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The Contest Winners and their Prizes!

I’ve finally found the chance to post the prizes for the early visitors to this website. Together, all ten prizes form a cycle of ten piano pieces, Starry Wanderers that will be premiered at Minot State University by Dianna Anderson in October 2009, but visitors to this site have the chance to download them and look at them early! Scroll down to read about the winners and their pieces.

And the winners are...

1. First person to send an email—Lupita Sanchez (right), Stratford, Texas. Lupita’s piece is entitled Martian Meditation and is a short piece exploring a motivic cell from the “Mars” movement of Holst’s The Planets, a piece which has a fairly important influence on my musical thinking., but which also has the deep flaw of being based on astrological assumptions. The truth about Mars is not warlike; rather, it is more like a barren, desolate desert, perfect for a meditation. Click here to download the score of Martian Meditation.

2. First person to send an email from an Oklahoma Panhandle State University address—Evan Dye (left, center), Guymon, Oklahoma. Since Mercury’s orbit and day-length are locked in a precise resonance, it only made sense to write Resonating Quicksilver for a student whose “other major” is mathematics. The piece’s main motive and character owe something to Holst’s “Mercury.” At the same time, there is a drive an motion here that is absent—this planet is not merely a messenger. Click here to download the score of Resonating Quicksilver.

3. First person to send an email from a US state or Canadian province that begins with the letter “M”—Pierson Wetzel, Boston, Massachusetts. Prize transferred to his son, Felix (right), be the dedicatee of his piece. Observations show that Venus has nothing to do with love, despite Holst’s assumption. While Venus was once seen as a “sister planet” to Earth, we now know that it is more like a dystopic parody of our planet. I have tried to capture such in my piece, Venus. Click here to download the score.

4. First person to send an email from outside the United States of America—Nathan Saunders, Berlin, Germany. Prize transferred to his daughter, Sophia. Earthly Hope is just that—my hope that we will leave a working planet for my niece and those of her generation. I have also used a quote from a favorite hymn, “Earth and All Stars.” Click here to download the score.

5. First person who has never met me—Michelle Diehl (right), Sioux Falls, South Dakota. If a person remembers something about Saturn, it is the beautiful rings, which are really just ice and rock particles. I hope my music works the same way—that from afar the individual notes create something memorable. Click here to download the score of Rings.

6. First person with a March birthday—J.P. Thompson (left), Columbus, Ohio. Since J and P are the first two consonants in the largest planet in our Solar System, I wrote Jupiter for him. In the piece, I attempted to capture the violence and sheer forcefulness of this planet that shears at its own moons and sends asteroids hurtling toward the inner planets. My conception is very different from Holst’s jolly king. Click here to download the score of Jupiter.

7. First person who was once my teacher—Jan Radzynski (right) Columbus, Ohio. Neptune is a brief set of continuous variations—in the way that, to the armchair planetary scientist, Neptune and Uranus are variations of each other. As wondrous as Holst’s “Neptune” is, I think he got it all wrong, so mine is completely different. Click here to download the score.

8. First person who knew me before 1993—Sylvia Smith (left), Cleveland, Ohio. I could never teach middle school science because I wouldn’t be able to deal with students snickering about the name of the planet Uranus. Since Sylvia kept us all in line in Youth Orchestra, she gets the piece No Names, Please, a fairly direct homage to Holst’s take on the same planet. If Americans best remember Saturn for its rings, we sadly remember sideways Uranus for its silly name. Click here to download the score of No Names, Please.

9. First person who has performed one of my compositions—Daniel Perttu (right), New Wilmington, Pennsylvania. Dan shouldn’t read anything into the fact that I wrote a piece for him about a planet that isn’t a planet anymore, except that his music often shows a more conservative bent than mine; if I had to locate the historical center of our musical tastes, mine would be about half a century later than his, I think. Stillness at the Edge is about looking out over the emptiness here in the Oklahoma Panhandle as much as it is about peering into the heliopause. I imagine that the experiences are quite similar. Click here to download the score of Stillness at the Edge.

10. First person to have met Leonard Bernstein, Robert Shaw, Frederick Fennell or Pierre Boulez—Donald Harris (left), Columbus, Ohio. We Were There is about Earth’s Moon. Like the Apollo astronauts, Don has “been there” and met musicians I only get to read about. No, the Moon is not a planet, of course, but it moves about the sky and mingles with the planets from our point of view, and while you can look at a planet and think it’s a star, no one mistakes the Moon (unless they think it’s a TV studio or a UFO). My piece portrays the effort and joy of the Apollo program—another time Don was “there” but which I can only read about. Click here to download We Were There.

There they are—the ten contest winners! The premiere of the cycle is currently set for October 2009—watch this page for updates.