Thanksgiving was a bit unusual. While the turkey was in the oven, we got news of a close family member admitted to the hospital in another city. We kept in touch and went ahead and had the traditional meal and enjoyed a fire in the fireplace that night, but then Crystal packed up some of our holiday food and drove there on Friday morning, while I held down the fort and the cat. With the situation stable, she was able to leave there to return home on Saturday afternoon, just in time for  the last of the turkey, diced and mixed with barbecue sauce. I also baked her a fluffy French souffle with the last of the mashed potatoes plus egg and grated cheddar.

Back to Thanksgiving evening, though, I put the turkey carcass, including the usual neck, etc. and some extra wings I had bought into our huge pasta pot, along with a couple of rough-cut onions, carrots, celery, salt, and whole peppercorns. That pot simmered on the back of the stove around ten hours, overnight, till the next morning. I added a little water at some point in the night to replace what had simmered away. Finally, I scooped out all of those bits and pieces and then cooled the pot out on the patio in the cold. That allowed me to remove the fat layer off the top, strain the stock, and put two quarts of it into each of five zip-lock plastic bags, two and a half gallons total! With their magical healing properties and great flavor, these bags were placed into our big freezer to retrieve in the future, either for soup in times of sickness or to use in rice, braised meats, casseroles, and gravies.  

Drip, drip, drip, came notes of music into my head rather involuntarily since I last wrote here about beginning to compose music for my next symphony, to be the fourth. You may recall that my third was just recorded and will be released on CD on Feb. 7. I have written a lot of other kinds of orchestral music, like tone poems and concertos, which is why I don’t yet have many “symphonies.” But (Lord willing) I am now working on building up a repertoire of what I hope will be five to ten four-movement symphonies, fifty minutes to an hour long each. This new music is to be the second movement in my fourth symphony. There is no rule that you must start with the first movement, so I’m writing the second movement first. The second movement is traditionally the “slow and loving” one.

I have not been killing myself working on this, though, usually spending a few hours a day on it at my leisure. Somehow, though, I have now found myself up to ten minutes of music, fully orchestrated, out of what will likely be a fourteen-minute movement. It is really enjoyable to compose with no deadlines and no recording dates set, after the high pressure of finishing both my recent ballet and third symphony on tight deadlines. The positive result of that stressful exercise in speed is that I now seem to be a faster composer, and, miraculously, I think the music is also better. Maybe I’ll actually get to that tenth symphony before I die, who knows. Whether those symphonies will outlive me remains to be seen. Even the great composers couldn’t predict that. Johann Sebastian Bach and his music were forgotten for eighty years and then rediscovered!

The state-of-the-art virtual playback I have with my “NotePerformer 4” software is certainly more realistic sounding than ever, even though it is still not as expressive as the real instruments will eventually be, but I’ll probably still post the virtual mockup here when the movement is done. I’ll also be trying out another set of instrument sounds in the days ahead. Nonetheless, I do remain “old-school,” because I wrote this music at the piano in pencil on manuscript paper and later entered each chunk of it into the conductor’s score in computer notation. Here are what a few of its pages look like:

As sometimes happens at this time of year, having finished the run of one musical theater show, Crystal is already rehearsing another one at night, plus a full-time teaching job by day, so it is challenging enough for her to keep up with routine matters at home and stay well, into the bargain. We may not be able to get out to buy our usual live Christmas tree together for two more weeks. Usually I put the lights on the tree, and she puts on the ornaments. However, we did get our Advent wreath and Jacquie Lawson Advent Calendar up and running on Sunday, the former shown here, which technically comes before the tree, anyway. O Come, O Come, Emanuel! As for shopping, we tend to pick up various Christmas presents during our travels throughout the year, so we are at least mostly done with that – just need to wrap them.

I did not expect to do great on my dieting over Thanksgiving and have only lost another two lbs. since I last wrote, but at least I got to have Thanksgiving dinner in moderation and some leftovers and didn’t gain any. I’m hoping to do better between now and Christmas. It’s the leftover dressing (stuffing) that’s hard for me to resist! I finally made myself freeze the rest of it. Don’t know how it will taste when someday thawed. It ought to freeze well, I think.

Breaking news: It looks like a new CD/album recording (audio only) of my ballet, Raffaella, may be viable to release sooner rather than later! If all goes well with the contracts, I will give details next time!

I’ll sign off here and wish you a joyful and not too stressful holiday season for the next two weeks!