…is something that many of us composers feel compelled to do.  The plus side is that you get your piece performed (usually), the opportunity to take home some cash (less frequently), and worst-case scenario, you at least get something to pad your résumé with.

For the uninitiated, the process of applying to competitions goes a little something like this:

1. You find out about the competition from some board, a friend, colleague, frenemy, or by reading some random poster on the wall of your music building.  It will usually give you a submission date some six months away.  You will take down the info, and put it in your calendar.  You will then forget about the competition until about three days before it is due, when you see the random entry and wonder what the hell was that you scribbled in.
2. Finally figuring out what you scribbled in, you will then proceed to comb through your work to see if you have any music that could qualify you to enter the competition.  Nine times out of ten, you don’t.  Three times out of ten, you give serious thought to composing something in those three days you have until the submission date.  You find whatever meets the demands of the competition most closely.
3. Once you’ve chosen the piece (or pieces) that you’re going to submit, you have to give your score a minor face lift, fixing glaring notation errors (No score on earth is without notation errors; look hard enough, and you’ll find them, just like allllll the germs multiplying on your skin, invisibly!  Quick, clean them!  Clean them!), and removing anything that might identify yourself as the composer.
4. This is generally the time where you start to look at the formatting requirements of the competition.  This is where competitions eliminate 85% of their entrants.  If your score is on tabloid, TOO BAD!  It has to be on letter.  Heartfelt dedication to the performers?  SCRAP IT.  Once you rid the score of your stink, your job is to fill in random information about the piece that usually never makes it onto the score to begin with.  How long is this piece?  Put that right under the title, but don’t use double-space.  Tell the percussionists every single mallet they’ll want to consider (and then disregard), along with what brand of drum head you prefer.  If you don’t comply with these, your score won’t get looked at.
5. You’re going to want to include something to listen to.  Most of the time, this piece that you’re submitting has never been performed, so you’re forced to tuck your tail between your legs and beg the gods of Garritan Performance Orchestra to bleep and blorp through your score.  You’ll end up putting something on the recording reading, “Electronic mock-up: I swear to God it sounds better on real instruments, and those are supposed to be glissandi in measure 47!  Oh, and percussion doesn’t play back.”
6. Gather all these materials together, and proceed to start putting them in a complicated series of sealed envelopes, nested in one another.  It helps if you have a unicorn to lick these envelopes.  The judges can tell.
7. Write a check for $35.  Just do it.  These things cost money, you know.  It’s probably to pay off  some Composer Mafia.
8. Put this sucker in the mail.  Remember to overnight it, because wherever you live, the competition is taking place on the opposite side of the country.
9. Wait.

Hey, it’s me, Jason.  I hadn’t heard from you in a while so…I just wanted to see what you were up to.  I didn’t know if you had lost my number or anything.  So…I had a really great time with you the other night…so, um…I was wondering if I can see you again sometime?  Uh…yeah, gimme a call.  My number hasn’t changed or anything…yeah, just wondering if you’re around.

…thinking about the emergent protest happening in New York City, Occupy Wall Street.  It all started with a colleague and sometime acquaintance of mine, Loren Loiacono (Twitter: @lorenlo), posting a link to Gawker’s article about the protest movement.  Of interest is the video of life in the camp in Zuccotti Park:

Right Here All Over (Occupy Wall St.) from Alex Mallis on Vimeo.

Those who know me know that I abhor politics, which might be one of the reasons that I haven’t been able to get my mind off of the subject (I really oughta be composing right now, but this seems to be all I can think about at the moment).  #OWS has been criticized for not being focused on a single issue, and for not aligning itself politically.  I have always found traditional politics to be a very sophisticated form of distraction for people: we’re so busy reading, watching, and listening to whatever political crisis is being pumped through the airwaves that we fail to see that the sides look eerily alike, and that their messages are generic enough to be repeated over and over without any real progress for one side or the other.  Rich people are the voices of both parties.  What’s interesting to see is that this movement is largely (although not totally) about separations in socioeconomic status.

As a classical musician, issues of class weigh heavily on me.  Classical music has always been associated with the wealthy, or at least with those of the uppermost class.  It had always been thought of as “intelligent” music, and not intended for “regular people.”  There has always been a popular music, in various forms, throughout the years, designed to be relatable/palatable  to the unwashed masses.

Anecdotally, I like to say that during the 1960s, popular music started to become, for lack of a better term, elevated (I also like to say that The Beatles ruined classical music, but that’s only when I’m feeling cynical).  Suddenly, the masses created meaningful music for themselves, which made for a dodgy situation for classical music.  Classical music, which had always been archaic, no longer had a premium on intelligence.  And classical music has struggled to find its position in the world ever since.

What strikes me as interesting that we think of the vast majority of popular music as corporate, meaning that it has “sold out,” or that it is designed to reap profit from the aforementioned unwashed masses.  It isn’t designed to be meaningful, it’s designed to fill the radio silence in between ads.  It keeps people shaking their ass in clubs, buying drinks, buying CDs, and it’s very good at its job.  I know hundreds of classical musicians who, although being surrounded with the “smartest” of music, still can’t resist the urge to dance to Ke$ha.  It’s a contradiction that many don’t think much about.

When I look at classical music being composed today, it’s music that is very far from corporate music.  It is small-batch, localized, and usually without a slick veneer of marketing.  Ironically, the classical composer working today resembles the protesters in Zuccotti Park much more than any music more widely available (and, ironically, much more than some of the music that they may be listening to during the breaks in protest).  As a group, we’re unfocused, apolitical (except those who aren’t!), and unable to be pigeonholed, packaged, marketed, or sold.  In this way, I feel a certain kind of solidarity with the people in the park, fighting the tendency toward homogeneity, and playing toward the sound byte, and the lowest common denominator.

What we need is a way to advocate for ourselves as a group, to show these people out there that we are making music that is like them; unique, complex, and not simply a repetition of our past incarnations.  In an unlikely twist, classical music has the potential and opportunity to be more relevant than it has been in at least a century.

…but I finally got the first half of my piece for bass clarinet and electronics, Air Reel, up and ready in mockup form!  I’ve plugged in the Finale playback of the bass clarinet, combined with the actual electronics.  Take a listen (I’ve made this into an mp3 for the sake of speed and bandwith!):

If that doesn’t work, try this link.

And here’s the score for the bass clarinet:

I could really (really REALLY) use some feedback.  Let me know what you think!