Garrett Breeze and Dr. Kirt Saville, School of Music
The goal of this project was to gain hands on experience by composing an original piece for the BYU Symphonic Band. There are currently no composition courses taught at BYU focusing on Concert Band literature; and because of the large volume of existing work by established, respected composers, and the small space available on a concert program, opportunities for a young composer to have his work read of performed by a large ensemble such as the Symphonic Band are extremely limited. This makes it difficult to really learn the craft of writing for such a large ensemble because in music there is no substitute for experience. This was perhaps a unique way of learning composition because Dr. Saville is a conductor, not a composer. But his knowledge of existing concert band literature provided an endless supply of ideas and suggestions.
Back in August I first approached Dr. Saville with two recordings of pieces that I had previously written for my high school wind ensemble. I asked him what he thought of them: if he would be interested in performing them and if he thought they would be ready for publication. In response, he said that he would much rather see me attempt to write a new piece to be performed by the Symphonic Band and allow him to serve as a guide for the project, all the way from conception to completion. I was thrilled at the prospect, because never before have I had such specific, hands-on guidance, from someone so experienced, someone who could catch potential problems while they were still small.
We soon began work. His only limitation concerned the length of the piece, which is to be approximately four minutes long—in terms of support, Dr. Saville has been behind me 100%. We started meeting regularly, discussing the melodic ideas that I had (using a piano and Finale notation software), the form of the piece, and the works of other composers: listening to recordings and examining scores in order to understand the elements we wish to imitate. We met roughly every two to three weeks until February, where we would go through the latest draft, solidify the form of the piece, tighten transitions, and tweak the orchestration, making it so that the piece would speak emotionally and effectively. Each time the piece will underwent an intense scrutiny in terms of editing—to print out parts for 80 people, plus the Conductor’s score can easily amount to as high as 500 pages—and we wanted to get it right the first time we handed out music to actual musicians.
In early February, Dr. Saville began rehearsing the piece while I acted as an assistant to listen and make note of any revisions that needed to occur. Our rehearsals lasted for a little more than a month, and culminated with the World Premiere performance in the DeJong Concert Hall on April 5th. A recording of the performance was also made, and the video of the video uploaded to YouTube. It is my hope that I can become a part of the conversation regarding new band literature and encourage the work of other young composers. Time will tell whether or not this piece will have much of a life beyond BYU, but the success of this project has definitely encouraged me to continue honing my skills, and in fact, Dr. Saville and I have already begun collaborating on a new composition.
One of the specific goals I had in writing this piece was to write what I wanted to say, and do it in the best way possible. As a young composer I wanted to make sure the piece had the legitimacy or maturity of not trying to do too much. A common error is for young composers to write everything they possibly can on every page. I wasn’t going to write things just to try and be flashy or win a competition; I was going to write something because that’s what I wanted to say. The piece is probably not unique enough to be successful commercially (unless people really start seeking out my music) but it touched a lot of people at the performance. A lot of people in the band and outside told me it was their favorite piece on the program. It was such a gratifying experience to hear the ideas that were once just a whisper of imagination played with such skill and passion and in such a great setting.
The following are the program notes written for the April premiere: “I believe that music is not really music until it has meaning. For me that’s the hardest part of composing: taking a collection of ideas and shaping them into something that will communicate a given idea. That may be one of the reasons I love choral arranging so much. Because the meaning is clearly stated in the text, musical expression flows naturally. But in the world of concert band we have no such luck. Any truth buried in the music has to be uncovered entirely through the melodic and harmonic content.
As I began thinking and writing about the piece the image that kept coming to mind was that of The Tree of Life. In Mormon theology, the Tree of Life represents the Love of God, or, Jesus Christ, who is to me The Face of Hope. I feel that composing is a very spiritual process and I firmly believe that if God were to communicate one message to us, it would be to have hope: hope of who we can become, hope of who we already are but don’t realize, hope in faith, hope in a Savior.
One of the truly fascinating things about music is that it can mean so many different things for so many different people. This piece is my testimony that God wants us to have hope, but I don’t expect everybody to interpret it the same way that I do—even if they believe in God—because when I think of hope there are many faces which come to mind.”
The process of working with Dr. Saville one-on-one would have been worth it even if the piece was a failure, because I learned so much from him. But our end result, the piece that we composed, was a fantastic success and I look forward to continuing to compose more in the future and build on what we started here. The talents that I already had, combined with what he brought to the table made for a truly remarkable learning and creative experience that I would not have been able to have any other way.