Tina Davidson

Composer

Uncategorized

Small Things

by

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.

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

by

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.