composition

When we engage in the activity of composition — “putting things together” — and create a piece of music, it teaches us about how existing pieces of music were created, before ours, by other people.

It not only brings new things — our things — into the world, a worthwhile result in itself; it also makes us better, more sensitive and engaged musicians.

Someone might say, “But I don’t know how to put things together.”

Pedro de Alcantara, musician, writer, artist, and teacher, told a group I was in recently about watching a group of children find myriad ways to interact with a few basic items: a box, a piece of wood, a length of fabric. A local theater group had brought these items for the children to create games with. “They didn’t ask what they should do with the things,” he said. "They just started playing."

A note, a color, a gesture, a rhythm, these are simple, versatile elements. If we allow ourselves, we can play with them for hours, days, weeks, a life.

A student of mine assembled a set of cards, each printed with a drawing of a different bird. She told me about their characteristics. “This bird likes to swoop down very quickly and catch its prey,” she said. “This one, I love it because it’s so mischievous.” “The colors on this bird’s head are exactly like a sunset!” She began choosing notes and rhythms that reminded her of the colors, movement, and personality of each bird. As the notes and rhythms came together, a piece, eventually called ‘Sonata for Seventeen’ (sixteen birds and one violinist) began to take shape.

Another student was anticipating the birth of her first child. Wanting to write a lullaby, she listened to existing lullabies for what made them work — key signatures with a certain soft character, lilting rhythms, gentle shapes of melodies. Day by day she improvised on her violin, choosing elements she liked and putting them together, teaching herself her own new music over time. When I saw her next, we wrote it down.

Yet another student was inspired by the rhythms he played on percussion in his school ensemble, and the chords he was learning on piano. He brought these elements together to write a piece for marimba, triangle and other percussion. Happy with this version, he then rewrote it for strings, changing some things and keeping others. Each of these two pieces brought out a different side of their shared melodies and textures; each had its own personality and sound.

When we make a choice during composing, we realize that other composers made these kinds of choices too. We are suddenly intimately connected to the process of making these choices. We are thrown into kinship with the makers of the music we love and are learning to play. Our learning and playing are thereafter guided in a wholly new and different way.