Apr. 27, 2021 | by Daniel Collins The COVID-19 pandemic has been a case study in constraint; from local lockdowns to mask mandates, notions of personal freedom have come into conflict with the needs of public safety, and many have been compelled to consider how their individual actions affect society. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For composers, this tension strikes a familiar chord: reconciling one\u2019s own artistic impulses with the confines of clear communication is a constant struggle. Although the pandemic has left composers\u2019 ability to practice their craft largely unscathed, reduced performance opportunities have nonetheless dampened creative spirits. In response, the Peabody Composition Department organized a series of Virtual Residencies<\/a> last fall, pairing student composers with specially-selected performers. These collaborations allowed students to craft works that not only advanced their artistic goals but spoke to this unique time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In this post, I catch up with four composers — Joseph Foster Harkins, Tristan Latchford, L\u012bva Bl\u016bma, and Julio Qui\u00f1ones — and discuss their experiences during last semester\u2019s Virtual Residencies through the lens of \u2018craft.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Art & Craft<\/strong> This brings us to the concept of craft. In his article 25 Essential Notes on Craft: Rethinking Popular Assumptions of Fiction Writing<\/em>,<\/a> Matthew Salesses succinctly defines craft as \u201ca set of expectations\u201d that, though not universal, are standardized. Although Salesses\u2019 scope is broad, some of his concepts are particularly pertinent. For instance, he establishes that craft is a product of culture: everything we consume both relies upon and reinforces our expectations. Creators, then, whether authors or composers, must navigate this complex feedback loop, engaging with preexisting expectations to make something new. Salesses also contends that \u201c[c]raft is never neutral\u201d and instead preferences a certain worldview. Though his desire to expose craft\u2019s political underpinnings is admirable, his attempt to \u201cchallenge and disempower\u201d the standards of yore neglects the benefits of a common worldview. Any set of standards will marginalize certain perspectives, but the value of a shared lexicon — a canon — outweighs the potential loss of perspective. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Amy Beach, for one, understood this trade-off, writing in a 1918 article for Etude Magazine<\/em> entitled \u201cTo the Girl Who Wants to Compose<\/a>\u201d that budding composers should \u201c[t]ry to acquire a good foundation of well assimilated [sic<\/em>] knowledge of musical construction, and the technic that is absolutely necessary.\u201d She then posits that \u201c[w]e cannot put our musical ideas into any shape that can reach other people, if we do not know at least how to dot our \u2018i\u2019s\u2019 and cross our \u2018t\u2019s.\u2019\u201d As a woman in the early twentieth century, Beach was well-acquainted with cultural constraints, yet chose to value craft and its concomitant comprehensibility over her personal vernacular. In the context of classical music, a better definition of craft would be: \u2018the method by which a composer crystalizes their internal artistic impulses for external communication.’ <\/strong> Such a method implicitly relies upon a set of standardized expectations, but, in keeping with Beach\u2019s formulation, it centers on how these expectations interact with the constraints of a given ruleset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What does this have to do with artistic freedom? In short, unfettered freedom is counterproductive: if every composer wrote in their own musical language, performers would be forced to learn a new set of rules for each composer and uninitiated audiences would find it impossible to engage. Even Salesses concedes that \u201cexpectations are not a bad thing\u201d and, moreover, that they \u201cbelong to an audience.\u201d For him, \u201c[t]o use craft is to engage with an audience\u2019s bias. Like freedom, craft is always craft for someone<\/em>.\u201d Yet where Salesses sees a burden, Beach would have seen a boon: it is only through the limitation of freedom — the requirement that the \u2018i\u2019s\u2019 be dotted and the \u2018t\u2019s\u2019 crossed — that one can truly practice their craft. <\/strong>What these requirements are does not particularly matter, but what does matter is that there are<\/em> constraints. Without them, there is no craft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ———— <\/p>\n\n\n\n Joseph Foster Harkins (DMA 2022)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Born and raised on the outskirts of Harrisburg, PA, Harkins writes music that celebrates his home state and explores the natural world, particularly geological features throughout the eastern United States. His piece <\/em><\/em>Leaf Vortex was written for saxophonist<\/em><\/em><\/span> Ryan Muncy<\/u><\/em><\/a> during last semester\u2019s Virtual Residencies. Another work, <\/em><\/em>Catoctin, for solo flute, derives from a similar impulse, albeit differently executed, and can be heard <\/em>here<\/u><\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Harkins contended with his fair share of compositional constraints during his Virtual Residency. In his talks with saxophonist Ryan Muncy, Harkins realized that his greatest challenge would not be the limitations of the solo-instrument medium, or even the instrument\u2019s technical capabilities, but rather the saxophone\u2019s complex cultural history. Harkins observes that, though it is occasionally encountered in the realm of classical concert music, <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c\u2026far more common in the public perception is the saxophone\u2019s quintessential role in jazz. Players and their instruments are household names, like John Coltrane and his tenor, Cannonball Adderley, and his alto, and Kenny G with his soprano. An audience member is more than likely to draw a relationship between a saxophone and a famous jazz musician, and this history must be engaged with when writing a solo saxophone piece.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n These are the sorts of cultural expectations that Salesses references in his definition of \u2018craft\u2019: for American audiences, the saxophone is inextricably associated with jazz, and any new piece must address the resulting expectations. Harkins\u2019 sense of craft is displayed in the consideration he gives this issue. He and Muncy decided to employ the soprano saxophone in part because of the \u201cdirect relationship the soprano has with Kenny G. We wanted to craft a piece that reacted against the preconceptions of the soprano sax from this perspective technically while retaining the engagement his playing has demonstrated in performance.\u201d Harkins was struck by the fast, wide-ranging scalar passages, altissimo climaxes, and melodic ornamentation that typify Kenny G\u2019s \u201cvirtuosic \u2018pop-jazz\u2019 improvisations\u201d and sought to subvert these tropes in his own piece, eschewing scales in favor of unexpected leaps, carefully controlling the use of register, and systematically spinning out melodies rather than merely ornamenting them. All the while, Harkins strove to maintain the sense of dynamism that characterizes Kenny G\u2019s performance persona.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Regarding craft, Harkins feels that \u201c[s]ound artistic craft allows extramusical ideas and narrative intent to be most fully realized and perceived by the performer and the listener.\u201d<\/strong> This formulation recalls Beach\u2019s emphasis on communicability yet carves out a place for the performer. Focusing on the musician seems to be a common theme for Harkins, who comments that his solo works attempt \u201cto create a cavernous sonic space for the performer to live and work in \u2026 [relying on] an expansive palette that makes one instrument seem capable of living and engaging on multiple dramatic planes.\u201d Yet the composer still bears the artistic burden of discerning between musical content \u201cwith little knowledge of how to bend, break, [or] contextualize [itself]\u201d and concepts whose lack of musical drive \u201cis masked by exemplary technical ability.\u201d In balancing these considerations, Harkins sees potential for music whose ideas elaborate a \u201cmethodology that \u2026 accentuates the material\u2019s individual characteristics.\u201d His overall conception of craft is remarkably holistic, placing specific demands on the composer to communicate with performer and audience alike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ———— <\/p>\n\n\n\n Tristan Latchford (DMA 2023)<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n A self-described \u2018note-placer\u2019 from Newmarket, U.K., Latchford\u2019s music deals with issues ranging from science to religion. For his Virtual Residency with cellist <\/em>Chris Gross<\/u><\/em><\/a>, he composed <\/em><\/em>Straight Down, the first in a two-part series exploring the sensations of gravity. The second part, <\/em><\/em>Straight Up, was written for violinist <\/em>Courtney Orlando<\/u><\/em><\/a>, and, together, they comprise his <\/em><\/em>Two Short Studies of Gravity, Op. 56.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Whereas Harkins\u2019 notions of craft neatly mesh with those of Salesses, Latchford\u2019s diverge radically. He invokes the criticism of Martin Amis to argue that \u201ca set of expectations are expected when they are played out, expected when they are subverted, and expected when they are ignored. In short, we expect both the expected and the unexpected.\u201d<\/strong> The question, then, is whether a situation can ever exist in which there are no expectations. For Latchford, the answer is a qualified yes. He cites the structure of James Weeks\u2019 Windfell<\/em><\/a>, which is \u201cso fragile that a single mis-note [would] shatter the image like glass.\u201d Yet to him, the piece does not generate any particular expectation, instead of achieving its effect by \u201cbalanc[ing] expectation against itself.\u201d The result is therefore devoid of explicit expectations, but still reliant upon the audience\u2019s implicit ones. Whether Latchford views this as an exception to Salesses\u2019 definition of craft is debatable; certainly, it is an expansion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his work, Latchford sees craft as only tenuously related to expectation and seeks to cultivate them separately. Moreover, he rejects that Salesses\u2019 comments on literary craft can be applied to music, as he does not believe \u201cthat music has a form of standardization like literature. There are no fixed letters, definitions, or musical meanings.\u201d Thus, while Latchford refrains from conveying specific images with his music, he nonetheless relies on extramusical ideas — like gravity in the case of Straight Down<\/em> — to organize his compositions. In the following clip, Latchford explores the difference between \u2018style\u2019 and \u2018craft\u2019 and explains how he feels these forces operate in his own compositions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Edited by Carolyn Dzul<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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During a presentation last month, Peabody\u2019s Distinguished Composer-in-Residence Georg Friedrich Haas<\/a> observed that \u201cthe problem with freedom is, being a teacher of composition, I can never say to a student \u2018well, your freedom is there, go ahead,\u2019 because that\u2019s something [they] have to find [for themselves].\u201d This comment leaves open the question of what a composition teacher\u2019s purpose actually is, if not to point students in the direction of artistic freedom. In turn, Haas implies that freedom of expression is not the ultimate goal of artistic study; rather, total freedom is a potent force which must be harnessed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Joseph](\"https:\/\/peabody.jhu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Joseph-headshot-1-1024x684.jpg\")
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![\"Tristan](\"https:\/\/peabody.jhu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Tristan-Headshot-731x1024.jpg\")
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