For a number of months (and perhaps even years) now, I have toyed with the idea of starting a blog. Not a personal blog, but a professional one, where I can write about my own work and music by others in a fashion that invites contemplation and discussion for myself and (hopefully) for others as well. Well… now seems as good a time as any!
There are many composers and musicians who have written expertly about professional issues surrounding music creation – advice on how to network and connect with others, how best to disseminate your work, how to define and brand yourself. There are also countless articles about issues of culture, attitudes, resources, and systemic issues within the new music community. Since countless others have done this so successfully in the past, I would like to go in a different direction. However, I don’t want to write solely about “The Music” or the dots on the page in isolation either, at least not for this kind of platform.
I have had much of my professional success as a composer in the choral world. From the completion of my PhD up until just recently, that was how I spent my days and made my income. While I have been quite fortunate to receive top-notch education at every step of my journey through that system, there are aspects of life as a professional composer that I feel higher education in music (even when focused on composition) does not address.
As a choral composer, I work with text almost all of the time. So does my husband. In our experience, few people realize the amount of time and energy we devote to finding concepts and texts for our pieces, even those who work in other facets of choral music. We conduct exhaustive searches for poetry which inspires us, lends itself to music, and fits our commissioners’ programming, while avoiding texts that have been set many times by others whenever possible. We accumulate large collections of poetry. We dive deep into long manuscripts on sites like Project Gutenberg. Longer pieces often necessitate looking outside of our usual poetic channels, as they require an even stronger “elevator pitch,” if they are to become a commissioned reality and live up to the gravity and resource requirements of their length. Working as composers full-time, we do this up to a dozen times a year, or more. The intellectual and emotional labor required to do this all the time encompasses a significant percentage of our working hours and an important part of our creative practices. This is not exclusive to choral and vocal music, either – pieces without text require an initial impetus as well, though this can take many different forms for different people.
This is the aspect of music and creativity that I hope to address and discuss with my writing here: the catalyst ideas and concepts that kick off our creative processes and form the underlying basis for new work. Where do they come from? How do we find them? What place do they hold in our work overall?
Often times in panel discussions and program notes, this is framed as the “inspiration” for a piece. I am not crazy about that word. I feel it is similar to using “talented” as the first and foremost adjective of choice to describe someone in a complimentary fashion. (Or worse, “lovely and talented.”) It only gives them credit for a nebulous innate quality, ignoring the hard work and practice it surely took them to create whatever demonstrated their “talent.” It’s also a bit like our use of the word “genius,” which I loathe even more. It tacitly implies that only certain types of people can possess this quality, which is needed to create the worthiest, most “timeless” creative works. (And of course, the people described as such are almost all white men, in music and elsewhere. But that’s another article.)
Also, what does “inspiration” mean, anyway? One dictionary definition asserts that it is a “sudden brilliant, creative, or timely idea.” It persists in our vocabulary because sometimes, it does feel like an idea for a new project or a solution to a problem comes into our minds out of nowhere. But, as I have worked from commission to commission over the past months and years, I have come to believe that this is never a truly, entirely, divine-intervention-style random occurrence. Despite stereotypes of artists groggily waking up in the night with a sudden stroke of brilliance bestowed upon them from above, we can learn to produce “inspiration” for ourselves, or at least invite it into our minds more actively.
For one thing, I learn over and over again that the more one practices openness and engagement with the world around them, the more an idea is likely to strike. Simply making it an active habit to take in knowledge of the world whenever possible – current events, history, popular culture, art of any media – can make all the difference. For instance, I love documentaries. From natural sciences to outer space, current events to long past history. I watch them quite often, and the influx of information is always stimulating. Multiple pieces of mine have been directly inspired by information from documentary films, including my recent composition for the Glasgow School of Art Choir. Similarly, though perhaps more out of left-field, I have often gleaned ideas for pieces from moments on my favorite TV shows such as The West Wing. While much of what’s on television is utter garbage, I can’t help but see some of the better-made shows out there as windows into popular consciousness and culture, imperfect windows as they may be. Since I am one of those freaks who often does the more menial tasks of my work with familiar TV shows on in the background, perhaps it has invaded my brain entirely. Regardless, keeping a mindful ear and eye for these things at all times can work wonders. Like any other skill or activity, this curiosity requires practice.
Perhaps even more noteworthy are the unique associations and combinations of ideas our minds can produce based on our individual lived experiences and personal tastes. For instance, I recently wrote a piece for an outer space-themed concert, the concept for which was born out of an (unsuccessful) application for a commission from a Bach festival. (Thanks to Portara Ensemble in Nashville for giving this piece a home!) While contemplating my application, I remembered the inclusion of multiple Bach pieces on Voyager’s “Golden Record,” a large part of the mystique and popular culture surrounding the Voyager missions. I proposed a choral reflection on the first movement of Bach’s Second Brandenburg Concerto, the first track on the Golden Record. Maybe Baroque counterpoint and space exploration are an unusual combination, but in my mind, they complement each other perfectly. When I think of the machinations of Bach’s counterpoint and sequences that move us methodically around different key areas, skipping from one animated, ornate melodic fragment to the next, I have no trouble imagining this music personifying a probe flying through deep space, especially when imagined as a potential goodwill ambassador bringing greetings of human culture to extraterrestrials. I used the greetings on the record for the text of the piece, including some in their original languages though largely in English so the words would be intelligible (at least, to a predominantly English-speaking audience and ensemble).
Sometimes, when growing tired or feeling a lack of confidence about our work, we can get sucked into the feeling that everything has been done. All the chords have been used, all the great tunes have been written, all the best stories have been told. Perhaps an argument can be made for the finite availability of new combinations of pitches, but it can only be taken as a serious issue if one takes a highly narrow view of composing (or writing, filmmaking, painting…) and its purpose. With a piece like this, even if the ideas themselves are not totally original – I am certainly not the first to reimagine a Baroque piece in my own way, nor am I the first to write music inspired by space exploration – I hope the way I have combined them is new. Free association and context are quite individual things. These catalyst combinations are a big part of how I conceive of pieces.
This seeking of extra-musical ideas, both actively and passively, serves as a huge chunk of my creative time and energy. And really, this is as it should be. Even music with the most abstract of intentions comes from somewhere, and art does not exist in a vacuum, as they say. Music especially is enormously social and collaborative. We are all citizens of the world, and each of us is working within a particular cultural landscape. What themes interest us? What ideas and whose voices do we hope to propagate and amplify with our work? We have a responsibility to interrogate the question of why we create in the first place, and who we are hoping to engage and serve with our creations. I continually remind myself of why I compose and what I want to communicate with music through working with themes and ideas that are important to me. Without considering these questions, my work would not be what it is, and it would be impossible for me to maintain focus and energy over the long-term while attempting to make a living at doing something creative without this kind of thinking.
Why am I dedicating a whole slice of my corner of the internet to writing about this? Because I wish it were discussed more head-on. This is a huge part of my life as a composer, and one of the biggest aspects of that life that I feel studying music at post-secondary level did not prepare me for. My PhD was the only thing which provided some insight here, as it was considered a research-based degree which required me to consider what original contributions I was making to the field of composition. Other than this, I received a truly excellent education surrounding the dots on the page themselves and how to get the most out of them, but with little in-depth discussion of any pre-musical impetus for putting them there.
On the other hand, this is unsurprising due to the nebulous, subjective nature of where our creative ideas come from. This is all a highly individual part of the process. It is also far easier and more straightforward to teach the more technical aspects of music, since we feel that we can isolate and codify them. It’s a lot easier to teach someone species counterpoint guidelines and methods for analyzing harmony than how to conceive of a concept for a new work. Also, what you choose to write about largely arises from why you create in the first place, and no one can tell you your “why.” However, we can practice openness to the world and discuss where our ideas come from to keep ourselves better in tune with our “why” and keep the creativity flowing.
With this blog, I hope to de-mystify and debunk the idea that inspiration is bestowed randomly, or that it is a passive part of the creative process. You do not need to be divinely inspired to create art. I also hope that this dedicated self-analysis will give me further insight into my own desires for my work and continually invite me to consider what ideas I am interrogating and amplifying with it, and perhaps invite others to consider similar questions.
In the interest of more dialogue about this side of the creative process, and in hopes that it encourages others to pursue this in their own way, I will focus on how I find these catalyst ideas for pieces of mine. I would absolutely love to welcome guest writers and others’ thoughts on these topics as well!
I’ve titled my blog series here “Practicing Curiosity” – thanks very much to Tom for helping me articulate that phrase! Here’s a bit of what you can expect from me here in the future:
How issues of communication and language have inspired much of my work and my personal musical style
How (and why) I’ve put together many pieces using multiple languages at once
Influences from popular music in my work, both folk music and contemporary pop artists
How several of my pieces were (believe it or not) inspired by TV shows
…among other things
Until next time,
Sarah