Why I Compose (Part 4)

Composition is largely a collaborative art. Many times have I "finished" a piece, only to discover in rehearsal with musicians that the piece was not nearly complete. Tampering with the score during rehearsal can be very fruitful, and it is a large part of the composition process. This is something I am still learning about. For my recent rehearsal of a flute and bassoon duet, the bassoonist helped me realize that what I had written, some really high notes for bassoon, was possible but not practical. Just by transposing those notes down an octave, I was able to achieve the sound that I wanted in the first place. I realized that for bassoon, the melody certainly worked and sounded much more fitting in the lower register. Also, being a composer requires a lot of patience, not to mention bravery. Musicians aren't the easiest group of people to work with, and sometimes if you don't know every single nook and cranny of their precious instruments BEWARE.
Delving further into the curious question of the creative process, I began to discover more evidence of this yearning to comprehend ourselves through art. In her eloquent essay entitled, "Living Like Weasels", Annie Dillard introduces the concept of the path of "necessity." "The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn't "attack" anything: a weasel lives as he's meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity" (213). Dillard uses the metaphor of the weasel in order to represent not only the life of the wild, but also to demonstrate to the reader that one must follow what he/she loves, and never feel tempted to stray from that path. There have been times when I questioned whether classical music writing was really practical in the high tech world of the 21st century. But after careful thought on my own part, I came to the conclusion that whether or not my music may be practical to the average naysayer, I nevertheless feel obligated to "stalk my calling in a certain skilled and supple way." I feel it is my duty to adhere to what nature has bestowed upon me, and never forget that in my case, music is the one "necessity" that I must yield to, no matter how economically fruitless it may be.