The talent of those who write music at OU will be showcased at 8 p.m. today in the Student Composers Recital in room 104 Catlett Music Center.

Ten original short classical works written by nine students ranging from freshmen to doctoral candidates will be presented in the hour-long performance.

Composition Junior Tom Horbacz wrote "Theme and Variations," which he will play on piano at the recital.

Working on an original composition gives students a chance to experiment with music.

"The idea with this piece is that I wanted to experiment with different types of harmony that I'm not used to," Horbacz said.

Works in the recital usually run two to six minutes. They are written to be played by one to three instruments, with one vocal piece, said Carolyn Bremer, assistant professor of composition.

An exception is doctoral candidate Alan Marshall's "Doryphoros." The 15-minute-piano piece will be performed by Ferhiz Irani.

Marshall spent about three months writing "Doryphoros," which was inspired by a sculpture from Ancient Greece.

The most difficult part of the process of composition is in transferring ideas to someone else by writing it down on paper, Marshall said.

"Coming up with the ideas is actually easy, putting it on paper is difficult."

Graduate student G.S. Christiansen wrote "Nothing Gold Can Stay," a piano and vocal composition with music adapted to words from Robert Frost's Three Songs on Poems.

"The music just sort of wrote itself," Christiansen said. "I just felt those particular poems were musical. The poems touched me."

The only criteria for composers to get their work in the recital is that the student must be able to find people able to play the work, Bremer said.

Those who take a group composition class are encouraged to write material for the recital.

"In a sense, it's part of their composition lessons, it's a part of studying composition here," Bremer said.

Admission to the recital is free.

Tuesday, November 28, 1995