What Does It Feel Like to Be a Composer?
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You can’t see it, smell it, touch it, or taste it, and yet it often overwhelms one’s senses more than any other experience. How do composers think, and what compels them to create the sound arrangements that they do? Through the words of historically famous composers and conversation with two contemporary composers we’ll explore the processes, the triumphs, and frustrations of creating in a medium that requires the engagement of multiple human beings for its realization.
Priscilla Hayes Taylor is the creator, cellist, programmer, researcher, and artistic director of Decompression Chamber Music. She is a member of the Plymouth Philharmonic Orchestra and Symphony New Hampshire. Ms. Taylor has a MM in Cello Performance from New England Conservatory, and a BA in Music Performance and Composition from Bennington College, and spent five summers at Kneisel Hall. Ms. Taylor currently teaches for Upbeat New Hampshire and at UMassBoston.
Syllabus/Reading
Before Session 1:
Reading: COMPOSER RANTS: Diatribes from the likes of Beethoven, Debussy, Ives, Schumann.
COMPOSER RANTS.docx – Google Docs
Pick a composer, from Bach to McCartney. (Please let me know who you pick.) It could be someone whose rant piqued your interest, or a composer you love to listen to, or someone who baffles you.
Additional Material:
NYT Walt Distney Igor Stravinsky
Key-characteristics-from-DCM4 (2)
Session 1: History and Composers
Come prepared to talk about your composer’s musical milieu and life situation. What period of music and place and time in history are we talking about? What instruments were available, or not available? What sort of competition did the composer face? Did the composer have patrons, and what were those relationships like? What audience were they composing for and how hard was it to get their work presented to publishers, and/or the general public? What values did they bring to their work? What were they trying to communicate?
Session 2: Melody and Harmony Lab – understanding the composer’s toolbox.
If you were a composer here and now, what would you be seeking? Beauty? Humor? Novelty? Argument?
Based on our conversations, and with your kibitzing, I will build one or two melodies on a music blackboard, using two different approaches. Then we’ll add other “voices” to each melody, and see what happens
Sessions 3 and 4: Living Composers
Composers Paul Sullivan, jazz/classical composer, pianist, and member of the Paul Winter Consort, and Jackson Lardner, funk/jazz/rock composer, guitarist and singer, and co-founder of Stolen Gin, will join us to discuss their paths into music, their hopes and aims, their frustrations, and triumphs, and whatever else you would like to know about them and their work.
▼ Registration
