Ordinary fool

Over the next little while I'm going to post compositions I wrote during my years as a music student at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. Listening back over these 10-year-old pieces I hear some incompetent rubbish and some promising starts. Unfortunately the former go on too long, and the latter are all too brief.

This first piece is entitled The Hare's Breath. This was the first composition exercise of mine ever to be played, back in 1992. I was a first year student. I played in rock bands and wrote songs, but I really wanted to write "proper" music "properly". I turned up to my first lecture thinking I would be very happy if, after three years, I could write something half as good as the string arrangement for Eleanor Rigby. I left the lecture reeling from an extensive comparison of Beethoven's use of motif in his Fifth Symphony and Schoenberg's 12-note theory. I wondered what I'd let myself in for.

We had to write, and organise performances of, three major composition assignments every year. Starting ambitiously, I wanted to write a whole piano concerto. I tried to put pen to paper... OK, maybe just one movement. Hmmm... still nothing. Then I heard that the New Zealand String Quartet were resident, and would play student compositions. Aha! Tunes began to emerge. For some reason I started thinking about the parable of The Hare and the Tortoise. Sometimes I felt like the tortoise, sometimes the hare. Alternating between dogged persistance and haphazard complacency I managed to finish the composition in time for the performance workshop. However, as you will hear in the unintentionally sparse, slidey middle section, my race to the finish line resulted in some missing parts. To their credit, the professionals of the NZSQ played on regardless and without laughter.

Listening to it now, I'm dubious about the supposed connection between my piece and the story of The Hare and the Tortoise. The title was a fairly late addition, and I think I was only trying to avoid calling this piece Exercise in Strings No. 1, or something equally overblown. The piece is in three sections. First, a pastoral scene where the hare's tune is interrupted by odd little waltzy interjections. Second, we hear the tortoise's theme (yep, there's a missing part). Third, we hear the race, where the music of the hare and tortoise are woven together. The piece concludes in a strangely ominous fashion as if there's a moral to the brief sorry tale. The only moral I can think of is "don't let kids loose with pen and manuscript paper".

In the post-performance feedback session one lecturer suggested that the tortoise's determined theme sounded like Money, Money, Money by Abba. A friend of mine generously commented on how much he enjoyed the bi-tonal pizzicato plinks during the race sequence. I already knew enough not to ask, "What does bi-tonal mean?" and instead I just accepted the statement as an appropriate acknowledgement of my unstudied genius.

So, in all it's glory here is my first ever performed composition: The Hare's Breath (4.57MB). This recording dates from May 1992 and was made in the Adam Concert Room at Victoria University, Wellington. Thanks to the members of the New Zealand String Quartet for playing through it, and to Roy for recording it.

P.S. Whaddya know... this piece's ominous ending sounds just a little like the ending of Eleanor Rigby.