Tina Davidson

Composer

Griefs Grace

Have Your Babies Or Tie Your Tubes

by

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

 

The Dance is On

by

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.

from music journal by Tina Davidson

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.

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

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

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