGF. But I’ve made progress, and I might actually be finished with III. Allegro gracioso by this time next week.

Just in time to use my spring break to plunge back into IV. Lento; allegro. That’s okay. I’ve been having ideas.

This is very odd. I’ve tweaked a few things (including a repeat on a section that was not repeated previously) and added another 16 measures of transition back to D major. And I think it’s almost done (except for the actual orchestration, of course). I’m not sure that’s good, is it?

Listen to it. When it reaches the end, what do you expect to hear next? If you’ve been paying attention, the opening phrase should return at that point, and then it’s all over but the coda.

That would be fine, but it’s barely two minutes long. Hmph. Perhaps something should come after the Big Syncopation and before the tremolo strings/horn bit, i.e., extend it before we hit the recapitulation and coda.

Or maybe it just needs to be 2:30 minutes long.

In less than an hour it will be 77 days, but who’s counting? (And who’s kidding whom? As if anyone believes I will be working on this in the week preceding noon, June 8.)

As I indicated previously, I have abandoned IV. Lento temporarily and am working on III. Allegro gracioso. Something tells me that it’s not going to be as salutary as it might be in anyone else’s creative scheme, because unfortunately I have a natural gift for waltzes. This was a piece of cake, and I fear it’s only going to make the formal torture of thematic variation even worse when I return to the fourth movement.

I’ve done the first 60 or so measures. You’ve heard the first strophe, but the rest is new and just sketched out in the strings. Here’s the mp3.

I think I’m stuck. I diddled around with the agitato motif, just scribbling down anything that came to mind, not stopping to flesh anything out. I didn’t get very far, although there were some possibilities among the bits.

I tried wedging the sweet variation from yesterday into the development, but it’s not really going in there. Now I have to get it out of there. Dang computers.

Perhaps it’s time to focus on the third movement for a while, just get away totally from the Lento and come back to it with fresh ears later. I’m thinking really a month or so.

How weird is our political discourse? The most sensible thing said about the whole Obama/Wright episode was said by Mike Huckabee, who said a couple of sensible things: a) it’s foolish to hold parishioners responsible for what their pastor says; b) preachers don’t always stick to their prepared notes and therefore extemporize things that they later look back on with wild surmise; c) you need to “cut some slack for people who grew up being called names.” Astonishing, no? But sensible.

Rather than trying to wrestle with what I already had, I explored what I consider to be my main problem, and that is the little agitato motif: how can it be developed in a light, joyous style?

This is asweet little variation. I’m not sure where I can use it. I’m not sure I can use it.

Let’s see: since Friday, an administrative staff meeting for the country’s premier gifted summer experience; author signing at the new hotspot in Senoia; dinner for eight; dress rehearsal and performance of Fauré’s Requiem; and today, taking the herb garden back down to the dirt. But no symphony.

I’ve been listening to it, but I haven’t had blocks of time to sit down and do anything with it. And I’ve been in one of those phases where it’s not sounding very good to me. It’s not light and celebratory in any of its sections, and it needs to be. It doesn’t sound organically inevitable in its development, and it needs to. It’s too thick, too heavy, where it should be transparent.

One of my problems is my increasing awareness of how badly Finale is translating the sound. I went back to listen to some of William Blake’s Inn, and it doesn’t sound bad at all. It’s almost as if I need to stop using Finale 2008 and go back to 2006.

I don’t know. I’ll get back to the music tomorrow night.

A brief update. I played around with the orchestral sounds to see if anything made a difference in the strings’ response to dynamics, but to no avail.

Here’s what I worked on tonight. Don’t take it as final, because it’s just blocked out, and it sounds that way. It’s the new bit from yesterday, but orchestrated. Herewith the mp3.

We have guests this week, so my time is not very concentrated on the symphony, which is very worrisome actually.

But tonight I was able to get in a couple of hours of work, and I think I got the minor agitato section mapped out. I’ve been very bold with the harmonies, which means that the more I listen to them the more I’ll try to smooth them out. I’m going to try to guard against that. Here’s the mp3, the new bits unorchestrated.

I also did some fiddling with some orchestration here and there, but probably nothing you’d notice.

There are real issues with the instruments not following the dynamics. I have almost given up trying to figure it out. There’s one more idea I might try involving the master mixer; perhaps I’ve set it too low for the instruments to play a real forte, so it maxes out at mezzo forte or something. But I’m betting that’s not it.