Ever upward...climbing Mount Parnassus

So, it was a couple of years after writing my Chant Chrétien--the winter of 1977/78, I think it was--in Spokane, on the way to an evening's 'Family Party' (at Bill and Sue's), that a small carload (three) of us stopped off at Bob Minks's (the twenty-something, anorexic, artist, intellectual, closet-bisexual's) apartment to smoke some pot in the kitchen; which, as marijuana often does, provoked an animated discussion among my companions and Bob that I found boring, so I wandered off by myself to the living room, pulled a novel of Aldous Huxley's, Chrome Yellow (which I had read some thirteen or fourteen years before at Patrick McClelland's instance), out of the bookcase, and sat down to leaf through it:  And there, fairly leaping out at me, were all four stanzas of 'Phyllis plus avare que tendre,' which I therewith grabbed a sheet of note paper and a pencil, and copied out on the spot.

A couple of years later, before, during and after Mt. St. Helens blew up (May, 1980) and blanketed Spokane with volcanic ash, high on the heart stimulant we were all using then for speed, noodling around on a recorder, I worked out the "shepherds' piping" for the beginning, segues (between stanzas) and codetta, and the basic shape of the melodies of each stanza of 'Phyllis plus avare que tendre'; and, checking into a Gonzaga University Music Department piano practice room,  I put together an essentially/harmonically five-part song for mezzo soprano and (perhaps lute) accompaniment.  The next day I hunted down a fine young classical guitarist, very patient and good-looking and somewhat dazzled  (I couldn't help but notice) by my being an actual composer who writes music down, who helped me go through the accompaniment note-by-note and remove all the notes that a guitar couldn't possibly play. Otherwise, I'd have made a hash of it.  I don't know how to play the guitar; which, for me, is half the fun of writing for it

And then, for I was full of juice, a few days later, I wrote out a very effective, funny, and idiomatically guitaristic setting (for, perhaps, contralto and guitar) of Jean Antoine de la Baïf's 'Le Loup, la Mère et l'Enfant.'

And then, after another few days, still oozing the vital sap, I wrote out, for myself, a tricky 7/8 meter, solo-voice setting of Charles d'Orléans' 'Le Temps a laissé son Manteau/ De Vent, de Froidure et de Pluye,' which, I confess, when I'm by myself, I love to sing.  I've heard other versions, including Debussy's (which, I boldly confess, I particularly dislike), but none does what mine does:  capture the bitter-sweet melancholy that throbs just beneath the surface of the glittering spring-song, or the still-melancholy, but also loud and joyous, "crying" of the beasts and birds in the second stanza.

Then for a couple of years I rested.

Nota bene:  The lyrics for all my songs have been characterized, qua poems, by absolute, exquisite, gem-like perfection--and I, as a composer, have done neither more, nor less, than to give them the (perfect) musical settings that they deserve.  It is also to note that all of my works have 'charm,' in the same way that our wisest and most socially aware forbears, in the most civilized era of our history (avant 1789), always had themselves portrayed as 'smiling' with their eyes.  This ineffable personal charm of mine has given rise to the dismissive fiction that I write in an "18th century style."  Would that I did!  More sympathetic friends to whom I've shown my work profess to hear in it, besides 'charm,' a certain harmonic astringency and fluent counterpoint more characteristic of 16th and 17th century Spanish and English music than of the 18th century; while my manipulation of metrics, of hemiola and polyrhythm are entirely of my time.  There, I have said enough.