A Note from the Composer
Serenada Schizophrana CD sleeve note
Serenada Schizophrana was a completely new experience
for me. As a film composer, I’ve always had visuals to drive my orchestral
music. Serenada began as a commission from the American Composers Orchestra
in New York with very few restrictions. As I’d never done anything like
this before, figuring out how to begin was daunting. I began composing several
dozen short improvisational compositions, maybe a minute each. Slowly, some
of them began to develop themselves until finally I had six separate movements
that, in some abstract, absurd way, felt connected. Free from film restrictions,
I more or less let the movements take themselves wherever they wanted to go
in a kind of musical stream of consciousness (which, with the way my brain works,
was not a very smooth stream.) The finished piece premiered at Carnegie Hall
in February 2005 with Steven Sloane conducting. It was, to say the least, a
thrilling and surreal experience for me.
Naturally, I have many musical influences. On some level, both conscious and
unconscious, they were probably all affecting my writing. They range from the
early film composers such as Bernard Herrmann, Nino Rota, Dimitri Tiomkin, Max
Steiner and Erich Korngold, to my “classical” influences of Sergei
Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Dmitri Shostakovich and
Carl Orff. I also cannot omit early Kurt Weill and Duke Ellington as playing
an equal role, along with the enigmatic Harry Partch and one of my few living
influences, Philip Glass.
In general, I consider myself to be a musical throwback. I am forever attached
to the music of the early 20th century when, for me, orchestral music flourished
alongside the creation of jazz in a unique and remarkable way. I suppose this
piece mixes up all my influences in a kind of musical “gumbo.” I hope
it’s interesting and perhaps even entertaining.
– Danny Elfman