On becoming a composer
Customer Inquiry
A customer of Gyre Music recently ordered several of my more serious works for solo guitar. And so, being pleased I might have a new and serious fan, I wrote directly to him to thank him and ask what his plans were for the pieces. I was surprised, and also pleased, when he wrote back that he had not the ability to play them, but only wanted to study the scores as a budding composer. He continued that he admired my work and particularly loved my use of dissonance. Subsequently he asked if I would consider telling him more about my development as a composer. I answered with the following and thought it might be of interest to others…
Beginning composer
I never even dreamed of being a composer. I’ve never taught or studied composition. All I write comes from instinct on top of my education and decades of paying attention to what is going on in music. A very few frustrating attempts along the way, literally once a decade or so, led nowhere. Yet somehow in the mid 90’s at age 45 or so, my wife suddenly proposed that I record some of my own music. She was nuts! There was no music to record.
But the seed was planted. Sketches, that you now have, was a growing collection of short works for my young students. I was getting bored with the method I was teaching and I was bored with the business of a music career – finding gigs, students etc. So teaching young children was a new course of action for me and it was engrossing. Writing simple studies and fun pieces for them led to everything that followed as a composer.
Love every note
One day I was composing a simple blues piece for a student and I suddenly started going off in new and unexpected directions. This became the Prelude to Suite Ladyslipper. Intrigued and encouraged, I pulled out some old notebooks. Somewhat miraculously I was able to make sense out of a ton of old messy writing, and that became Quadrangle. That was it – I was hooked. Was I a composer?
The key seemed to be that I had nothing invested, no goal other than pure joy. I loved the sounds I was creating and I always loved making beautiful sounds on the guitar. Whenever I created a chord that I had never heard before it was particularly gratifying. I somehow trusted myself as a composer in ways I never had as a performer. It was all good! And I can say that I still feel that way – I love every single piece I have written and have thrown away very little.
Compose with trust
You asked about several pieces that happen to represent the beginning of my second period of composition. The first period had little chromatic dissonance. I was modelling a lot on Renaissance practice and molding dissonance within the scale or mode. It pleased me. But curiosity about what else I could do led to new sounds. Serial music had little attraction for me, but I knew the basics and so tried a few tone rows – Red Lion comes to mind from Song of Albin. The Elements was mostly a lot of improv with no special idea or concept of technical compositional goals. This emerging, more contemporary style certainly came in part from a great admiration and attraction to the “Bream repertoire” – Britten, Walton, Henze, etc.
In The Bells, however, I developed a technique of assigning notes to the letters of names. The second Bell is for Norbert Dams, whose name generated note groups from a simple chart. The opening chords literally spell his name. The notes I generated for Epitafio a un Pajaro seemed too boring – just an A minor chord arpeggio. So I made a chromatic version, then added the name of the poet for the song, Federico Garcia Lorca. I manipulated those notes into different chords and voicings/melodies and finally found something attractive. It comes back to trust that my ear could manipulate and mold that which I didn’t like into a new and attractive idea. Cool thing was, the A minor chord became the basis for the third movement and was perfect. It represented the peace of the butterfly [representing the soul] flying free and my ear led me to writing in the style of a Renaissance Agnus Dei.
Seed of chance
I have now written many pieces in this fashion. It’s kind of like throwing dice – there is an element of chance. But that only generates the seed and then I mold the growth of the germ to my satisfaction, like a Bonsai artist. I have no predetermined concept of form and try not to push a concept into the realm of intellectual boredom. You need to keep a visceral link to the process. You want your ideas to move and transform themselves. It’s time to return to the beginning of the piece when an idea gets boring. Go back and experiment with how it can be transformed or re-generated into a new related idea. This maintains continuity, but creates interest and excitement.
My second sonata, Timid Nightingale, completed a year ago, used a couple of names and a medieval melody that were woven together into a five minute piece. One three note melodic progression of F, E, D# ends the first piece and generated the beginning of the second movement, then maintains a presence throughout all four, 17 minutes in total.
Musical ideas come in many ways
A retired professor that lived around the corner gave me my only composition lesson. I asked him about the ear and the fact that I felt I could not generate musical ideas in my mind alone. If I do hear something in my head, I can’t reliably write it down. I asked him about this and he responded, “Do you like the music you write?” My enthusiastic affirmative response led him to say, “So what’s the problem?” It works – it ain’t broke – don’t fix it. I also once asked a brilliant composer friend if I should get a masters degree. He said absolutely not! “You already have an accomplished voice, why be trained to do it like someone else?!”
Friendly dissonance
Lastly, since you asked specifically about dissonance, I believe all dissonance needs resolution. I believe in the triumph of beauty. I don’t know how I freed myself from tonal thinking except by the process I described above. Well, there is this, a progression of dissonant chords, or polyphony creates its own language. Since there are only seven basic chords in a key, it seems best to limit the chords used whether they are in a key or not. Through repetition they will become familiar as the piece progresses, even if they are not tonal.
Lesson 1 done!
I hope that helps and inspires. Start simple – don’t be afraid to repeat, to experiment, to improvise. Last advice – start each day with an improv of any kind. If you play anything you remotely like, write it down, whether it be a melodic fragment, a chordal riff or rhythmic groove. I recall waiting for a class to begin many years ago with guitar in hand. My hands started playing a riff, repeating it many times. So I pulled out my notebook to write it down and figured out the riff was in 15/16. It became the basis for a song several years later called The Lady and the Bear. Don’t be sloppy if you want to be a real composer! Stimulate the whole mind by figuring out the correct rhythm and notes and that will inspire the creative process.
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