Tina Davidson

Composer

creative process

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.

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.

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

Barefoot in Winter

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I am sitting in my music studio, a few days into a month residency at MacDowell in New Hampshire. Outside is icy cold; the snow leans up against the studio and icicles hang off the small moss-covered shed roof.

I sigh and drum my pencil on the blank score paper. All morning I have been procrastinating, unable to move forward in composing my next work. I am caught in the bardo of creation – between not knowing and, at the same time, sensing the direction of the piece.

I wait and close my eyes, thinking about summer and soft warm dirt between my bare toes, the color a milk chocolate. In my mind’s eye, I turn and spin, remembering that Moses, as he approached the burning bush, took off his sandals to stand on holy ground.

Of course! Barefoot. The sound of the new work wells in my ears; I am flooded.

I grew up as a pianist in a household of strings. My mother was an avid amateur violinist and my sisters played violin and viola. I envied their ability to play with others, while I was continually on my own. In college, I took up cello in addition to studying composition and piano. I studied with Michael Finkle, who was mustached, quirky, and full of joy. We gathered weekly to play cello quartets and octets late into the evening. Then, turning off the lights, we improvised in the dark.

My ear is always bending towards the sound strings produce when I compose. The instrument itself is an ingenuity of construction – as one plays, the open strings resound, building up a deepening of sound – like a piano’s sustaining pedal, but discrete and selective. The resonating strings respond like ghosts to a call, building up overtones and harmonics, even different tones.

I love the immediacy a string player has between themselves and the sound they produce. Pressing the flesh of their finger into string, they bow to bring the pitch to life. With this comes the unique ability to bend a note easily through a glissando. This is aslide between notes, not a fast get-away, but a way of directing energy from one note to another. Sometimes I want to pierce through a note cleanly, like an arrow through the heart. Other times, I move between two notes, creating a slow-motion tension, where the departing note comes so close to the next note that union is magnetic and unavoidable.

The string instrument is a master of getting to the kernel of sound by varying the way a sound is made. Pizzicato and tremolo are most common, but, for me, ponticello (playing close to the bridge to make a scratching, buzzing sound) and col legno (reducing the sound to a bare shadow of itself by playing with the wood of the bow) gets closer to what I experience in a single note or tone – an outer shell-like-flesh with a soft inner core.

I am always composing towards the center of sound, to get as close as I can. And always, in a stream of movement, a consciousness liquid enough to become something else at any moment. Lean and snake-like, my music is continually circular and linear, transforming in a seamless continuity.

String writing in Barefoot

LISTEN: https://lnkfi.re/barefoot

Tremble for violin, cello and piano, has no end of movement – we shiver in delight or quake in fear. We shake in anger or pulse in love. We tremble in the act of knowing and not knowing.

Barefoot for violin, cello, viola and piano is cold and full of fresh snow, and always a longing for bare feet on green forest paths and creek beds. The dashing out and tasting life with little protection, the dancing before the burning bush – barefoot before God.

Wēpan for string quartet and piano is full of slippage from one note to another – glissandos between note to note; weeping, endless weeping.

Hush for violin and piano is quiet and reflective – a sweet calming of our child, ourselves and those around us – a stillness so that life can be experienced, cascading around us.

Leap, for violin, cello, viola and piano, was written during the pandemic when we found ourselves having leapt into a world unrecognizable. Restless and often sudden, the strings echo each other, searching and slightly out of tune.

Tina Davidson’s new album Barefoot, featuring the Jasper Quartet and pianist Natalie Zhu, is released on New Focus Recordings.  

 

Some Things I Have Learned, Part 2

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What I have learned about being a composer. What would I tell myself as a young composer? What would I share with others?  This section is about the business of being a composer.

BUSINESS, noun, 1. a person’s regular occupation, profession, or trade. 2. the practice of making one’s living by engaging in commerce.

Music is a business as well as an art form. My compositions are like children; having them is one thing, launching them into the world, another. This takes networking, using social media, learning how to represent myself, and finding others who will support and represent my work.

Break In.
If the front door is not open (because of race, gender, religion, education, or just being at the wrong place at the wrong time), break in through the back door or window. No matter how you get in, you are in.

Accept and build on small opportunities.
Compose music for anyone. Find ensembles in your community and compose for them. Have your work performed. Learn. Compose more. Better yet, start your own ensemble.

Remember your self worth.
Understand copyright, publishing, and recording rights – the ways your music can generate income. Have an attorney or someone in the business look at any contract before signing it.

Create your own working sabbatical.
When I started my career, I worked many jobs to support myself. Using the latte-principal (saving the $5 cost of a latte a day), I saved for ten years. When I got a commission from the Kronos Quartet, that and my savings allowed me to launch into being able to compose full time.

Develop a personal language to expresses your artistic process.
Over the years I learned to share my feelings and emotions that accompany composing music creating a deeper connection with the public at a human level.

Communicate about your work.
Taking the time to use all the tools to get the word out about your work is just part of being an artist. Learn how to write grants, find commissions, create consortiums and promote yourself.

It is about the relationship.
Creating a career as a composer is like fundraising – it is not about the money. Networking is key – going to concerts, introducing yourself, creating relationships, builds connection for future business or collaborations, etc.

Make ‘thank you’ a key part of your interaction with others.
I dedicate one day each week to say ‘thank you’ to anyone I have had contact with. Expressing appreciation is so important, even when rejected. And, by the way, at the rehearsal of your music, be awesome to the performers.

Advocate and join. 
Show up at concerts and conferences. Support other composers and musicians as colleagues and friends. Get involved with advocacy organizations! Speak out against ageism, sexism, cronyism where ever you see it.

Share your joy.
Communicate your love of the work with others. I find sharing rather than teaching, motivating rather than lecturing, including rather than talking to, brings others into the process on an equal standing.

Abundance rather that scarcity.
At the core of my artistic endeavor is a sense of abundance and possibility. There is always a new piece to compose, and a new opportunity to explore. And if I don’t hear or see one, I set out to sniff it out – using all the tools I have honed over the life time. There is always something more.