Composing a Life, Note by Note

Have Your Babies Or Tie Your Tubes

March 7, 2022 by Tina Davidson

She steps close to me, and almost whispers, “Can you have children and still have a career in music?”

Attractive and young, she is a successful composer, already teaching at a prestigious university, and married to an older, well-known composer. They are talking about having children, but she is not sure. I smile.

I can only speak for myself. Having my daughter opened me up in a way that I never could have imagined. Through her I found the courage to face my dark self which has allowed me to speak true in my music. She awoke in me the possibility of love given and love reciprocated, and connected me to lingering soft animal embraces and the wonder of discovering the world anew. It was a second chance of unknown dimension.

And yet, time was now not my own. As a mostly single parent, I crafted careful structures for childcare, combinations of daycare and babysitters, which, at any moment could fall through – an illness, an early dismissal, a snow day – all was in shatters and I was frantic. I’d sneak into my studio when she was playing or napping, feeling the weight of my continual distraction. She learned, implicitly, that even when I was with her, I was not always present. My gaze far off, I would put her voice on mute as I tended my evolving work, moving energy around in my thoughts.

“There is a passionate case to be made on either side, having your children or doing without, and both sides are for humanity,” says Alix Kates Shulman, in her book, Burning Questions. “Have your babies or tie your tubes – whatever you decide, you’ll find out soon enough that you’ve lost something precious.”

Excerpted from Let Your Heart Be Broken, Life and Music from a Classical Composer © Tina Davidson, 2022.

Listen to Core of the Earth, and Lullaby, from Tina Davidson’s opera, Billy and Zelda

Fire on the Mountain

February 1, 2022 by Tina Davidson

For marimba, vibraphone and piano

Spring is finally here. The magnolia’s dark pink buds are ready to burst with color and joy. Quiet and peaceful, I yearn to open to this new piece like these buds.

I sense the work, the crackling of the opening. I suddenly remember a dream I had several years ago. Standing in an open field, I am behind a camera ready to photograph a large white horse lying on a flowered couch. I cannot get the entire horse in my view finder; I am too close. I step back, and the clouds part. I look up and see the red glow of the peaks – fire on the mountain.

The dream filled me with love, sexuality up on the mountain, glowing and hot. This is where I need to go, into the heat of the fire, which is myself.

I hear the beginning, muted piano. The marimba and vibraphone use fingers on the instrument bars instead of mallets. The rhythms widen and deepen, a counterpoint. But always a linear pull.

*At Ghost Ranch, pastel by Tina Davidson*

The form my music takes is a stream of movement, a consciousness liquid enough to become something else at any moment. Lean and snake-like, it is continually circular and linear, transforming in a seamless continuity. I know it is good; I also doubt.

My piece smolders with the fire within me. I bring the fire of my life home – the urge to renew myself, to integrate and combine with others. Sacred and profane, intangible and tangible come together in a wonder and beauty. It spills off me, like seeds on a rich earth. Ripe and overflowing, succulent and juicy, the surrender is to the sweet body. The delicious needs and urges.

I finished Fire on the Mountain today. It was difficult to write, full of the energy of love, storm and pain, and finally the bursting of the heart to a quiet, open melody.

I am reminded again of my dream of the horse and the mountain. Often, I stand too close to love and intimacy. All I can see is the whiteness of love’s flanks and abdomen, but not the fine outline of the body, the suppleness of the neck and the quietly etched flair of the nostrils.

So I step back. What is the alternative?

Excerpted from Let Your Heart Be Broken, Life and Music from a Classical Composer © Tina Davidson, 2022.

Listen: Fire on the Mountain, marimba, vibraphone and piano:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CIqP7Eu0Dg

Or on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2y5Z17bEilAiViMp9FMuJh

Immersed in Sound

January 10, 2022 by Tina Davidson

The morning is still dark as I creep down the stairs. I am five, and under the Christmas tree are two boxed sets of LPs – Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado and The Pirates of Penzance.

I finger the cardboard, open up the lid, and feel the weight of the four black discs in each box. My small phonograph is blue and silver with a hinged cover. I sit on the floor, and open it carefully. Slipping the record out of its sleeve, I put it on the turntable. Holding my breath, I lower the arm onto the disc. The needle sinks into the shiny grooves of plastic. I lose myself in the scritch scratch of the margin. I wait for the music to fill me.

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Sound is all around me. My denim skirt swishes between my legs when I walk fast and hard. I laugh, and almost jump with pleasure. It is the whip of sails against the mast, it is the sound of laundry being hung out on a cold day, of curtains in a heavy, dusty breeze.

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Drawing, colored pencil, from music journal

These days are dark and quiet, filled with composing. I have finished I Hear the Mermaids Singing, and wait before copying the pencil score onto the computer.

I live in a world of sound, my ears are filled. When I look up from my work, the house is surprisingly calm, the street empty; the magnolia tree waits to blossom. Looking down again, my ears are flooded. Sound has never kept me so entranced, so excited. My days are effortless. I am full. Before I touched the surface, now I bathe in the waters. I put my head down in the cool depth and breathe.

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There has been good work on my piece. The beginning has a metallic howl, the slow growing melody goes well.

In the afternoon, I walk on the beach. The skies over the ocean are grey; the waves are dark. The wind is so cold that my face aches. I sit in the sand, and watch the overlapping clouds move layers. A bright spot is in the sky where the sun almost comes through. The houses on the ocean are boarded up. Like trees without leaves; they are without life. I trudge past them; their ears are shuttered to winter and the wind.

Excerpted from Let Your Heart Be Broken, Life and Music from a Classical Composer © Tina Davidson, 2022.

Listen on YouTube: I Hear the Mermaids Singing, for viola, cello and piano

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auLzryCh_Mk

Buy the CD:

https://www.newworldrecords.org/products/tina-davidson-i-hear-the-mermaids-singing

The Dance is On

December 1, 2021 by Tina Davidson

Composing and daily life

The day is cold, and snow-blown. The sun shines clear on the stark, naked trees. The house is bright with reflection. I could be resting, inside, warm from the white, frosty day, instead I am disconnected.

The time nears to begin my new composition for saxophone. I am restless and irritable. I pace and growl, find other things to do, and waste time. I want to move forward and to stay back at the same time.

Of course! My old friend, procrastination. For years I fought against him, as he sniffs around my house. Now I concede. Procrastination has transformed from the art of avoiding my work into that nebulous space of beginning – I am on my way, the dance is on.

At first, I only have an impression of the piece, its general size and weight, as if I were holding an invisible oval shape in my hands. I can only feel the smoothness of the outside shell. Gradually, I start to hear the edges, like an egg hissing in a frying pan, the whites gradually crisping under the heat, gaining definition.

I begin to write the material for the piece. Quickly, notes scatter over the page, a short hand of sorts. I am interested in the journey, the relationship between where I am and where I am going. I map out the whole piece before I start to score it.

There is a beauty about this process. Sometimes I am so deep into the work that daily life is not a conscious act. Instead, it revolves around me on its own, as if it knows what to do without my directions. It is something else, it has a pulse and a rhythm of its own, color and speed. My work is silent, far away, full of itself and only itself. It has my total attention. I am rapt and inert, and at times rapturous. Then life tugs at me, like a suture on the skin. I leave reluctantly; this will await me tomorrow when I take up the pencil again.

But there is a dark side as well. Often the music I am composing has a mind of its own. When I am unhappy with the direction of the piece, I erase measures. Later I notice that the deleted section has wormed its way back in without my noticing. Try as I might, the direction has been set and unmovable.

After an intense day of work, I wake several times a night hearing my music, or watch it slowly, scrutinizing every moment. My mind is like a computer; I am forced to watch the notes twist and turn. My privacy is invaded and music blares in my ear, possessing me. I roll over in bed, “Get back to the studio where you belong,” I mutter.

In the worst moments, I am resentful of my music. It soars, breathes, moves on its journey. I am the servant. I sit, quietly, studiously and patiently pressing the small black and white notes on a staff paper. Hours away from friends and family. I have a fleeting fantasy, a secret fear; I will turn into music, this vehicle for sound. Music will overtake me, fill my pores, and submerge me. I will wake up one morning scaled and encrusted like an ancient desert creature, a reptile with congealed flesh. A watcher.

Listen: Transparent Victims for soprano, alto and pre-recorded saxophones (soprano, alto, tenor and baritone)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLE-HbmLOPg

Random Thoughts, #4

November 1, 2021 by Tina Davidson

from my music journal

October 3

A great day. I can hear. And I am dreaming again. The dreams are busy, as if they were leading my daily life for me while I concentrate on the symbol. My dreams wash dishes, tend the garden, and pay bills. I sleep well, though my stomach is still tender.

I came in and immediately worked out several sections, streamlining the shape of the piece, reducing it to two sections. I get to the point right away. The old sense of balance and confidence returns. The end of the piece is already written, and I am anxious to compose towards it.

Most difficult is to wait until my unconscious offers up the music to my conscious. A patient waiting, an eternal sense of trust, and then suddenly, clarity.

July 10

Monday morning. The magnolia tree is dying by degrees. The slender grey branches cross over each other at the base, this year the leaves are small and pale. Overcast day, foolish thoughts. Where do I place grief?

September 1

My music often springs from an idea first formulated in words. The titles come well before the music itself and are, to some extent, my map of the world, guiding me as I compose. They are metaphors or secret encoded meanings for my pieces that I understand, do not understand, and come to understand. Dark Child Sings, for example, is my dark child singing out his life, with growing ecstasy and passion, of sexual beginnings, of calm lullabies and of strong chants.

I have a love affair with the poetry of words. Strung together, they are both important and not, mysterious and clear. Occasionally, words stand in the way of my music, speaking louder than the piece itself, because I simply do not know yet. I cannot dig beyond the phrase.

Music is never just passion or reason, instead a delicate balance between opposites that need the other to exist. Without one there are neither. Reason, brittle and devoid of passion, can be a monster of blindness and self-service. And passion, without reason, is bloated and ridiculous.

Listen: It is My Heart Singing, for string quartet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYpKICTyO9c

It is My Heart Singing, music by Tina Davidson, Albany Records, TROY842, 2006

Performed by the Cassatt Quartet (Muneko Otani, Jennifer Leshnower, Tawnya Popoff, Nicole Johnson), Stephen Manes and Caroline Stinson

Purchase: https://www.amazon.com/My-Heart-Singing-Tina-Davidson/dp/B000FO443K