For the celebration the Rozsa Centre's 10th Anniversary, I was given a unique challenge: out of a list of words that embodied special meaning to the Rozsa family, I was to compose a work using any one of them for solfege compositional procedures. Two words in particular stimulated my creative imagination: Lola and doodlebug.
Prelude. he name Lola brought up memories of a woman I once knew. As well, the phonetic quality of the name hearkened the poetries of Arthur Rimbaud (where his choice of words were based on their phonetic sounds to intensify the reader's experience).
Groove. I initially found the word doodlebug rather humorous being that I had never heard it before. My immediate associations were "doodle" (or "doodling") and the "jitterbug" (a swing dance popular during the big band era of the 1930s and 40s). When I discovered it meant a "self-propelled personal railcar", I could not help but imagine a cartoon railcar bopping and singing along as it carried its passengers to their destinations.
