Op. 27 is subtitled 'From a Theme by Hindemith' - first theme in the first movement of his Symphony in Eb - he of course treats the theme in a very different way than I do.
On this piece hangs a tale...
I wrote it in April 1966. I was a Freshman at a prestigious scientific university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, studying (theoretically) to become a research scientist. (That did not happen.) By the end of my first semester there, I was totally disillusioned with my 'chosen career' and wanted instead to become a music composer. But of course, how does one do such a thing? I had been writing music since 1963, mostly small scraps and a few minor piano pieces (or rather attempts at such) and had little success. I had no musical training, not even piano lessons, because my Father thought such things were only for girls (remember, that was a different time), so I had to teach myself from encyclopedia articles (with many false steps along the way).
By the first of Jan 1966 at college I had many pages of music scraps, attempts at choral pieces (songs for solo and choir), and even some orchestral attempts - but nothing really completed or in shape to show to someone else. So I decided I needed to finish something 'big' that might, hopefully, start me on my desire to become a composer. In Jan - March 1966 I worked on some ideas in my head, setting fragments down on paper, until I finally had a clear mental image of what I wanted to write down. (I took long walks around the city, often at night, to clear my head and try out various ideas - something hard to describe to anyone who has never done such things.)
Spring Break was in early April, and I stayed at school (I lived then in Las Vegas) and used a piano room downstairs in my dorm to put my ideas fully on 24-staff orchestral music paper. The result was this Overture, finished 11 Apr 1966. (I had originally intended to write a suite called 'Ad Astra' - To the Stars - which would have this overture and 9 movements for each planet in the solar system, plus a finale - never finished that, as you will soon see.)
I showed the completed result (45 pages, which I still have) to a fellow Freshman who played Tuba in the university orchestra. He was mystified by it, and as I could not play the piano (I could pick out notes and chords, but nothing more) I could not play a summary for him. At my urging, he showed it to the orchestra conductor, who glanced at it casually then gave it back to my friend, saying that I should 'show it to someone in the Music department'. Of course that puzzled me, since I thought the conductor was part of the Music department...
So I made an appointment with the Music department Chairman (whose name I have mercifully forgotten) and gave the manuscript to his secretary, who told me to come back in 3 days for his evaluation. At the appointed time I returned, and as I stood there by the secretary's desk the 'great man' rushed out of his office and angrily thrust the pages into my trembling hands, muttering vehemently that I should not waste my time with such things, but should study Bach's Two and Three-Part Inventions instead. I took the manuscript and slunk away, totally abashed. I put the pages away (luckily I had them in a protective binder) and did not look at them again for years. I also abandoned the idea of completing the suite for which this Overture was to be the beginning.
Now we shift to 2008, when (after several software predecessors) I started using a PC program called Finale, which I still use. That program was the best music composition software I had yet seen, and within a month or so I had composed 2 works - a process which, before such software, would have taken me months or perhaps years. After the first 2 pieces emerged from Finale, to my amazement and joyous surprise, I suddenly remembered this old manuscript and dug it out of hiding. Within a few days I had 'transcribed' it into Finale, and the result is what you may now hear for yourself. (One mea culpa - the piece as of now is 95% directly transcribed from my original manuscript written in Apr 1966, completely unchanged - the last 5% is in 2 passages - I shall not mention them - where I heard that my original paper ideas were faulty, so I corrected them.)
I cannot help but think how my life might have changed had that professor reacted in a different way - perhaps saying 'My specialty is Baroque music - let me call someone up the street [at Harvard] and let them take a look at this'. Certainly, I did not expect (of course I secretly hoped, until my hopes were dashed) that the university orchestra would ever play my piece - but why not? Such things happened every week at many of the schools in the Boston area that Spring. What if... Perhaps I might have actually changed my major and transferred to a real music school... What would my future have looked like after that? (This is something I will of course never know until, perhaps, the next life.)
The point I wish to make is that my original concept, as put down on paper nearly 50 years ago, was a near-perfect match of what came out of the computer when I transcribed the notes from paper to sound.
Files are accessible below.
Overure in Bb on a Theme of Hindemith - Tone Poem (Op.27)