The study of any creative discipline starts with cultivating a sense of taste. Before one can be a creator, one must first be a connoiseur. The association with the material has to be deep. That is what makes it meaningful and drives that first act of creation. It’s what takes noodling around on a guitar with three chords to writing a concerto. The problem with developing a sense of taste and really going deep with the material is that it makes it very clear that creating things requires skills that must be developed over time. You can really, really love King Crimson and still not be able to put together an album like Discipline. It’s not a great feeling, but it’s one that each composer or artist has in the beginning.
The struggle that follows as we develop as creators is that dersire to mimic what we love. Listening to Lutoslawski’s string quartet was revelatory for me and I tried for a long time to do something like it. I couldn’t, of course, because that’s not who I am and it’s not my voice. Like many, I studied the works that I loved and tried to find patterns. What I found was complexity and a harmonic language that wasn’t my own.
Naturally, I created rules for composing based on what I heard. That seems to make sense. But what to do when something that truly comes from within is in conflict with those rules?
For years I have avoided sitting down to write for the solo guitar because I wanted to do amazing work like Brouwer, Chobanian, or Villa-Lobos. I wanted to be a master composer of contemporary music for the guitar. Sadly, I’ve studied too much. In the Post-Cage world, there is nothing to push against. The composer is floating like an astronaut who gets stranded between the walls of the International Space Station. With nothing to push against, there is no movement.
That’s how I felt for years. But in the past few months, I’ve discovered Yorgos Nousis. I’ve begun studying his Sept Scenes Musicales and something clicked. I went back to the Brouwer etudes. I listened - really listened - for the first time in years. Then I picked up my instrument and began to write. My rules? I did with them what one should do with rules that don’t work: I threw them out. I felt, finally, like I had permission to write in my own voice.
At the moment, I’m in the throes of writing an three (or is it five?) movement piece for solo guitar. The first movement is pretty well finished. There are sketches for the remainder of the work and they are filling themselves in day by day. It feels natural. It could be that at this late date I am finally finding my voice with the instrument. I’m finding the pieces that I was meant to write. Or the ones that I should be writing. It’s a thrilling experience (most of the time). Composition has always been that way for me. It’s the excitement of seeing something come together slowly as I push through the painful and often mundane process of developing the work.
I wish the maestro were still here to see it. I may write something worth sharing yet.