They never taught me how to focus

Throughout graduate school -- the part of it where I had direct, weekly, and human contact with my mentors -- I was encouraged to have one main project on my docket at any given time but to dabble and keep working on sketches and other works-in-progress. One composition instructor actively challenged me to write as much as possible and find ways to write material quite different from the primary endeavor for the month / term. Retrospectively, this was to force me into modes of thinking to divorce my first responsibilities from any other ideas or brainstorms and to collect a back-catalog of sketches I could use for other, later projects without being tempted to work on too many things at once.⁰

If I were a visual artist, there is no conceivable way I could have just one easel set up in my studio; no conceivable way for me to keep simply trucking away upon one idea. Part of this is a long-standing problem I have with artistic patience. Part of this arises from the high lack of feedback necessary to younger composers on works of music: it doesn't necessarily matter how it looks, and if I'm composing a work for large forces, I don't get the luxury of hearing whether some element "works" until rehearsals -- or in the case of some dormant, unperformed works, not at all. Part of this also stems from my natural knack to be engaged in many activities at once, despite my quiet and easy-going (typical) behavior,¹ a curse from being a "Jack of all trades" personality.

How soon I forget the lessons of past instructors; how soon (and for the past 15 years) has this become a perfect storm.

Many years ago I was relatively prolific. In 2008, by contrast, I didn't finish a single piece I was composing.² I finished (I think) four pieces last calendar year. While I would love to become more like Villa-Lobos and less like Henri Duparc in terms of compositional output (minus the "Frank O'Hara syndrome" of not revising anything), I don't think it is going to come to pass any time soon.

At last count, I have sketches for nearly 20 pieces in my notebook, most in the very early stages with only a few measures. Some works have several pages of notes, but all rather rudimentary -- and I get into a habit of criticizing and analyzing my sketches (my sketches, for crying out loud!) and putting them aside after I've made my dour notes and changes and called into question what it is I'm doing. I have pieces that I know must take priority: an orchestral work, a wind ensemble work, a few chamber works. I have older pieces in various states of "completion" that need to get revised before I foist them upon an unsuspecting performer or choral director -- that is to say, I want them up to my standards: right now, they're not, and I hate putting my name on something inferior, much less opening myself to criticism for it.³ I have a commission for a saxophone orchestra piece I seriously need to get started on.

But all the possibilities seem endless and too tempting.

And too crippling.⁴

And I wonder how much of a composer's "voice" is bound up with how many pieces she is working on at one shot, how many ideas are on back burners yet sneaking in...

A lot of my old sketches came about as sporadic, or better impulsive, attempts to capitalize on an upcoming conference, contest, or performance call. (Case in point: I have a cello-piano piece sitting 10% finished in my notebook, a sketch I haven't looked at in over two years) I realize, of course, this is a foolhardy approach to writing. But with so few people asking me to compose works for them, and with a lot of time on my hands, this is the ultimate result: a lot of aphorisms when there should be a philosophical exegesis; charcoal sketches when there should be a 20'x80' mural. This is also due to the fact that my catalog, while quite large in some respects, leaves out some standards and staples: I have one standalone orchestral piece; I have no string quartets or quintets; I have no Pierrot-like ensemble pieces; I have no percussion-only pieces; my piano-and-instrument catalog is fairly thin; most of my chamber music has odd or non-standard instrumentations (bassoon, tenor saxophone, and bass clarinet, for instance, or trombone and violin). So, submissions to things come and go and I scramble. Sometimes I succeed in completing a work (my clarinet quintet -- didn't win the prize I submitted it for, but it's a good piece, still waiting on a performance); other times, like the aforementioned cello-piano work, I get caught up with other pieces, with life, with people, and that October 1st deadline quietly eludes me.

So, I don't know what to do. I don't know how to focus on writing just one piece at a time. Something has been lost in mental translation since the days of composition teachers hovering over my work; something has been amplified in the liberty I've received as a free-lancer; something is missing in the fact that I don't have the immediate resources (peers on a performance faculty at a music school, to wit) to run a piece by someone and get their response. I do have Facebook and all and I occasionally post my scores or send scores to acquaintances and friends -- but there's a frustration level there, as well, in that I rarely get feedback, or at least critiques beyond the topical (of course, many of my friends are busy with spouses, jobs, careers, and the like, so I can't blame them for letting a solo trombone work, for instance, fall through the cracks). I have no ideas on how to focus and I'm left with basically the notion that writing as much as possible as quickly as possible couldn't feasibly include sticking to one work at a time.

I'm dating my music, perhaps. Moving back and forth between sketches, getting somewhat familiar with them, but not profoundly so, and not committing to any singular entity. I did manage to do so with my dissertation and a few other larger works, but those were important works for deadlines or merit. I guess I used those pieces, then. But then, perhaps -- if we extend this gruesome analogy further -- I'm nothing more than a man-whore of composing. And all composers, then, probably fit into this scheme, of moving on from piece to piece after various levels of intimate understanding of each musical world. We're a lascivious, insatiable bunch.

All of us, except maybe Henri Duparc.⁵


0. This was supposed to be a chronicle of what works I'm attempting to create; instead, this happened. I'll keep this instead.
1. No, really. It's true. My natural demeanor is very quiet, borderline-boring, and not easily provoked. Wasn't always so, to be sure.
2. Admittedly, I started a few pieces in 2008 that I finished in 2009 or am still working on; I also dedicated a fair amount of time to updating and revising some pieces, and I also had this thing called a dissertation (and, at the time, a serious romantic relationship -- despite the discussion above, the two were not mutually inclusive) that took up a lot of my time.
3. As it stands, I have difficulty taking existing works and extracting new pieces from them. I know it would increase my exposure and performance chances, but I'm on principle opposed to taking a movement out of a work to make it stand alone. I also don't relish the idea of more work or finding errors or rehashing old blunders. I should probably change this perspective.
4. cf. Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom
5. Henri Duparc was a French composer who, along with Samuel Rousseau, Chabrier, Massenet, d'Indy, and Franck, represents the French late-Romantic and post-Romantic traditions (prior to Debussy/Ravel). Despite his lasting reputation, or maybe causative of, his output is one of the smallest and paltriest of any "established" composer. Villa-Lobos, on the other hand as we all know, wrote what seemed like a piece a week -- he himself admitted that a lot of the hundreds of works he cranked out were not very good. Frank O'Hara was a poet who, while I adore his work, could have stood to reread a lot of his poems.