I began writing extended themes and then connecting thematic statements with episodes, as in a Bach fugue. A “section” — perceived by the listener as such, with a beginning and an ending — took concrete shape and might last a minute or two, perhaps even longer. Now, a la Minimalism, I’d repeat it, but develop it with additive/subtractive techniques throughout, retaining its original melodic contour. To animate it and give the music the feel of a dance, I used a three- or four-voice contrapuntal texture; to more clearly demarcate the sections, I gave each its own instrumentation.
In my more recent pieces, I’ve loosened the reins, so to speak, and incorporated other, more wide-ranging compositional approaches. But I’m sure I’ll stay a Minimalist at heart, and I’ll gladly invite listeners into my soundworld, wherever they may be.
NOTES FROM ABOVE GROUND
Bach and Progressive Rock were the earliest building blocks of my music. Bach — the greatest of all composers — gave me a love of counterpoint and the exquisite dissonances that imbue his music with profound spirituality. The masters of Prog gave me a reason to love rock for something other than its mastery of song form and its relevance as a social movement.
But it was Minimalism, mainly Glass and Reich but also Riley, Monk, Young and others less well known, that conquered my heart and mind as a young composer. I look back with nostalgia to the 70s, when my friends and I were entranced by the new amplified avant-garde music that filled the airwaves. Glass was my main model. His masterpieces that decade became part of my musical DNA: Einstein on the Beach, North Star, Music in Twelve Parts, Another Look at Harmony, Dances 1-5. My favorite was Music with Changing Parts, which to my mind vied with all other works, the Rite of Spring included, for greatest piece of the 20th century.
The music was great, but also presented a great problem (a problem faced by all composers): How do I find my own voice?
I wrestled with that question for many years. What I emerged with in the early 2000s was not a new language — I was born too late after the genre’s advent for that — but a rearrangement, a reconfiguring of its elements. I took as my starting point the basic unit of Minimalism, the short, repeating module, a “loop” in today’s parlance. While meditating on the module like a mantra, it occurred to me to radically change it, to expand it beyond recognition, and then subject it to the same processes which Minimalist composers used to develop their pieces.
In Last Pages, I used additive techniques to develop a long, almost through-composed melodic line, an attempt at marrying Minimalism with narrative form. I animated the texture with imitation in four voices, and varied it with alternative instrumentation between the sections.