Every year at Sforzando is wonderful, and this year was no exception. I felt like the teaching was particularly helpful this year, especially in the areas of music pedagogy and music standards. Perhaps part of the reason why I felt like I learned a lot is because last year I was running around with a camera in my hand the whole time. It was great seeing all our Sforzando friends again this year, playing and learning about music for God’s glory!

On the topic of the Sforzando documentary — it’s released to the public now! After months of working on it, getting feedback from friends, and making more tweaks, the final cut was exported on May 9, 2011. It’s an hour, five minutes.

One of the unique things about the documentary is that I attempted to use the string camp as a context for an educational experience (opposed to making a long commercial or highlight video about the camp). The film contains some practical information, in my opinion, on a variety of topics: the importance of history and theory to music, what the purpose of music should be for a Christian, a discussion of music standards, some tidbits of fun information about Beethoven’s famed 5th Symphony, why it’s crucial to start children young in playing music, and more. It’s a fun film for anyone who’s ever gone to Sforzando, but other music-loving people would enjoy it as well, I think.

Sforzando is available at Amazon.com and Createspace — as well as at Sforzando String Camp, but that only happens during one never-long-enough week out of the year.

Note: if you buy it from Createspace, enter the code “NY7H7U4N” (without quotes) to get 20% off.

It went back up with the new redesign, and today I’m releasing the first download: Fantasia for Two Brothers, the music I composed for the credits of Bros.

Enjoy! =)

So I composed some music. And it doesn’t fit at all with the video… But that’s part of the learning process I guess. It won’t be used for the video, but I decided to finish it out anyway because I liked the way it was going.

It’s a piano piece. I don’t play piano — trust me on that. So I decided to try my hand at composing something for the piano. There’s no way I could ever even try to play what I wrote! After consulting a friend who’s quite good at the piano (thanks, Reis!), I think I might try splitting apart some of the way-too-many-notes-for-one-pianist and making the duet available as sheet music.

You can download the song by clicking the image below. I named it “Pectus,” the Latin word for heart. It sounds kind of dry, since I just used my software instruments (Vienna Special Edition, using samplings from a Bösendorfer Imperial piano)… I think it’d be neat to hear it played in real life sometime. Software just can’t capture the emotion that people can put into music.

Over the past five years, I’ve had lots of memories made during that one week of a sudden emphasis on music… I wouldn’t trade the experiences for anything. Every year makes me want to come back next time; every year inspires me to improve in the skills the Lord has equipped me with.

Next year’s camp is tentative right now, due to Marquette Manor Baptist Church going through a bit of a transition time in getting a new pastor. It’s in the Lord’s will, anyway, every year. If He wants it to continue, it will continue.

And next year, if it happens, it’ll be Sforzando’s seventh year. Every year brings something uniquely special… I can’t wait to see what God has in store!

To God be the glory, great things He has done!

This year in chapel, Mr. Ron Perkins delivered three messages to campers, each dealing with how our lives as Christians are examples to unbelievers. His source from the Bible was mainly in Ephesians 2:8-10, focusing specifically on verse ten.

His point was that we, as Christians, should be walking in good works (we are God’s workmanship created for good works!), striving to live godly lives. He told about when he was a young teenager and visiting some churches with his dad near where they lived. The thing that made the most impression on his mind was that the kids at these churches — whom he also knew from school — were either no different than they were at school (in a bad way), or were hypocrites (putting on a front at church).

The examples of those kids kept him from putting his faith in Jesus for another nine years. If he had died before then, sadly, he would be spending eternity apart from God in hell — that’s the sad reality. Even though the works of these kids pointed to them not having true faith in Christ, from an outside perspective, they were representatives of Christians. It’s important that those of us who have true faith in Christ be careful in the way we live our lives — not that we can be perfect, of course. It’s about following Christ, keeping our eyes on Him.

Titus 2:11-14 are some verses that Mr. Perkins set forth as examples of what we’re to be striving for: renouncing ungodliness and worldly lusts; living self-controlled, upright, and godly lives; waiting for the hope of Christ’s return; being zealous for good works. When a person becomes a Christian, things begin changing. In my life, desires and motives have been changing, my identity has been shifting, etc. In Mr. Perkins’ life, his lifestyle changed, his choice of music changed, etc. It’s all about a change of identity — identifying with Christ instead of the world we were once a part of.

One of my favorite things during the camp week is having spare time to simply play music with others. This year, we had a few impromptu sessions, during which we played a string sextet, improvised on common folk tunes, etc.

In the minutes leading up to the final Friday night concert, everyone in the room where we put our cases banded together in playing Dvorak’s 9th symphony — most people playing from memory. That was fun! After the concert, Tyler and I, along with another violist, succeeded in playing what was our most complete improvisation yet, based on Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major. We affectionately refer to our arrangement as the “Tacobell Canon,” it being in a western fiddle style.

Sforzando is so great because of the people, both campers and staff. The faculty is always willing to help one learn, and campers always get along quite well with one another. Tyler and I both have so many great memories from the years we’ve attended the camp!

Next post coming up: Conclusion.

This year, we covered Antonín Dvořák, Joseph Haydn, and Ralph Vaughn Williams. In addition to studying the lives of these composers, we also took a look into the form and instrumentation in the pieces we were playing by them.

Something new I learned about Haydn’s “Surprise” symphony (No. 94 in G Major; in German, it’s the symphony “mit dem Paukenschlag”) was that Haydn wrote it to outdo a student of his, Ignaz Pleyel. It worked. The audience attending the premiere of it at the Hanover Square Rooms, London, demanded an encore after hearing the second movement (which contains the surprise)… Second movements of symphonies are never encored. In symphony form, the second movement (usually out of four) is slower and calmer than any of the other movements.

One blessing in disguise that came from being late to camp was that neither Tyler or I had to take the greatly-feared Theory Test. We got to choose which theory class we wanted to be in — and we both chose Theory IV Composing.

Theory is my weakest point in music; I never really studied much of it until beginning lessons with my viola teacher around four years ago. While I can now (slowly) identify note names, key signatures, scale degrees, and chord inversions, I’m still not very good at it. Kinda ironic, since I love to compose music (hence why I chose the composing theory class).

Dr. Seth Custer shared some really good thoughts about utilizing different techniques in arranging and composing. He made the class practical by having everyone do a homework assignment, arranging “Shenandoah” and disguising the melody using various methods. On Thursday, he had four of us (including Tyler and I) put our compositions up on chalkboards, then proceeded to take them apart and examine what we had done.

Him doing that was quite helpful for me, in a couple ways. First, it showed me that there are a ton of ways that composing can be approached. Second, I got to step back to take a look at where I am with my composing skills, and what I need to study in order to improve.

I realized that I tend to be so afraid to overuse a theme, that I jump around way too much. There’s quite a bit of mileage to be pulled out of a musical theme, if one is to think about it and try different things.

Something else I realized is that I need to do more composing on good old staff paper, rather than relying on the computer all the time. Dr. Custer rightly said that a good composer can hear the music in his head.

And the last thing that was really driven home was that I need to dig into some theory topics and really get a hold on the mysteries of how music works. I’d like to start by really trying to get down keys, intervals, modes, scale degrees, etc., and also to diving into learning counterpoint (which I’ve used in my composing thus far, though ignorantly…).

To sum it up, I feel like I walked away from theory class this year with quite a bit. Now, I need to apply it.

Next post coming up: on other aspects of Sforzando.

The music lineup is always good. This year we had some repeats from previous years, including Joe Mueller’s arrangement of Holy, Holy, Holy (originally arranged for the 2006 camp), Medley on the Cross (medley of hymns about the cross), Vaughn William’s English Folk Song Suite, and Haydn’s Surprise Symphony (No. 94 in G Major). Both of the latter pieces were first performed at the camp in 2005, I believe, which was my first year in attendance. I played violin that year, so it was neat to take a look at the pieces from the viola perspective this time.

As I stated in my previous post, you’ll recall that we arrived at the camp late. Because of this, we missed our auditions… And just as I thought would happen, I was put at the back of the section. I’m fine with that — that’s what the right thing to do was.

It was, however, a huge difference from sitting in the principal seat last year! Trombones were behind me, violins to the right, and timpani to the left… Needless to say, it was hard to hear myself sometimes. It didn’t detract from the experience, though. We were glad to have been able to even be there at all, and I determined to learn as much as I could through the experiences at camp this year.

In a sense, it was easier to be able to do that, since I didn’t have to be über-worried about leading the section. All I had to do was play the music, follow the section, principal, and our conductor (Dr. Brown was back again as conductor!), which freed my mind up to be able to pay attention to my technique. Because of this, I was able to pinpoint some issues with my technique that I’d like to fix or make better through practice in the next few months.

At any rate, rehearsals went well throughout the week, my only real problem being that I was a day behind in becoming comfortable with everything put together. The Wednesday evening concert and service went good, with the addition of a new thing this year for the Advanced Orchestra — an a capella song sung as part of our performance line up for the night.

The Friday night Final Concert, in my opinion, was perhaps one of the best in the six-year history of the camp. The brass and woodwind sections did a particularly good job this year, especially considering that a lot of our music had a lot of reliance on them. These sections are made up of people who volunteer, some of them playing through the music for the first time on that beginning Monday.

Our full repertoire for this year, besides the Haydn symphony and Vaughn Williams suite, included the Prelude from the Carmen Opera (Bizet), and Dvořák’s famed 9th Symphony (“New World”), Allegro con Fuoco movement. It was a fun lineup.

Tyler and I always look forward to the chamber part of string camp, as well. Chamber groups are put together on Monday, given their music, and perform it on Friday morning during a recital.

This year, we were both put into the same group (Quartet No. 3), along with Joshua Muzzi (assistant principal of 1st Violins in the orchestra) and Calvin Kuntz (third chair 1st violin). We were given Haydn’s “Lark” quartet (String Quartet No. 53 in D Major), Allegro Moderato movement.

This particular movement is the one that people think of when they think of the “Lark” quartet. It’s slow, somewhat simple, quite different from the Beethoven I played in chamber last year. Slow and simple can be hard, though, because one has to really work on making it sound good. It’s easy to make a boring performance out of the “Lark.”

So even though it wasn’t necessarily as exciting as if we had been able to do a Mozart or Beethoven quartet, it was good. We got to really work on getting the small details right; getting articulations exact, matching style and sound throughout the quartet, etc.

We feel that our performance at the Chamber Recital on Friday went fairly well. I happened to forget to tighten my bow before we began (a stupid mistake), which threw me off balance for most of the performance… But other than that, it was a lot of fun. We threw in a bit of our own style into it by taking advantage of a fermata (bird’s eye) and turning it into a chuckle moment.

We video taped our performance, so it’ll hopefully be up on YouTube sometime in the next few days; I’ll post it once it’s up.

Next post coming up: on Music History & Theory.