Written by Kirsty Devaney, Composer for Newtown
I am at the final stages of my piece inspired by Newtown. I have had a couple of ‘eureka’ moments and a couple of composition flops* but I think the end is in sight. One of the main aspects I have been working on is the structure of the piece. I had a couple of musical ideas that I really liked hearing but I couldn’t see how to put them all together. I have had to delete some musical material in order for the music to make sense structurally. Deleting music is a really hard thing to do, especially if you like it and you have spent time on it. Refining and evaluating is an important skill for all composers and one I am still working on and think I always will be.
I am pretty happy with the structure of my piece now but I really need to hear the musicians perform it with the field recordings in order to properly assess the balance of ideas and the journey of the music. I am sure after hearing the piece for the first time I will have a lot more small edits to do to the piece!
*a composition flop was a term developed in my second year of university when I lived with 6 other composers in one house. Quite commonly we would take it in turns to come into the living room, flop on the sofa and say ‘I can’t compose!’