Tina Davidson

Composer

Composing a Life, Note by Note

Small Things

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My world, whether in music or in my country, is dear to me.

I will not let it go without some sort of action.

 

The evening in my studio was beginning to darken at a recent Composer Posse gathering. Faces shone from my computer screen as fifteen composers shared information and support about their creative work. The topic of life prior to computers and notation software came up, and laughingly we recounted the times before.

I came to the field when we used India ink, vellum, with an ozalid process to print out long accordion fold scores. Others, younger than myself, began their careers when they copied out their music with pen and score paper and photocopied it.

“That reminds me,” Jennifer Higdon said, leaning forward with a smile, “of an amazing story.”

While in graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania, a composer colleague of hers had finally completed a large work for orchestra with only a week before the rehearsals began. He had copied his lengthy work out by hand on paper, a breath taking long process. Then with care, he copied out each individual orchestral part. A one of a kind score and parts, with no backup.

Stacked and ready to go to the copier, the composer left his work on the kitchen table. Upon waking the next morning, he was horrified to find that his little grey striped kitten had squatted on top of the music and let loose a yellow stream. The score was soaked, the inked notes melted and flowed down the page, the parts were stained and shredded. The entire project was rendered useless; a catastrophe beyond measure for any composer.

In a panic, he called up his friends. They, in turn, did something extraordinary. Each taking a portion of the piece, they re-copied the score and parts for their friend. Working full-time over a week, they hand reconstructed the orchestra piece with over thirty parts before the first rehearsal.

Thinking back on Jennifer’s story, I wonder at this display of support between artists. Working together, each completed a small part of a larger piece, reconstructing the torn, yellow stained ruin into something whole. In other words, small actions, taken together, are important.

It is, in the end, what we face in today’s political arena. Coming together as concerned citizens, we are less afraid of what is happening or what might happen if we speak out. We can be positive and also realistic; we don’t have to agree, but can always be respectful. And we never, never underestimate the power of our actions, no matter how small.

My world, whether in music or in my country, is dear to me. I will not let it go without some sort of action.

A Long Tail

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The time away from my usual surrounding is the gift I give myself two or three times a year. To step back and step into a new viewpoint.

 

As always, despite my protestations and traveling worries, it is a good place. In the mountains, nestled above a valley without running water or internet, the small one-room cabin has endless views. An outside shower allows me to be naked in the tall grass under a starry night, with an outhouse up over the hill. Yes, this is a good place.

The quiet surrounds me on the cool early evening. Light fading, I hear bits of the new string quartet I am commissioned to write. Suddenly last week an opportunity presented itself without much time, none in fact, to sidle up, dream about, or even be anxious over a new work – just a go-go-go.

I have not thought about composing this year and it is already August. All spring I had been engrossed in writing a new memoir about the emerging from a second marriage, composing and aging. That, and getting my music scores ready for my publisher has been all absorbing. A careful, detailed work of margins, spacing, page turns, and placing of the dynamics; it reminds me that excellence has a long tail. Not only in the composing of the music itself, but also in the attention to the score. Always a willingness to spend what ever time needed to create something of value on every level.

Excellence versus perfection; I have fretted about it before. I have no patience for perfectionism, it seems like an empty threat against the gods, superficial and a desire to control. Excellence, on the other hand, knows when to stop and when to tarry, when it’s done the best for now, while sniffing ahead for the next opportunity.

The summer night is falling. First there is a glimmer of yellow light, and then a covering gray. Soon, dark. The hills are misted with white patches that dampen green-green of the trees, making the outlines of each more clear.

The time away from my usual surrounding is the gift I give myself two or three times a year. To step back and step into a new viewpoint. A time with nothing to do but drink coffee and walk through the milkweed, golden rod and elderberry. I look out into the valley, and allow the wisps of a new composition to appear.

Dancing with Dogs

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I open up the side porch, and sweep up all the winter dirt. The dogs and I sit in the sun, listening. Isabela, hopeful that she can magically transport herself next to the squirrel on the lawn, thrills an undertone growl and pants.

The earth is beginning to wake up. Daffodils bloom, and birds sing and sing. I am half hibernating between projects. A new piece soon?

Trembling. This part of composing is always difficult; the hearing it into existence. Half of me is eager, the other half resistant – wanting to scale back, to sink back into bed, into books, into a life of teaching, and nothing more. My energy flags, my spirits gray out.

 

The book, In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahrir, is beautiful and rich. Her writing about the separation of self at an early age and the need to find home resonates deeply with me.

For her, it is in language. Caught between Bengali and English, she turns, as an adult, to Italian and begins to learn it without the comforts of a native tongue.

Delving deep into the language – now speaking, reading and writing in it, she becomes unchained from the desire for perfection. Her Italian will always be imperfect, and thus more free. “Imperfection inspires invention, imagination, creativity. It stimulates. The more I feel imperfect, the more I feel alive,” she says.

 

I danced with the dogs last night and ate sweet ripe oranges, fennel salad with tuna and avocado.

I worked on my new string trio, creating a fabric with sound – oscillations, repeated notes sliding upwards; a throbbing.

 

From concert to concert, I go, half drunk with sound. Poulenc’s choral work one night is followed by the Jasper Quartet’s performance of a work by Aaron Kernis. Then, the play “Still” at Julliard, and tomorrow, Piazzolla’s Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas.

I have become a glutton for moments that touch and move me forward in my understanding, thinking, and feeling. I am always looking for the meeting between deep investigation and spiritual presence.

The Box You Chose

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The truth is, I have never given up my pencil. With it in hand, I slip into the tactile world of music. I love the scratch of the point, sometimes breaking with a pop, the smooth finish of the staff paper, and the slide of the eraser. Sometimes, I lean in hard with feeling, pressing almost through the paper. Later, my fingers brush over the marks on the back side of the page, and as if reading them like a secret code.

This sensitivity to touch comes from decades as a pianist; my fingertips can almost see at touch. The act of playing music on a piano is about bending the bones of my fingers – meeting music with my flesh – moving into and through to mold, bend, scoop it out of the ivories. This finger work, whether at the piano or grasping a pencil, sees and smells independently of myself.

But there is another reason I compose with pencil; the freedom it gives me to create. The page is a tabula rasa, open and waiting to be filled.

In my first draft, notes drift around, sometime clumping together or jumping lines. Page after page I scribble here and there, crossing out, or drawing arrows to another section. Pages waft to the floor or slide on top of the piano; a sea of notes. I am full of motion as I compose, using a kinetic energy that brings out a sweet solidity. I swear that my hand, moving up and down, over and across as I compose with pencil, wakes up a deeper something else. It moves me into the heart of things.

By the second draft, I have decided the order of the sections, and crafted each transition. Only when I have put the whole piece together in pencil do I turn to my computer, my typewriter.

A music notation program, no matter how brilliant, is a box in which I fit my music. They are created based on classical music or even programmers’ ideas, and lag far behind living composers who challenge perceptions and create new ways of communicating music. It has to catch up to me, not the other way around.

If I am not careful, the limitation and inflexibilities of a software program can impact my composing process and even my thinking. Sneakily, it defaults to a notation I don’t want to use. Fortunately, I have already settled the argument with my pencil, so I insist. The program fights back, and we wrestle back and forth until I find a workaround, or use a prompt to override it.

I find it exhausting resisting this steady pull to the middle that is not my own. But with my score already rendered in pencil, I am fully armed and ready to push against the software and avoid the influence of its’ overbearing hand.

 

It is the first day of my composition class for the music majors at Franklin and Marshall College. I have just informed them that they are not allowed to use their computers for the first six weeks of the semester. A look of confusion flashes over their faces, then concern. “What do you mean?” asks one student, “We have to use a pencil? And compose music on staff paper?”

I smile. The start is an open field to explore.

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.