The early parts of the piece are actually the most difficult to perform. As I worked on it, I got more used to how my vocal rhythms and breath patters were falling in reading the text, so I gave myself a lot more space. In the first few pages of the score, however, the text comes much more rapidly, and I have to nail the rhythms much more exactly to avoid getting out of sync with the strings. I suppose that it makes sense, dramatically, since the early part deals with Moses’s surprise and fear upon seeing and hearing the burning bush. As it moves on, it gets more thoughtful and deals with more expansive visions.

This will be another of my whirlwind vacations in which I’ll probably have little time to relax. I fly out on a red-eye on Wednesday, arriving in New Jersey on Thursday morning. On Friday, I’ll be helping my mother prepare for Passover. On Saturday, I may be dragged to a bar mitzvah at my mother’s synagogue. The performance is on Sunday. On Monday, we go to Philadelphia (about two hours away) for the first seder, which will be at the home of one of my aunts there. On Tuesday, we head back and have the second seder at either my mother’s or my brother’s house. And I head back to California on Wednesday morning.

On top of the rushing around, I’m going to be massively jet-lagged. Since I work an evening shift on the other side of the continent, I regularly go to sleep at just about the time that people on the east coast are waking up. I expect that my family will be expecting me to snap instantly to their sleep cycles and to complain if I don’t.

I also have a few things that I want to get done when I’m out there. I have a large amount of CDs (roughly 700, I think) that I want to pack up to sell off. A friend from college works at the Princeton Record Exchange, and it would make sense to arrange to get the CDs to them. A lot of them are pretty obscure, and that’s the one store in the state that might make sense of them and give me a fair sale price.

I also want to go through the books in my mother’s garage. I haven’t touched or thought about most of them in almost five years, so I figure that I might as well get rid of them. I figure that I’ll donate the Judaica that I don’t hold onto to my mother’s synagogue library. Many of the others are music books, and there must be something appropriate to do with them, though I don’t know what. And I have a lot of computer junk in there that I should just throw out or appropriately recycle. I don’t know if I’m going to have any time to look at any of this, though.

It also looks like the only window of time that I’ll have to get together with anyone is on Saturday late afternoon and evening, and we’ll have to get together in Toms River. If anyone’s up for coming down and getting together then, let me know! (And take the Parkway, not Route 9, unless you’re very confident and relaxed…)

When I get back to Berkeley, I’m going to want to get rolling on several projects again. The Ocean of Ghosts album has been on hold for several months, and I want to look into how to get that moving.

The book of “The Rounds” has also been on hold; I had been waiting for a friend to edit it, but that person seems to have dropped off the grid, so I’m going to proceed with whatever I have when I return. Chelsey shot photos for the book several weeks ago, and I’m hoping to see them and start making some selections when I return.

I’ve also started poking at another writing project, which will probably turn into another small book. It’s been hovering in my head for years, but aspects of the form, voice, and organization have clicked into place recently. But there’s no deadline, and I’ll let this take as long as it needs.

Work is continuing as it has. Our annual inventory is coming up while I’m away. I had hoped to get my entire section perfectly organized before it, but we’ve been short-handed at work, and I’ve had less time to work on it than I’d hoped. For most of the CDs that are organized by composer, I try to sort them by the major work on the CD, then by the primary performer of the work, then by the date of the recording, then by the label. (Chopin is the exception: since most discs have a smattering from amother the many mazurkas, etudes, impromptus, nocturnes, and the like, I just gave up and, except for the Cello Concerto, sort the rest by performer regardless of the main work.) Most other sections are content to hav e works by a single artist together without further organization, but I get kind of compulsive on these things.

(I had a maddening conversation with an innocent and well-meaning coworker last week. She needed an inventory code to log a returned CD, and asked me to look it up. After failed attempts to pronounce “Rachmaninoff”, she spelled it out, then said that the album was of “Symphony number 1.” She seemed baffled when I told her that I needed more information to determine which recording it was — after all, it’s not as if anyone needs to know who performed a given disc of, say, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Well, there have been tribute versions of it, but they have different names.)

I’ve been listening to my usual array of music, both for enjoyment and to glean ideas for more music. Right now I’m listening to a wonderful bootleg of the Cecil Taylor Unit from 1978. I thought it might give me ideas for a piece that I’m sketching, though it’s mostly pointing out things that I don’t want the piece to do, which is useful.

I’ve seen a couple of movies recently. The high point was Miss Potter, and utterly charming depiction of the life of the author of Peter Rabbit. The utter nadir was the execrable and inexcusable Borat, which took schtick that had been worn out by Yakov Smirnoff and Candid Camera years before and filtered it through the sensibility of a nine-year-old boy who had just discovered that he could get a rise out of people by talking obsessively about feces and genitalia at dinner. The combination of ambush interviews and doo-doo humor should an utter lack of compassion or consciousness on the part of anyone involved. That anyone actually liked it is, to say the least, dismaying.

And it’s time for me to wrap this up and get to sleep. It’s going to be a busy week, what with trying to get everything together for the trip. And I’m eagerly awaiting Sunday’s season finale of the new Battlestar Galactica, though if as good as the previews suggest, I may be staggering around for a couple of days trying to sort out what the frak I had seen.

All the melodic materials and most of the rhythms are derived directly from the spiritual “Go Down Moses”. I’m sticking strictly to the notes of the harmonic minor scale that the song uses, meaning that I’m not really modulating at all, and that I’m not heading into any harmonic wormholes that might get me lost.

Harmony, and particular harmonic motion, are not my strong suit. While I understand that many people have some sense of built in harmony that compels them to want to follow a given chord with another particular, I’ve never caught this. Almost any chord, followed by almost any other chord, sounds pretty good to me. I sort of hear chords as clouds rather than as direction-pointers, so I wander among them as they happen. Since this piece, however, effectively stays within one chord, I’m not as afraid of zigging where I should zag and modulating into a ditch.

I also decided to consider the text as fixed, once I posted it here. This saves me from second-guessing the wording and rewriting it, and keeps me focused on the music.

I’ve set myself a deadline of February 15 to finish the score, and I should make it. When I finished Thursday night’s bout of composing, I emailed my mother the score as it now stands. She’s replied that her orchestra should have no problem playing it, and didn’t have other criticisms.

Meanwhile, I try to continue with my regular life in the cracks between the twin compulsions of my job and the composing. I had spent several nights thrashing about the accumulated stuff in my room, convinced that something had eaten my favorite pajamas. But I just found them under a pile of my shirts that I had forgotten in a drawer of the room upstairs from which I moved many months ago. When I got the shirts back, I absent-mindedly put them down on top of other clothes. A fortunate avalanche of laundry revealed where they were.

I might have seen them sooner if the overhead light in my room had not burned out. It turns out to need a weird round fluorescent bulb. It’s also a little too high up for me to reach easily from our stepladder, and positioned over an archipelago of stuff that juts out into the center of my room, so that I would have to lean over it to change the light bulb. (How many of me does it take to change a light bulb? If the answer is greater than one, we would probably trip over each other’s stuff and break several more bulbs in the process.) Fortunately, I have a desk lamp that’s working well enough for now.

Following up on earlier messages: I look forward to getting together with folks in New Jersey and environs when I’m out there. The way that my schedule is shaping up, though, the best possibility would be the day of the performance (assuming that it happens as planned), Sunday, April 1 (no fooling), somewhere in or around Toms River. Perhaps y’all could come to the show and we could go out afterwards. I realize that this would involve multiple people coming down from Central and North Jersey to Toms River, rather than my head up to where you are, but I’m committed to being in Toms River on both the Saturday and Sunday, while most folks work on the other days. And I haven’t driven a car in several years (not needing one out here), and would be leery of just hopping out onto the Parkway after this length of time.

Meanwhile, I’m going to post this, catch up on some other mail, and try to get the Sony Clié that I’m delighted to have been given working with my Linux box. The next sound that you will hear will the usual howling and cursing as I wrestle with technology. Fun abounds…

I’m using the Rosegarden sequencer to compose the piece. I know how it works (pretty much). It effectively plays back what I write, and it generates beautiful printed scores, for both the conductor and the players.

Rosegarden only works under Linux, which means that I really should keep my laptop booted into Linux rather than Windows while cramming on this project. Fortunately, I found a very good article at the Linux Journal site that showed me how to be able to get at my mail and Firefox bookmarks from either Linux or Windows on the same box.

In trying to get there, however, I hit the usual bunch of obstacles that set me back a week. I first had troubles on the Windows side, then ran into trouble clearing space out for things (having not only lots of large MP3s but half-gigabyte downloaded episodes of Battlestar Galactica makes defragmenting difficult).

Once I got that done, I went over to the Linux side and upgraded to the new version of Ubuntu — which completely killed my graphical interface, meaning that I only had a command line. With the help of some folks on the Freenode #ubuntu IRC channel, I was able to conquer that, discovering that the problem stemmed from an easily removed smudge on the installation DVD.

The one killer app for Windows that isn’t available yet on Linux is any recent release of iTunes that will handle video. So I’ve have to pop over to Windows to sync my iPod with new podcasts and to download new episodes of Galactica when they resume this Sunday. But that shouldn’t be too big of a deal.
So here I am, working relatively happily in Linux on the laptop.

Composing this is going to be a mad dash. Agreeing to have it ready in time to perform it on April 1 is insane, but I had some good reasons to do it (some perhaps to be revealed here later).

I’ve worked out the timings of the text, so I can tell where the bar lines fall. The reading will be freer than the playing, but it will still have to be in sync with the orchestra, and I may not have much of a chance to rehearse with them. (I’m using Robert Ashley’s scores as a model.)

The melodic material is derived from the song “Go Down Moses“, with repeating phrases from it running alongside and against each other and contrasting material. I’m keeping in mind that it will have to be easy for this community orchestra to rehearse and play, and not so repetitive that the players get lost. This means having frequent obvious points where things very clearly sync up and shift.

For example, early in the piece there’s a twelve-bar section where a measure-long phrase taken from “Go Down Moses” (roughly the four-notes corresponding to “Israel was in” in the first line — an eighth note and a dotted quarter on one pitch followed by a dotted quarter and an eighth a half-step down, in parallel with another voice a minor third below) repeats against what turns out to be a slow twelve-tone row in the cellos and basses. The most dissonant point is at the end, where the voice for the first time says “MOSES.” Everything stops for a few beats and restarts. (This stuff is much harder to describe in words than to notate.) The effect should be of increasing tension.

(And nobody may notice that it’s a twelve-tone row, and it isn’t being used rigorously. It just struck me that using all twelve notes as I went along was a good way of organizing things. The row may or may not turn up again. You can unbutton your collars now.)

Now that I’m able to get started with the actual notation, I’ll be starting by notating the vocal part. Since I’m not assigning pitches to the speaking voice, it will probably make sense to use a single line of percussion notation to track it.

But I should probably get to bed sometime, so I can be awake at some point tomorrow. Come to think of it, I may not get to do much, since I’m planning to catch the movie Absolute Wilson at 2 PM (the only time in its one-week run that will fit my crazy schedule), have a rehearsal in the evening for next Wednesday’s concert, and may try to squeeze in the late show of Pan’s Labyrinth at the same theater afterward. Then, I’ll do my rounds and work on the composing some. I’ll probably also cram on it on Thursday, then fit it in around my work week, rehearsing, and performing from Friday on.

I don’t know if this means that I need to get a life or that I have too much of one. If I ever slow down, I’ve have to schedule a time to figure that out.

MOSES (for narrator and orchestra)
– Joseph Zitt

I am standing in the desert.

I am standing in the desert,
and a bush is burning before me.

A bush is burning,
and it is not consumed.

It is not consumed,
as smoke is rising from it.

It is not consumed,
as a voice is rising from it.

A voice is rising from it,
and it is calling out my name.

It is calling “MOSES”.

It is calling “Moses”
and I am afraid.

But then, more gently,
it is calling my other name.

It is calling my other name
that no one else knows.

It is calling my other name
that my mother gave me
before she gave me up,

That my mother gave me,
before the princess found me,

before the princess found me,
and named me “Moses”,

“Moses,”
a name from the oppressors,

“Moses,”
a name that everyone would know,

“Moses,”
a name that I knew was not my own.

But when I had asked my mother
what name she had given me,

what name she had meant me to bear,
she said, “You are Moses now,
and you must live with kings

You are Moses now,
and you will be a leader.

You are Moses now,
because you have to be

You have to be true
You have to be strong
You have to be strong for us.”

And the bush is calling me,
And the bush is calling me “Moses”,
And the bush is calling me by my secret name,
the secret name that I never knew

But when I hear the bush say it,
When I hear the bush sing it,
when I hear the bush whisper it,
I know the name is mine.

And as I suddenly know my name,
I suddenly know my destiny,
I know my future,
of struggle,
of struggle, and plagues,
of struggle, and plagues, and faith,
of struggle, and plagues, of faith, and of freedom.

And I will go down, now,
I will go down to Egypt’s land
I will tell Pharoah
to let my people go.

But first,
But first I will go home
I will go home to my mother,
back to my mother’s arms,

And she will hold me,
As she held me before she let me go,
As she held me when I was a child,

And I will whisper to her,
I will whisper to her
that I now know who I am,
I will whisper to her my true, my secret name,

And she will tell me
“You now know who you are,
You now can be a man,
can stand up to kings,
You now can lead

And people will know of what you will do,
and people will sing of Moses

And maybe, at the end of days,
when all good things are known,
we all will gather back again,
will gather by the river
that leads us to heaven,
where we will sing of our lives,
of our past, of our history,

and we will sing of Moses,
and then in a loving whisper,
we will all sing our true names.”

D’MAMAH (דממה)

(Hebrew for “Still,” as in “a still, small voice”)

• Nancy Beckman: shakuhachi, voice
• Thomas Bickley: recorder, electronics, voice
• Joseph Zitt: voice

Performing “Badbury Rings,” “Banquet of Heaven,”
“Te lucis ante terminum,” and other works and improvisations

7 pm

Grace North Church

2138 Cedar Street

Berkeley, CA 94709

Open to the public without charge

We’ve created this performance specifically for the Grace North Church sanctuary space. It combines existing works (including several from my book Surprise Me With Beauty) with new works created for this space.

D’mamah’s music draws upon Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, and other traditions in creating a sound of joy, surprise, and contemplation.

The performance will last about an hour.

If you’re driving, directions are here.

If you’re taking the BART: Take the Richmond line to the Downtown Berkeley station. Come up the escalators at the center of the station. Turn right. (You should see Half Price Books a block ahead of you. Allow extra travel time if you can’t resist bookstores.)

Walk for about ten minutes until you reach Cedar Street. (There’s a traffic light there. Starbucks will be on your left, the Elephant Pharmacy on your right, and Andronico’s ahead of you.)

Turn right, cross Shattuck Street, and continue uphill for one block on Cedar Street. Grace North Church will be just across Walnut Street. Continue up Cedar until you come to the double doors to the Sanctuary. We’ll be in there.

• Black Eyed Peas: Elephunk
• The Blue Nile: A Walk Across the Rooftops
• Elliott Carter: Night Fantasies/Piano Sonata (Charles Rosen)
• Elliott Carter: String Quartets 1 & 4 (Arditti Quartet)
• Michael Daugherty: Jackie O (the opera)
• Dr. Dre: The Chronic
• Electroplenaire Sound Diary: The Wind Rises
• Fastball: All the Pain Money Can Buy
• Future Sounds of London: Lifeforms (EP)
• Emily Hay: Like Minds
• Aurora Josephson/Philipp Wachsmann/Jacob Lindsay/Damon Smith/Martin Blume: Zero Plus
• Giya Kancheli: Abii Me Viderum
• October Project: October Project
• Pink Floyd: Works
• rinocerose: installation sonore
• San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus: ExtrABBAganza!
• San Francisco School Orff Ensemble: Jitterbug Waltz
• Dave Smith: First Piano Concert
• Gregg Smith Singers: Madrigals and All That Jazz
• Spooky Actions: Early Music
• John Tchicai and the Archetypes: Love is Touching
• Ten Grands: Vol.3 (Music for ten grand pianos)
• Vienna Teng: Waking Hour
• John Voight: Free Jazz Improvisation Play-A-Long
• Cassandra Wilson: Traveling Miles
• Various Artists: Wig in a Box: Songs from & inspired by Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Almost all were $2.99 or less. The sole exception. The Wind Blows, was $7.99. I already had the October Project and Vienna Teng CDs, but for a buck apiece, it was worth having a spare.

Then there’s the music that I’ve accumulated online, but that’s harder to stack and track.