Choral (too much) Fantasy ?

I have always admired the musical artistry of Aning Katamsi, as so have I always admired the poems of the recently departed WS Rendra. So when Aning, on behalf of her choir PARAGITA (who's gonna join forces with the ITB Choir singing my second cantata "Libertas" for the next New Year Concert -- having those 2 top Indonesian choirs sharing the stage is like having a (wet) dream come true !) commissioned me to write a choral piece using Rendra's poem to commemorate his passing away, I accepted it delightly without second thoughts ; even when the answer to my question about when the deadline would be was "a.s.a.p. please, since the concert will be next month." Ooops ...

But things got rather complicated, because apparently Rendra's poem has been set into a pop song by a pop songwriter, and he is the person who iniciated and organized this concert. So, what I should do is to "interpret" his song (Aning specifically told me not to "arrange" the song, so I guess the process would not be so different from my pieces such as the 3-pianos 6-pianists "Schumann's Psychosis" where I took Schumann's Toccata and "messed it all up", shall we say.)
The original song itself has the title Kantata [sic] Belavita (you know Indonesian pop musicians like to use the words "cantata", "symphony" and "opera" for their songs. I guess there are more "operas" in Indonesian pop music than the whole history of Italian music. I wonder why nobody puts other fancy titles such as Passacaglia or Concerto Grosso). So, certainly I wouldn't like to apply that title to my piece which definitely is NOT a cantata. He he .. in this case I really am an old-fashioned classical music composer. Therefore, my piece bears the fancy title "Choral Fantasy" (yeah, yeah, it sounds beethovenianly bombastic for a 6 and-a-half-minute piece, but at least it's correct!). But that's not the problem : the problem was that when I read the poem, I couldn't connect it to the pop song (I really tried, I did !). In other words, if I were given that poem, my tune and even the character of my music would sound completely different, and even directly opposed to the existing pop song which should be the basic material for my new piece.

So I was like the son of those old-fashioned parents who is told "Meet this girl, love her coz you're gonna marry her.", while I am like those rebellious sons who'd say "OK, I'll marry her but then I can have affairs with anybody I like". I guess the birth process of my Choral Fantasy was sort of like that. Therefore for my first extra-marital affair I took another element for my piece --to make things more complicated-- which is the rhythmic structure of Beethoven's First Movement of the famous 5th symphony. And so writing my Choral Fantasy became really fun !!

"Choral Fantasy" will be premiered on the 29th of October at Gedung Kesenian Jakarta by Aning Katamsi (soprano soloist) and the Paragita Choir accompanied by a pianist which I still do not know who will it be until now.

"This Boy's had a dream" ; In memory of Prof. Dr. Fuad Hassan

Piano, piano. I've been quite pianistic these days. Writing 4-hand piano pieces for my daughter Alicia, started a two-piano piece and several etudes for piano solo. An email came last week from the Faculty of Psychology of Universitas Indonesia, asking me if I could contribute something for a concert commemorating our former minister of education, Mr. Fuad Hassan. He was the one who helped me with a scholarship to go to the Royal Conservatory of Den Haag, back in 1986. So I wrote the piece quickly (I was unusually inspired !), and wrote this program note :

A piece of music of mine to cherish the memory of our dear Prof. Dr. Fuad Hassan would be, inevitably, autobiographical. He was the person responsible for my musical education abroad, back in 1986, when things were really difficult for me. Without him, I wouldn't be where I am now. Sitting down writing the piece, my mind automatically travelled back to those years, when I was a teenager --to be precise, an ungrown-up boy. I had only dreams to follow, those kind of dreams where one could achieve anything if one really wants it. That, mixed with the uncertainties of a teenager, understanding (or not?) love for the first (few) times, the sentimental feeling of travelling far far beyond his birthplace, etcetra. Those things would sound unreal now, but were more than real in those days. Hence, "This Boy's Had a Dream" was born with an un-typical sentimentality that normally can't be found in my music. This, I feel, is the music this boy would write 20 years ago but didn't have the musical skill to write it down. Again, I hold Mr. Fuad Hassan responsible for the physical birth of this music, embedded in me for 20 years. It is unabashedly romantic, reflecting the Whitman-esque teenager not a bit tamed, untranslatable, sounding his barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world. And Mr. Fuad Hassan understood my dreams, and realized them. Requiescat in pace, Mr. Fuad Hassan.