The Fredösphere

Today's post brings you the conclusion of Joshua Shank's take on the creative process and his experience writing a choral piece called Autumn, premiered by the Choral Arts Ensemble, conducted by Dale Warland.  You should read part one if you have not already.  You may also want to view the score and listen to the sound file of the piece.  Joshua, back to you!

The Writing
The hardest part about being a composer is the beginning of the writing process.  Movie composer Hans Zimmer once said that, “The Academy Award would be this amazing thing if, with the Oscar, they gave you the next 4 bars of the tune you have to write…because they are impossible.”  I am extremely inclined to agree with him.  I never know where to start but, in this case, I just picked a key phrase to ruminate on: “the leaves are falling.”  During a vacation to the Dominican Republic over New Year’s (in which I intentionally didn't take any staff paper), I came up with the initial motive.

Composer Eric Whitacre calls this initial motive the “primer”:

The primer teaches the audience everything that’s going to happen.  In that moment is encapsulated the entire piece as a microcosm of everything you need to know.  There’s the tonal language, the pace of the piece and the architecture that I’ll be using over and over again.

For me, writing this “primer” is much like how an archaeologist unearths the first bone of what will eventually be a complete skeleton of some mammoth, prehistoric thing.  I feel like the whole piece is already there and that I just have to uncover it.  As a matter of fact, I don’t often feel like I’m 100% involved in my own composition because it doesn’t seem as if there’s much conscious thought or decision-making going into the process until very late in the game when all these little pieces get sewn up into a cohesive whole.  This could be because I usually have a text to hang onto but I have the feeling it has more to do with how I go about composition.
 
There’s a quote I love from Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham that goes:  “Music is a means of expression that rings truer and is more connected to things inside than speech.” 

Overtone genius David Hykes puts it another way:  “Every so often in life, one is struck by something that has the ‘ring of truth.’  I think we need to know how to listen for that ‘ring,’ how to hear what life is trying to tell us.”

I think these 2 quotes are probably my mantras.  I truly believe that music is a means of expression that can’t be substituted by anything else and I believe that, in composition, truth should always win out over flashy and dramatic writing that smacks of an upturned nose (not that truthful pieces can’t have these things or that people with upturned noses can’t be nice).  I try not to over think my composition and instead just try to let it be truthful and honest.  Everything the piece needs is contained right there within the text.  It’s a simplistic approach I know—but it seems to work out okay for me.  Consequently, my music is never ambiguous or subtle—you always know exactly what I was trying to get across.

During the time I was writing this piece I was actually between jobs in the truest sense of the term.  I had just finished student teaching and had been living the life of a nightshift gypsy stocking shelves from 3am-11am at a local grocery store.  That job was over with and I was waiting for a maternity leave teaching job to enter the “maternity” phase of the whole process.  So my internal clock was thrown pretty much out of whack and I would write whenever I was up and had the wherewithal to do it.  One of the few moments that I remember in writing Autumn was getting a call from my dad around noon one day saying he had met some “Anton guy” from St. Olaf College who knew who his son was.  (Note: in the choral world my dad sometimes seems to think I’m some sort of celebrity…which I most definitely am not.)  Another moment which sticks out in my mind was writing measures 25-27—I just remember being very moved by the chords that fell under my hands.  Not because they were so good, but because they just seemed to have so much genuine emotion tied up in notes and words.

The End…or is it?
When I finish a piece and send it off to the choir there is much rejoicing in the Shank household.  This usually means I have a beer and go to a fast food restaurant as a treat after throwing the piece in the mail.  (This isn’t the romanticized, upper-crust intellectual way we like to think of composers but man cannot live by martinis and fine wines alone.)  There is a certain ring of finality to this part of composition and a colossal feeling of satisfaction.  However, Autumn was not to be wrestled into submission so easily.

As a member of the choir I had resigned myself to the complete and utter awkwardness of singing my own piece.  It sounds simple but let’s think about this for a second: what if I wrote a monumental clunker?  I would have to sit there and endure my sh*tty piece being sung by a marvelous choir who probably knew it sucked.  In my favor I had the fact that the last couple of commissions had, indeed, been clunkers (one was for choir with electronic, 70s-style synthesizers a-lá Styx and the other was a “Christmas carol” about death which contained some really corny “choralography”).  Not in my favor were a few measures of my piece that had 11 parts in them.  But we got through it and the choir loved the work.  However, Autumn was not to be wrestled into submission so easily. (Note: This phrase is repeated from the last paragraph for comedic effect.)

A week before the first rehearsal I got a call from music director Bob Giere asking me if I would like to prepare the choir on my piece for our guest conductor…Dale Warland!  Obviously I said yes but I have never, ever, ever, ever been so nervous or stressed out in my entire life.  In the end I had a great time and Dr. Warland was extremely gracious and humble when he finally took up the reigns.

The piece was premiered to tumultuous, warm applause (a huge ‘thank you’ to the wonderful people who attend Choral Arts Ensemble concerts—they are simply the best) and I literally had a full glass of champagne for the entire after-party due to many, many nice people who were feeling congratulatory and found out I already had a ride home.  The piece went to my publisher as soon as I got the recording and it was released shortly thereafter.  The CAE’s premiere performance will even be featured on Santa Barbara’s latest promotional CD, Octavos 8.

Conclusion
What I got out of this whole process was two-fold:
1.    I achieved a heightened sense of musical satisfaction due my piece being performed by a top-shelf choir under a legendary conductor.
2.    I received money.

Wow!  Joshua ended his essay with the M word.  As someone who does live by martinis and fine wines alone, I sometimes forget that for many people, the green stuff makes a difference.

Thank you, Joshua for putting your thoughts together.  My entire readership is grateful to you -- I know this for a fact, because both of them told me they were.  Best of luck to you, my friend.