#on composing

A perpetual question: can I write what I want to write and simultaneously write something worth anyone’s valuable time?

In music as in conversation, what you don’t say can be as significant as what you do.

I’ve learned to not let it hurt me when somebody says, “So basically you’re going to school just to be able to go train others to go train others?” The cold, hard truth of being a non-film composer (or really of being a musician) in the 21st century is that you make your living doing something else, usually teaching, besides making music. You’re still a composer (or musician) and still living the dream. And frankly those young whippersnappers need the guidance! I know I did.

I think that rather than being able boil my music down to just one simple label or schtick, I’d rather be like Messiaen—(influenced by birdsong, colored by synesthesia, employing symmetrical, additive, and exotic rhythms, using modes of limited transposition and the harmonic series, playing with complex mathematical and isorhythmic patterns, writing for both traditional and unusual instruments, and building musical structures on theological symbolism and surreal imagery)—and be ALL THE THINGS.

The story goes that before Hungarian composer György Kurtág figured out his iconically aphoristic style, he was suffering from depression and writer’s block. In the 1950s, he went to psychologist Marianne Stein in Paris, who encouraged him to simplify his process—could he fit just two notes together? And then two more?

Things you might hear if you are a composer.

With that, it matters not who praise or blame.