who are you, and what are you doing here?

When I meet someone new, and they ask what I do, and I respond that I'm a composer, the conversation typically takes an awkward turn, if it doesn't simply go moribund at that exact moment.

The following are mentally-noted excerpts of initial conversations I have had with countless people.

Case Number 1:

I'm a composer.
Oh... So, you write music?
(taken slightly aback) Yes... Yes, I do.

[if the conversation continues here, this is usually what happens]

So, are you in a band?
No.
Then... How do you write music?

Case Number 2:

I'm a composer.
Oh, you write music?
Yes.
What sort? Classical?

[there are far too many reasons at this critical juncture to explain the semantic nuance of the word "classical" to a person, typically lay, but I generally make that mistake, anyhow]

-OR-

What sort? Classical? Like Beethoven?

[At this point, I can't fault people for what they know. Music education in this country is abysmal, at worst, and routinely undersupported and underappreciated, at best, so I cannot hold these answers against the responders, even if I feel superbly cantankerous that day and really, really want to. The responder, in most circumstances, is at least a little earnest and attempting to meet me halfway - but can't, for reasons I theorize later.]

Case Number 3:

I'm a composer.
Oh, so... What do you play?

[see bracketed statement above]

Once in a while, I've made the conversationally-fatal mistake of doing the following:

I'm a sound artist.
[suppressing a chortle, grimace, or other facial expression as a means to remain polite] (quizzically) So, you... paint... with sound?
Well... Yes and no...

[and by this point in the conversation, I've lost them forever, unless it's that one person in 982,000 who is interested]

Composers and sound artists are the only creative artists who, I believe, have this problem of nomenclatural proportions. We are the only ones whose tasks and crafts are not etched permanently within the minds of the laypeople. What I mean is this: a person will have a general idea about what an artist does. Most visual artists I know differentiate: I'm a photographer; I'm a filmmaker; I'm a painter; I'm a sculptor. (Rarest of all species is the wily videographer.) Individuals have an exact knowledge already borne in their minds from experience with visual media about them in their daily lives and from the education obtained - typically informally - over their lifespan. The same could be said for the literary arts: individuals make automatic, instantaneous connections, conscious and unconscious, and cognitive leaps to envision what it is a writer does, what a playwright does, what a poet does, what a journalist does. There is even a prompting for differentiation from the uninitiated party: they may, and frequently do, ask the "writer" if they write fiction or non-fiction, short stories or novels, biographies, or (erroneously) poems or plays. There is a kernel of truth within every reasonably-educated person's mind about what each of these occupations entail.

The biggest problem, I think, is not that composers don't reach out to audiences: I think the problem is visual, primarily. This isn't to belittle other things, but from a purely cognitive standpoint, it's major. We have etched into our brains and popular imagination via film and TV and museums the sight of Jackson Pollock painting. We have the sight of photographs themselves - we don't need to see Avedon or Ray, but we have their work. We have footage of visual artists creating, of filmmakers peering through their viewfinders, of sculptors turning pottery wheels or wielding welding torches or chiseling away at stone. Obviously, humans are much more visual animals (unfortunately) than sonic or auditory ones, but that's really subservient to the idea that we have very little footage of composers in the process of creation. The few we have are iconic but all staged: Stravinsky peering into a score, Bruno Maderna poring over a score while chain-smoking and listening to a rehearsal. The most famous portraits of Ravel, Debussy, and Ligeti, for example, may have them at the piano, but this is mere suggestion - and at least in Ligeti's case, many of his famous photographs are emblematic of the typical visual representation of composers: wholly divorced from the act of creation, clad in a cardigan or suit, in the company of other composers, or at some symposium, or in a context removed in sum from the act of composing. I know of no footage that has made it into the pantheon of artistic documentation that shows a composer actually changing pitches or trying out motives on a violin. Of course, the fact that those few (though elaborated) portraits of composers at work exhibit composers with lines of strain in their faces, hunched over score paper in what looks like dim or unforgiving conditions does us no favours, either. Admittedly, my favorite depiction of Hindemith is one of Papa Paul playing viola - not composing; it goes without saying, too, that the most remembered and easily-comprehended visual renditions of Mahler are those of his conducting - despite being the last great post-Romantic voice.

There is, too, paradoxically a visual element that completely does not work in our favor: that is to say, a printed score. Without invoking the hoary discussion of whether it's a universal language, printed music in the Western tradition is an elitist language: it's the Latin of art forms. Few can read it passibly, and fewer still can tease out all of the nuance and delicacy in an interpretive manner that commands respect. I want to make clear that I am speaking of the entire Western population as whole, and the actual reading of music - not performing or the auditory transmission of music. I want to democratize the ability to reach a literacy level in music, as do music educators everywhere, but our resources are meager and our ability to make inroads is kept constrained. So, the ability to read music beyond a very rudimentary level still belongs to only a comparative few. While I bemoan the fact that we still in 2011 do not have universal literacy, 99% or so in the United States ain't bad. And, yes, many of the same problems of subtlety and intricacy exist in written language, but there are a few sociolinguistic and developmental factors at play: there is constant speech around us; we all have a base-level literacy and, evolutionarily, are much more easily adapted to learn and relearn spoken language when confronted with a visual analog if and only if there has been adequate exposure before a certain age; words, despite the many ways can be wielded, have exact definitions that are made contextually clearer in writing; everyone is taught to read (under normal circumstances); everyone is taught to write.

There is, of course, a visual-accessibility component, as well, which is fairly obvious: transmission and mutability. I can pick up a pencil and write a poem. It will most likely be awful. Same deal as with a short story. But I have a base level knowledge of rhythm, diction, syntax. I can write. I can pick up a book and read it. I can take the book with me anywhere. I put the score for Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra in my father's hand, and he can do nothing with it until he hears the recording or performance - and even then, the score does him no good.

This lack of visual-cognitive stimulus is even more pronounced when we get into electroacoustic music - a subject too big for this blog post. (Though not for a future one!)

We also - collectively, as trained musicians in the Western tradition - lack a vernacular common to experience that will allow us to communicate succinctly and efficiently without either speaking beyond the layperson's knowledge or experience, or - worse - insulting them by toning down and diluting how we describe what we do, why we do it, and what sort of art we make. Say what you will about untrained folks discussing visual art - I count myself among these - or, even better, film: there is an accessibility level of describing some technical aspects (I will not say all) that arises organically, almost generically, from repeated contact and experience and from limited visual art education or bits and pieces learnt along the way. I see brushstrokes on a canvas and can describe them as such; I may not know the proper technical terms beyond "vanishing point" in a landscape painting, but I can remark on something approximating it. At the very basic level, the elementary particles of visual art can be discussed almost universally. We don't have that ability in music or sound art. We end up with onomatopoeia or end up discussing visceralities or emotionalities rather than the sounds or music themselves. Certainly, these reactions are valid - but if we're talking about a Miró painting, we have exact language to describe it. Exact language in the world of music happens to be argot.

Debatable to an extent, the dimension of time itself is the only plane of existence for music and sonic art. We create a representation of thought which in turn becomes a simulation of a representation in performance or on a recording; divergent as those two could be, they are essentially the second status of removal from origin; we have the listener's memory, whose variety is mathematically wild; we have the retransmission from the listener in some fragmentary manner. And it all exists within primarily the realm of time. We have the object (score or recording or...) in our hands, but it is indeed just an object-intermediary. The visual aspect has zero bearing. The auditory aspect does have bearing, but it is not frozen in dimensionality, not firmly rooted to a place or a singular moment - a painting, a sculpture (especially a mediocre one), a visual referent: this is something permanently etched and tied to a place, a moment, a history. It can exist anytime; I can recall them at will now, and now, and now. A Takemitsu chamber work? It has to unfold. It takes time. And that's all it takes.

Which leads me back to why I decided to muse over this initially. There is no set visual re-cognition of the composer, her craft, or her process, or her end result. Aside form the transmission issues, lack of more holistic education about what composers do, lack of exposure of of newer - much newer - artistic trends in art music, and lack of visual elements in the composer's art, what else am I missing?

Other than the composer himself, who may or may not be able to communicate effectively what he does, regardless the pseudo-romantic images a layperson may see, regardless the naive and hurtful stereotype that a small but vocal minority has about composers (and musicians in general) being deadbeats, the responsibility doesn't lie completely with the lay audience or everyday people: it lies within the musical community as a whole to, without exoticization, exhibit composers as often as possible¹, encourage composers to take more active roles in orchestras, schools, and the like (there is only so much composer-fostered groups of composers can do, for obvious auditory-transmission reasons), and (this is the killer) somehow place composers alongside writers and visual artists in the public eye (pun intended) (and with no intent to disparage or remove renown from artists in different media) and allow them to receive respect and due credit - first, from the musicians who perform their work (I think here of a relatively recent orchestra commission where the composer was given billing far below a featured soloist, no headshot, no introduction or pre-concert talk - way to go!); secondly, from educators (and this is not accusatory to educators, but pleading for those who shape curricula); thirdly, from an investment by listeners and the general public; and, finally, from composers ourselves. It's hard to make listeners and audiences believe us, understand us, support us, tolerate our existence, and appreciate us when we have to explain exactly what it is we do in an almost-defensive manner. It's hard to justify our existences when a wide swath of Americans don't know we exist to begin with and are then skeptical of our cultural place.

I know I leave out a lot in this discussion, but something tells me we're not done discussing this yet. I am, right here and now, but as a culture, we've got some speaking yet left in front of us.

I would like, though, in the future, to have a conversation with someone new and not have to explain what it is that I do as a defense mechanism or to clarify doubt; I'd like to explain it meaningfully, beyond eradicating uncertainty, and allow it to just be part of my identity - and not a conversational or interpersonal liability.

***

1. But not in ways that force the composer to spend down the entirety of his savings account when, without the composer, there is no performer, and there is no audience, and there is no art.

this might take a while

I've been thinking for a while on the subject of revising pieces and what the process of revision, for me, entails, but didn't start crystallizing my thoughts until I read a recent piece by my colleague Joe Eidson.

Stravinsky revised works - despite any grandiose claims to the contrary - in order to stay ahead of copyright law curves. Brahms was a frequent reviser of completed works, predominantly in order to rectify juvenile indiscretions, as he put it, and clarify rhythms. Messiaen rarely revised works, favoring a process of slow, complete, thoughtful work that would be satisfactory. Villa Lobos never revised - it is a shame he and poet Frank O'Hara never crossed paths. Duparc would revise the same work for years before releasing it to the wider world. Other extreme examples are in the forms of Sibelius or Barber, who burned earlier works or demanded unsatisfactory works withdrawn. Hovhaness went so far as to destroy every work he composed during his student period, dissatisfied with his output and criticisms from peers and teachers.

Upon reflection, I safely do not belong to any of these camps. Revising, for me, has a peculiar twofold definition: the first dimension of this is the perennial divide - and internal battle between - of "pencil" versus "engraver;" the second aspect is a consideration of when, and how, or if, a work becomes complete.

Like every composer who started writing before home computers and cheap keyboards became commonplace, my first works were wrought by paper and pencil, and the final version (or in intrepid days, the first!) became ink and paper. Moving forward fifteen years, all of my pieces still start life on paper, but very few end their lives that way. Still, I have a handful of works - primarily solo or small chamber works - that are not performance-ready as they are still in my admittedly disheveled handwriting, and they have remained on the shelf for years. I have returned to a few of these, and in the process of entering them into engravers in order to create a legible meekness as opposed to an illegible tawdriness, I have made changes to content, motives, pitches, or rhythms; in a few extreme examples (see this post of mine, especially regarding a future "violin and piano" work), I have completely reworked the material, or added a substantial amount in order to radically alter the scope or focus or purpose of the work. This has been the case, though, for a few direct-to-engraver works of mine as well: every few years 'round submission-time for contests, I'll see some glaring, if only cosmetic, errors in a work in need of correction.

This opens up a few questions for consideration: what needs correcting? what am I comfortable releasing to the wider world? is there a window of time acceptable as a difference between when the pencil first hits the paper and when a performer receives the score? Obviously, cosmetic blemishes need attention: a slightly-misplaced dynamic marking, adding additional performance directions, shifting the placement of a hairpin... these are all small things to take care of (I'm not big on tedium.) Whether a melodic line needs resculpting or a harmonic sentence needs clarification is far less immediately apparent and much more intuitive, and this depends upon how much time I spend in the process of putting lipstick on a pig. I do have a number of works that have sat in "completed" pencil-sketch form - works I'm sure I could pass in front of performers and enjoy performances without having to wrest away the sounds - for many years, some as old as 8 years. Should I just withdraw these works and pretend they never happened? No: in short, this would deny I ever attempted to create the work; further, there may come the time when I finally do have the necessity to edit or "complete" the works electronically. Yes, this inhibits my ability to get some performances - but not tremendously so, and with odd combinations like harp, flute, percussion, and piano, my performance chances are only slightly diminished by having a penciled-in score rather than an engraved PDF. This is not to say, however, that even works completed in Finale are veritably complete.

So, what is complete? Is it, as I was taught to think, that a piece is complete when I am satisfied with the shape, the pacing, the dramatic curve, the orchestration? Or is it finished when every dynamic marking is 8 pixels south and 3 pixels west of its corresponding notehead; is it finished when every solitary machination of engraving is done? Is it complete once we have a performance and are satisfied that there is nothing to rectify or redo? When is it possible to set aside the score and assume that lessons learned from Piece A should be applied to Piece B instead of taking said lessons and reinserting them to fix the errors, small as they are, in Piece A? Idiosyncratically, complete is when I get tired of fidgeting with the details of the work, when it is clear to me that the energy spent in rectifying some perceived sonic or notational injustices would be better served working on some other project. This varies, piece to piece, considering many of the factors above as well as the plain intangible of how proud I am of the work, especially if I'm privileged to hear a performance of it or work closely with its performers. Dealing with electroacoustic music, there is a bit of a difference - all of the work aside from loose sketches happens within the machine, and revisions are more concerned with how I control and use the space - there's no going back on source material or re-producing sounds - with a few attempts in my time to retrofit stereophonic works for 4 or 8 channels (but never in reverse).

I also routinely, casually, and perhaps cavalierly apply the term "revision" to practically any piece underway (this can number from 5 to 20, depending on how honest I'm feeling that day) that has lain dormant for more than a few weeks, so there's that.

As I've previously mentioned, each of my pieces that comes to some sort of finality of presence is like one of my creative offspring, and at some point I have to let go, no matter how disappointed I am in how it turned out. For this reason alone, I may end up either the world's best or worst parent.

conundrum, or dilemma, or crisis?

I find myself now in a bit of a (large) crisis. At present time, I have sketches for about a dozen pieces. Only two have any sort of firm deadline - two that have guaranteed performances - and neither has received much attention from me lately, owing to the fact that their deadlines aren't until the early spring.

I've halted reworking gravity express (despite my claim that it's basically finished, I'm not satisfied with the form and pacing), and I'm staring down:
- violin, clarinet, piano work sketches;
- bassoon quartet sketches;
- string quartet sketches;
- two orchestral works in various states of completion (or, sketches);
- a Pierrot ensemble sketch;
- a piano/string quintet sketch;
- various wind ensemble sketches.

That's not all of them, obviously. It feels as though all this music wants to escape at once and it's all getting caught in the threshold. I'll fizzle out working on one thing and try to flit over to another; I'll lose patience on that and focus on yet something else. The cycle perpetuates. Of all the sketches, the work for which I have the clearest vision is an orchestra piece, but I can't logically justify letting that take precedence over many of the chamber works. Each of the chamber works I can easily see being an entry into some prize or contest - if I could finish them. They would also, theoretically, be easier to get performed - if I can find performers for them.

This has been a perennial problem for me. I have no problem working with multiple canvases, but when I have more than two or three set up, my world becomes disarrayed and harried pretty quickly. I'm not finding outside encouragement to write a lot of these pieces (read: been getting more rejections than usual, not having performers lined up for the pieces, etc), so that erodes my due care and focus pretty sharply and quickly. In the back of my mind, there's a "don't bother" attitude promulgated by the very same long string of prize/commission/contest rejections of late, but I know this isn't a healthy sentiment to have. I've been disappointed with my slow progress on all of my projects of late, and my dolefully tendentious brain is always caught between simply writing and stepping back and asking whether what I'm writing is imaginative enough, or challenging enough, or too banal, or too tonal, or too uninteresting.

This all leads to a bit of a devastating thought. I know I have the talent to be a composer, and perhaps a good one, but where is the focus, the determination? Where are my connections? Why is it that I know so many people - software engineers, law professors, teachers, academics - but so few performers? I feel as though I've largely exhausted my list, and I am loathe to keep pestering the same dozen people for performances of existing pieces or about asking them to perform newer or not-yet-composed works. I seem to have the mind for it, most of the time, but little else. And with my bizarre desire to get so much written - seemingly at once - the situation is just compounded...

Longer Questions That May Never Be Answered

If we were to put a moratorium on creative arts – that is, if we were to actively stop the creation of “new” artworks across disciplines – for a full generation, 25 to 30 years, what would be the result? How would the creative spirit thrive during that interstice? Would people create works subversively? Would the populace that survived the silence awaken with a deeper appreciation and understanding of dance, or art music, or poetry, or sculpture? Would we forget how to create? Would we forget our techniques? What of the children born during the silence – how would they cope? How would they be able to reinsert themselves into the world of artistic creation? Would they be startled or appalled at the idea of people freely expressing themselves through scores or canvases? Would we subsist on previously-created works for a full generation? If so, how is that truly different from the mainstream artistic world as it is now? What would happen to pop music? Would we enter a new Renaissance period where years of ideas accumulated creates a driving push into The Next Phase of creation? Or would we go backward?

Is there such a thing as a musical avant-garde anymore? Have we succeeded in shocking everyone into complacence, or is cultural literacy that advanced and uniform – that is, has a critical mass of understanding been met? I find it difficult to believe that either is true, but this creates a dangerous cosmic interplay of relativistic thought. A soybean farmer in Arkansas may never have heard of Xenakis or Lady Gaga – would either matter to him or her? Do we enter the dark chambers of "it’s new to you but not to me, and that’s acceptable"? Gravely seriously, though, what constitutes the New in music – other than having been just composed?

Is the term “experimental music” anymore just a marketing gimmick or a way to appeal to an already self-selected audience of cognoscenti, the pretentious, and/or gallery-hoppers? When we parse the semantics of "experimental," do we end up with the unified pluralism that all new music is in some way experimental and we need some degree of musical literacy to label something truly Experimental or more in line with Conventional models? Should we rather just make way for history and deem Experimental Music its own subgenre from the mid 1950s until the early 1980s when “experimental” veered into (or was concretized as) Performance Art?