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Wise King Taken by the Foolish Oneessay no. 12 Dear Lark in the Morning: I am entirely devoted to the glorification of the raw, instrumental sound...Dan Plonsey Keywords: ancient distant faint sounds, hand-to-mouth music.
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I believe you must think along similar lines, to have devoted your business to making such instruments available. I am writing first of all to express my gratitude to you for your work in promoting these instruments from other times and places; for introducing or returning these fantastic, under-utilized and/or nearly forgotten sounds into the Western musical world! I do think that these sounds - along with the appearance of the instruments' individual shapes and histories - is having a positive impact upon those who hear and see them, and even more upon those who play them. In a world that is fragmented by politics and religion, especially now, it is important that people re-acquaint themselves with the knowledge that in all times and places there have been ingenious makers of music and art, that there is the potential for creativity in all lands, and that this is maybe even what it is all about!
My second reason for writing is to introduce myself to you as a composer of instrumental music. I'm certain that you must get many such requests from composers who get it into their heads to write music for a collection of instruments from your catalog - and if so, simply add this letter to your files! I believe that my approach is especially suited to working with groups of un-matched instruments. As you will hear on the enclosed recording, my music derives from first listening to my own internal seemingly idle humming, and then thickening these melodies with fairly simple - if often slightly mismatched - harmonies, and near-unisons. I employ instruments that are difficult to play in tune (e.g., C melody sax), instruments with un-fixed intonation suited to expressive playing (the western string family and the trombone), along with non-western instruments with their own traditions of temperament (e.g., shakuhachi, shofar, cumbus, saz, sackbutt, and gangsa).
I propose to write a long (20+ minutes) composition for any number of instruments in your catalog, chosen from among winds, strings, and percussion; selected both for variety of time and place of origin, as for relatively quick learning time for the musicians I have at my disposal (I do not intend for the instrumentalists learn to play the instruments along traditional lines - unless that is what they really want to do - I'm more interested in having them develop hybrid playing techniques, relating to those instruments they already play).
Hoping to hear from you soon!
Sincerely Yours,
Daniel Plonsey
-- Dan Plonsey, October 2001,
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