On The Verbiage Of Composers

Well, so much for blogging hiatuses. We interrupt ours once again to call your attention to a post by blogger and composer Roger Bourland who has something to say about composers who insist going on in prose about their music:

And then there are composers who talk about music — other composer’s music as well as their own. My own advice is to ALWAYS take whatever composers say about their music, with a grain of salt. You can usually trust their comments to be true if they tell you it was written over a certain period of time, commissioned or not by someone, orchestrated for some ensemble, and premiered by someone somewhere on a certain date. Beyond that, turn up the purple prose filter and just nod politely. Granted, much music can and is described with minimal purple prose. But we composers love to go on — being the artists and gasbags that we are.

Mr. Bourland concludes by offering this thought:

I fear that “where music comes from” will always be a mystery. I’m not ready to ape Stravinsky and tell you that I am but the vessel through which it passes to be given to the world. I’m not going to tell you that I channel music. I’m not going to tell you that God composes my music. I just don’t know, and that’s fine.

With all of which we most heartily agree.