Emily Hope

choral composer

[emilyhopebunny]

Welcome to my blog! My name is Emily Hope and I am a composer of choral music.

You can find my sheet music here.

If you would like to listen to some of the music I have written, check out my #playlist tag.

If you would like to contact me, here are some ways to do so.

I'm happy to have you here! Let's make some music :)

[pmamtraveller]

by Alexey Lyapunov and Lena Erlich

[emilyhopebunny]

I got a good grade in blazing a post, something that is normal to want and possible to achieve

[lascitasdelashoras]

Igor Stravinsky By Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1940s

[emilyhopebunny]

Since I've started using IMSLP as my streaming service, I've been thinking I'd like to make some kind of editorial contribution to the IMSLP collection, and I think I've decided on what that contribution will be: I'd like to create a new creative commons-licensed piano/vocal score for the third movement of Debussy's Nocturnes, "Sirènes", which has a treble chorus part.

I've decided on this for a few reasons: first because there isn't a public domain piano/vocal score, just the vocal parts by themselves, and also because the vocal parts were really written for sixteen vocal soloists rather than a choir, and having sung this work in my symphony chorus a few years ago, I know how awkward a transition that is, and I'd like to come up with a version that makes more sense for choral musicians.

But also, I just really love the music, it's so pretty!

(ngl these voices could lure me out to sea)

The revoicing is pretty much already done. That's the easy part. All the pitch content remains the same, of course, and I'm preserving the antiphonal effects in there (and in fact, in places, I'm intensifying the antiphonality), but I'm voicing it in two choirs, each with a soprano and alto section (Debussy originally scored for 8 sopranos and 8 mezzo-sopranos), and arranging the voices so the ranges correspond better to those parts throughout.

The hard part, of course, is the piano reduction, but IMSLP does have a reduction for two pianos by Ravel, and I'm kind of going between that and the full score to hopefully arrive at something playable by your average accompanist. (When I sang it a few years ago, I think (don't quote me) our accompanist was working with the Ravel reduction and... just doing his best, bc the orchestra library didn't have a piano/vocal score, though I searched recently and found that piano/vocal scores of this movement do exist.) Anyway, I think this will give me more good practice with piano writing. I'm getting better! But I would like to get more confident and less anxious about it.

One final aside is that this piece brings me back to my college saxophone playing days in a very interesting way, because one of the main themes is very melodically similar to a main theme in another Debussy piece, Rhapsodie for saxophone and orchestra, which I played twice in college (once for juries, and then I brought it back for my recital because I liked it so much) (of course I played it with piano accompaniment, not with orchestra).

As for original projects, I think the rest of this summer might be for percolating ideas for my psalms piece in my mind. Maybe I'll work on that piece more in earnest if inspiration strikes.

[nerdgul]

Your average pineapple, peeled and cut makes about 4.5 cups or 36 ounces of pineapple chunks. Cans of pineapple come in a variety of sizes the most common being 20oz and 46oz. Meaning a single pineapple generally won’t fill up a single can perfectly, wich also means everytime u eat pineapple from a can somewhere someone else has the can that has the rest of that same pineapple. Meaning u can share a single fruit with a stranger from hundreds of miles away and I think that’s beutiful

[emilyhopebunny]

Here is my musical rendition of this post (third movement in this video):

Sheet music is available here.

[utopians]

stepped on a plum (overripe plum) (barefoot) it was on the driveway got out of the car and accidentally (didn't know it was there) stepped on the plum (warm) (on the ground) (it had fallen from the tree) barefoot (no shoes) wearing long pants (too long) (need to hem them) plum viscera got on them (the pants) unexpected plum on the driveway (hot plum) (97 degrees out) already super hungover (throwing up all morning) (should not have been driving at all) and I stepped out of the car (black car) (97 degrees out) and onto the plum (unexpected) (didn't know the plum was there) and it burst (plum nightmare on my only good pair of sweatpants) still we find ways to keep ourselves going from day to day

[emilyhopebunny]

Here is my musical rendition of this post (second movement in this video):

Sheet music is available here.

[reallyreallyreallytrying]

“average person eats 3 spiders a year” factoid actualy just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

[emilyhopebunny]

Here is my musical rendition of this post (first movement in this video):

Sheet music is available here.

[emilyhopebunny]

Have a listen to my choral setting of text post memes that originated right here on tumblr!

My piece, Copypasta (performed here by the First Readings Project) is in three movements and uses these texts:

Spiders Georg by @reallyreallyreallytrying

Hot Plum by @utopians

I Think That's Beutiful by @nerdgul

Sheet music is available here.

(If your choir performs this piece, please let me know!)

[lascitasdelashoras]

Maurice Ravel

[emilyhopebunny]

The Copypasta recording hasn't dropped yet, but the listings are live for my August June batch of pieces:

Copypasta

Hope

To Make a Prairie

The House that Jack Built

[bunnysaige]

i would hop 500 miles

[emilyhopebunny]

and i would hop 500 more

[emilyhopebunny]

When I send pdfs in to Swirly Music to be published, the file name format goes: "[catalog number] [composer last name] [piece name].pdf". I've had my unfinished setting of "Hope is the thing with feathers" lying around since before I started publishing with Swirly, so for all this time, I have been waiting for this file name to exist:

[emilyhopebunny]

So First Readings Project had an opening in an earlier recording session, which I very happily filled, which means Copypasta will now be recorded in a little over a week!

This is good because my "August batch" of pieces is all pretty much complete and in the final editing stage, so if I'd waited until August to publish them, they would've all been gathering dust for a few months. However, I've got a whole lot of work with my day job right now, and while that gives me plenty of time to look over pdfs of my drafts on my work computer, it does not give me as much time to sit in front of my own computer and edit them in Dorico. I may still be able to get all of it done by the time the recording drops, but we'll just have to see.

All that to say, the August batch is now the June batch! And just as a reminder, this will include:

Copypasta

The House that Jack Built

Hope

To Make a Prairie

[emilyhopebunny]

I was starting to think of what other project I might work on with the aim of including it in my August publishing batch (at this point I have all the notes written for my setting of "Hope is the thing with feathers"), and I remembered another unfinished Emily Dickinson setting I have lying around, this one of "To make a prairie".

However, if you look below the text of the poetry in the above link, there's some "used by permission" language rather than saying the poem is in the public domain. Much of Dickinson's poetry wasn't published until well after her death, meaning some of it is still under copyright, so I assumed that was the case for this poem. When I initially started working on the setting, I looked into how to get permission to use the text (there's a form for that), but figured I'd deal more seriously with that if I ever finished the piece.

Coming back to this piece I was kind of grudgingly preparing myself to probably have to pay to use this poem, when it occurred to me to do a little extra research to make sure this poem hadn't been published in an earlier collection now in the public domain, and wouldn't you know it! it's included in this book published in 1896 (it's about halfway through the book, the 15th poem in the section about Nature). And look! this version even has an em dash in it where the copyrighted version does not!

(Did you know? The em dash is named after Emily Dickinson.) (This isn't true in real life but it's true in my heart.)

Anyway, now I have all the voice parts written for this setting. The piano part is maybe about 20% done. But seriously, the creative momentum I've got going right now is ridiculous? I was originally worried that the August publishing batch was going to be a bit meager, but it turns out I'll have plenty to publish, actually!

[emilyhopebunny]

I've been working on inputting dynamics tonight, and my feeling on dynamics is they're kind of already there when I write the notes. Like adding all the letters and hairpins (ideally) only confirms the shape that's already there. Which isn't to say it's not important for them to be there, it's more that you can't create the shape of a piece with dynamics (though I've seen many (published) composers try). The shape is in the thematic and harmonic structure. Or if it's not, it's just a house of cards.

[emilyhopebunny]

It seems like a surefire way to kickstart my progress on something is to get on this blog and say "idk you guys maybe this thing won't happen... :/"

Which is to say that in the past week or so I've made tremendous progress on my setting of "Hope is the thing with feathers" and I'd say at this point I'm about 80% done with it. Of course the piano part is what remains unfinished. But it's definitely coming along!

Now my traitorous brain is starting to wonder if there's anything else I could add to this batch...