Taking a Chance

Last summer I participated in Deborah Henson-Conant’s one-week Harness Your Muse Mastermind Retreat. The retreat’s emphasis was on performance. It didn't seem to have much applicability to my focus on composing for the harp, but I went anyway and presented the story of how I composed a Namepiece.

When the retreat was over, I went home utterly exhausted. I avoided doing anything for a good week, including looking at the . As I slowly revived, I looked at the Facebook site for the HYMM group. It was August 23, and Shelley Fairplay, one of the other participants, had posted the notice of a composition competition for harp, and she suggested that maybe I would be interested. The deadline was September 1, just a week away. I was interested in entering. Why not submit some of my compositions? So just as I was coming to from the retreat, I had to get serious and prepare my compositions for submission to a group of reviewers who would choose finalists. I had to scrutinize my work, as if I was a professional composer, and I did not know what that meant. I could only guess. I selected three of my compositions to submit. I had to scrub them and dress them up for consideration. How do I do that? What do I do to make my compositions appear like professional presentations. I have played a lot of music, but the standards of notation and the ability to manipulate Finale, the notation program, are skills that I have not mastered. I had never taken a course in composition, let alone notation. Self-taught, and still looking things up and learning how to use the Finale program. All the thinking and re-considering of every notation entry, was arduous and tiring. I had been through this before, when I prepared the pieces for the book, and at that time I thought the pieces were in final. But now the thought of submitting these pieces to professional eyes, pushed me to go over and over everything, again and again.