No one ever asks me where I get my ideas. Sometimes I have ideas I would be better off ignoring.
For example, listen to this little bit of piano music. Eleven seconds!
It's the end of a cadenza played by someone famous as part of a concerto written by someone even more famous. I happened to be listening to this on my iPod last week. When I heard the scale passage (the first half of this clip) I thought to myself "I could make a piece out of that."
But how would I make such a piece? Sure I had the initial idea. That's easy. Then I had to pay the penalty - I had to do it. That's what I didn't know how to do. My inspiration was followed by the punishment of following through.
As it turns out I used not just the scale passage but the trill after it. Inspiration and Punishment begins with an attempt at recreating the "inspirational" material. And I added some annoyingly mistuned and unstable bass notes as well. Throughout the piece there is a feeling of preparation for the big moment of recapitulation which inevitably follows a cadenza. Remember, that's just a feeling.
Click here to hear Inspiration and Punishment © 2013 by David Ocker, 113 seconds.
I didn't say it would be a great piece.
Here's another Mixed Meters post in which my brain got me into trouble by having a crazy idea: Milton Babbitt and the Superbowl
Cadenza Tags: 30 Second Spots. . . piano music. . . cadenza
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