Tina Davidson

Composer

music by women

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.

Escaping Gravity

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I am counting again. It comes up now and then like a nervous tick. I notice it most when I am outside walking and preoccupied with some interior thought. Suddenly I hear the sound of my counting; how many steps to my front door, how many trees line the street or how many rows of grass to mow in a section of lawn. It’s embarrassing; an obsession that keeps me from experiencing what’s around me. I sternly forbid any more counting, abstaining like an alcoholic. Soon, however, I forget to be wary and I slip back into it again, this preoccupation with the count, the soul of music.

I have long been fascinated with rhythm in my music – how to shape the energy of a piece, like a band of shimmering movement. My interest is in how it transforms, moves from one state to another, interrupts itself, then doubles back. Sometimes it is a stream of water bouncing down a curling bed, glancing off rocks and edges. Other times is it a hot liquid metal, slithering, pulsating, spurting, angry, and insistent. Whether whimsical or full of power, it is the rhythms that often take a listener to a breaking point.

But I am getting ahead of myself. First, a bit of back ground on how I understand and relate to rhythm.

Music, for me, in its crudest form is three things: organized sound, duration and silence. Sound is the pitch (high and low). Duration has to do with time, both as the invisible net in which sound floats (how long the piece is), and the length of each individual sound, or rhythm. Silence is the great back drop and rarely intrusive. It acts as a foil to contents of music, bringing it into relief.

Rhythm is organized around a pulse, a steady continuous beat that hides in the background. The pulse can be fast or slow becoming the tempo or the speed of the music, but its primary role is to be the skeleton-form on which rhythm rests. For convenience, these pulses are corralled in countable units or measures, commonly 3, 4, 6 or 12. These keep the performers from flying out of place and loosing themselves completely.

The downbeat, for me, is the star of the measure. Its genesis, most likely, comes from walking. Stepping out to walk four steps, the dominate leg (usually the right leg) takes the lead, making a slightly firmer emphasis on the first step, and again on the third step. The first of these is the down beat, a natural emphasis of the measure.

Walking in groups of three is slightly different. The first group starts on the dominate leg (RLR), but the second grouping uses the nondominant leg (LRL). I almost stumble as I walk the pattern on my studio rug; the slight-off-centeredness catches my imagination.

I play with the magical insistence of downbeats. I am forever adjusting groupings of continuously running fast notes – like the sound of steady rain – not mathematically or intellectually, but in a playful, natural kind of movement.

This is where I begin. I am counting in a steady fast pace, let’s say 123 123 over and over. The first in the series is the downbeat that I feel as a little pulse. Then, wanting a change, I add them together, 123456 123456. Now the distance between downbeats is longer. Feeling a bit sassy, I put these groups together, 123 123 123456. Counting steadily, snapping my finger on each 1, I feel a lift in the last grouping, as if the 456 can’t keep their feet on the ground and are curling upwards.

There, right there is the magic – that lift, as if you were about to fly. The upward motion pulls at gravity. I am a kayak, rushing downstream only to hit a rock. As I fly in the air, the suspension seems longer than possible; my heart stops beating for a endlessly long moment – time is distorted.

In truth, this is the way I feel my own energy. Restless and seeking, I move from one slight change to another, but always in a context that makes sense, and has an inner logic or glue. As the pressure  heightens, I burst out into a calm, an arching melody of understanding perhaps. There is an interplay between the instruments, before I collect my wits about me, and dash on, back into the pulse of life.

This leads me to another question, what happens when my rhythms run out of energy? I imagine a marathon race where I am running and running. I am becoming more and more physically tired, although my pace has not changed. The moment when all my physical energy is depleted, I am unable to stand and fall towards the ground. In that vulnerable moment, I transform, and go upwards.

Isn’t it so in life? Significant change often happens when I stumble, or am so exhausted I can no longer resist. And then, the rhythm moves me upwards to what ever name I call it at the moment – God, higher power, the cosmos.  I escape gravity.

Why I Compose Music as a Woman

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In these days of growing numbers of nonbinary, gender-nonconforming and transgender people, I have been reflecting on how and why I compose music as a woman. I wince a little as I write this. It does not seem current, or perhaps currently relevant.

I came to composing over forty-five years ago when feminism was in it’s second wave, where the focus was on the inequality and discrimination of women. It was a time when women were speaking out about the marginalization of their choices and expertise, it was about being seen and counted.

My mother was the first feminist in the family. She read Gloria Steinem, Kate Millett, Germaine Greer and Betty Friedan. She taught women’s studies and went to on countless marches. True, she often spat and lectured. A professor at the State College in Oneonta, mother of five, she knew the limits of her salary and position. She had valid grievances and was angry.

I was a second generation feminist. I read Alex Katie Schulman, Erica Jong, Adrienne Rich and Alice Walker. Early on, I didn’t wear a bra or shave my legs. I worked to pass the equal rights amendment, and went on marches, taking my daughter in a stroller. Feminism, for me, was personal and deeply related to finding my voice in a male dominated music world of the late 1970s. I needed to grow myself, and I wasn’t sure how.

I am reminded of the summer I was eleven and I lived with my aunt and uncle who were scientists in Cambridge, England. One day they brought home small plates from their laboratory coated with agar, a clear medium that fuels microbes and bacteria as they grow. My job was to see what was really on our household surfaces. Carefully I took samples from the kitchen and bathroom and spread them on the agar. Uncle John pressed his thumb on one of the plates. We waited to see what emerged. Colors bloomed several days later, a brilliant white and a poisonous looking orange – a world invisible – existing only when it was allowed to grow by itself.

My agar medium, as I think back on it now, was feminism, or seeing myself as female. And it was Beethoven, oddly enough, who gave me permission to culture and cultivate myself.

Classical music, whose language and history I grew up in, carried forward the idea that music is ‘universal’ in its expression. In 1818, Schopenhauer wrote that music “is such a great and exceedingly noble art …  a perfectly universal language, the distinctness of which surpasses even that of the perceptible world itself.”  Soon came the claim that classical music works were masterpieces – above and beyond our daily lives.

This superlative description of music confounded me. Instinctively, I felt that the artistic endeavor came out of an authentic expression of myself, or as close as I could get to an inner truth. Take Beethoven, for instance. He wrote richly genuine music, an expression of who he was: a white, educated, Christian, and upper middle class. And male.

I shivered. A male aesthetic, not universal at all. And I was female.

With this realization musical world opened up and works came tumbling out. While composing, I held words in my mind that related to myself and the world around me – not to create a ‘tone-poem’ or music describing a story, but as a way of exploring and understanding myself. Cassandra Sings, commissioned by the Kronos String Quartet, was both the anguish of the Greek prophetess who was never listened to or believed, and my hope for better times in the future. Women Dreaming, for mixed ensemble and piano, was my continued dreaming of possibilities. River of Love, River of Light, a seven movement choral piece, was my understanding of the female face of God.

Feminism was, in an odd way, my lucky break. In pushing forward to illuminate the wealth of the individual, giving credibility to the female gender, I found my agar plate. It was a rich medium to explore myself, to grow my work from the hidden secrets of my inner and outer surface. To press my thumb down, and see what was revealed by my print.

After a decade of composing, I softened. I became more digested and reformulated; more fully mixed. My interest began to shift from an inner to an outer relationship to the world, and my gaze looked upwards. What was the connection to the larger whole, to the sky, earth, to the unnamable? From these eyes that belong to a woman?

Finding Words for Music

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My memoir, Let Your Heart Be Broken, was recently published. Never did I imagine it would take so much work to launch and follow it through. Nor did I realize that a work in words would receive such a different response than a work in notes.

In the music world, a new piece is premiered after working with the performers in rehearsals. We confer about tempos, do a last bit of editing, talk about the musical heart of the piece and how to express it. At the performance, I introduce the work to the audience, or do a pre-concert presentation. But mostly, I am in the audience, listening. I stand for the applause, usually from my seat, or bound up to the stage for a quick bow. During the intermission and after the concert, a few audience members warmly clasp my hands. But most of them dodge around me. Did they not like my work? Or is it too vulnerable to express an opinion face to face?

After the editing and revisions are done, the book is published with a flurry of press releases, podcasts, interviews, and book tours. I get emails, messages or posts from readers, sometimes several over a week, letting me know they are halfway through, almost done, they couldn’t put it down until 4 AM. It reads like a thriller, has a musical lilt, they resonated with my words. I have introduced them to contemporary music, articulated something about composing andmy deep relationship to sound – I have put words to an art form that is generally wordless. They feel let in.

What a difference between the music world and the literary world! A live performance, or a release of CD’s will get a review or two. One can track how many listeners on Spotify or Apple Music, but never hear personally from any of them. On the other hand, my memoir not only gets reviews from critics and bloggers, but also from dozens of readers on Amazon and Goodreads. Bookstagrammers (I know! It is a word!) post their reviews to hundreds Instagram followers.

Readers are involved and connected. Listeners are mute. What is this about?  Of course, there is a gap between the eye and the ear, the visual and aural. Sound is not translatable into words – that is part of its beauty. But still it doesn’t account for the lack of audience response. I wonder if it is a difference between public and private, and historical and current.

Books are read in the safety of one’s home, perched on a chair, on a couch or in bed – buffeted by cushions or nestled under a blanket, warm and comfortable. The subjects are about us – relatable – about our growing understanding of the world seen through a contemporary lens. The opposite is true in the music world. Presented in a large concert hall, music is heard in a thigh-to-thigh seating with strangers. The artists are virtuosos, highly esteemed for their performing abilities. The works they perform are primarily historical, often hundreds years old, and referred to as masterpieces. Contemporary music – our living culture – is not performed with any regularity.

Music is listened to at home, but the response is divided between popular and classical music. Taylor Swift, for example, writes music that evokes a feeling of intimacy between herself and her audience. Her fans are avidly vocal about her and hotly analyze her lyrics on line. And classical music? Honestly, I have no idea. I could not find any discussions about classical or contemporary music that included even a moderate audience.

The differences between the literary and music world are dramatic, and while the effect is up to some interpretation, my experience is of readers expressing their opinion and connecting with my work. They exude a sense of ownership, even belonging. I feel the barrier between myself and them relax, even removed. The experience is no longer mine but theirs, and in that exchange is a freedom. They are now peers, and the intimacy of the exchange is personal on both ends.

Having tasted this fruit, I want more of this. I especially want this for my music world.

Music as Collaboration

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In rehearsal, the performers sit there for a moment and exude nervousness. They are struggling with my music. It is trickier than they realized, and they haven’t had enough time to rehearse together. At the end of this two-week long festival, they are exhausted by the many concerts they have already performed and time is in short supply. I smile. I am easy. “Forget the notes,” I suggest. I am their supporter and collaborator. They are brilliant musicians. “Just play the music!”

The creation, rehearsal, and performance of music is, for me, a full scale collaboration. Initially, I collaborate with the idea of the new work I am composing  – I am both progenerater and investigator – the idea itself is almost a code I have to learn and understand. Often, I collaborate directly with the notes. They are sometimes compliant and easy to keep in place, other times they have to be corralled or even threatened. They can wander off, or even, magically reappear after I have erased them, insisting on their own logic to be.

Next I collaborate with the performers. I have a fluid approach and not interested that they get exactly what I intended. I am excited that they will inhabit my music with their own sense of themselves. My work is shaped by their body and understanding, they put their skin into it. I trust them.

At times I am commissioned to create a work for an individual ensemble. I stalk them a bit, going to their concerts, listening them perform on YouTube and talking to them – what do you like, what are the things you do best as an ensemble or individually? My goal is to create a piece for them that is both mine and theirs, a bit like a beautiful set of clothing, stitched to fit their their particular sound or skills, or, at the very least, using that as a jumping off point.

In the end, the performers collaborate with the audience – the receivers of the music. For me, it is a journey, a traveling through a sonic and emotional landscape. Because music can only experienced through time, the listener perceives the whole only with the aid of memory, a remembrance of beginning. As the performers bend over their music and the audience listens, the energy between them creates the experience.

Collaboration, at its best, is when all participants, artist, performers, and audience, serve what is there; to deeply feel and express the moment. And in that expression is a wonderful transference – not what I am thinking or composing about, but what the performers and listener understands about themselves.