Part of the problem is defining who I am and what I want to say as a composer; another part of it is suffering from depression, which has robbed me of many months this year, but this is not the place to talk about that.
In my last entry, I said that I wanted to write short pieces for individual or small groups of performers. That way, or so my logic went, I would avoid massive problems like the structure or architecture of large scale works. I also managed to convince myself that if I wrote just one minute of music a day (surely possible with such short pieces for a few instrumentalists) then at the end of the month I would have at least thirty minutes of music. Quite a portfolio building up there. And if I'd been able to stick to my plan, I'd have four hours of music written and possibly performed by now. But it didn't quite go to plan...
To be fair to myself, I have written a few sketches and I have had an abundance of ideas; but they have never once made up a single complete work, although I am coming close with a string quartet, which (for reasons I'll mention on another occasion - like when the thing is finished!) is called, Gestures and Memories.
But there are so many voices in my head, so many sounds, I'm not actually sure that any of them are mine. And what's the point of being a composer if your music just sounds like a cheap version of someone else's?
But I think things have taken a turn for the better and I want to talk a little bit about that.
The internet being what it is, a vast resource of information and opportunities never before granted to watch pornography (I jest, of course), I'm able to study scores which may have been completed only very recently. The one thing I don't see is trends; that's a good thing. I see composers from all over the world coming up with their own solutions to compositional problems, including the fundamental one; what happens next? We call all come up with a flourish or a simple series of sounds - a tone row even - but what happens after that? That's always been the big problem for me. Does that mean I'm simply not very inventive? Maybe so but I do hope not. I have been doing this a long time so it's clearly much more than a passing fad. But there's just such a huge volume of music out there, where should I decide who my influences might be? I discounted all -ism, including serialism and minimalism. So where was I to start...?
In the end, I approached this thought another way. I greatly admire the musically complex music of the hugely talented composer, Brian Fernyhough. But I do know that I don't want my music to sound like his. Brian writes music of enormous difficulty for both performers and listeners alike, in which events happen, often very quickly and frequently simultaneously. Let me say again that I admire his music a great deal, but I don't want to imitate him. In fact, I want to reject the New Complexity altogether. It isn't for me. Much as I might be impressed by it, I don't want to write like that.
Then I came across a remarkable young composer called Marc Yeats - of course you can search these people on YouTube and you'll get many hits. What, it seems to me, is different about Marc is his complete and utter rejection of -isms; every piece for him sounds like a new challenge and a new adventure and I have grown to love many of his pieces. And I learn from that, almost self evidently, that the music I hear in my head, and there's a lot of it which I choose to call my own, also rejects -isms. Why would the world want to hear my pale imitations of New Complexity when there are some very talented young composers who have studied it and would do a far better job than I.
Also, again self evidently and this time from Marc, that every piece I write need not be seminal, cast in a form or structure that I will then spend the rest of my life duplicating, having 'found my voice'. There are thousands of voices in my head (or embryonic pieces as I choose to call them) and not one of them sounds like another. In fact, unlike in writing, I think finding my voice would be a disastrous thing for me.
So, no -isms to follow and not one composer from whom I want to steal. That's a start, at least. And I have another piece for string quartet that's been swimming around my head for weeks now, and it seems that I've alighted on a solution, if not for ever, then at least for this piece. And that is that it will be slow moving. Events will unfold slowly and attacks will be few and far between - the opposite, it seems to me, of Brian's music. And there will be prolonged silences and moments of stillness and contemplation. For me, that's new.
It's not much, but it is a starting point. And I know other composers have reached similar conclusions, like John Taverner and Arvo Part, but I'm not, again somewhat self evidently, them. I can approach these new voices without the weight on my shoulders of having to be seminal; this is my solution for one piece, not necessarily the direction of my music for the rest of my life. I have to thank Marc for that.
Ladies and gentlemen (if my readership amounts to that many people) I can only promise to keep you posted.
And in the meantime I wish you all a happy holiday and all the best for 2014. Maybe that will be the year you come to hear of me!
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