For any newcomers to this page, I periodically explain that our “Hilltop” is at the top of a lane, just like the Hill Top (two words) house pictured below, which was the home where author Beatrix Potter wrote Peter Rabbit. It is in the Lake District of northwest England, amidst the most gorgeous countryside and hills and stone-rimmed paddocks of sheep. That is one of the locations that inspired my third (“English”) symphony’s first movement, subtitled “A Walk in the English Countryside.”

I really enjoyed visiting there and touring it several years ago, and there were even bunny rabbits in the garden. The rooms in that house were quite small, though, because people were much smaller when it was built in the 17^th century. Potter bought it much later, in 1905.

Our “Hilltop” peonies have now burst into blossoms! Here’s a photo of a few. Since I last wrote two weeks ago it has otherwise been fairly uneventful here. Lots of domestic chores – for me, especially mowing some of the property every day, due to so many rainy days causing the grass to grow faster. Pushing a heavy mower around a hilly acre is great exercise, but I’ve also done a good deal of composing.

There was still some confusion amongst the orchestra, their union, and my record company sorting out the contract to release the live recording on CD of my ballet, Raffaella, a Fairytale Ballet. Sadly, the deal has fallen through again between them. These things happen.

However, for now, until a proper album can be made by another orchestra, the whole ballet is on YouTube, and if you are driving a car or otherwise not able to watch video of the dancing, you can still put it on and just listen to the music through your car speakers or at home, just as if it was a live audio album.

I have wanted to get into the habit of walking for exercise (not only behind my mower) as many days a week as I can. Our neighborhood and house are, as stated above, on a hill, which is not fun to trudge up, once you have gone down, not to mention the rather scary barking, unleashed pit bull dog at one house!

But there is a lovely park about a mile away with a level, paved walking path next to a creek (both shown here), and I have just had to get up the resolve to drive the car a few minutes to get there. I can listen to music while I walk, using my mobile phone with headphones, or just enjoy the chirping birds and the sound of the water in the creek. The park surrounds a beautiful, historic log cabin used by the early settlers here.

As usual, I have probably spent too much time thinking about the mysterious, interior aspects of composing. Ironically, this tends to haunt me more when I’m writing fast or happy music, as I am now, perhaps wondering if it is too trivial. But can’t it just be for enjoyment? After all, some comic relief is needed in a third movement like this. The philosopher Susanne Langer calls music a kind of “objectification.” That is, music gives us at least some kind of “object,” even if it is an invisible one in the air, to symbolize our unspeakable feelings – to say for us what we’d like to say but do not have words to say. You hear it, and sometimes you think, “THAT’S what I feel.”

I can tell you this is all as much a mystery to the composer as to the listener. Composers are not some kind of wizards in perfect control of music’s emotions, at least not in my case. Rather more often we are just the vessel through which those musical emotions come, as with a mind of their own. Usually the notes do come to me easily and without doubt, but sometimes there is some doubt as to whether they are the right notes, or are any good, or even worth keeping. You come back to it the next day and think it’s terrible, and then again a few days later and think it’s good again. But I think if there is no doubt or struggle in a work of art, maybe it is not genuine.

In the late afternoons with my cat beside me and my gin martini (stirred, not shaken), I have been reading Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, having previously worked my way through Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple stories. I finished his first one, Casino Royale, and have skipped to his third, Moonraker, and am really enjoying it, though it has some huge differences from the movie version starring Roger Moore. Generally, I think the Bond movies are more cartoonish, whereas the novels are rather realistic and focused on the cold war and actual espionage, which were going on in the 1950’s when Fleming wrote them. People may not know that Fleming was in Naval intelligence during World War II and in the British intelligence service after the war, so he knew how spy work was really done. Really interesting and well written.

A close friend of mine is the musician/composer extraordinaire Kip Winger. He has rightly built a huge fan following in the famed Winger band from the late 1980’s to the present. But this coming weekend, a new classical violin concerto Kip composed will have its premiere performance by the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. I look forward to being there for the Friday the 9th concert. If anyone reading this happens to be going then, too, please say hi to me.

That’s all the news that’s fit to print, this time. I bid you a fond farewell! But let me pontificate on one point: When things are not going well, happiness is a choice you can make, a decision. You are not a slave to whatever is not going well in your attitude. There is grace available, and there is joy in beauty.