Stravinsky was once asked “What do you say to someone that wants to be a composer?". The reply: “You cannot want...you must be."

Ah...Inscrutable Igor. Great. Thanks.

OK....so what did he mean by that?!

To me, he meant: Just do it.

"Only the doer learns."
-Nietzsche. Thus Spake Zarathustra, 4th part

The legendary awful singer Florence Foster Jenkins once said; maybe I can't sing, but nobody can say I didn’t sing."

I had dinner yesterday with Robert Ward, now 93. As you may know, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his opera The Crucible and now lives in Durham. I asked him what he would say to a young person who was interested in composing. He then mentioned the good advice he had received from Aaron Copland:

"Write a melodic line that you like. Make it as long as you can...keep spinning it out. Don't be too self-critical. Write." This is great advice. I have always felt that unless you push through to the very crucial bars five and nine you will never regain the initial energy and atmosphere of the original inspiration. The first four bars are always easy. Getting to bar five is more difficult, but once you have developed the second part of the first phrase the next few bars come relatively easily. Ditto bar nine, etc.

Sondheim has also warned about being excessively self-conscious during this first phase. Too many good first ideas are premature victims of the waste basket if the perfectionist instinct is allowed to dominate too soon. Do not throw out the baby with the bath water.

Heed Shakespeare's injunction from the famous" To be or not to be" speech from "Hamlet," Act 3, Scene1:

Copland suggests that once the melody pleases you during that first sitting, walk away from it. Sleep on it (my favorite part).Come back to it the next day. Edit, prune, add. At this stage, self-criticism is all-important. Copland would often chide his student David Diamond by saying, “the problem is that you are not choosy enough!"

After editing, start adding on the harmony and bass line. I can't stress enough the importance in tonal music of the bass line. You will learn on your own when the bass should be in root position or 6/4, etc. As Brahms believed, if the melody and the bass are right the piece is already a long way along to being completely right.

I also asked Ward about the most famous musical composition teacher of the 20th century, Nadia Boulanger. Her students included Copland, Piston, Harris, Thomson, Carter, Quincy Jones, Phillip Glass, Joe Raposo, Piazolla and Ned Rorem, who called her “the most influential teacher since Socrates." Ward knew those first five composers and they all said that she stressed creating a "line of tension"—the quasi-narrative “flow" of a piece. Periods of calm that alternate with more dynamic periods. .Music should always seem to be on the move...going somewhere...saying SOMETHING. Of course, the static but evolving structures of strict minimalism were something she did not live to experience.

(For some) the importance of a hidden or overt narrative
I'm reminded of Richard Strauss saying; “everything after Beethoven's "Eroica" is program music." As a composer, he needed the literary element for his foundation. And yet, as the master of the tone poem form, he knew that the literary structure must always be secondary to the musical structure. "Also Sprach Zarathustra" is first and foremost a logical, tightly-conceived piece of abstract music.

Britten said that he thought of the structure first. "Then all I have to do,” he said, “is find the right pitches."

I am incapable of writing a large-scale piece unless I have a definite atmosphere, mood or story in mind. There will be no pieces coming from me with titles like Sonata for Bassoon or "Extensions for Orchestra."

Boulanger's "The Line of Tension"
Think of the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. If you were to outline the moments of tension using a line and graph paper, most of the peaks would be the loud sections. But not all. Think of the terribilita of that predominantly quiet passage in the development (bars 215-239) where the fearful tension is just as powerful and ominous as in the loudest passages.

Ward mentioned that during his time at The Juilliard School of Music, young composers were encouraged to begin by using the familiar tried-and-true forms—sonata and theme and variation. I approve of this. Everything I have written uses elements from both forms. Using a pre-existing form can help you conquer the fear of the empty page.

Originality
Yes, it's important to be original. However, it makes no sense to search for your unique voice before you fully appreciate the value of the musical systems that worked so well for Haydn through Schoenberg and beyond. I do like the saying, "If it is not original it is redundant." But how original does a work have to be?! It can be too original. If it is 100% original, like a newly created language, it will be incomprehensible to all except the creator. Maybe Gershwin had it right when he handed the manuscript of Act 1 of Porgy and Bess to the copyist and said; "If it's 30% original, that will be enough. “Patience. The original stuff “comes of its own accord. Or after the third charge of plagiarism.

Sonata form with two themes
How are the themes different? How are they the same? How do they interact with each other through the three major sections? Notice what Beethoven did in the opening movement of the Fifth Symphony.

Theme and variation form
Schoenberg worshipped Brahms's inventiveness and the sheer variety he was capable of in this form. Study Brahms’s Haydn Variations. It's a great way to teach yourself organic thought in music.

Musical Architecture
Like that of a building, the architecture of a piece is not always seen, but it is there. It has to be there in order for the structure to stand and for the work to hold together.

T ‘is the Gift to be Simple
Copland said, "The piece should seem to be composing itself." Meaning: keep it natural, keep it organic, keep it simple.

Paraphrasing Copland: Anyone can write a three-minute piece. Large-scale pieces can consist of many three-minute passages, but the result must not sound like be a crazy quilt of musical patches.

"God is throwing down from heaven musical mosaics to me. It is up to me to assemble them.” --Sibelius

Faith and Devotion
Optimism and hard work are rewarded. Be excited by both your first discoveries and first drafts....and 49th draft.

You Will Learn a Lot
You will learn the meaning of genius. Do not become disheartened. The talented Humperdinck has one opera in the permanent standard repertoire. The genius Berlioz has none.

You will learn the veracity of Edison's credo, “Invention is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration."

Your feelings for the various musical intervals will become sharper and deeper. As Nielsen said, “One must be taught to regard a melodic third as a gift of God, a fourth as an experience and a fifth as the supreme bliss."

As a conductor, you will learn where you can be flexible and where you must be strict when you are interpreting the music of the Masters.

The Ultimate Reward
You just might write something good.

It could happen.

Write on!