I’ve become really fixated this month in what the title “Necrosis” – meaning cell death – could mean in a piece of music.  As both my parents died in September, it is quite common for this month for the ideas of short journeys, completion, and double barlines to be the dominant ones; I saw a call-out online for 60 second pieces…so I gave it a shot!

It’s called “Necrosis 1” as I feel like I may come back and back and back to this way of working.

The thing that was most tricky was the pacing – pieces in this style often last at least 15 minutes so to make something that sounded organic but fit in under a minute was difficult. I particularly struggled where the pitch starts getting higher and higher – too smooth a rise and it feels to easy and inevitable, too sudden and it feels like it is created by an outside force rather than something within the cell.

I have a feeling the piece may be quite hard! Let’s see what the cellist says!

EDIT: I’ve just seen that the file I sent to the composer at about 23:45 on deadline day was badly electronically corrupted so I guess that’s that! But…

…I sent it to my mentor-person who was wondering if I should add a piano and explore making the material into a 10 minute piece. May have a ponder on that – watch this space!