Deron saw me through my studies at KU as I navigated the B.M. in Composition and the B.M. in Theory. When three of the classes I needed to graduate were taught at 10:30 on MWF (KU did that a lot back then) he taught one of those as an independent study for me and another student. Deron also tolerated my misguided analysis of Bartok’s Viola Concerto which served as my bachelor’s thesis. I don’t think my arguments about the piece hold any water anymore but it did what theorists are supposed to do: have an opinion and use analysis to support that opinion. Deron never told me my idea was wrong, he made sure he gave me the tools to support my point of view.

I stayed at KU for a M.M. in Theory because of Deron and it was probably the best thing I could have done. I took over the undergrad music tech course and learned more than I ever thought I would learn. I would pester Deron about things, the kind of academic stalking that could only happen between a precocious student and an all-too-patient faculty member. I feel like I was always knocking on his door, asking him questions, dropping by his office, and totally missing the signs that he was incredibly busy doing things that didn’t involve me and my wacky shenanigans. He never made me feel like I was wasting his time, even though I probably was.

When I left KU in ’98, I didn’t think I would come back. Yet I did in 2000 as music tech staff. Deron was my immediate supervisor in that position and helped me navigate my first “real job.” I was unhappy in the job for 2 years, unhappy with life in general actually, and left to do my D.M.A. He knew that was coming, probably long before I did.

Over the years, we became friends and would get together socially, too. We went camping, went to movies, got together for Thanksgiving, lots of fun stuff. Our wives became partners-in-crime, too, especially when scrapbooking was involved. At least they said they were scrapbooking. They sure went through a lot of wine and sometimes they pasted pictures to things.

Anyhow, I bring all this up because Deron had his 4th (!) brain surgery yesterday to deal with a pesky tumor. It sounds like everything went well and he is in recovery now. This blog post probably sounds like a eulogy and while my thoughts tend to linger on Deron more when I hear about his health I cannot deny that I wouldn’t be where I am now without his guidance, council, and influence.

Also, I’m starting to see students act around me the way that I acted around Deron. I’ve had students knock on my door at random times to talk about various and sundry music/life issues. It freaks me out a little because, as you all know, I wear my own insecurities on my sleeve. With neon signs and everything. I do my best with these students and try to give them the tools to do what they want to do (even if it means letting them make mistakes, sometimes they need to do that) while not showing the seething currents of stress that are part of the tenure-earning faculty life.

Deron taught me how to be a mentor. I didn’t know he was teaching me this at the time, of course. I hope that I can do for my students as Deron did for me.

This semester I taught “Contemporary Compositional Techniques” to 8 intrepid students. Most of them were composition majors, a few were performers who were interested in composition or were otherwise roped into the class because I told them it “would be fun.” The hour before my class, one of my colleagues taught a 20th century analytical techniques course. Some students were in both classes and I’m sure I muddied up the waters nicely. We used the same book (the Roig-Francoli anthology, not the text, of his contemporary music book) and I did a lot of supplementing as necessary. Quite a lot of supplementing, actually.

Anyhow, how does one teach a subject like this? You all remember my counterpoint tropes from the past but the issue of “contemporary techniques” is much squishier than species counterpoint (go figure). I stuck with the book for a while, covering post-tonal extended tonality and atonality and then moving into a grab-bag approach of what composers have done and, more importantly, were doing. I glossed over heavy set theory stuff because a) not a theory course and b) who is really doing that anymore anyway? We talked about atonal sets, serialism, etc., but we talked about the Music. Not the Row. Why were composers doing this? What difference did it make? How did different people use serial techniques to make music that sounded radically different from other serial pieces?

Anyhow, looking back, I failed in some respects. All I can think of now are the things we DIDN’T do in class that will seem like unforgivable sins:

We barely mentioned George Crumb.

Why? Well, what techniques can you extrapolate from Crumb? That guy writes his own music so freakin’ well that anything we do is seen as derivative and cliche. Piano harmonics? They sound great! And it sounds like you are ripping off Crumb when you do it. We talked about how composers generate color, sure, but I didn’t spend time on Crumb. Didn’t talk about Schnittke, either. Damn.

We didn’t even mention the Berio Sinfonia.

Or, more specifically, the 3rd movement of the Sinfonia. I love the piece and don’t deny its power. But again, what techniques can you extrapolate? Collage? Sure. We did talk about textural counterpoint (Lutoslawski, Ligeti, Xenakis, Carter) but didn’t talk about that piece. I spent a whole class on Quartet for the End of Time, though. That has to make amends for something.

I didn’t have them prep enough before classes.

I’ve been teaching so much this semester that a lot of my prep work has been “reactive.” Prep has been, at times, out of the question. I should have made more assignments of my students listening to works and come ready for discussion. They generated a half-dozen pieces using these various techniques. I should have had them write more, of course.

“Always with you what cannot be done.” – Yoda

We did talk about a lot of music, a fair amount of philosophy, and go down some wonderful rabbit holes of thought. Hindsight is 20/20, if I ever teach the class again, I’ll do it differently. I always do that. Then I’ll blog about those failures, too!

A lot of the students here at CMU compose (and I’m going to make a broad generalization here, so please acknowledge the limitations within the statement and Move On) tonal band music. My colleague, David Gillingham, is the major draw for most of these comp students and David writes exceptionally well-crafted examples of popular wind ensemble literature. Lots of bands play his music, the students in the bands want to write like him, so they come here to learn how to do that.*

What I think our students are overlooking is something obvious: they don’t need to get a doctorate to be a composer. Being a Composer is actually an option and many students don’t think that it is. The DIY culture in music is such a boon that it would be criminally stupid to not acknowledge it.

There are times when grad schools will look down on composers who are writing “commercial” music and are looking for those with more modernist and less marketable tastes (broad generalizations again, take a deep breath and Move On). I don’t think it is earth-shattering to say that a lot of us with Dr. in front of our names and/or faculty positions couldn’t support ourselves solely on the music we create (Move On). Babbitt was, no surprise, right when he was talking about how music in Academe was akin to experimental research. We lock ourselves away and make things using University resources and these Things we make have little or no commercial appeal. That, if I understand my P&T guidelines correctly, is how we know they have value.

Ok, I probably shouldn’t have said that last part, but you must admit that outside the realm of athletics, Universities aren’t interested in creating commercial products.

So I’ve been pushing the radical notion of “Don’t get a doctorate, go be a composer” on some students. The idea that they could sell their music, hustle for commissions, establish a reputation, and gradually earn a living after many lean years of cobbling together whatever employment they could muster, hasn’t really occurred to them. It can’t be easy to do but if they love and believe in the music they write, I think they owe it to themselves to try. And given the minuscule number of faculty composition gigs in the country, they might have a better chance of supporting themselves without a DMA’s worth of debt to drag around.

Not to say that I don’t like my job: I like it. It suits me. For those with a passion for teaching, I recommend doctorates because they don’t stand a snowball’s chance at faculty gigs without one. The Point is that there is no one solution that is right for everyone. Students sometimes slog through grad degrees out of a sense of duty rather than an unquenchable urge to do crazy things. I’m all for unquenchable urges to do crazy things.

Maybe I’m just away too much of my next class for Contemporary Techniques in which we discuss Zappa’s “Bingo! There Goes Your Tenure” as a counterpoint to “The Composer as Specialist.” MUS 504 students, if you are reading this blog you still need to be in class on Thursday!

*I am totally at peace with my own obscurity. I was brought here to be “the weird one.” You can imagine how much I hate THAT particular role…

Supposedly, that is how it works. I find that composition students, more so than any other studio, actively question and outright reject things that the faculty say. I don’t really have much of a problem with that. A lot of studying composition is about learning what makes you sound like You. In other studios, your interpretive license is, I imagine, much more limited. There are artistic freedoms to be taken in just about any piece of music but, at some point, the flexibility is gone. There are tempi that are too slow, staccatos which are too long, dynamic contrasts which are inappropriate, etc.

The independence of the composition student is a wonderful and irritating thing. As a teacher, I try not to paint a Single Solution to what I perceive as a compositional problem. This probably frustrates the hell out of some of my students but at some level they need to be able to solve their own problems their own way.

On the other hand, there are times that I have valid opinions and there are students who reject ANY notion that their music could/should/ought to be different than what they brought in. These students, which are rare, really frustrate me. Not because I think I’m right and they are wrong (but sometimes I am right) but because they leave me asking the following question:

“If you aren’t interested in questioning and changing your music, why are you taking lessons?”

THAT is what bugs me. If you don’t want your ideas challenged, if you don’t want input on changes you could make, don’t bring it in to a lesson. Just go write your music. There is no harm, no foul, no hard feelings. Lots of people are happily writing the music they want to hear and aren’t taking lessons. They are not better or worse composers than those who take lessons, they aren’t less of a composer because they didn’t participate in formal study. They want their music the way they want their music and they write it as such.

I think we’ve somehow culturally damaged ourselves by thinking that Composers Must Be Professionals. We make music students think that they have to participate in some secretive and exclusionary club in order to write music. That notion is bullshit and should be called such. You want to write music? Go write it! Do you like what you wrote? Great! It doesn’t need approval from anyone other than yourself. Write it. Find players. Publish your stuff and sell it. It really is that simple.

Meeting with others is a great way to learn. You can get a lot, sometimes more, from your peers than your faculty. I’m happy to cite my friends as influences and teachers, almost moreso than the faculty with which I’ve studied.

Lessons allow for a dialog, a discussion, about what your music is and what it could be. If only one person in that dialog is interested in other possibilities, it doesn’t benefit anyone. Both must be open minded and curious.

It is nice to be “in demand” in my own way but I’m having a hard time with organization. I’ve asked the question before, I know, and I’ve tried a few things but nothing is really working. How do you keep track of what piece you need to be writing, for whom, and when the piece needs to be done?

I’ve tried a spreadsheet, a Google docs file, a wiki, and right now I just have a list taped up on my office wall. I need to pace myself somehow and prioritize based on deadline, length of composition, and learning curve for the instruments/ensemble. I feel like I need a separate calendar for this sort of thing but I don’t really know what/how it would look like. Thoughts?

When asked to write a piece for someone, how much should the composer accomodate the desires of the performer? Now flip it around: When asking a composer for a piece to be written for them, how much should the performer know about the style of the composer’s music prior to the request? How much of this changes when the situation involves money instead of a “if you write me something, I’ll play it”situation?

I’ve been on the short end of this stick a few times in the past year. When someone asks for a piece from me, I usually talk to them and find out what they like to do, what their particular strengths are, and if they have any particular needs that they want addressed by the piece. Sometimes this information is useful, sometimes I get a vague “do whatever you want” kind of message.

There have been times when I already have an idea and just started writing, only to find out that the direction I was going was not what the requestor wanted. Is this my fault for not finding out what they wanted? What if the requestor simply didn’t know enough about my music and asked me for a piece without knowing my style?

I feel like I’ve been writing music that is fairly consistent in language for the past few years. I’m almost in a rut. My tempos are slow, my textures are simple, there isn’t a whole lot of technical fireworks. When someone asks me for a piece, I assume that they have heard something of mine, liked it, and want something similar. I’m surprised when I send drafts to people and they say they want music that is the fundamental opposite of what I do. I have to ask the question: is it me or is it them?

How much is a composer expected to write to the demands of the client as opposed to the client asking for a piece because they like what the composer does? Is this happening to me more frequently because I often write for people without a fee? I feel like if I insisted on payment for every piece I wrote on someone’s request, I would be MORE beholden to their wishes instead of my own. I mean, I know how to write music that is the opposite of my natural tendencies. I’d rather not, though. If you want a piece by someone who sounds nothing like me, ask THEM to write it, not me.

Am I way off base here? I’m not trying to make a living as a composer so my experience with “write to order” is a bit off. I love the fact that pretty much everything I write was requested by someone. I hate the fact that sometimes the people requesting pieces want somebody else’s music written by me.

• I want to narrate the following: Coming Together, Narayana’s Cows, Are You Experienced, Of Fables, Foibles, and Fancies
• I want to do another radio show.
• I want more time to compose.
• I want to write an opera. Or three.
• I want to do a residency somewhere.
• I want to do another collaboration with an experimental non-musician.
• I want to bring more guest composers to CMU.
• I want to do a multimedia installation.

There it is. I’m making moves on all of these things, putting things into action in order to actually DO them and not just list them. I’m sharing them here simply to state them openly. These are things I want.

Directly contradict my Buddhist thoughts? Abso-smurfly. I would try to justify it somehow but I don’t want to do that. Contradictions can be fun!

1. Learn what my style was during my undergrad
2. Make that style better in grad school
3. Write in that style for the duration

That ain’t what happened. I was a very promising young atonalist and my interest in music theory (read: employment) had me writing music that Made Perfect Sense. I knew what I was doing, why I was doing it, and was getting better at articulating it. My structures were complicated, my pitch collections took longer to work out than the actual surface of the music, and I could write tons of music very quickly. I was on my way!

About 6-7 years ago, something snapped. To quote one of my favorite Alanis Morissette songs, “It won’t work now, the way it once did.” I suddenly couldn’t work in the way that I had worked before. My music no longer starts from an idea, it just starts. I can’t always articulate what I am doing, why I am doing it, or why this is Good Music.

At first, it scared the hell out of me. Okay, it STILL scares the hell out of me. I’m writing things that feel right but that ain’t how it is supposed to work in academe. So I turn to others for the occasional sanity check. Yesterday, I sent my new piano work to David McIntire of Irritable Hedgehog fame for such a sanity check. My thinking was that

1. Dave is a good friend of mine
2. He has introduced me to a lot of music that has influenced by current aesthetic
3. He delivers great descriptions
4. He won’t lie to me

Here is the score I sent, here is a scratch recording of me playing it on my office upright piano (which is getting tuned on Monday, I swear). Dave supported the “I am not insane” idea and gave me a fantastic pull quote: “It sounds like what you might get if you loaned Charles Seeger’s manual on dissonant counterpoint to Satie for an afternoon.”

I couldn’t be happier with that description.

At least the first one, possibly both, will get premiere performances at the end of March and recorded in May. I feel like this collection will grow, maybe do at least one more. So even if I don’t know what I’m doing, at least I don’t appear to be insane.

The problem is this: the way that the competition is structured, I don’t really have any new material to send them. What I’d be sending would be, with maybe one exception, exactly what I sent in before. The judge panel seems to rotate annually, but am I “honor bound” to send in new works? Or, if They didn’t like me well enough the first time, would they like the same pieces another time?

If it was a festival performance, I wouldn’t think twice about sending the same works. Since this is a small portfolio evaluation and the portfolio is to be constructed of specific kinds of pieces, I’m afraid I’ll be bounced because I’m essentially selling the same goods they weren’t buying in the first place.

Any thoughts from you, oh Wise and Learned Internet?