Becoming-Composer

BECOMING-COMPOSER BRIAN HULSE The process of self-creation is the transformation of the potential into the actual, and the fact of such transformation includes the immediacy of selfenjoyment .1 —Alfred North Whitehead Appreciate how rare and full of potential your situation is in this world, take joy in it, and use it to your best advantage.2 —The Fourteenth Dalai Lama HIS ESSAY CONCERNS THE RAPIDLY CHANGING FIELD of composition and what this means for composers aspiring to make their way in it.3 I say “the” field of composition, as if it were a unified whole, which it is not, and as if I presupposed that the term composition itself belonged firstly to the loose collection of professionals who would be inclined to read this journal, which I do not. However, my thoughts are directed at this latter group even though the word “composition” is problematic and contestable (considering the number of traditions and cultural practices who may rightly lay claim to the term, and especially the wealth of intercultural connections, references, and influences T 220 Perspectives of New Music one would not be surprised to hear on a given new music concert). That is not to say I think composition is an outmoded term, but rather what the term refers to needs rethinking. For example, there are an increasing number of composers who present their works at so-called new music concerts and yet who do not identify with the Western classical tradition, or not primarily; whose musical-cultural referents are elsewhere. Even in the most venerable institutions the practice of composition can no longer be considered synonymous with the idea of a “vanguard” of Western classical music. There are many more musical traditions from around the world that feed into today’s new music than what is more or less known as the Western canon. And of course this has long been so to a degree. But I daresay that some kind of tipping point has been reached where a growing global network of composers may claim any number of backgrounds or practices or traditions . It is hard to escape the conclusion that composition should no longer be identified with or claimed by any one of them, but by all of them (for our goal cannot be to supersede or oppose traditional musical practices—we need these and the world needs these to thrive. We are artist-nomads, not colonists.) Composer Samuel Adler made the point in a recent interview that “we belong to a tradition, not the tradition.”4 That’s a significant acknowledgement. For of course other traditions have long been known to exist by practitioners of Western classical music. To go further to concede that these traditions are equally valid is, historically speaking, a change. Make no mistake, this is just as much a matter of selfaffirmation and preservation as it is a more liberal attitude toward other musical cultures. Adler is a traditionalist. He is closely linked to the influx of German expressionists to the U.S. in the early and mid twentieth century—who practiced (and many of their students continue to practice) a renowned and rigorous musical tradition. This is to be celebrated and treasured. And composers who belong to this tradition and who intend to foster it rightfully belong at the table with every other practitioner of what I see to be an emerging world composition practice—a practice without a ruling genre but rather one with the capacity to engage any genre or combination of genres. With the above in mind I’d like to address the emerging, “globallyminded ” composers of today, particularly those who study or have studied in traditional Western academic environments. My topics include: 1) issues of composition pedagogy and technique; 2) some of the attitudes and challenges facing emerging composers (including a discussion of some of the results of an anonymous survey I administered at the 2012 edition of the soundSCAPE Festival);5 and 3) larger Becoming-Composer 221 questions about the cultural and artistic significance of “becomingcomposer ” in the twenty-first century. I’ll start with this question: what does it mean to teach—and learn— the craft of composition, especially in light...