Tina Davidson

Composer

Composing a Life, Note by Note

Talking to Henry

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I see Henry* at the conference, a wonderful composer and someone who has championed the field of new music as well as other composers. I take his elbow warmly.

Smiling, Henry turns to me from his conversation with a tall man who’s name I don’t catch. His friend interrupts our greeting. “I have to finish this conversation,” he says, and animatedly continues his long story about a job application as a composer that had not gone well.

“And then,” he finally finishes, “they hired a woman!” He pauses and names the composer. “This job was a fit perfect for my talents. Instead, they hired a woman.”

Henry knows her. “She is a wonderful composer,” he counters, “and she will be fabulous at this job.”

His friend shakes his head. All jobs are going to minority and gender diverse candidates; white men are being pushed out. I am flooded with thoughts.

I began my composing career in a music world governed by the idea of excellence – that the best candidate should get the job, the commission, or the performance. The catch, however, was who was determining this “excellence” and what the criteria was. I quickly learned that “excellence” included which school you attended, who you studied with, what kind of music you were composing, and finally, gender and race.

Fortunately, we are in a different time. Now, music institutions know that to survive they must find new connections with their audiences, as well as represent the broader community. Part of that work is to offer opportunities to minority and gender diverse composers and support those who have been hidden in the shadows. 

But there is something else. Historically there have been no women composers as well known as Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms. For many reasons women were not encouraged or often ignored. But more importantly, they didn’t have opportunities to hear their music – a vital link to their growth and maturity as a composer.

Music doesn’t fully exist independent of performance. Unlike literature or art, music is incomplete until it goes under the fingers of a performer, who wrestle with translating and bringing it into life. Even then, the work is not fully realized until it is in front of an audience. Something magical happens to the work in this communication, this transfer to the ears of the listener. And it is where I learn, evaluate, and move onto the next project with increased wisdom. Without the performance of my work, my progress is hindered and only half completed.

In truth, there are always winners and losers in the face of opportunity. The pendulum sways back and forth. I have lived through the shift of dominance of university composers (mostly white men), the push for representation of women, the activation of composers in community settings, and now the inclusion of DEI. I am thrilled at where we are, and where we are moving to.  This music field – this thing I love, will be greatly enhanced. 

I applaud these opportunities to marginalized composers to speak, hear and learn. As their voices join with others, we cultivate a rich, diverse artistic field which will, over time, speak to and for all of us.

  • Not his real name.

Inter Stellar

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Not until the first snow of the year, did I know for certain that she was there. I had guessed as much, somewhere in the back ground, in the corner of my eye, in the undergrowth of my thoughts. But now, here were her footsteps, curling and meandering across my yard, like shafts of arching winter wheat.

I had heard her months before on the edge of sleep. A cry, a half-shriek or moan, almost like an animal mortally wounded. Stumbling out of bed, I stood by the open window and waited. The sound recalled my childhood. Late one afternoon, our dog appeared with a small brown rabbit in his large jaws. Terrified, the rabbit’s mouth was shaped like an oval as it screamed continuously – a bowels of the earth sound.

This, was no rabbit, however. Instead a vixen in heat, calling out an ancient enticement for a mate.

I started to set out scraps of meat for her, a fresh bone or two, a nightly snack – just something to keep her going in the winter. I know, I know. This is against all current wisdom: do not interfere with nature, or make wild animals dependent on humans. But, in truth, either by choice or necessity, foxes live in my neighborhood; we are part of the same ecosystem.

Small traces of her began to increase. The plastic dishes I laid out were scattered around the yard, often decorated with round puncture marks. Then, a carefully composed dropping of scat on the walkway, later, on my doorstep. A blue ball was left under the apple tree.

One evening I looked out the window and there she was. Slender black legs, thick red orange fur, and a laughing face. She approached the food as if it were a foreign object, jumping back in caution. Circling, she lay on her stomach and slid forward to eat, only to dance away again. Finally she finished it, and began to move gracefully off, stopping to look around every few steps.

Her movements were both of curiosity and caution. It made me smile. She had none of the cruel intensity I had as a young composer, where insistence was the only path forward. I was singular, driven, and compulsive. A straight line, a harsh beam of light, always thinking about what to create. Preoccupied and rarely in the moment, I was angular and often strident.

Now, in my seventies, I am more tamed. c is no longer one-directional, scraping and scouring rocks. It oozes, bubbling towards my writing and composing, my garden, and my friends. I have more elasticity, more contours.

I have, I think, learned wisdom, by being humbled through experience. I no longer move at a fast pace or travel long distances. Instead, the reach is deep, and as connections come to the surface, words are there to articulate them. Before I was a runner aimed for the horizon. Now I have a spade; I dig.

Age has not taken away my ambition – the belief I still have something important to add. I grapple with doubts or vulnerabilities, but I have learned how to be more fluid and gentle, like the fox’s looping footsteps.

I soften at the sight of her. For all her grace, she is no fool. While she is not possessed or driven, she knows the boundaries and carefulness of living.

I search to name her. I am thinking of Interstellar, or Inter Stellar. Borrowed from Latin, stēllāris, it is of or pertaining to stars, like the ones she roams under. And, both of us are are “inter” or between stages. She, a wild creature living in a tamed neighborhood, and I, a human living with the passage of time. 

Like her, I pause to sniff before moving a few more steps forward. I pick up my head and gauge the shifting patterns.

The Death of Finale

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Recently, the music notation software, Finale, long considered the industry standard, announced that it would end production. Although the software would be permanently available to download, the company would longer provide upgrades, particularly when the computer operating system changed.  In other words, soon Finale would be obsolete, and most probably the music created using it would no longer be accessible.

I, like many other composers, was panicked. I had used the software for over thirty years, and almost all of my music catalogue was in Finale. I had made PDF files of all my scores for ease of printing, but any re-editing or correcting had to be done on the original file.

Finale assured composers that all was not lost; music could be migrated to another notation software system. However (why is there always a however?) this entailed a lot of re-editing. Most of the dynamics had to be reentered, glissandos were all over the place, and any unconventional notation was illegible. I was looking at hours and hours of work to upgrade each piece. The prospect was daunting at best, terrifying at worst.

Of course, I was glad I wasn’t dead. That would have been a real problem.

I came to age as a composer in the mid 1970’s. To create a score, I used vellum or onion skin, a durable, semi-transparent material pre-printed with a staff. Using various well chosen pens and India ink, I would copy out my music. The manuscript was then reproduced through an ozalid process. 

This mode of copying was time consuming. The vellum had to be dusted with talcum powder so the ink would stick. Pen nibs needed meticulously cleaning, and mistakes were scraped off or even cut out. Once the score was created, each part needed to be copied out separately on vellum. Imagine an orchestra piece with 24-28 parts; it was a proof-reading nightmare.

When photocopiers became available, I switched to handwriting the score with pen and paper.  I corrected mistakes with white-out fluid, and cut a photocopied score up and glued the parts onto separate sheets of paper. The only drawback was that the parts would constantly come unglued, often falling into a tangled mess.

I began using a computer and the Finale software in 1991 with a great sigh of relief. Quickly I learned how to key in the notes, adjusting the formatting to my own personal satisfaction. My music was now more regulated and easier to read. Parts were extracted from the score and I sent them to performers by mail, or electronically as a PDF.  This was a best case scenario.

The advent of music software, coupled with direct access to the world wide web has been a great equalizer for artists. Before the internet, publishers (museums or libraries) were gate keepers. They selected artists they wanted to represent and made them ‘important.’  Now, composers became their own publishers, creating websites to publicize and sell their music directly to performers. More than that, the digital age offered artists – offered me – the taste of the promise that my work would endure, some place in the big somewhere. That my work would survive and have a life beyond mine. 

Artists are always concerned with the preservation of the works they have created over a life time. First, will the material used – the paper or ink – stand the test of time?  Secondly, how will the works continue to get out to the public? Are there publishers who will make the music available to performing ensembles after the death of the artist? Are there libraries, museums, or archives that will store and protect the work?

We live in a time of diminishing resources to safeguard the legacy of music created by American composers. We have no national repository in the way that other countries have. Canada, for example, has a library of all its composers’ works available to view, study or perform. In other words they honor and treasure their country’s artists; the US does not. And publishers have neither the financial resources nor the interest in representing composers that are not currently successful. 

The internet and the availability of music in a viable software system is of great importance; it will house, remember, preserve, and make available works of all composers – so that this generation of composers, who speak of our time, will be remembered.

The Finale-end-of-the-road reminds me of the false promise in terms of permanence. I look at my music paper with renewed fondness.

The Speed of Things

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I am at a local concert, listening to a performance of Beethoven’s “Appassionata” Piano Sonata, No. 23. The pianist has impeccable clarity as he thunders through the tempestuous last movement. The speed of his playing, however, distracts me. What is it about the escalating speeds in performances of musical works?

Everything is faster and faster these days. In fact, things have sped up so much that they say our brains have been reprogrammed. Being forced to use a rotary phone, taking 7 to 12 seconds to dial a number, would probably drive us crazy. Once adjusted to the current speed of our computer, slow loading of a program can be irritating, even anxiety provoking.

Physical prowess has also changed. Young athletes are bigger, faster and stronger, demonstrating a level of athleticism that was once considered beyond their years, due to a combination of better training techniques, technological advances, and specialized sports science. For example, in the 1980s and 1990s, few Olympic and professional sprinters could run a 100-meter dash in under 10 seconds. Since 2019, however, some high school athletes have been able to do so.

In other words, once a barrier is broken, it becomes a standard. A gifted athlete – or prodigy performer – creates a new marker of normal.

The classical music field reflect much of this increased speed. According to the 2018 Universal Music Group study, the recordings of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Double Violin Concerto have sped up by as much as 30% since 1961, with the 2016 recording lasting about 12 minutes compared to 17 minutes. Modern recordings, the study suggests, may be picking up the pace by about a minute per decade.

With escalating speed of performance comes an increase of technical abilities. I was up at the recent Tanglewood Contemporary Music Festival when Steve Mackey introduced his work, Physical Property.  In the mid 1990s, performers struggled to master his technically difficult work. Now, he laughed, the young performers, “Ate it up like whip cream.”

Last year, I was in rehearsals with the Jasper String Quartet and Natalie Zhu. We were preparing for the the recording of my latest album, Barefoot. The quartet were playing my difficult work beautifully; seamlessly moving through the tricky meter changes and the rambunctious middle section.

As the piece closed, we sat for a moment. “Wow,” I finally said, “You play fast!” I paused, “Can you take it slower?”

They smiled. Of course.

How fast, ultimately, can we listen, and what do we miss hearing because of speed? I love composing music that quickly twists and turns upward, or plunges downward. Hanging for a moment, breathless, it dashing off to another curve. Playing it too fast, however, flattens, even blurs the music. Sadly, we do not have instant playback to rehear, in the moment, and decipher the music that just rushed by us.

For my part, I say to my performers, slow down. Breathe. Allow the music to have more space.

 

You are What You Eat

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As an artist, does one need to be a good person to create good work? I’m a little embarrassed; it seems like a silly question, but it has nagged at me over these many years.

I have always maintained that ‘you are what you eat,’ and I feed myself well. To support the music I create, I spend a lot of time reading, journaling, and drawing. I get outside and garden, take long walks, spend quiet evenings meditating or thinking. I go to art museums, music and theater performances – filling my head and heart with enriched fertile soil to grow the music I compose.

But do my actions – how I treat others – find their way into my music as well?  If I am careless or cruel to my partner, children or friends, if I am selfish, self-centered, even narcissistic, will these character traits translate into my music? How does who I am effect my music, possess it, even corrupt it? Crassly put, can bad people write good music?

There are plenty of examples of badly behaved composers. Gesualdo committed a gruesome murder and mutilation of both his wife and her lover, Beethoven was famously temperamental and more than a bit abusive to his nephew, and Wagner was a fervent anti-Semite. Scriabin was a pathological narcissist who imagined himself a god and Mussorgsky was a raging, out-of-control alcoholic who idealized his addiction. Closer to home, I know many good composers I would rather not spend any time with.

How can I understand this from my own life perspective? Perhaps it is in the creative process itself that I might find common ground.

When I compose, it is as if I have two lives – one that is music and the other one that is every day. Call it a split personality or a double self, I project myself into this realm, into this voice – my second self. As I wrote in my memoir, Let Your Heart Be Broken,

“Without music, I am plain and unremarkable. I shop, eat, dally about, think foolish thoughts, peer into the mirror. I hate, I love, I sleep, I anguish—nothing special. But when focused on writing music, I am a channel, a beam of light – I am a passageway for what must come out. My entire person comes together in a pulse, condensed and absorbed. The work follows me everywhere. I hear it in the bathroom, while I am cooking, as I fall asleep. There is always this murmur, this whisper.” (page 47)

In my composing life lies untethered ground, unhampered by anger, pettiness, and dis–ease. This neither-here-nor-there state becomes a clean slate and a dreamland where all is possible. I can articulate deep feelings of connection and love without encumbrance of my more human emotions. I can turn my night sweats, jealousy and rage into energy and rhythm, dissipating their destructive force. I am, as I compose, a better person, an imagined best.

In this way, I understand how badly behaved composers write good music. In this composing dream-world, they can exist emotionally open, kind and connected. Whereas in daily life, they can be harsh, cruel, mentally unstable and even murderous.

But, honestly, this doesn’t work for me.

The relationship between my life, who I am and how I behave, and my work is inseparable. There is no slacking off in either regard. I am as flawed as the next person, but it is how I am accountable to and work on those flaws that matters.

In the end, I ascribed to the Shaker’s motto, hands to work, hearts to God, where “every part of life is a spiritual manifestation of God – the God within – whether they make furniture or say their prayers” (Let Your Heart Be Broken).

The glue in my life is that I am always working to be the best I can be. My imagined best that I project into my music is my true north.

© Bottle, Tina Davidson, pastel

Read Let Your Heart Be Broken, Life and Music from a Classical Composer

https://www.amazon.com/Let-Your-Heart-Broken-Classical/dp/1633376974