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to Leslie's Pieces 
The sheet music for
Jobe's Farm can be found here: http://www.mindspring.com/~lesmuskey/JF
Jobe's Farm is an
"ordinary" piece of nature
along Alamance Creek, and this is an attempt to share its personality
with selections of music that seemed to express
certain moods or changes that I found there with the passage
of the year. It started when I walked down the trail early one
day after a January snow to try out a new camera. The morning
before, when the snow was falling, I had improvised a bit and
on the walk, the idea struck me not to name the new piece after
the earlier flurry, but after the stream. I found it at a stage
where it was still moving and causing fanciful shapes as it interacted
with the lingering crust of ice, just hours from being erased
into water again.
The original idea
actually came as a total scheme
that flashed on at once: that I should add a dawn subject (recalling
the Noyes piece I'd found few days before), and to complete a
set of 4 with a Spring and Fall series that I knew could be focused
around predictable events like the arrival of the humble colonies
of wildflowers called "Mayapples". That would represent
water and sunlight as essential for life, and the 2 stages of
nature which draw the most attention to its cycles at this latitude.
Within a couple of
weeks, I trudged out again, right
before a sunrise thinking it wasn't going to yield much that
morning without any bright cloud effects, and because the rolling
land and trees would hide the sun until it was quite high...only
to find by the most amazing coincidence (to a non-astronomer
anyway) that it was a perfect time to see the setting moon.
Halfway finished, I thought. But while waiting for the Spring
to come, I discovered more historic music I wanted to use. Then
the question wasn't about how to write or find a piece for the
ideas, but what ideas would go with the extra pieces? An amazing day
I found the old orchard trees
full of butterflies and bees, and the idea of the pond in its
tranquility
and a night walk helped complete
the project. Even the rows of cutting flowers in the Orchard appeared
as if
to help me. Mr. Jobe told me that he had only put out one row
for the first time the previous year, then assumed they would
not come back, but they re-sowed themselves in abundance.
The moon is the
cover photo because there is a connection
it has with the seasons. During this work I learned that it steadies
the earth from having a more serious "wobble," which
would result in shorter and more turbulent fluctuations possibly
making life as we know it impossible. While the sun gives light,
the moon guides the earth's steady and gentle transitions, acting
as a silent influence to the emergence and dormancy we see on
land along with the tides of the sea.
This is for the
places we
pass by and the music we rarely hear, and for the imagination
they can can nourish. I always hope to reach another mind who
enjoys such things as the early stages of opening dogwoods or
a transformed winter stream. I know I have seen them more closely
myself by following the impulse that seems to know where they
are, and that leads me there.
Copyright 2004.
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Pieces in Jobes Farm
1-MELTWATER
4-EMERGENCE
5-ORCHARD
6-POND
7-NIGHT
8-FALL
Filmfiles: 
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