Archives for 2017

Vijay Iyer’s music occupies a fascinating terrain.  It’s a world that emanates from a lifetime of improvisation and a multilayered approach to the passage of time.  It’s also music that reflects its creator’s quiet defiance of unexamined assumptions of the Western Classical tradition. Every fall, our Composition Department chooses a single living composer to focus on, studying several scores, … [Read more...]

For as long as there have been machines, I suppose, the question has been asked: Can Machines Make Art?  With the exponential growth of artificial intelligence this century, the topic is discussed with increasing frequency.  It’s an interesting question, but there is a supplementary question that I find even more interesting:  How Much Do We Care About Machine-Made Art?  To me, there are at least … [Read more...]

I’ve had this happen to me before. My head is always whirling with music.  For a long time, I assumed that was true for everyone, but it’s really one of those phenomena we can describe to one another without ever being sure we are experiencing the same thing. What I constantly hear is sounds combining and recombining, heading off in simultaneous different directions, merging together again … [Read more...]

I write music for three reasons that I can name, though there may be others that elude me.  These three reasons jockey with one another for primacy from one work to the next, and sometimes within one work. The first, though not necessarily the most important (just, I think, the most obvious), is to communicate with others.  When I say it’s not necessarily the most important, I have to qualify … [Read more...]

When I was an undergrad, I was taught the concept of masculine and feminine cadences.  It went like this: masculine cadences resolve on the strong beat; feminine cadences resolve on the weak beat. I have no idea if this nomenclature is used by anyone anymore.  It probably is, because so many things survive longer than one would think necessary or possible. The underlying implication of … [Read more...]

Opera lovers can be forgiven for imagining the works they love were born in a flash of inspiration.  Sometimes the journey is a bit more arduous. The UNCSA Composition Department met with Jennifer Higdon via Skype on September 20th to talk about her opera Cold Mountain.  We got the two things we had hoped for: a rich and detailed rundown of the eleven-year process from conception to premiere, … [Read more...]

We’ve got a packed fall season in the Composition Department of the UNC School of the Arts.  For those who aren’t familiar with it, this is a campus of about 1200 students, all artists, from high school through graduate school.  Our composers have a ridiculous number of opportunities to write absolute music, music for film, for dance, for theater, installations – whatever they want to dive into, … [Read more...]

A few months ago, I wrote about the music that concludes the film A Quiet Passion, and that brought to mind one of the most frustrating endings, musically speaking, that I’ve experienced in a film score. It was ten years ago; the film was There Will Be Blood.  Justly celebrated as one of the most amazing films of the 21st century, it features an award-winning score by Jonny Greenwood.  Much of … [Read more...]

Never been the kind of composer who slows way down during the academic year and then composes like crazy in the summer, but that seems to have changed this year.  I’ve been blasting out music the last three months like nobody's business, and all in pairs: two sextets, two quintets, two large ensemble pieces, two songs. After fifty years of doing it, I’m still always amazed at how quickly … [Read more...]

I co-led an hour-long seminar this summer on the business side of being a composer.  We covered a lot of topics: commissions, publication, recordings -- the works. At one point, I mentioned what a small world it is, despite appearances.  We keep running into the same people over and over in different contexts, and the way you treat people when you are young will almost certainly have an impact … [Read more...]