Update Title: 6D1211B8-13AD-403E-AC0D-E04120B7C535

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My violin concerto was begun (last movement first) in a classroom after a concert. I always do my best to get ideas down on paper right when they occur to me. Actually, the concerto was "begun" several times (first movements) before I found a musical idea that I knew I could carry to completion. I would conceive of wonderful introductions and then run out of ideas when the soloist was to enter. I persisted in the search for the right ideas though, because I wanted to write a sort of graduation gift for my son Stephen, and I actually did get enough done for him to play through the first movement while he was still an undergraduate at the Eastman School. It  became a master's graduation gift.

While the "right stuff" came to me first for the last movement it is the first movement which cost the most effort and was completed first. I sought to write a traditional movement in d minor (really dorian mode on D) with an elaborate cadenza for the soloist. I always planned for the second movement to be based on one of my songs but I was not certain of just which one. I had several candidates, all of them from my collections to poems by American poet William S. Merwin. I settled on "Beggars and Kings," from the third book and the entire song is there but much expanded. It's a sweet song about beggars gathering up hours that are leftover at the end of the day. There is a little whiff of a hymn tune suggested by part of the text. The finale is a dance-like piece, also in d minor, and based entirely on one idea which is heard immediately at the opening. --John Beall

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