The composer keeps strange hours, especially if, like me, your work gravitates to the evening during the week and the morning on Sundays. It can be difficult to keep a reguar timetable, as longtime readers of this blog will know, and even though I would like to be in my ‘office’ at and for the same time every day, I have to admit that it will not happen that often.
Today was one of those odd days, my work beginning in late afternoon and going on until well into the evening. Once home I began tackling my own projects, which is why I am writing this entry at well gone the witching hour, with a small glass of red for company, just winding down for the day.
The reactions to Why Should We Not Sing? continue to come in, and there are whispers of a possible second performance somewhere along the line this year, and more than one person, including a particular gentleman who is something of an expert on Lloyd George, has described the piece as ‘moving’, so it has pressed the right buttons for some people. What it has done which is much more important is to put my music before new people and, best of all, show that I can write something to the commission brief under budget and before the deadline. You would be amazed how many composers cannot do any of these things, and how many opportunities come along for those who can.
Anyway, people appear to be taking notice, for there have been whispers all day of new projects, and I hope to be able to confirm one of them within the next few days, even if the others might have to wait for a little longer. What is particularly gratifying is that my current project, and the one which looks set to come in after that, are going for be for instrumental and orchestral forces, which are exactly the two areas I would like to explore, given that my choral catalogue is fairly well stocked.
I have been writing for long enough to know that rumours of commissions are very different from the actual commissions themselves, and that any news needs to be confirmed before it is announced, whether publications, awards, performances or recordings. There is much that goes unmentioned in this blog, but a large amount goes on behind the scenes and I could, if I wanted to, mention all sorts of things which might happen in 2013. However, they might not, and that’s the point.
When they do not happen I suffer that kind of dip in my confidence which I have had over the past couple weeks, but of course the trick is never to give up. I even have something similar written on a Post-It note attached to my work computer. I rather like that quotation “For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, ‘It might have been'”, but there is something reassuring in the thought that these commissions might be.
Nicholas O'Neill 