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...]
Archives for August 2017
Appropriate Appropriation
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...]
Respect
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...]
Sunrise, Sunset and Subjective Connections
Can we name a universal aesthetic experience, one that all peoples around the globe have encountered from the beginning of humanity to the present? Probably not. But if we wanted to come close, we could do worse than the daily occurrences of sunrise and sunset. The size of the sun, the colors that surround it, the length of the shadows that engulf us as we watch: how many trillions of times … [Read more...]