What I Will Remember

Sometimes I think about what I will remember most—or care about—when I am old.

I am pretty certain I won’t remember much about FaceBook. I know I won’t think about email or text messages, or as much as I love gadgets, my mobile phone.

I won’t care what operating system my computer is running, if we even use computers at that point, but I might care if I backed it up, although it probably will not matter unless I print everything. I know I certainly won’t want to be holding a Kindle, or a laptop or have a Bluetooth headset on my ear.

I am also certain that I won’t think about all the frozen dinners I have eaten, organic or not,  that Sienfeld re-run where they cut up candy bars with a knife and fork—although that was pretty funny—or that great deal I wrangled on a flat screen TV.

Here is what I am pretty sure I will think about.

I will think about my family, both immediate and extended, first and foremost, and wondering how they are, wherever they are, and I will want to be with them as much as possible.

I will think about Victoria and Dylan, and how much I love them, and how much of a gift it is to have them in my life. To see another human being that is genetically half you and half your wife look into your eyes and say I love you is truly euphoric.

I will remember that time my father threw me in the air when I was three to the music of Shostakovich, and I will think about my mother painting on the third floor of the house I grew up in, while I stood by her side finger painting. I will remember molding clay side my side with my father in his studio while he was making his sculptures. I will think about the rice crispy treats with little cinnamon candies my grandmother made me and my brother and sent in care packages while we were growing up.

I will also think about my work and how much I accomplished, the experiences I have had as a composer and performer—both good and bad—and what I am leaving behind. I will certainly hope that my music doesn’t die with me. I want to think that by the end of my life, I will have contributed to the world in a positive way.

I will think about the walks I took in Central Park, the mountains I climbed in the Adarondacks and Colorado, homemade chocolate chip cookies and those times I stayed up all night with Dan, one of my best friends while growing up. I will think about friends, present and past. I will think about a few exquisite meals I had in a few fancy vegan restaurants, and my favorite pieces of music and visual art.

I will think about everything in my life that was intensely personal and full of love. I will also regret all that I wanted to do, but didn’t.

It is interesting how some of what we do now will not matter that much when we look back, and how important it is to live each day as fully as possible, take chances, and be with the people we care about, in the flesh.

Vermont In August

This August, I will begin a three-year Music Alive Residency with the Vermont Youth Orchestra Association, made possible by a grant from Meet The Composer and the League of American Orchestras. I am really looking forward to working with everyone and exploring some of my old haunts in Burlington.

The Vermont Youth Orchestra Association consists of one of the most accomplished youth orchestras in the North America, along with a few other excellent orchestras, chamber groups, choirs and an annual music festival in Burlington called the Reveille! Music Festival. They even just completed a tour of Quebec and France with their out-going Music Director Troy Peters. After a highly successful fourteen years with VYOA, Troy accepted a new position as Music Director of the Youth Orchestras of San Antonio. Although he is much-loved by everyone in VT, and brought the association to new and higher levels, this will be an exciting year as VYOA embarks on a search for a new director. I lived in Vermont long enough to know that although great people sometimes leave, they often come back, and fresh, new faces will also arrive.

Back in the mid-90s, Victoria and I lived in Burlington on the corner of Church and Main, right next to Nectar’s, the bar and  restaurant where thousands of bands have played and Phish played some of its first gigs. We moved there right after we left undergraduate school at Eastman and the University of Rochester. I can still remember the smell of gravy fries wafting over from Nectar’s, roasting coffee beans at Muddy Waters, and the freshly made pizza and bagels from across the street and down the block.

While we lived in Burlington, Victoria had a violin studio of ca. 20 students, and we gigged in just about every classical group in the state, including the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, UVM Symphony Orchestra and with the Lyric Theater Company. We even played West Side Story at the Flynn in 1995, which is an amazing coincidence, since Victoria is now playing in West Side Story on Broadway. I played in Vermont Composers Consortium concerts and worked with interesting musicians like Michael Arnowitt and Gordon Stone. These are all great memories.

Before gigs and commissions started trickling in, I worked at Kinko’s in Burlington, which I think still has the distinction of being the only Kinko’s in Vermont. For a young musician trying to meet people, it was a great place to work: it seems like just about everyone in town made copies there. I would strike up conversations and try to get to know everyone in the music scene. Burlington is a major city, but cozy enough that you will probably eventually run into every classical musician in town—and even in the state—if you stick around for a while.

Anyway, I am very excited, both to work with the Vermont Youth Orchestra Association and interim conductor Andrew Massey, and to be in Vermont in August. As time goes on, I may either blog about my experiences with the orchestra here, contribute to the VYOA Blog or even create a new one, but either way, I hope you will continue to read about my experiences with this wonderful organization.

A Child Possessed Demo CD Finished

The A Child Possessed CD is finally finished, and it sounds fantastic. It was recorded this summer with a stellar group of singers and Powerhouse pianist Blair McMillen at LBrown Recording studios in NYC’s historic Film Center. Visit our site and download all of the MP3 tracks for free. Listen while driving, walking your dog, on your iPod, anywhere, but let me know what you think.

The two scenes on this CD consist of Act I, Scene 4 and Act II, Scene 3. Here is a synopsis of the first scene:

Hélène placed Génie in a Swiss hospital and told Stepan she had died. The couple has been estranged for five years. Now, neurologists at the Swiss hospital contact Hélène and inform her that there’s an operation that could improve Génie dramatically. However, they need permission from both parents. Hélène reluctantly reunites with Stepan and tells him the truth: Génie is alive. He is shocked, but agrees to accompany Hélène to the hospital. Once there, Stepan is disgusted with the antiseptic and freakish aspect of the place, with lobotomized patients and detached professionals. Hélène reminds him that this is Génie’s only chance. Their daughter finally enters, looking utterly withdrawn, uncommunicative, disheveled. Stepan goes down on one knee and opens his arms to embrace her. She approaches him and then suddenly, inexplicably, sinks her teeth into his hand. As Stepan’s blood trickles to the white hospital floor, he sings tenderly to his eight-year-old daughter, asking her forgiveness. Then he announces that they’re leaving immediately. Hélène objects, but Stepan says it’s his chance to raise the child.

The second scene takes place in Cannes. Hélène has a singing engagement, and her manager, Igranes, is sitting in a bustling, glamorous hotel lobby, having a phone conversation with someone who wants to interview her. It’s pretty funny, as Igranes makes fun of composers and basically says that she doesn’t sing modern music. Then the hotel manager informs him that Hélène took off and is at the beach with Stepan and Génie. The scene skips a little recitative, then ends with an aria sung by Hélène on the beach, entitled Only Me.

I won’t give away the rest of the story, but you can visit our site to find out what happens.

What’s next? My librettist David Cote and I will be sending it around to try and secure a commission and production. Wish us luck! Stay tuned for future updates on our progress.

Reflections on Yaddo

Yaddo - Woodland Cabin

I recently spent three weeks at Yaddo, an artist’s colony in Saratoga Springs, NY. Located down the road from the Saratoga Racetrack, Yaddo is one of the most famous artist colonies in the world, and is the largest in the U.S. Tons of great people have worked there, including Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, David Del Tredici, Truman Capote, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath and Philip Roth—the list goes on, seemingly forever. It was an honor to be there among so many talented people.

While there, I wrote over sixty-five pages of score for A Child Possessed, the opera I have been working on with writer and librettist David Cote. I wrote more in three weeks than I have ever written in that period of time in my life. It was amazing to be able to work in solitude, and to think big thoughts, for long spans of time. In this crazy email-centric, cell phone-tethered world we live in, large, uninterrupted moments are becoming a rare commodity, and I think this is what makes the difference between the kind of work—and the amount of work—that is being created these days, compared to, say, a hundred years ago. Not necessarily better or worse, just different.

In some ways we have less to worry about—we have cleaner water, less disease, and more (but not necessarily higher-quality) food, at least in the U.S.—but we are also very distracted and seem to have shorter attention spans. Sitting through a Chopin Nocturne seems like eternity for some folks, and you can almost seem their fingers itching for the remote during a live performance. It does not help that we are over-saturated with content and media, and not all of it great, but it is really all about distraction. We are pulled in a many different directions at once, and we kid ourselves into thinking we can really multi-task to great effect. Mozart had almost none of the gadgets we have now, and look how much he created. That tells you something.

What is so great about artist colonies such as Yaddo is that you have time to really concentrate. It is amazing how much you can get done when you are left alone. Ironically, I had better cell phone reception at my little cabin in the woods than I get in Manhattan (it is near the highway, however distant and in the background), so it was a mental thing. The physical distance from NYC and separation from other people created a sense of calm that is really hard to find, and with birds—and not people—twittering in the background, it is much easier to turn off gadgets or conveniently leave them behind.

Don’t get me wrong: artists love to party. Almost every evening consisted of sharing bottles of wine and great conversation, but during the day, at least during my stay, people were either working very hard, thinking very hard, or even just thinking about working very hard. Artist’s minds are usually churning in the background, even when they look like they are paying attention to what you are saying. It’s faint, a distant look in their eyes, but you will notice it if you look closely. You learn to not take it personally: they are just existing on multiple planets at once.

Some people do not work well at colonies, but others thrive. I loved my time away, although I missed Victoria and Dylan immensely. I work well at home, surrounded by my things, but there is nothing like working in a space so quiet that you can hear the blood rushing in the back of your neck, away from honking trucks and WiFi connections. It was truly a gift to be there.

Vegetarian Chinese Store in New York City

For years, I wondered where the vegan and vegetarian Chinese restaurants in NYC obtained their mock meats. Most of these restaurants use the same ingredients, and a few, like Home on 8th, do almost nothing other than place these analogues over a bed of steamed vegetables. Others, like Wild Ginger, excel at presentation and nice plating, but their main dish prices are in the $11-$14 range, and they are not located in my neighborhood. That got me thinking: I wonder if I could make these dishes myself?

Then, I discovered the Holy Grail of Chinese faux meats in New York City: May-Wah Healthy Vegetarian Food, Inc.

Located at 213 Hester Street in Chinatown, they stock just about every veggie meat analog you can think of, almost all of them vegan, including mock chicken, fish, beef, steak, shrimp, ham, beef jerky, chicken nuggets, smoked sausage—this list goes on and on. Almost all of these offerings are different than what you find at Whole Foods or other natural food stores, although Westerly Market—our favorite natural food store in NYC—does stock a couple of these items. Our favorites are the Mock Chicken Nuggets (my wife’s favorite), Coal Roasted Veggie Sausage (a hit all around), Citrus Spareribs (my favorite), and the Vegan Ham and Mock Chicken Legs (my son’s favorite). Best of all, everything is relatively inexpensive. They even offer a discount to those who shop there  a few times a year.

If you like to cook Chinese cuisine and you are vegan or vegetarian, check this place out. You’ll save some dough and discover a whole world of Chinese veggie possibilities, and be able to prepare exactly what some of these NYC restaurants serve.

Name That Tune

I recently had three premieres of On The Day The World Ends, a new piece commissioned by the San Francisco-based Volti choir. The texts consist of three poems: A Song On the End of the World by Czeslaw Milosz, Life’s Tragedy by Paul Laurence Dunbar and Do not stand at my grave and weep by Mary Elizabeth Frye. The title came from the first line of the Milosz poem.

I find coming up with titles one of the most difficult parts of the compositional process. Sometimes I give pieces abstract names, like Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano, or String Quartet No. 1, but more often than not, I try to come up with something creative, compelling, and less pretentious-sounding. However, I like coupling abstract titles with movement titles that are more evocative. To me, it’s like opening a present wrapped in plain paper: you may not have a clue as to what is inside, but when you open it, you are pleasantly surprised—hopefully by the music, but also by the titles of the movements.

(That aside, I like to think that I will have an opportunity to write at least one more violin sonata, and hopefully a few more string quartets. Implying that there will be a Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano and String Quartet No. 2 may be a little presumptuous, but I am hopeful that I won’t die too soon.)

Back to this piece: I borrowed the title On The Day The World Ends from the first line of the Milosz poem, but I was never happy with it. As my lovely wife Victoria puts it, it sounds like the title of a bad B movie—or, perhaps like The Day The Earth Stood Still—and it also really only reflects the first poem, not the other two. When I received a couple of mixed comments from audience members, including a gentleman named J’Carlin, that did it: I was convinced; I had to change it.

This isn’t my first time trashing a title: a work I wrote called Symphony in Three Movements used to be called Chamber Symphony, until I decided that there’s really nothing chamber about it, and it even uses spatially-placed trumpets. Since this technique is not that effective in a small space, and since the ensemble is really more a Mozart-sized orchestra than a chamber group, I changed the title.

The new title I finally settled on for On The Day The World Ends is Eternal Reflections. The word ‘eternal’ implies forever, which I like (birth and death being a continuous cycle), and each poem reflects a different take on finality. The Milosz poem supposes that the final day of the world will be like any other; the Dunbar poem describes how we judge what we have achieved by what we haven’t achieved; the Frye poem is a meditation on how life springs eternal.

Finally, Eternal Reflections just sounds like a choral title. It’s not Bang on a Canned (no offense meant, I admire all three of them)—there’s nothing living, breathing lying, stealing, cheating, sweating or anything else with “ing” in the title—and it’s definitely not hip, sexual, confessional or  world-music-y, but it makes me think of something grand—like a beautiful choir in a large, resonant space. This time around, that’s all I wanted.

My composer friend Jonathan Newman wrote a blog entry about this subject. Here’s a formula he came up with for how composers come up with titles:

some descriptive word or phrase + 
a) “Music” 
b) “Dance(s)” 
c) some specific kind of music or dance (i.e., “Gavotte” or “March”) 

I think composers use processes like this without even thinking about it. It’s like a genetic defect, or maybe an unspoken marketing plan. “If I title it like he/she did, maybe people will like it.” Some composers get around this by using funny symbols, dashes, no caps and so on, but I think we all run into the same problem: how to come up with a convincing title that means something, looks cool, sounds compelling, and doggone it, will make people like you.

Maybe all those dead composers who wrote blandly titled symphonies and sonatas had it right: it’s the music that matters, not the title. As with any great piece, you should be able to appreciate it on it’s own merits, stripped of program notes, venue, the level of performance, and, dare say it? Even a cool title.

My Choral Addiction

Volti Choir of San Francisco, conducted by Robert Geary

It is common knowledge among composers that each musical genre is a distinct world unto itself, complete with societies, clubs, associations and groupies. Some of the most robust center around wind bands, educational music, sacred music, the orchestral world, chamber music, music for children, and finally, choral music. Lately, I have become addicted to writing music for choir.

Strangely, choral music gets a bad rap in some circles. Sometimes when I tell people I wrote a new choral work—which I am very excited about, let alone for Volti, a great choir—their eyes glaze over, or they remain speechless, staring at me with an almost condescending, downward glance. Yet the minute I say I am working on an opera, an orchestral work or even a piece for saxophone and marimba, people become excited, almost gushing. Personally, I find this very strange.

Writing for choir is one of the first and sometimes the only method of composing taught in basic theory classes. So if writing for our own voices is so fundamental, why is it so despised by some composers, and even some performers?

Perhaps some composers are put off by the inherent technical limitations you need to work with (or around) to write great choral music. Great voice-leading is paramount. Writing erratic, wide leaps imparts pain and anxiety, at least when composing for most choirs, and frankly, bad choral music with lots of difficult leaps and bad voice-leading just sounds, well… bad.

Plenty of great and/or well-known modern composers have written for choir, composers as diverse as György Ligeti, Aaron Copland, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Arvo Pärt and Morten Lauridsen, not to mention J.S. Bach and all the great, long dead composers. Not too many people would argue that at least a few on this list are great, so what’s the problem?

Maybe it is because choirs are so common, and there is so much choral music—maybe too much, and a lot of it not very interesting, in my opinion—that it is looked down upon.

Or, maybe in our scientific, experimental world, one that is increasingly moving from the sacred toward the secular, at least in the United States, those who are non-religious, often science-minded academics are weary of embracing a genre that has been—and continues to be—steeped in religion, and specifically Christianity. If this is the case, it is truly ironic, as we would not have universities and science if not for religion.

For better or worse, probably worse in this case, the general population appreciates cool effects over subtly and finesse, and maybe choral music does not offer enough pyrotechnics—choirs are just not Monster Trucks. You cannot hide behind snap pizzicatos, multiphonics, muted passages or a percussion section, at least most of the time. Choral music is extremely transparent: if a piece is bad, you will notice very quickly. Opera on the other hand, is highly visually provocative, so perhaps that has something to do with it. In a visual age, choirs are not as visually stimulating as operas, or television, except if your friends, relatives or someone you think is hot is singing in the choir.

Finally, maybe it is that unfortunately, many choirs are not that advanced. Typical community choirs are often technically limited, and often do not have strong tenors, low enough basses, strong altos or modest sopranos. I am kidding a little here, but not really. The difference between The Norwegian Soloists’ Choir, Volti, Chanticleer and Nordic Voices and many local choirs and vocal chamber groups is night and day. Listening to great choirs is a sublime, almost out-of-body experience. Listening to a bad choir—even in a church—is simply hell on earth.

Whatever the reason for some people’s disdain, I can’t be bothered with it. I love great choirs and choral music, and I also love when non-professional choirs program new music. I think there is nothing more beautiful than the human voice. Don’t get me wrong: I absolutely love writing instrumental music, but to ignore the power and beauty of the human voice is to deny one of the greatest joys in the world: to hear ourselves sing.

The Importance of Singers Having an Online Presence

My librettist David Cote and I recently solicited materials from singers for an upcoming studio reading of two scenes from our opera, A Child Possessed.

Many singers do not have a website, and are also not on Facebook, MySpace or have clips on YouTube. If you are young and/or do not have management, you should at least be on one of the social networking sites (i.e., Facebook or MySpace), or have a website, or some sort of page with a bio, resume, sound clips and a headshot. It is impossible for us to figure out if you will be appropriate for a role, unless we have a lot of time, which we don’t.

Granted, the world of professional opera is different: relationships between composers, librettists, directors, producers, management companies and individual singers over many years will reveal the right people for roles fairly quickly. Perhaps our case is unique, but still, it can only help to put yourself out there so even more people can easily discover you.

Admittedly, we are more swayed by vocalists who either take time to present themselves well, or have a manager to do it for them. However, many management sites are not comprehensive, and that’s a shame: we didn’t have time to call each manager and ask for materials. It is just much easier to listen to a few clips online, look at a headshot, and read a bio and/or resume.

Did it matter to us whether a singer had management or not? Not really. In fact, since managers are in business to make money both for their clients and themselves, and our project is small peanuts since it’s not a major role with a major opera company, managers really just get in the way. The few managers we know and talked to really could not help that much, and that was expected. They cannot put us in touch with people on their roster who regularly work with major opera companies, only those who are not getting enough work—and you have to ask: why aren’t they getting enough work? Maybe they are really good, but it did give us pause. Of course, often times, how would we know? There were no sound clips online.

Fortunately, the singers we are using are all excellent—we are very lucky. Almost all of them have something online somewhere, or we have heard and seen them live, so we know how good they are. Or, they are quick about getting us materials when asked. Others recommended a few singers we are working with, often more than once. This is why it is important to be friendly to your peers and keep reconnecting with your teachers: you never know when someone will talk you up to someone else, and heartfelt, warm words of praise from someone important count for a lot when you have little else to go by.

What was revealing about this process of looking for singers, is that with a few exceptions, they are pretty bad about promoting themselves. Sometimes we received recordings and head shots that were years old or materials weeks late (or not at all), or some of the sound clips were so low-quality that it made us not want to listen. If you are singer, why would you send a bad recording? The sound is what is most important: if you can’t get that right, nothing else matters. It doesn’t take much: just set up a hand-held recorder in your coach’s apartment and record a few arias and songs.

It is surprising—although I guess it should not be—that many schools do not bother teaching students how to promote themselves. Perhaps singers (and schools) think they will eventually get management, so why bother? The truth is, a lot of great singers do not have management, and a lot of bad ones do, and as I mentioned before, many management sites are awful: few or no sound clips, outdated bios, maybe one small headshot, etc.

So if you are a singer, what would be useful to have online? After viewing over a hundred singer pages and sites, what follows is a list of what I think is useful.

Suggestions for Online Materials for Singers

1. Biography: at least have a medium-length one, but having three versions—long, medium and short—is optimal. You don’t need to have a PDF or Word document. People generally know now how to copy, paste and reformat text from a website.

2. Headshot: a clear, recent 8 X 10 headshot, no more than three years old, preferably in color (graphic designers can easily change it to grayscale with the click of a button). Have two versions: one that is 72 dpi (for online use) and 300 dpi (for print). Note that the image you have of yourself on your home page (if you have a  site) does not need to be your headshot. You can also include images of you in different roles, which is also often highly revealing.

3. Sound Clips:  3-5 (or more) sound clips that best represent your singing, and that no more than one or maybe two years old. If you focus on opera, you should have opera clips. If you love new music, make sure to have a few clips of you singing modern works.

4. Resume: in my opinion, what is important here, at least for opera singers, is a list of roles you have performed, with the companies you have worked with, and when you worked with them. You can also include recordings you have made (if any), and if you are younger, teachers and coaches you have worked with.

5. Concert Schedule: this is important because if someone wants to hire you, they need to know if you are available. You can include this on a website if your management doesn’t do this for you, or even do this for free on MySpace, which actually works quite well. This is by far the one detail that is most overlooked by singers, and wasted the most time. We found many singers we wanted to work with, but then found out later that there was a conflict, sometimes of only a day or so (they had to miss one rehearsal, but could have made the recording date).

6. Contact Info: at the very least, include an email address, but a phone number is also useful if you are comfortable putting it online. If you don’t check email that frequently, make sure to include a phone number. Or, if you use Facebook or MySpace, that can suffice, as long as you make it clear on your site that you use one of those sites.

You don’t need a hip flash site, a downloadable press kit or any other fancy gizmos. Just the basics, but done well. In fact, you don’t even need a professional site. You can accomplish all of this for free on MySpace, and even Facebook.

What else could you include? If you have professionally released or self-released CDs, include some links to those pages on Amazon, iTunes or some other site so people can purchase your CDs. If there is something else about you that is pertinent or interesting—you have a social conscience and work for shelters, you are vegan and/or a gourmet cook, you have a blog, you also sing musicals or pop music, or maybe you also play an instrument—make sure to mention it. Sometimes those details can make a difference, or at least make you seem more interesting, After all, if are working with someone for days or weeks on end, eventually, you will want to talk about something other than music or opera.

I look forward to working with many of the wonderful singers I didn’t have a chance to experience this time around, and for those I haven’t yet discovered, I hope I will be able to find you online.

Dylan and the Snowman: Why Children are the Best New Music Audience

On Planet New Music (a strange planet perhaps, but the one I live on nevertheless), everyone usually focuses on entertaining adults. Playing music for children, or writing music that appeals to children, is usually considered a good deed at best, a chore at worst. It is certainly not what most “serious” musicians go to school for, unless they are planning on a career teaching children. This is unfortunate, because I think kids really are one of the best audiences for new music because they usually have the fewest preconceptions. I wrote and essay back in 2002 entitled Who is Our Most Important Audience?, in which I elaborate on this issue, but I want to tell a story about my three year old son Dylan that illustrates my point.

During the winter of 2007-08, I completed a work entitled Winter Songs, a twenty-minute, six-movement work for bass-baritone and chamber sextet. I wrote a lot of it in Vermont—the perfect place to write a piece about winter, I should add. While I was writing the fourth movement, a setting of Richard Wilbur’s poem Boy at the Window, I looked out the window where I was composing, and unbelievably, without knowing what I was writing that day, Victoria and her father decided to take Dylan outside to build a snowman! You could not ask for better inspiration for setting a poem about a boy and a snowman than to look out the window and see your own son building one. Of course, the movement is dedicated to Dylan, but I meant to dedicate it to him all along.

At age 3, Dylan is beginning to understand what I do, that I write music for musicians to play. The other day he said he wanted to listen to my music. Of course, there is nothing more flattering than to have your three year old—or any family member—ask to listen to your music, so I decided to play him Boy at the Window. I described what I think it is about: a boy watching his snowman with fear in his eyes, scared that it would melt and die, and that in the second stanza, you see it from the snowman’s perspective, looking inside at the boy. I told him that we should really be more afraid for the boy, and that all adults know children will eventually experience pain, and that the snowman sheds tears of rain. Dylan developed this whole, elaborate story: the singer, David Neal (who also commissioned the work), is the snowman, and he (Dylan) is the boy in the story. He then proceeded to ask me to play it fourteen times in a row. As a composer, how do you say no to that? Every night since then, he asks for “the snowman song”, and has me play it at least once, usually twice, while he tells the story to me, and is now even beginning to sing along with the vocal line.

What is my point? Dylan does not know that this is “modern music” and that many people have pre-conceived notions that all new music is bad until proven otherwise. He just enjoys it as a piece of music. To my mind, this is how all people should approach new music: with an open mind, and with the innocence of a child.

Muses and the Curse of Memory

Euterpe by Battoni

These days I am working on a new opera entitled A Child Possessed. I love writing vocal music, but I find that the more tuneful my melodies are, the harder it is to let them go. They end up permeating my thoughts when I am awake, and even my dreams. This may sound delightful—how much better could it be than to dream your own music, right?—but imagine having the same soundtrack running through your brain over and over again. It is both a blessing and a curse.

Not only do the melodies themselves repeat ad nauseam, but the singers who will be performing the roles are the muses behind those lines. I will be recording a demo of two scenes in a few days, and I haven’t even heard the singers sing the lines yet, but I already hear their voices—perfectly of course, because it’s all in my head.

Of course, sometimes I have someone else’s music as my life soundtrack. This is great, particularly if it is something I like, such as Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, Bach’s Golderberg Variations before bedtime, or if I am feeling particularly badass, the soundtrack to the The Matrix, but what if I just came from an awful concert? Then it’s hellish, but that’s what iPods are for: you can reset by listening to a favorite piece of music, or in my case, more often than not, either works submitted by composers for AME, or a recent podcast.

I wonder if other composers have this problem. What is the background music for Milton Babbitt’s dreams? Are they serialized? How about Helmut Lachenmann? Has he ever dreamt a melody? Is this phenomenon a thousand times worse for a composer like Stephen Schwartz, the composer who wrote Wicked? I would suspect that even for Schwartz, there are only so many times you could dream Defying Gravity before going a little batty. I can take comfort in never having had Philip Glass’s music as my background, as that would be too repetitive for my taste (I wonder what the background music for his dreams is?), or Kenny G.

I guess that’s when I will know I am in hell: when Kenny G becomes by permanent background soundtrack.