Pretentious [Title]

for a sx, tpt, tbn, cl, vln, vc, pno, bs, and d.s.

Duration - approx. 9 min.

Program Notes:

This piece was written for a mixture of jazz and classical players at UMKC.  The title is meant to evoke a mocking tone toward many of the other pieces written in the 21st century that try and encompass many varied and enormous philosophical and poetic meanings in a single piece.  Often, I think, composers forget that the most important aspect of their composition is the music (this critique can occasionally be applied to my own pretentious titles), and try and make programmatic elements take the “form” of the piece.  This is an existential question that must be asked about all music, and whether titles create a simplistic symbolist syllogism that defines a piece before it is performed.  And if the piece is predefined, then can it really be new?  To posit that the finite combinations of the English alphabet and the chromatic scale inhibit the possibility of creating a truly original composition creates the latent meaning of this piece.  This train of thought obviously brings us to the universal language “Esperanto” and the possibility of discovering a link between different cultures and different tone combinations and…I’m just kidding.  It’s exactly that sort of academic dribble that I wanted to avoid in this piece.  Just relax and have a good swinging time.

 

-Ryan Jesperson
Jan. 4th, 2008

This piece was premiered March 6th at UMKC. It was a finalist in the 2008 UMKC Chamber Composition Competition.

This performance is the premiere on March 6th, 2008 by Musica Nova at UMKC.