Blogging for the MCE: Evidence of Compositional Activity
Before I trot out the evidence that I have, in fact, been writing music for the MCE as well as reading the newspaper and then blogging about it, there's just one more quote I would like to share with you that relates to yesterday's topic (integrity of musical idea versus the practical concerns of performability).Of course I did and do maintain that it is possible to keep your authentic voice while still writing music that is performable.Wuorinen's distinction is not quite the same—he writes about the difference between entertainment and art. Here's the quote:

Blogging for the MCE: Integrity vs. Performability
Here’s a quote for your consideration:“Art can’t just press your pleasure buttons and sell itself to you. It can’t need to care whether you like it—that’s the space where new ideas are born.”I love those words. I would love to live them, not just in all the art that I make, but in every gesture I make in real life. Worrying about being liked just distracts from things that really matter, such as authenticity in one’s creative voice. And when making art, I would never want to pander, or to condescend to my audience.

Blogging for the MCE: Publication!
Quick update:I just really want to thank Dale Warland and the good folks at G. Schirmer and Hal Leonard for this:http://www.schirmer.com/Default.aspx?TabId=2419&State_2872=2&composerId_2872=3239It's my first publication with one of the major houses. It's a very short choral setting of "The Lord Bless You and Keep You," easy and tuneful, not some magnum opus, but today when I opened the package from Hal Leonard with the first actual copies of the choral octavo and pulled them out and looked at them and saw they were real, I burst into tears.More about the MCE Xmas piece soon; it's coming along well, but to share what I've done sin