O for a Muse of... dust and bone?

One that would still "ascend | The brightest heaven of invention," in any event.

(Félix-François Georges Philibert) Ziem (the painter) was dining with two friends at the house of Paul Chevandier de Valdrôme at No. 39 Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne in Paris. The host, somewhat of an eccentric, kept a skeleton in one of his closets and displayed it to Ziem. When the latter met Chopin he told him about the skeleton and Chopin, becoming morbidly impressed with the story, asked Ziem to let him see it. A dinner party was arranged at Valdrôme's house and during the dessert, Ziem mentioned Chopin's desire. The skeleton was fetched by the servant and placed near the piano in the drawing room.

Ziem describes the scene that followed:

Chopin, his face pale and his eyes opened to their extent, had enveloped himself in a long winding sheet, and pressed against his throbbing breast he held the ghastly skeleton. The silence of the salon was all at once broken by the sound of music—slow, sad, profound, splendid music, music such as none of us had ever heard before. Immeasurably amazed we were as the beautiful sounds succeeded each other and were gradually fashioned into the world-renowned Funeral March. On to the end played Chopin, still grasping the skeleton, and so spellbound were we that not until the last note was struck did we really recover our senses. Then we hastened to congratulate the shroud-robed musician, and reached his side just as he was on the point of fainting.

So... anyone know where I can get a Muse like that?

Well, I mean, it needn't actually be a corpse or anything; just something profoundly affecting enough to generate music of such quality. I haven't been doing too terribly much in the way of new music lately, though of what I've done it's certainly been terrible. Thus the search for a Muse.

Tonight, I have revisited a couple of older pieces, one original, one a sort of collage of other works, and made new, and I hope better quality, recordings of the same. If there's interest, I will offer one here for any whose ears will endure it. That one, the original score, is the result of an evening spent with one of my own ghosts on the night of her birthday, three years on from her death. It is called "Nevroză", after the poem of Bacovia that always brings her to mind.

Neurosis

Nevroză

Outside, it's snowing horribly; my lover's playing the piano— and the town looks as gloomy     as snow in a cemetery. My lover's playing a funeral march, and I puzzle myself wondering why she chooses to play that…     like snow in a cemetery. She weeps and she falls on the keys, and she whimpers painfully as in a fever… in discord the piano dies,     like snow in a cemetery. And I lament, and, trembling, spread out her hair over her shoulders… outside the town is deserted,     like snow in a cemetery.

Afară ninge prăpădind, Iubita cântă la clavir,— Si târgul stă întunecat, De parcă ninge-n cimitir. Iubita cântă-un mars funebru, iar eu nedumerit mă mir: De ce să cânte-un mars funebru… Si ninge ca-ntr-un cimitir. Ea plânge si-a cazut pe clape, Si geme greu ca în delir… În dezacord clavirul moare, Si ninge ca-ntr-un cimitir. Si plâng si eu si tremurând Pe umeri pletele-i răsfir… Afară târgul stă pustiu, Si ninge ca-ntr-un cimitir.

You can hear the work here.

Combine 1 part Chopin, 2 parts Satie...

Nothing especially clever tonight, alas, just an idle bit of time wasting. You could think of this as what happens when you mix together varying amounts of sleep deprivation, recovering-from-illness, Erik Satie, Chopin and myself—or, "Raindropédienne", perhaps, for short (a combination of Chopin's 15th prelude, the "Raindrop" prelude, with Satie's first Gymnopédie and Gnossienne). It's a small piano work with an ABA structure; in A—a liberal treatment of Am—the left hand is a simple motion similar to the bass of the Gnossienne, while the melody is almost a verbatim transposition of the opening melody of the prelude. In B, we briefly modulate to Cm, and a tiny microcosmic ABA form of its own, where in B_a the bass is a slight variant on the initial bass of the Cm modulation in the prelude, while the right hand takes on a transposed variation on the Gnossienne melody; in B_b, the bass continues to follow the prelude but becomes a transposition of the material from the left hand of the molto tenuto movement of that work, and the melody becomes a Lydian transposition of the right hand theme of the Gymnopédie.

Other than doing the transpositions, stitching the disparate parts together and touching up a note here or there where the original themes didn't quite mesh, there's so little of myself in this piece I hardly feel right putting my name on it. As a result, I won't be adding this piece to my formal catalogue of works, naturally, but it was a fairly pleasant exercise and not quite the hand-mangler Für Elise on the bass proved to be, so I thought I'd tip up a copy here for any who might be interested.