Category Archives: composing

Aphorisms for Composers – March 2016

March 30, 2016

Do what it takes for your music to walk out of your head and into performance saying what it means.

Do we see/hear what is there, or only what we are? Is skewed perception OK if we believe what we write and manage to convince listeners?

March 25, 2016

It’s not so much work in the day-in, day-out sense; it’s involvement, engagement [can be applied to copying scores/parts by hand; performing one’s own work and others’; you name it].

March 8, 2016

Enduring low points and what’s-the-points in “working for the idea” [see Aphorisms in January, 2016] is to be expected.

Aphorisms for Composers – January to February 2016

February 24, 2016

In response to pianist David Holzman’s perception that the music of mine he plays is minimalist:

I don’t think of my work with the M word, but I do appreciate simplicity and repetition. So I am certainly influenced by M (minimalism) — Tom Johnson‘s procedures in particular, as well as interesting number series/rhyme schemes that can control and/or shape phrases and forms.

I like things that stay where they are for a while, or just do one thing while exploring the inherent variety in that thing.

January 30, 2016

A placid surface does not necessarily indicate calm underneath.

January 7, 2016

“Work for the idea.”

  • T.J. Anderson, 1989

P.B. –  Pierre Boulez and Paul Bley died in the same week

Returns – The Petrified Forest

pefo2

Petrified Forest National Park.
Photo: John McDonald

Op. 569b (2015-2016), for solo cello

Second part of a commission by Rhonda Rider, Petrified Forest National Park Artist in Residence, 2015, written during and after visiting the park. The first part, Two Ways, One Place was written beforehand.

For Rhonda, and to Kip Woolford, Director of the PEFO Artist in Residence Program, with gratitude.

Returns, as in:

Returning/mirroring cloud and land (cloud formations returned as rock formations–where does one end and the other begin?); return to solitude in vast space, separation from trappings (except for the rental car, which of course must be returned); day and night, different/transformed each time they return; rock rabbit wood bird wind sun scattering, scampering, disappearing, returning; the Santa Fe railroad keeps on returning with more trains, more cargo; in badlands on foot in the morning, my return to silence, texture, distance; returning on the same path, not realizing I’d “been there;” had enough, can’t take it, so at the desk again, returning to books, manuscript paper, directed thoughts, (ok, laptop), processing the overstimulation from looking, being, moving and that’s the whole thing; in the music, ideas returning, not really leaving; a return “home (?)” to integrate/understand, if possible (6:15 am departure; leave the place as you found it)…

John McDonald, in the Petrified Forest
October 21-22, 2015

Aphorisms for Composers – December 2015

December 20, 2015

“It’s truly time to study the water, passing, each specific ripple, flicker of light—“

December 11, 2015

T.J. Anderson, at the age of 87, has just completed a new memorial piano work for the extraordinary coloratura soprano Mattiwilda Dobbs Janzon (1925-2015). He is working as consistently as at any other time in his creative life.

Is the composer/pianist in the silent abode akin to the painter in the whitewashed apartment? Colors from no colors, or clear sounds emerging from silence? This method (if you want to call it such) seems clearer than trying to be heard over the crowd of other musics that populate the “hard day of composing and playing.”

December 10, 2015

Be kind, forthright. Do what you can; seek to own nothing.

Aphorisms for Composers – November 2015

November 30, 2015

Prepare to deeply understand what you want to hear when you write. [Does hearing begin when you forget the name of what you hear?—paraphrasing poet Paul Valéry (1871-1945)].

November 23, 2015

To be adequately simple, one must be fully aware, thinking and feeling everything experienced and imagined insofar as one is capable.

November 11, 2015

Development is overrated.

From a note to a student who asked about graduate school:

I think I understand where you’re coming from on the grad school thoughts. But keep in mind that even if you don’t like the styles your teachers write in, they may still have plenty of insight that can be helpful to you. Or not. Depends on who, of course.

Studying privately with someone you are sure to learn from a great deal is also a very good avenue–maybe the best when it comes to really zeroing in on your own motivations, cares, concerns, needs.

You are young and can take plenty of time to develop your musical personality. You need to be sure that whatever path you choose next will afford you opportunities to move forward; you can’t stagnate. But no need to rush. Working on craft can happen in many ways–you just have to find what is right and suitably inspirational for you.

Looking inward for what you really want is better than aligning with any school of thought–better but harder. 

***

I’m interested in capturing ideas within short forms/spans so that they loom larger in the memory than perhaps they did at first physical hearing. Distilling an essence, seizing a moment. I fancy that I do this by writing as clearly and concisely as I can. [shaped phrases, clearcut contrasts, strong rhythmic profiles]

Aphorisms for composers – October 2015

October 22, 2015

Returns, as in:

Returning/mirroring cloud and land (cloud formations returned as rock formations–where does one end and the other begin?); return to solitude in vast space, separation from trappings (except for the rental car, which of course must be returned); day and night, different/transformed each time they return; rock rabbit wood bird wind sun scattering, scampering, disappearing, returning; the Santa Fe railroad keeps on returning with more trains, more cargo; in badlands on foot in the morning, my return to silence, texture, distance; returning on the same path, not realizing I’d “been there;” had enough, can’t take it, so at the desk again, returning to books, manuscript paper, directed thoughts, (ok, laptop), processing the overstimulation from looking, being, moving and that’s the whole thing; in the music, ideas returning, not really leaving; a return “home(?)” to integrate/understand, if possible (6:15 am departure; leave the place as you found it)…[21-22.10.15; program note for “Returns, Op. 569b,” for solo cello; composed in Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona for cellist and artist-in-residence Rhonda Rider]

October 16, 2015

Everything is only something most of the time [i.e. don’t try to put “everything” in one piece].

Wei identity page-response. (Cleveland; black classical musicians; New England); core body—how is it dressed from day to day, intention to intention?

October 13, 2015

Get lost; stay lost. If we know too much, become too sure of ourselves, is not the point then…lost?

October 12, 2015

If you have fewer notes, do you pick them more carefully?

October 11, 2015

When dry, look back.

October 10, 2015

If you find an outlet for it and let it out enough times, will it go away?

October 8, 2015

Poem: Why My 2 Remaining Brain Cells Are Tired

Too many years
Of premieres

October 7, 2015

“Running”—as in despotic control—is uncomfortably close to “ruining.” The composer may do well to learn the right time to relinquish control.

October 6, 2015

When composers “go deep,” they must re-emerge to express the depth as shared experience.

Two Ways, One Place – The Zen of Petrification?

pefo

Petrified Forest National Park.
Photo: John McDonald

Op. 569a (2015), for solo cello:

  1. Through Which There Is No Way
  2. On The Way Or At Home?

Because of my delight upon receiving a commission from cellist Rhonda Rider (early in 2015) for her upcoming stint as Artist in Residence at the Petrified Forest National Park (PEFO), I started thinking and sketching almost right away. The present diptych is the result of that early creative excitement, and serves as a prelude to my own upcoming trip to PEFO.

As of this writing, I can only imagine the experience of the Petrified Forest, with its petropgyphs, wildlife, and storied vastness. It is from that imagined experience that Through Which There Is No Way and On The Way Or At Home? were fashioned.

A curious definition of “petrified” found in my still-trusty two-volume OED (Oxford English Dictionary), “through which there is no way,” suggested phrases like “can’t get there from here,” but also indicated that impenetrable strength and solidity might be a musical goal to consider. Thus, this first response to the idea of the Petrified Forest—of petrification—is made of three muscular, lengthening phrases divided by rock-like, double-stop chords.

roaring_streamTo get a little lost and stay lost is essentially the goal of On The Way Or At Home?, an almost entirely pizzicato piece inspired by a phrase from a Zen poem “Wandering” (by poet/monk Musō Soseki [1275-1351]) that I stumbled across while reading The Roaring Stream: A New Zen Reader (The ECCO Press, 1996):

…Traveling east or west
light and free
on the one road
I don’t know whether
I’m on the way
or at home

I wonder with this piece (and this poem) if I will feel at home hiking in the PEFO, or will I be lost? Or lost and at home? Am I lost at home?

After visiting the park, I hope to offer an afterpiece titled Returns, about the park’s migratory birds, items that park visitors have stolen and returned over the years, and my own return “home.” Stay tuned…

I dedicate these pieces, with admiration, to Rhonda Rider.

John McDonald
October 15, 2015

Aphorisms for composers – September 2015

September 24, 2015.

Aren’t routines crushing if they’re TOO strict?

September 23, 2015

“My” archivist told me today that pencil and pen scores are much easier to investigate and preserve. Further validation for handwritten manuscript! (while working in Tufts Digital Collections and Archives). [Digitize after the creative effort, not during!]

Do your hands fall where you want them? (for pianist/composers, I guess)

September 5, 2015

Let things brew enough so that they taste right.

Aphorisms for composers – January 2015

January 31, 2015.

We need each other:
Composers and performers
Working together

Haiku “motto” for Tufts Composers Project with STEP [Boston String Education Progam/Triple Helix piano trio].

January 22, 2015

Interesting instrumentations: cello and two turntables; ocarina and alto saxophone; quartet of Baroque flute (traverso), flute, alto flute, shakuhachi; trio of cimbalom, harp, piano/celesta; French horn and cimbalom; please add.

January 19, 2015

Cairns. I like to build cairns (rock-pile structures; “a pile of stones that is used as a boundary/trail marker, a memorial, or a burial site”) in my back garden and driveway. The wind [or roving animals, or wandering people, or something/somebody] regularly knock(s) them down, and I rebuild them a little differently each time. For this writing, I take this as a metaphor for composing. One attends to musical ideas regularly, but they often fall apart or unravel/get out of control, and one re-addresses them—often with increasingly clear, satisfying results. Re-work, re-shape, rejuvenate, learn.

January 7, 2015

Time pressures provide direction and help things get finished, but do not encourage deep relationships. Similarly, rushing through material because one can or must develops facility, yet bypasses the fluency and flexibility that comes from abiding investigation (day in, day out).

When one cannot wander or daydream, ideas don’t breathe. Guard against clotting the brain by overfilling it; leave room for getting lost a lot.

January 4, 2015

It is what it is when you know what it is.