Professional Development

A little history...

I began this blog over three years ago after losing my day-job. At the time I thought it would be good to record my activities, thoughts, and impressions in a format that resembled a diary – only online and available to friends, family, and anyone who cared enough to read it. As the blog progressed my primary area of focus morphed into an open-ended discussion about my thoughts on music and other random rants of the day. My semi-frequent posts have tended to focus on aspects of contemporary music composition and items of interest that relate to it in the periphery, both historically and in the present.

In retrospect, “Deconstructing-Jim” has also served to function as a personal digital soapbox and electronic therapist in an age where, in the spirit of Reality TV, it’s socially acceptable to spill ones guts online. I’m appreciative of all those who have read my blog posts over the past years and have taken the initiative to contact me, reply online, and find out a little more about my music. In the end there has been value if this blog leads one to consider (or reconsider) aspects of my musical work. Over the duration, it’s been an interesting ride.

My blog posts have included random (and not-so-random) thoughts about the challenges of being a 20th/21st century composer, including some of the more mundane and practical matters of self-sufficiency and self-preservation. It’s a story that often goes untold. Yet, I think it is useful at times to explain to the public what many composers actually do to earn their living, and how they maintain their motivation over the long haul. The game of survival often involves jumping through hoops like a circus dog just to make ends meet and to move on to the next level.

Everyone knows that not all composers have the privilege and support of a university position, or even the sporadic income of royalty checks, and/or major commissions. But there are some - a lucky few - who are in that position. If they are diligent and disciplined in their work, they will be successful - almost by default.

I’m not one of those composers.

For me, the music profession has never been fertile ground for generating income. For better or worse, I have never earned a penny from the trade. I’ve never held a teaching job, taught private students, or received a paid commission. It’s not that I haven’t applied myself, but rather that the music I create has had (for whatever reason) minimal commercial success.

Fortunately I’ve been able to survive into middle age with most of my teeth and all of my fingers by working day-jobs of various sorts. I’ve been employed as a dishwasher, security guard, retail sales clerk, house painter, technical trainer, car salesman, technical instructor, and made a career in IT for a time. Some of my day-jobs have been better than others, but all of them taught me something. I’ve also been fortunate in that my wife works (albeit part-time) and has benefits. As a family we’ve been able strive toward the iconic middle class American dream, even though I have made vigorous efforts on the side to promote my own music and career in whatever way I can.

I have to say that given the challenges, when trying to balance composing music with earning a living, all has gone fairly well. That is, at least up until now.

After the loss of my full-time job and benefits in 2008, my personal financial position has declined. As we all know too well, the economy has taken a precipitous plunge into the abyss of recession. The unemployment rate in the US is officially over 9%, but some say that in reality true unemployment hovers around 20%. Any semblance of financial recovery does not seem imminent, at least not in the next few years. The experts say it may take decades before things return to normal.

Since 2008 I landed some part time and temporary contract work in IT for a period, but that also came to an abrupt end. The latest news is that our family lifeline, my wife’s long-term steady job, may in jeopardy due to corporate reorganization.

The timing could not be worse since the employment outlook is dire. After having no success applying for jobs in IT or in higher education, it became clear that I couldn’t continue to burn through personal savings in the hope that the US economy will turn around anytime soon. I found myself applying for entry level jobs that pay a fraction of what I once earned. Yet, even those jobs are now more difficult to acquire - especially for someone in their late 50’s. At one of many job fairs I heard a story about an open position at Barnes and Noble in downtown Boston that attracted 1,000 applicants. That dire fact is fairly representative of what it’s like in the general job market today, and it’s pretty unsettling to anyone who is unemployed.

Recently my luck improved. I was invited to a job event hosted by a large supermarket chain. I spent the day interviewing with them, and came away with a job offer. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the salary is $10/hour. After some consideration, I accepted the offer and have begun work.

In my new role at the supermarket is working as a bagger. I’ve done jobs of this sort before. I can do it again. Although standing on my feet for eight hours a day will be a challenge, I’d rather work than not, be able to pay my bills, and not fall into debt or spiral in downward path financially. I also have a son who could use our assistance in paying his college tuition. I am grateful for the income.

My emotions about my new day-job are mixed. While it is a relief to finally find something after such a long search for employment, it also is unsettling to know that trying to live on a much lower income stream will be a significant challenge. I’m also perturbed about the current economic impact that has resulted from mistakes made by a number of our country’s political leaders, policy makers, and by the grandiose power grab by greedy corporate executives that initiated the global financial meltdown in the first place.

And yet I realize that I’m in the same sinking boat as many Americans, and better off than a lot of them. But it is disconcerting to realize that what I thought would eventually be my retirement years now seems so much farther away in time. It’s as if my retirement future has disappearing from sight as it slips over a moving horizon in a Las Vegas magic show. Counting the additional years to retirement creates a sinking feeling.

I’ve long accepted the fact that I’ve never been able to compose full-time as a profession. That dose of reality has always been mitigated by the notion that I could use my retirement years in pursuit of that lofty passion. Now, unfortunately, even that goal looks less promising.

The success and survival of the new music trade is more important than the success of any particular individual. For that reason I’m glad that at least some of our nation’s composers are thriving and able to create work in the down economy. At least there are still some resources available to them. There are only a limited number of commissions, university jobs, and prestigious foundations to support and aid their work, and I’ve come to conclude that there is just not enough funding to go around to support a broader spectrum of composers such as myself. The tendency has been to award commissions, grants, and academic accolades to composers who have already demonstrated success – based mostly by the quantity and quality of awards they have already received. My unscientific analysis indicates that: as more awards and distinctions are presented to a composer, the more he/she is inclined to receive them in the future. It’s an interesting relationship. [Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls this the “Survivorship Bias”].

I do believe that it is important for someone fill the societal role of “professional composer” since a world with a few good pieces is better than a world without any. Given the state of the U.S. economy, not everyone in the field is worthy of that unique privilege.

My new job as a supermarket bagger is physically demanding. Pushing trains of shopping carts in from the parking lot tires me out. Standing all day is an acquired skill.

I have begun to dream about my job, and an unscripted scene from an imaginary encounter runs through my head. In it, I’m at work bagging groceries for my customers passing through the checkout line. The next customer arrives at Register 8 with a carriage full of items to purchase. I look up and notice that they are a distinguished American composer with university tenure. I smile, and then ask the critical question, “Paper or plastic?”

49 Russian composers in 39 seconds

In January of 1941, the musical Lady in the Dark by Kurt Weill (music) and Ira Gershwin (lyrics) opened on Broadway's Alvin Theatre for a run of more than a year and 467 performances. It's in an interesting form: except for the final song, all the music in the play is heard in three extended dream sequences (the Glamour Dream, the Wedding Dream, and the Circus Dream). Each of the psychoanalytic studies stand as micro-operas within the overall work.

Entertainer Danny Kaye made his career in this musical playing the role of fashion photographer Russell Paxton in this musical. His patter song "Tschaikovsky (and other Russians)" was a showstopping success. Kaye dashes through the names of 49 Russian composers in just 39 seconds in the 1941 78 rpm cast recording directed by Maurice Abravanel released on Columbia...

Danny Kaye (David Daniel Kaminsky), was born in 1913 in Brooklyn NY the son of an immigrant Russian tailor. He dropped out of school at age 13, but found work in the “Borsht Belt” and in vaudeville shows. He studied music seriously, including music composition, and once conducted the NY Philharmonic.

How many "other Russians" can you hear named in the song? Borodin, Malichevsky, Rubinstein, Arensky, Gretchnaninoff, Kvoschinsky, Rachmaninoff, Glazunov, Stravinsky, Orijifuev, Prokofiev, Shostakovich...

Here is a contemporary performance by Servio Tulio (voice) and Glauco Baptista (piano), recorded Live at Radio MEC FM - Rio de Janeiro:

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What Composers Dream About

Igor Stravinsky allegedly told the following story about the genesis of his 1922 “Octet” to his assistant, composer/conductor Robert Craft...

The octet began with a dream. I found myself (in my dream state) in a small room surrounded by a small number of instrumentalists who were playing some very agreeable music. I did not recognize the music they played, and I could not recall any of it the next day, but I do remember my curiosity (in the dream) to know how many musicians played. I remember that after I had counted them to the number eight, I looked again and saw that they were playing bassoons, trombones, trumpets, a flute and a clarinet. I awoke from this little dream concert in a state of delight, and the next morning, I began to compose the Octet, a piece I had not so much as thought of the day before. The Octet was quickly composed.

Though technically not a dream, Arnold Schoenberg experienced what must be termed an “out of body” experience after a heart attack in 1945 at the age of 71. Lying on the hospital operating room table, through the white light he saw himself hovering in space looking down at his own body. During this experience he heard what was to become the soft mercurial music that would ultimately find it's way into the beautiful coda of this last completed work: the String Trio, op. 45. It is said that the form of the String Trio revolves around “program music” stemming from his near-fatal heart attack and recovery experience.

The subject of dreams came up last evening when I ran into composer/musicologist Mark Devoto during an intermission at a concert in Boston. Devoto and I had been chatting with 89 year-old Harold Shapero after the premiere of an arrangement of his famous 1941 String Quartet for Saxophone Quartet. We talked about health-related issues, including PSA levels, blood pressure medication, and prostate health. Harold, who had been good friends with Stravinsky, then turned the discussion to dreams and relayed a disturbing one that he had experienced the night before...



Harold Shapero had dreamed that he was in a car being driven somewhere near his home. At some point the driver just slumped over and died from an apparent cardiac arrest. He felt helpless to do anything.

After hearing that story, Devoto relayed to me a couple of dreams that the late composer/musicologist George Perle had shared with him. Devoto knew Perle well, since both are well-known as musicologists and as leading scholars on the work of Alban Berg.

Perle: background and dream #1)

Perle was one of the few researchers to have seen the manuscript to the third act of Berg’s opera Lulu before Universal Editions published it. He wrote many letters to Alfred Kalmus of UE suggesting that it be released, since it was fundamentally complete except for the details of orchestration (lacking after bar 268 of Act III, Scene 1). Berg’s widow Helena, was Executor of the Berg Estate and had requested that UE not publish Act III. She had once asked Arnold Schoenberg if he would complete the orchestration, but the ailing composer declined that task after looking at the sketches. As a result Helena was steadfast in her belief that it could not be reconstructed from her husband’s existing manuscripts. However, the publisher secretly arranged with composer by Friedrich Cerha to orchestrate the third act for performance after Helena died, but kept it under tightly under wraps until she passed away. The terms of the Berg Estate would allow UE more latitude to ultimately publish the score in a form that they wished. After Helena died in 1976, and the third act was published and premiered in 1979 by Pierre Boulez: nearly forty-four years after Berg's death.

Perle’s dream is that he climbed up the stairs into the dark attic of a dirty garret. It looked very much like the set in the last scene of the opera Lulu, where the heroine, now living in poverty and working as a prostitute in London, would be brutally murdered by Jack the Ripper.

Perle looks over and sees an old, pale-faced man sitting in a chair. It’s Alban Berg himself, and he is alive. Perle approaches the venerable composer, and exclaims, “Alban, you are alive. Now you can prove to the world that Act III of your opera Lulu is complete enough to publish!”

Berg looks Perle directly in the eye and replies, “What third act? There is no third act!”

Perle: background and dream #2)

Perle had been a visiting composer at Tanglewood for a number summers, including a year that Donald Martino also shared that same distinction. Perle was assigned a student that he couldn't easily relate to. She kept bringing in graphical scores written in non-traditional notation. He was accustomed to looking at pitches, notes, and just didn’t know how to comment on or analytically approach such vaguely notated music. He mentioned to the young composer that perhaps they should both get some copies of the great works of Schoenberg and Berg, and study the works of those great masters together. At this point the young composer burst into tears and said, “you don’t understand me!”

Soon after this event, Perle received a reprimanding phone call from the Tanglewood Music Festival director, Gunther Schuller. Schuller expressed grave concern about the delicate situation, and reminded Perle that this particular student had paid a lot of money to study with him at Tanglewood.

That night Perle had a dream that he was walking down the main drag in Lenox, the cozy New England town where Tanglewood is situated. He saw a station wagon drive up. It was driven by Don Martino, and filled to the brim with happy composition students. Martino gets out of the car, and goes into a nearby shop. He immediately comes out with a large bag of marbles, and hands one to each of his composition students.

That story reminds me of a dream the well-known Swiss composer Ernst Bloch (right) is said to have had. As all things are related, Bloch’s dream was relayed to me by composer Don Martino in his composition seminar at the New England Conservatory in 1978. Bloch was the teacher of Martino's teacher: Roger Sessions (left). The story of Bloch's dream may have passed down to us first through Sessions, and then by Martino.

In his dream, Bloch climbs up a tall, treacherous mountain and approaches the top. He sees Beethoven sitting at the its pinnacle. Beethoven, looking like a majestic king, looks over at Bloch, greets him, and then speaks in his deep voice, “Ernst, come join me at the top of the mountain.”

Martino (left) did a great job telling the story, and I can still hear his deep voice, fake German accent, and see his facial expression as he imitated Beethoven welcoming Bloch to the top of the mountain. Martino even looked a little like Beethoven, and this eerie resemblance struck me again when I visited his home basement studio not long after he passed away. You can find it in his study, on the shelf behind the piano - a plaster mask of his face made by a friend of the family. It was made toward the end of his life. At first, I thought it was a replica of the famous Beethoven death mask (right), but I had to ask his wife Lora about the details, and learned that it was in fact of a life mask of Don .



The Beethoven-Martino relationship existed on many levels. Martino was of course deeply impressed with Beethoven’s music, particularly the “Spring” Sonata for Violin and Piano Op. 24 and late works, such as the Piano Sonata Op. 109. He yielded an old reel-to-reel tape from his personal collection of a performance by a somewhat obscure pianist named Ernst Levy, who gave what he considered a transcending interpretation Op. 109 at MIT’s Kresge Auditorium during the 1950s. Levy was then a was a member of the MIT music faculty.

Martino would often sing, hammer out themes on the piano, and quote Beethoven’s music in class and during lessons. He elucidated to the students in the composition seminar Beethoven’s working method, and tracked the composer’s tedious sketching process in stages from mere human doodles to the attainment of musical perfection and artistic enlightenment. It’s all documented in the composer’s telling sketch books.

It’s not surprising that my composition seminar with Martino at NEC covered a wide-range of Beethoven-related topics. Aside from dream interpretation, there was a paranormal Beethoven moment worth mentioning. We got off on a discussion about an item of mail that Martino received from a total stranger. Someone, claiming to be a professional psychic, had sent him a letter and cassette tape. It contained what she said was a recently composed piece by Beethoven. The psychic indicated that Beethoven had transmitted the music to her via radio waves. She would tune her FM radio in-between stations, and listen to the static while in a state of trance. Emerging out of the static she was able to perceive and capture a fleeting image of Beethoven’s ethereal music. Our class listened very intently to the recording. What we heard was a noisy snippet of an orchestral piece lasting only a few seconds long. But it sounded “mysterious” and nobody in the class could identify the origin. The general consensus was that the music, which was quite reminiscent of the musical impressionist Frederic Delius, was not something we’d imagine Beethoven composing – even with the benefit of the latest and greatest compositional tools and aesthetics of the late 20th century. Somehow Beethoven and the whole-tone scale just don’t go together.


My final example of dreaming music relates to a story about Gunther Schuller. One of the anecdotes told in Don Martino’s composition seminar was about a trip the both of them took to Munich in the 1960s. Schuller was engaged to conduct Martino’s large orchestral work Mosaic, and the two of them sat together on an overnight flight to Germany. During the long trip, Schuller (who has spoken about receiving ideas for his works from dreams), sat in his seat half-asleep and fatigued from his legendary work-a-holic schedule. According to Martino, Schuller kept a large manuscript score for an opera in front of him. He would wake up for a minute, write down a note, and then fall back asleep. This asleep-awake one note at time compositional process went on for the duration of the flight.

Perhaps we should pay more attention to our dreams.

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A silly dream...

It’s now about twenty minutes after five in the morning. A foot of snow lays softly on the ground beyond my window, and it’s dark and cold outside. The day is about to begin, but for now there is a moment of silence. It’s January 20th. It’s going to be a historic day as our 44th President takes office in a few hours.


I am writing this shortly after I woke from a dream. It proved impossible to go back to sleep, but I need to tell my story. Sitting at my computer, restless, Microsoft Word beckons me to tell it about the event that just transpired.

It began like other dreams, a confusing hodge-podge of unrelated surrealistic and random events in serial succession, none of which make much sense of all. But then I found myself lost in an unknown urban setting – the bowels of a modern city – a hotel I think. After wandering through a maze of underground hallways and tunnels, I came through a door and exited up into the retail space of a large bookstore. It’s not Barnes and Noble, but a bookstore that sells used books - perhaps Powell’s in Portland, Oregon where I visited on vacation a few years back.

Miraculously, I found myself in the music section of the voluminous bookstore. This is not unusual since I am typically drawn to used bookstores to explore rare and out-of-print editions about my discipline: Music Composition and Theory. I was immediately drawn to one book in particular with a red cover, and pulled it off the shelf. I observe that it is dog-eared, but in good shape and I know what it is immediately. When I open the jacket, I see right off the bat that it had been my book. It still bares my name written in the inside cover, and still contains my carefully written annotations and comments.


The book in the dream was “Serial Composition” by Reginald Smith Brindle, a British composer who’s work was published by Oxford University Press in 1966.








He was an expert on the music of 20th-century Italian composers such as Luigi Dallapiccola, Ildebrando Pizzetti, and Bruno Bartolozzi, and had studied with all of them. Smith Brindle died in 1993 at the age of 86.



I was puzzled how my copy of “Serial Composition” had fallen into the hands of someone else, since I had purchased it decades ago for what was then a hefty price: $6.00. The subsequent owners had apparently added their own names and annotations in the years following my stewardship of the book. I looked to see who they were, and what they had written, but I did not recognize any of them. One owner had written his name in blue ink on the top right corner of the outside cover, although it was vague and blurred from the age of time.

As with many of my books, this one has a unique history, insider anecdotes, and personal associations from the youth of my student days. It had acquired the stains of use and the dust of many years on the shelves from a series of run-down apartments – including a period tucked away in storage between homes.

I purchased the book brand new when I was a year or two out of high school, but referred to it sporadically through years of college and graduate school. At that time practical “how-to” textbooks or technical field-guides about how to write 12-tone music were scant - at least until the American composer Charles Wuorinen published his “Simple Composition” in 1979. “Simple Composition” turned out to be not so simple, and it is just as biased and inane as Smith Brindle’s “Serial Composition.” With the wisdom of 20-20 hindsight, writing any book about the act of composition is impossible, and writing an aesthetically-neutral book about serial composition is just as futile. Nevertheless, both of those books made it to my personal collection of odd-ball artifacts concerning this obscure little corner of the musical universe. I have an entire room filled with out-of-print and out-of-use tomes on modern music and contemporary music theory. It’s a treasure trove of now-historic musical relics.

On little anecdote related to “Serial Composition” dates back to a colloquium that occurred at Brandeis for the graduate students studying composition in the early 80s. Composer Nicola LeFanu, a professor at King’s College London, Oxford educated, and a practicing a serialist, was invited to speak. Her music was familiar to me from her stint at Harvard on a Harkness fellowship in the early 70s because the new music group Collage played one of her works. Only a few faculty members and students made it to the colloquium, but I recall that professors Marty Boykan and Conrad Pope were present. At one point during her impromptu talk, LeFanu took a swipe at “Simple Composition” - the Wuorinen book. I forget precisely what it was that she said, but it was disparaging and contained an overtone of British superiority. With the arrogant over-confidence of a graduate student, I returned the torpedo with the reply, “Well, the Smith Brindle book sucks too.” Everyone got my joke.

In the dream I gaze at the book that I had formerly owned in amazement, but someone comes up to me, sees what I’m reading, and immediately attempts to grab it out of my hands. He’s a young man, has dark hair, a British accent, and is muttering, “I must have that book.” I hold it tight in my grasp, but he is persistent, undeterred, and appears unstable. I assured him that I’ve read it cover-to-cover many times, know its contents, and would be willing to give it to him if he told me why he wants the book so badly. The man can’t make his case. He’s confused and continues to forcibly grab it out of my hands. We engage in physical combat: mano a mano.

I woke up disoriented, covered head to toe with the moisture of perspiration, yet half-asleep. Still in an adrenaline rush, I consciously wondered if I had in fact lost my old book to the used bookstore. I glanced at the alarm clock on my bedside table but all I saw was the LED flashing in red and stuck at 3:26 AM. The electrical power had gone off briefly during the night. Everyone in the house was fast asleep.

I walked over to the adjoining room where I keep all of my music theory books, the flipped on the light. The room is filled to the brim with musical treatises – most of the brainy 12-tone-influenced classics: including “Basic Atonal Theory” by John Rahn, “Post Tonal Theory” by Joseph N. Straus, “Serial Composition and Atonality” by George Perle, “Composition with Pitch-Classes” by Robert D. Morris, “Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations” by David Lewin, “The Structure of Atonal Music” by Allen Forte, and the pioneering work by Howard Hanson published in 1960: “Harmonic Materials of Modern Music.”

I search through the walls of shelves for the bright red Smith Brindle book. It should be easy to find because of it color and characteristic canvas binding. I can’t find it. It’s not where it should be. Still groggy from my dream, I begin to wonder if the dream could be true. How could someone have gotten their hands on my book? Did I misplace it somewhere in my travels? Did I lend it to someone? Finally I find it hidden behind a front layer of books on the outer rim of the shelf. Speaking silently to myself so as to not wake members of my family who are still fast asleep, I utter “Ah ha, Smith Brindle is safe and intact!” All of my original notes written in pencil scribbled 35 years ago are there too. I had written my annotations very lightly as not to damage the book for the rightful next owner, whoever that may be. The book will survive longer than I. This copy of Smith Brindle’s “Serial Composition” will live in perpetuity.



Dreams are only informative if we listen to their message. You don’t have to be Dr. Freud to interpret my dream and get a sense about what the book represents to me. I’ll leave the analysis to you.

Feeling a sense of relief after finding the book, my next urgent stop was the bathroom. I did what most old men have to do at various times throughout the night… pee.


Links:
http://www.powells.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Smith_Brindle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicola_LeFanu

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