(Scroll down for earlier blog entries.)
ORLANDO, Florida. Monday, July 23, 2007 11:08 p.m.
“I’ve made a huge mistake.”
It’s amazing just how many times that thought races through your mind during the long, often tedious, always lonely process of composition. But what kind of mistake? It’s not what you might be thinking. Not that I feel that I’ve made a huge mistake in choosing a title, or in settling on issues of form and structure. It’s not a mistake in orchestrating, in harmony or melody, in pacing, or even in a work’s dramatic goal. It’s actually…
Yeah… well, actually, it’s exactly that. All of that… and sometimes all at the same time.
Composers are, in all honesty, usually overly self-conscious, occasionally self-doubting, and very often indecisive. The numbers of decisions we make regarding our music from its conception to its premiere are virtually endless, and the light at the end of the tunnel is usually a freight train, out of control and barreling down on us.
Of course, it’s not all like that. When you think of composers, don’t think only about the starving artist, slaving in lonely obscurity, working on a manuscript at the piano with candlelight as the only illumination. Don’t think only about the long hours, the sad, tormented soul, the hopeless romantic…
Yeah… actually, if it’ll get me a date, think about exactly that.
Composers are, in all honesty, fairly well fed, usually happy, and very often social people. We’re also charming, funny, honest, and handsome. (See? I’m going for that date thing again.) Being a composer is mostly about achieving a strange state of balance – balance in one’s music between successfully contrasting light and dark, between opposing musical materials, between a soloist and the orchestra. Balance is also necessary in one’s career – between working by yourself in your apartment or practice room and working with an orchestra in the concert hall or recording studio, and between discovering the music and understanding it yourself and helping the audience to discover the music and understand it. And then there’s life in general, achieving balance between rehearsal night and movie night, between sleeping until one in the afternoon and making an eleven a.m. train.
As composers, we don’t always know where our next rent check is going to come from or where our next commission is going to come from. We don’t always know what new friend we’re going to meet or what book we’re going to read. We don’t always know what great performer we’re going to work with, what brilliant conductor will get to know our music, or what orchestra we’re going to make music with. And, yes, we don’t always know what piece we’re going to write next or even what happens after the climax in the third movement of a flute concerto.
Or even if there is a third movement.
We don’t always know. And that’s when the little voice in our head says, “I’ve made a huge mistake.”
Being a composer is rarely easy, but it is, often times enough, a real thrill. That huge mistake nearly always leads you to finding another way – to finding a better way. And then you get that little rush of adrenaline, maybe you even jump out of the seat, excited such that you need to stand up and move around a little bit.
I wouldn’t trade that for anything in the world.