This was actually a Broadway-type musical. I started with the overture, in full score. Unfortunately, the only music paper I had was a little four-stave practice booklet. I tore out a number of pages and glued them together to make a massive orchestral score, which I kept rolled up in my closet when I wasn't composing. I had no idea what I was doing.
Note: This MIDI file is more a reflection of the way I heard it in my head than the way I had it written down. The rest of the samples below are straight from the manuscript.
Ever since hearing the Bruckner Ave Maria, I wanted to set this text to music. My first attempt was an eight-part polyphonic setting. Again, I had no idea what I was doing, but I gave it a good try. Eventually, I would successfully compose two settings of this text.
Click here for cacaphonic MIDI file, if you dare.
This is one of those that never really progressed beyond the "nebulous concept" stage. I thought I was being very original with the name, until I heard Beethoven's Ninth referred to as the "Choral Symphony". The idea for my symphony was to blend the orchestra and choir in all four movements, starting with medieval-style music and working my way through Rennaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and 20th Century styles. Ugh. That would have been awful.
Click here for MIDI file. You may want to cover your ears.
Pretty catchy title, huh? I timed it myself. Not much else to say about this one.
1979 was the International Year of the Child, and this overture was intended to commemorate this fact. When I showed my sketches to a schoolmate who played the piano, she scolded me for my poor manuscript and then proceeded to play some of her compositions. A quite discouraging moment.
Another musical, this one rehashing some ideas from "Blackrock Symphony" and adding some new ones. The overture used material from the 1979 Overture. I stayed pretty serious about this one for a number of years. Lots of sketches, but nothing ever completed.
My first attempt at a genre for which I was totally unprepared.
Click here for somewhat comical MIDI file.
The Missa Grandis was supposed to be a great mass in the tradition of Bach's Mass in B Minor, Mozart's Great Mass In C Minor, and Beethoven's Missa Solemnis. It was in the old-fashioned, extended cantata form, like Bach's and Mozart's masses. This is another one for which I wrote numerous sketches. In fact, I completed a preliminary score for the "Gratias Agimus Tibi", in hopes that my high school choir director would have us sing it. He, too, complained about my manuscript.
Click here for a sample of the Kyrie (They're getting better, trust me).
Click here to hear the "Gratias agimus tibi" in its entirety.
A big choral extravaganza with orchestra. It used the text from the famous Mozart piece of the same name, but was influenced by another Mozart piece, Regina Coeli.
After hearing some of Beethoven's piano sonatas, I decided I wanted to write something in a similar vein. Sure, why not? Well, because I wasn't quite up to it.
A symphony in the style of Mozart and Haydn, only, unlike Prokofiev's Classical Symphony, it would REALLY be in the style of Mozart and Haydn. I wrote numerous sketches for this and had some pretty good ideas. I might go back and finish it some day.
Click here for an excerpt from the Minuet.
These three attempts at setting this Latin text reveal the dramatic changes in my writing style through my years as a music major. The first is the work of an imaginative but unpolished composer; the second shows the influence of Music Theory class, and the third is the result of being told to chuck all that Music Theory garbage and write something New and Different.
Click here for the first O Magnum Mysterium in its entirety.
Click here for a sample from the second O Magnum Mysterium .
This was inspired both by Mozart's flute concertos and by a female flute player I had a crush on. I abandoned work on it when I realized the main theme was too similar to a Tchaikovsky melody.
An organ fugue on a theme by J.S. Bach (from the cantata, "Schwingt Freudig Euch Empor").
These were some early attempts to write fugues for the piano. Although they worked, technically, they were nothing to write home about.
Click here for another MIDI sample.
So named because it was to be dedicated to a girl I had a crush on who was part French (see a pattern starting to develop here?). Like my relationship with her, this symphony went nowhere.
Click here for an excerpt from the first movement.
Click here for an excerpt from the fourth movement.
Dedicated to the space shuttle Challenger, which exploded three days after our wedding in 1986. I never could make up my mind whether this was going to be a symphony or an overture, but I finally chucked the whole idea because it sounded too much like Brahm's second piano concerto.
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