Hollis Thoms Resume

Composing music at the most concrete level involves the mere manipulation of sounds. Somehow, though, we derive pleasure from this activity. But, as we take composing more seriously and give our lives to this creative urge, something extraordinary happens, it seems, that is transcendent and spiritual. Stravinsky sees his talent as “a gift from God” and Ives connected the everyday “digging of potatoes” as taking on transcendent significance.

How composers view their act of composing has always intrigued me, and a few years ago I sent a survey to some of my former composition teachers and composition friends and colleagues (fifteen in all) to see how they viewed their composing and whether they, like Stravinsky or Ives, viewed their composing as a God-given gift or faith/transcendent activity. Since sending this survey out, two of my former composition teachers have died, M. William Karlins and Warren Benson. Their comments on this survey, now, seem even more poignant, significant and meaningful.

Survey

I asked for nine responses. First, I asked them to detail the variety of compositions they had written (i.e., solo instrumental works, ballets, symphonic works), in order that I might get the range and scope of their compositional endeavors. Second, I asked them to detail the variety of sources that generated ideas for their musical compositions and circle the three most significant influences (i.e., Biblical texts, literary prose, nature, and others). Third, I asked them to describe their usual process of composing a new work in a step by step way from the gestation of an idea to the final performance. Fourth and fifth, I asked them, respectively, to describe the external and then internal conditions necessary for them to compose. Sixth, I asked them how they would rank the act of composing in relation to the entire process of realizing the composed piece (i.e., getting the first idea until the audience’s reaction to the work). Seventh, I asked them to rank the act of composing to other possibly faith acts or transcendent experiences, such as praying, listening to a great musical work, or being with family or friends). Eighth, I asked them to explain to what extent their composing was an act of faith or a transcendental experience. And, finally, I asked them to cite one composer whom they admired for modeling composing as an act of faith or transcendental experience.

Results of Survey

For the most part, the composers wrote a wide range of compositions from solo works to large ensemble works. For the variety of sources that influenced their writing, it was interesting to note that all, despite having dissimilar beliefs, found Biblical sources as most stimulating, followed by other religious poetry and then secular poetry. Quite expectedly, traditional musical forms provided ideas for compositions.

With regard to the process of composing, composers generally did visualizing of an overall plan of a work before composing, did pre-compositional planning by analyzing texts (vocal declamation and rhythm of texts), constructing pitch collections, selecting instrumentation, made preliminary sketches to some extent before actually composing the work, and made revisions all along the way. All composed the piece generally from the beginning to the end, but some worked at it sectionally and then put the sections together.

What was most interesting was the way in which they talked about the generating ideas. One stated that he made an “improvisatory search to discover the main melodic or rhythmic ideas,” another said that “the first ideas” were the most authoritative, another said that he “waited for the material to mature” and, finally, another reported that he “played with ideas and let the piece write itself.” Two composers did not find the process of composition complete until they had discussed the work with either performers or other composers.

The external and internal conditions for composing were fascinating. Some indicated they could compose “anywhere and anytime,” but most designated a certain place and certain times. Many used the piano, computers, synthesizers, and other instruments. Most needed a “comfortable space” or “studio with a piano nearby.” One stated that he preferred his studio “integral to daily living, not radically separated.” Most preferred quiet and desired not to be interrupted by other people when working.

Internally, composers viewed their composing as ranging along the continuum between the “craft” and the “ecstatic.” One composer was very suspicious of “inspiration” and found that composing was more daily work. Another said that there were no “special conditions” for getting ready internally to compose. One composed with a certain reluctance, saying that “basically, I just know it’s time and I do it. For the most part, I’d rather be doing something else, because I know the piece in my mind, and it’s a drag to have to spend time figuring out all the local-note to note, rhythm to rhythm stuff.” One composer said that he would “get in the mood of the piece – reverential, angry, silly, whatever” he was writing, but also said that the “mood of the piece” would often not be related at all to the “mood of everyday life.”

One composer remarked that he was not “faith-based” and “the only unusual experience I had when (writing poems, painting, or composing) was that sometimes I didn’t remember having written the words or the music or painted what was patently there, and could not have been perpetuated by anyone else. If, rarely, it seemed particularly good, then I’m tempted to think that I know what’s meant by inspiration.”

For many, however, composing was not just a task or a craft. It moved toward another realm of intellectual activity, one more transcendent. Most needed quiet to concentrate and work carefully, and they “enjoyed” this quiet writing. They would “lose track of time, get excited,” sometimes so much so that they would “forget to eat” and become “possessed” or achieve a “state of flow.” One personified his composition process: “I need to ‘live’ with my composition, so that it is there daily waiting for me to complete it. In time, I become fully acquainted and, if possible, obsessed with it and begin to understand its internal expressive and structural needs. When we are fully agreed upon these, the piece is finished.” One talked about a “revelation of the beauty/art that I have created and then the excitement flows and I become entranced.” Another stated that he “preferred long sessions to let my mind unfold, play, work. The musical idea gradually takes over more and more as I get further along in the process until I am merely the ‘material’ for its realization. Sometimes the musical material takes over completely, and then I am in a complete ‘flow state.’ It is disciplined inspiration.”

When I asked the composers to rank the act of composing in the entire process of realizing a piece (getting the idea, pre-compositional work, act of composing, revising piece, copying out the work, rehearsing, revising the work after rehearsals, listening to the first performance, listening to the audience’s reaction), the act of composing was first in preference followed by the time getting the generating idea and listening to the first performance. The act of composing appears to be the most pleasurable and desired experience.

When I asked the composers to rank composing to other faith acts or transcendental experiences, such as praying, singing hymns, listening to great music, nature, or being with family and friends, composing was third to listening to great music and receiving recognition for achievement. Singing hymns was right after composing, as well as sexual love and being with family and friends.

Composing and Listening

Composers are gifted listeners, because composing requires a paradoxical stance of reflective/active listening to one’s own creative muse. Composers also prefer to listen to great works rather than perform in them, because they prefer being reflective as they actively listen. If they were performing they would not be reflectively/actively listening. Performing is more active than reflective and disturbs reflective/active listening. The singing of hymns is more of a reflective/active mode, since the singer is not performing but is being absorbed into the musical fabric of the singing community in a reflective/active way, becoming part of something greater as many voices become one voice. Composers prefer reflective/active activities such as composing, listening to great music, singing hymns: action coming out of inaction, sounds found in silence.

Significantly, composers are concerned about recognition for achievement. They aren’t writing for the moment, and they desire that their voice be taken seriously, remembered, and have an impact on other composers and the audience. They want others to listen to their creative voice.

Aaron Copland’s word reinforce the results of this survey, as he beautifully states,

“The situation of the professional musician as listener, especially of the composer, is rather different. He is an initiate. Like the minister before the altar his contact with the Source gives him an inner understanding of music’s mysteries, and a greater familiarity in their presence. He possesses a dual awareness: on the one hand of the inscrutable mystery that gives certain common tones meaning; on the other hand of the human travail that enters into every creation. It is an awareness that no layman can hope to share…The ideal listener, above all else, possesses the ability to lend himself to the power of music.” (Aaron Copland, Music and Imagination, Harvard University Press, 1952, 9)

Composers have the desire and empowering gift to surrender to the power of music through reflectively/actively listening. The sacred mystery of music is revealed to them only as they submit through their gifted listening to the power of music.

Composing as Transcendental Experience

Finally, with regard to composing as being an act of faith or a transcendental experience, at the very least, as one composer put it, composing is a “wonderfully integrated mental activity.” A number took up Stravinsky’s stance as possessing a gift from God: “enabled by the grace of God to praise Him,” “talent derived from God,” “pastoral musician,” “participating in God’s creation,” “creative act like God’s creative actions,” and in composing “God draws closer to me.” The surveyed composers found composing a “secretive, protective, fragile, private, uncertain, intuitive, mysterious, unknowable, discovering, sometimes ecstatic” process.

Igor Stravinsky, in his Poetics of Music, summarizes eloquently my findings from this small survey. He writes:

“What sets the composer’s creative imagination in motion is a certain emotive disturbance generally designated by the name of inspiration but (it) is chronologically secondary Step by step, link by link, it will be granted him to discover the work. It is a chain of discoveries, as well as each individual discovery, that give rise to the emotion-an almost physiological reflex, like that of the appetite causing a flow of saliva-this emotion which invariably follows closely the phases of the creative process.

All creation presupposes at its origin a sort of appetite that is brought on by the foretaste of discovery. This foretaste of the creative act accompanies the intuitive grasp of an unknown entity already possessed but not yet intelligible, an entity that will not take definite shape except by the action of a constantly vigilant technique.

This appetite that is aroused in me at the mere thought of putting in order musical elements that have attracted my attention is not all a fortuitous thing like inspiration, but as habitual and periodic, if not as constant, as a natural need.

This premonition of an obligation, this foretaste of a pleasure, this conditioned reflex, as a modern physiologist would say, shows clearly that it is the idea of discovery and hard work that attracts me. The very act of putting my work on paper, or as we say, kneading the dough, is for me inseparable from the pleasure of creation. So far as I am concerned, I cannot separate the spiritual effort from the psychological and physical effort; they confront me on the same level and do not present a hierarchy.” (Igor Stravinsky, Poetics, Harvard University Press, 1942, 50-51)

Ann McCutchan’s fascinating book about composing, after interviewing 25 contemporary composers (Ann McCutchan, The Muse That Sings: Composers Speak about the Creative Process, Oxford University Press, 1999), is quite a bit more extensive than my personal survey of 15 composers, but covers similar ground (I did my surveying around the same time she did her interviewing). However, there is barely any mention by composers interviewed by her of a spiritual dimension to composing, and it appears they weren’t asked. Only a few composers in her study approached spirituality or transcendence, as Stravinsky and Ives do, in their discussions: John Adams, stated that composing “is a mirror of my spiritual evolution scendental quest,” Daniel Godfrey talked about composing as allowing “yourself to fall between the cracks of phenomenal reality, these illusory boundaries, into a broader and unbounded realm,” Bruce Adolphe said writing music is “when something really special is present, it’s not just an emotional state, but an awareness that brings together everything a completely elevated state because everything’s there,” Bright Sheng prayed everyday to get inspiration, and Richard Danielpour stated that “the experience of writing music is akin to a waking dream coming into a deeper reality, as a way of approaching the deepest part of ourselves a great mystery.” I suspect, though, that if they were specifically asked, as I did of those I surveyed, that there would be more discussion of this dimension of composing.

In response to my last question about composers who modeled a spiritual approach to composition: Bach (was often mentioned), Bruckner (“believed that his faith in God was what gave him the talent to create and be on the cutting edge”), Ives, Messiaen (“integrated faith, experiment, nature and structure”), Penderecki (“expressed a vibrant and intense faith through an unwavering and bold artistic language”), Stravinsky (“after visiting the realms of orthodoxy in Russia, where he spent his formative years, I am quite convinced about his faith”) and Tavener (“viewed composing as an act of prayer and as an expression of the mystery of the Godhead”).

Nevertheless, something happens to the composer as he or she composes, something that is not confined to mundane task making or even creative play. Paradoxically, through the everyday work of composing some sort of experience occurs which opens up some “transcendent dwelling place” that is sought after over and over again, a “place” that delights and lasts, where something that is God-like unfolds through empowering creativity, making something significant, meaningful, great and eternal out of what seems like nothing but mere vanishing sounds.