The Fredösphere

Freedom From Greatness.  My friend Dave (a fellow amateur composer) and I like to talk about what we call the Masterpiece Syndrome.  He and I are always dreaming of writing that one bold, visionary piece of music that will make the whole world fall to its knees in awe.  What an inspiration killer.  It makes an artist extremely peevish.  Under its spell, I sit at the piano, staring at the keys for minutes, then finally play a single note.  "F-sharp," I sigh, "what a cliché!"

Freedom From Complexity.  The Kwest for Komplexity is a disease closely related to the Masterpiece Syndrome.  Whenever I find myself thinking "...and then here I will put two minutes of really sophisticated, really complicated stuff that will be real impressive..." I know I'm in trouble.  What will follow is an hour of throwing notes at the computer monitor to see which ones stick, followed in turn by a playback session that reveals a big shapeless blob of soulless nonsense.  Heed this warning:  do not compose this way.  It is a waste of time.

Frankly, I blame the Rite of Spring for this.  Now, its not Stravinsky's fault; anyone able to seize the chance to write a revolutionary work like that would be crazy not to.  But that piece imposes a heavy burden on the rest of us:  don't try to copy it.  Don't even let it influence you, certainly not in any of the obvious ways.  Sadly, many have not resisted that temptation; many Rongs of Spring have been spawned to no effect other than to confuse and frustrate poor, innocent audiences who never hurt anybody.

Writing for the members of my church saves me from this.  I expect they will be the canonical group of alert, intellegent, and sympathetic listeners who are nevertheless not up on the latest trends in high brow music and not interested in being schooled in them, certainly not while they are sitting in church.

Freedom From Eternity.  A recurring theme of Michael Blowhard's blogging is the way commercial motivations improve certain artists' work.  Working to please someone else imposes a certain discipline that is lost when one has complete artistic freedom.  (See also Masterpiece Complex.)  A related benefit to working for others is that ol' debbil:  the deadline.  I'm spending a heck of a lot more time lately on writing music than usual; hey, I've got a lot of pipe to lay between now and mid-January.  Not only is it good for getting the thing actually written, but that concentration of effort into a shorter span of time is a quality booster as well.  Ideas don't get forgotten when the gaps between composing sessions are fewer, and the overall vision for the work will have less time to drift.

Freedom From Rumination.  This is related to Freedom From Eternity.  Over the summer, I had two texts picked out for choral works.  I loved those poems, and spent a lot of time thinking about how to set them, but for various reasons I delayed in getting down to business.  The result was I became bored with those projects before getting to the stage of, you know, actually writing notes on the page.  What a disaster.  Those texts may be permanently ruined for me.

With this new project, I spent just about one week organizing my text and letting musical themes play in my head before putting the quill to parchment.  Muuuuuuch better.