Correlation between composition and conlanging?

On Thu, 10 Aug 2000, Daniel Seriff wrote:

> Hey, I'm also a composer, although I graduated with a piano major from
> college. I seem to remember someone else on the list saying that they
> composed some music, maybe more than one person. Ever tried setting
> anything in one of your conlangs? I'm toying with the idea of writing
> some Mungayod poetry and setting it for voice & piano, but I'd feel a
> little silly publishing it, I think.
But why? Lou Harrison set Esperanto texts to music (La Koro Sutro,
IIRC), and Ligeti created his own "conlang" for Nouvelles Aventures.
I've always felt that when a composer creates a sufficiently large
work, he in effect has created a language (the definition of
"sufficiently large" is of course open to interpretation).

> If you're interested in my music, go to
> "http://members.tripod.com/microtonal/music/mycomp.html". I don't have
> any MP3s up, because Tripod doesn't handle them very well, but I'm
> looking for off-site space to put them as demos.
I've listened to and enjoyed some of Herman Miller's stuff; I've also
been curious to hear your stuff, too!

Once upon a time, I was a theory and composition major, but I quickly
realized that to spend the rest of my university career with musicians
(at least the ones at the U of Utah) would be absolutely intolerable.
I often referred to the building in which the music dept was housed
(Gardner Hall) as Gardner Junior High, because of the average level of
maturity displayed there.

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga
dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu