LONDON — They had rehearsed the piece only once, but already the musicians at the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra were suffering. Their ears were ringing. Heads throbbed.

Tests showed that the average noise level in the orchestra during the piece, “State of Siege,” by the composer Dror Feiler, was 97.4 decibels, just below the level of a pneumatic drill and a violation of new European noise-at-work limits. Playing more softly or wearing noise-muffling headphones were rejected as unworkable.

So instead of having its world premiere on April 4, the piece was dropped. “I had no choice,” said Trygve Nordwall, the orchestra’s manager. “The decision was not made artistically; it was made for the protection of the players.”

“Composers should bear in mind that they are dealing with people who are alive, and not machines,” said Mr. Nordwall of the Bavarian orchestra.

(From Sarah Lyall’s article “No Fortissimo? Symphony Told to Keep It Down” in today’s New York Times.)

It does not take much imagination to realize that if these new European Union regulations were in place in May of 1913, some orchestra manager would have told Stravinsky that the decision to cut Le Sacre du printemps was not made artistically, but rather for the protection of the players. On the bright side, it would have prevented a riot and saved the Paris police the trouble of heading down to the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.

That’s not really the point though because anyone who knew about these new laws could see this coming from miles away. What really caught my eye was the irony in the comments of Mr. Nordwall. It’s funny that he would presume to advise composers on the nature of life and death as it relates to the performance of classical music. The program for his orchestra’s concert this coming Thursday:

Johannes Brahms: Variations on a Theme by Franz Joseph Haydn op. 56a
Alban Berg: Three Pieces for Orchestra op. 6
Pyotr Ilyitch Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 in B minor op. 74 “Pathétique”

Under normal circumstances, I would say that it looks to be a fun program and one that I would be happy to attend. Unfortunately, after Mr. Nordwall’s comments and because I have no problem recognizing the difference between musicians who are alive and those who are not, all I can see on that program is 1897, 1935, and 1893.

I received an interesting and fun email from a former student of mine who is now studying composition at a “big” school. Everything seems to be going well and I was interested to hear about all of the exciting developments (re-living vicariously, as it were) in this person’s young career. I was also asked the following question (and I paraphrase):

What are your thoughts on the struggle between academic atonal and tonal music?

I think it’s safe to say that most creative people have been there and done that to the point where there are books, articles, and countless blogs dedicated to this subject. Some of those blogs are even linked on this page so this entry will represent my (very) quick and (embarassingly) brief answer.

I remember telling this student, in their first lessson, to “write whatever comes to mind, regardless of key and rhythm” and even encouraged the student to intentionally avoid tonal music! At the time, I was never thinking about these deep philosophical issues or about tonality versus atonality. I just knew that this student was writing very square, very boring, and very C Major music and that I needed to push the student outside of their comfort zone. I was operating in my post-student belief system that the true dichotomy is actually between well-crafted music and everything else.

Looking back, I planted the seed for the current identity crisis! But despite what the more cynical readers might believe, it wasn’t intentional. I wanted to push this student outside of their comfort zone and teach them the first of many new ideas to add to their compositional “bag of tricks” not indoctrinate them in the “Church of Modernism.”

In the end, I think this “struggle” in the minds of young composers is a very healthy and normal and part of the growth for a creative artist. At some point in each of our lives we should be wrestling with this issue and the fact that it typically comes in the safe and forgiving environment of school is a good thing and hardly surprising. The constant exchange of ideas in the university setting can be dizzying, and in my own experience, confusing. This is the time when you have to face these issues and make the decisions that will lead you to be a composer or perhaps down a different path.

In my own experience, after leaving the “womb of studenthood,” I took about 6 months where I didn’t write a note of music, or really even think about writing music. I did some teaching, I traveled a bit, and generally recharged my creative soul. When I did return to composing, I found that I felt both liberated by not having to meet with someone to judge my music each week and also a bit frightened to have lost the security net of a teacher. However, I now know that this transition from student to a composer trying to write the music that speaks to my own aesthetic has been the biggest revelation of my professional life. I am now writing MY music and I can draw on many learned techniques from Beethoven to Berio to bebop and I’m a better composer for it.

Of course, it took me a very long time to learn this for myself, perhaps so long that it resulted in an advanced degree in composition, for better or worse.

Tonight the Smoky Mountain Brass Quintet will be performing my work Persistent Echoes in the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. Though the work is relatively short (ca. 7′) I am fairly happy with it and wish that I could be there. However, I made the decision to be with my wife and her family during the only extended travel window that we have and unfortunately it coincides with this concert.

My best wishes to the SMBQ for a successful concert and my sincere thanks to them for their decision to program my work. If you happen to be in the city, the performance starts at 8:00 p.m.

I am five days too late with this entry but last Thursday marked exactly two years since Lubomir Georgiev passed away after an extended battle with cancer. He was a noted cellist, a successful part-time composer, and my wife’s primary professor during her tenure at Florida State. He was an interesting man (and anyone who knew him knows precisely what I mean) and his musical instinct was second to none. Most importantly, despite his rather odd beliefs on a variety of sensitive topics, we considered him a friend.

I have been thinking about Lubo a lot the past couple of days, especially about some of the more interesting thoughts about music and advice about composing that he shared with me during our brief acquaintance. He had some very strong opinions, and I have been trying to visualize our conversations in an effort to remember some of the more influential, or at least, amusing anecdotes.

As a member of my doctoral committee, he seemed unnecessarily nitpicky about the tempo markings in the piece I wrote as part of my dissertation. At the time, I was stressed, under a monumental deadline and growing more and more intransigent that what I had written was already good enough. In retrospect however, his comments made me rethink the piece and was a valuable lesson in how to use tempo and tempo markings to help create the best music and reflected by the most accurate and powerful performance. (A lesson that has been ongoing for my entire career as a composer and one that I anticipate will continue until I am no longer writing.)

My favorite Lubo memory is of a comment he made to me regarding the use of tremolo when writing for strings. As clearly as if it were yesterday, I remember him telling me that: “Tremolos are the mark of a lazy composer.” While this is of course an overstatement (in typical Georgiev fashion), I understand what he was trying to communicate and to this day pause whenever I consider using orchestration to mask or improve a bad idea. This impulse has caused me to rewrite and very often, considerably improve poorly written or poorly conceived music.

It seems simple to say, but knowing that easy path does not always lead to the best results is not always the easiest lesson to learn. Now if I can just figure out when to “keep it simple, stupid” and when to challenge myself to forge ahead through difficult compositional problems, I will have cleared a major hurdle in my own career. I suspect it will be many more years before I can divorce myself enough from my own process to know the answer to this question but I am certain that I am a better musician and composer for having known Lubomir Georgiev.

My thoughts go out to his friends and family two years after his passing.

На здраве Любо!

I really enjoy cooking. I find that the process is similar to composition in several ways: First, success requires a bit of creativity tempered by a great deal of practice and experience. Second, some meals and recipes come out exceptionally well while others are just lousy. Also, it is very important to have a clear plan and a firm goal in mind. Finally, there are just some ingredients and recipes that I simply do not like and will not use. Serialism and mushrooms are both items on my respective blacklists, though I’m perfectly happy with, and very fond of, dissonance and garlic, both in moderation.

Every year I make a typical “American” meal for Marta’s family. Last year I made chili and apple pie, this year I made meatloaf and apple cobbler. The meal was (fortunately) quite successful and the meatloaf was particularly well received. I had to convince everyone to at least try ketchup as a condiment before turning to the local tomato and pepper spread (lutenitsa) but I have to say that it worked well with the ubiquitous feta cheese that is typical of the cuisine of this region.

I have no idea what to make for the entrée next time, but I do know that I will be making cherry pie for the dessert. If you have a suggestion, (No hamburgers or hot dogs please, they do barbecue and sausage far better than Americans do!) please let me know.

Kitsch is good, in small doses. For example, I really like Cape Cod kitsch, but dislike “Wild West” and Native American kitsch (and if you’ve ever been to Cherokee, North Carolina, you know precisely what I mean!) I’m not a big fan of the Valentine’s Day excess, but actually do quite like the Easter Bunny nonsense.

One of the things I like about our little apartment in Burgas is that when we first moved into the place a few years ago, Marta’s parents left us some shelves in the kitchen filled with a bunch of kitschy items. The coffee mugs are particularly goofy, but they are now an integral part of our annual month living here and I can’t imagine taking them down.

To keep this blog somewhat on course, I will say that occasionally there are one or two bad (or clichéd) ideas that stubbornly manage to remain in my music simply because familiarity had made these passages less objectionable (sort of like dodecaphony.) I wonder if this is what happened to Smetana at the end of Vltava and that perfect (-ly kitschy) authentic cadence that punctuates the end of that piece…

We have arrived safely in Budapest and will spend the next three days with my brother, sister-in-law, and niece before moving on to Bulgaria and a month with Marta’s family. The trip was relatively uneventful, but I will admit that one of the three landings had me scared witless. That happens from time to time.

In music related news, I was reading the “Weekend Journal” section of the Wall Street Journal Europe and came across an interesting article about digital orchestras and their growing influence in the classical music world. The article focused on Paul Henry Smith, the founder of the Fauxharmonic Orchestra and an advocate of creating digital music that is truly a realistic and artistic interpretation of the score.

When I was younger, I would have railed against Mr. Smith’s work and bemoaned it’s potential for destroying the livelihood of myself and particularly my performing colleagues. However, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve had a change of heart regarding this topic and now see virtual orchestras as yet another venue that creates the opportunity for the spread of classical concert music. I also fully understand that the world is constantly evolving and that classical music has survived greater catastrophe than the advent of digital music and will continue as an important part of the musical landscape. There are important drawbacks to this technology, such as the use of digital renditions of scores in lieu of pit orchestras and live musicians (particularly in London’s West End) as well as the loss of gigs for studio musicians. These are valid concerns, and could potentially be a tragic side effect of computerized performance, but as I mentioned before, I believe that evolution is natural and sometimes painful and unless there is a general audience revolt that manifests itself in a loss of profit, I don’t see the trend reversing itself.

A snippet from the article addresses this concern and I find Smith’s response to be fairly well-measured given the vitriol of the personal attack left on his website:

For Mr. Smith, this [Beethoven’s No. 7] will be a work of art. But that clearly isn’t the view of the person who put an anonymous posting on Mr. Smith’s Web site: “This man is evil. This project is evil. Die in hell.” Mr. Smith responds that the advance of computerized music is inevitable, and that musicians are better off taking control of it than leaving it in the hands of producers and executives.

I have to admit that I submitted an entry to their recent composition contest, which was a call for works for string orchestra that evoke the pathos of Samuel Barber’s famous Adagio. The winner of the competition wins a cash award, a digital recording and a performance of the work by the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra. I felt a twinge of guilt at the moment of submission, but the potential for a live performance and the opportunity to be named the “Master of Melancholy” was simply impossible to ignore. (What artist could resist this potential moniker?)

Does that make me a hypocrite or enemy of live music? I do not believe so, as I firmly believe that nothing can replace the experience and emotive power of a live performance and I honestly (and optimistically) foresee a future where live music and technology can co-exist, providing wider opportunities for the art that I love as well as maintaining the important tradition of live performance.

I’m sure that this post will generate some response from my readers and I’m especially interested in hearing from the performers who read this blog. What are your feelings? Do you agree with Johan Schodl, the Austrian musician who recorded trombone samples for the Vienna Symphonic Library and doesn’t see it as a threat to his livelihood, or do you see computerized performance as a legitimate threat to live music?

I have known for quite some time that the Smoky Mountain Brass Quintet was considering performing the work I wrote for them last spring during their upcoming performance at Carnegie Hall. In a recent conversation with one of the members of the quintet, it was confirmed that they are still planning to have it on the program that they will play on June 8th. Unless the program changes (and that is certainly possible), this will be my first New York performance. Unfortunately, I will be in Europe at the time and will miss the concert.

This is a great bit of news for my family and a talking point for my father, who like any father, loves to talk about his children’s accomplishements, but I am am a bit underwhelmed by the entire situation. I’m very flattered that they (SMBQ) enjoyed the piece enough to keep it in their books for this tour, especially since I have been away from Western for almost a year. I am also always pleased to see my music performed, but for some reason, and most likely because I will not be able to be in attendance, I am just having a hard time being enthusiastic about this opportunity. I just have this detached feeling about the performance, and that is a bit frustrating. Maybe if anyone is in New York at the time and makes it out to hear it (Jim?) then I can live vicariously through your account of the performance.

I think I’m going to call one of the guys from the quintet just to chat, that ought to get me fired up again!

Like many musicians, I try to visit the New York Times’ Arts and Music page a couple of times a week and read all of the contemporary music articles as well as any other items of interest that seem interesting at the time. For the most part, I find the headlines are relatively benign and rarely engender much reaction, but I have to say that the following headline made me laugh out loud.

The “humble” trombone?

One other item of note that I caught this week was the article about the premiere of David N. Baker’s Concertino for Cellular Phones and Symphony Orchestra. I am certain that many, many composers have had this idea, and I can remember talking about it with a few friends several years ago at a new music festival, so when I first read the review I gave myself a little mental kick. I doubt that I would have ever written a work for cellphones, but it is always good to remind myself that every idea, no matter how frivolous it seems, deserves at least a cursory examination.

Congratulations to Dr. Baker for the premiere and to Paul Freeman and the Chicago Sinfonietta for the courage to commission and program such a work! I bet it was great fun for the audience and a memorable night.

The premiere of the brass quintet went well and judging by the positive feedback, the audience really enjoyed my piece. It’s a very unnerving experience for me to listen to my music for the first time because all I can think about are the things that I’d like to fix. However, since I have several performances coming up in the near future and an ensemble willing to try some changes this is an ideal opportunity to tinker with a few spots. It shouldn’t be much work since I feel most of the music is just fine.

I received an interesting comment from an emeritus faculty and his wife after the concert. I hadn’t met this couple before, but they introduced themselves and we began talking about the work and I was eventually asked about my “main” instrument. I told them that I started my career with the trumpet and they then remarked that they had guessed that I was a brass player. I found that mildly amusing, and somewhat disturbing, because I’ve intentionally avoided writing for brass for that very reason. I don’t want to pigeon-hole my compositions into one genre (or at least not yet) but it is interesting that even after years away from being an active performer, I still have a pretty good feel for brass writing. In retrospect, it was nice to get back to my roots and it looks like there is at least one more brass work in the near future, as the trumpet professor here has asked me to write a short work for his trumpet ensemble to perform at the next ITG festival. It’s an opportunity that I can’t refuse.

A happy corollary effect of writing the quintet is that I’ve picked up my horn again and have been putting some time in every day in an effort to get my chops to a reasonably respectable level. At this moment I don’t really foresee putting in the hours to actually perform, but perhaps something will come along and I can actually sit behind the stand again rather than just sitting on the sidelines handing out my own music. I feel good about it, no matter what the result.