The story of my debut

Growing up Episcopalian, I cut my teeth on Anglican choral music.

[A brief interruption: for those who don’t know about the history of the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church, and the Church of England, they all have a sort of intertwined history, with the former two being birthed out of the third. Please read more here, here, and here. I bring this up to address any potential confusion over “Anglican” choral music in an “Episcopal” church. Even though the names are different, the origins are the same. That, and it was very common for American Episcopal churches (particularly “high” churches) to perform music written by British composers.]

My choir director noticed early on that I was interested in writing music. While I still had a lot of kinks to work out, he did encourage me to write descants and four-part psalm chants (otherwise called Anglican chant), which I did occasionally. Early on, only an occasional descant got performed (and by “occasional”, it was like maybe once a year or once every couple years). Mozart, I was not. And that’s ok. While my dad has occasionally quipped that he wished that the choir director would not only have been more active in his encouraging my composition, but also that more of my stuff would’ve been performed, I look back and don’t exactly regret it. The stuff I wrote early on was garbage. And by “garbage,” I mean that musical activity I may have written for the soprano part didn’t mesh with musical activity I may have written for the tenor part, neither of which meshed with musical activity I may have written for the pipe organ. And of course, two bars later, the music was likely to be completely different, in a different key, in a different rhythm, in a very different register, at a very different volume. And so on.

Looking back, my early choral compositions didn’t make sense because, as a child, I still hadn’t quite figured out the “big picture” aspect of ensemble writing. And that’s ok. I was learning. I was teaching myself how to compose, simply from grabbing aspects of what I had performed as a choirboy (which grew exponentially by the year), both what I had seen, and what I had heard and sung. It was like a form of ADD, in that for one part, I would recollect something I liked for one measure, and then, once I moved to the next layer of music (usually the next vocal part over), I would have completely forgotten about it, and would instead try to find something else that I remember hearing or seeing that I liked and wanted to imitate.

One of the most helpful early pieces of feedback I received was in fact from my other choir director, in New York, who briefly reviewed another choral composition I had been working on. He first commented how I had done a good job matching the soprano melody with the treble lines in the organ, and then remarked that I needed to do the same with the basses and the organ’s pedal line, which weren’t matched. The reason, he explained, was that the music would otherwise sound very muddy. That was a really cool “lightbulb” moment for me.

In high school, as I accumulated more self-taught experience, both from just having composed more, and also from the blessing of having Finale (my music notation software) play back music I had entered, I began to develop a sense of what sounded good vs what didn’t and got better at writing music that way. I had even more descants and four-part psalm chants performed, with a lot fewer changes made from the original. At home, I also branched out, writing piano pieces, orchestral pieces, as well as occasional interesting-mix smaller ensemble pieces (all of which were on Finale, since I could hear the playback immediately). My output, specifically output of what I was prouder of compared to earlier years, increased a lot.

College was a different story. I went in already knowing that, while I had gained a lot in my decade-plus of largely self-taught composing, there was still a whole lot to learn. I ended up picking the school that gave me the best scholarship package (although there were a number of other enticing factors). In retrospect, while I did learn many valuable things, I also felt like most of what I learned in composition I decided I wasn’t interested in keeping. (My primary composition professor – and advisor – was about as obsessed with 20^th-century “classical music” as anyone out there, and he taught us all as much. As a result, just about all my favorite works were composed outside of class or lessons.)

Since college, my performing experiences have shaped what I’ve written since, which has proven to be invaluable. I’ve concluded that anyone who composes or writes songs is simply just going to write what they like. I agree it is valuable to have “tricks in the bag” to pull out when needed (which was what my one 20^th-century-loving professor explained as he was explaining in class one time, possibly related to why he broke down composition to so many different basic barebones elements). But, following the history of music on another level (and for this post, I’ll keep it very brief), it seems that when one genre of music has exhausted all the development that it possibly could, a new genre with much more “Classical”-sounding melodies and harmonies takes over. In the 1950s, when serialist composers like Arnold Schoenberg, Alan Webern, and John Cage were presently or recently active in what would be considered the “Classical” realm (primarily due to the instruments), it was others like Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, and Richard Rodgers whose music was preferred. Why? Because their compositions had melody, harmony, rhythm, things that draw people to a piece of music! Because their music sounded good. As such, even now, I try to create music that sounds good, no matter what genre I write in.

Now, as for my compositional debut: considering that as a child, I had several descants and psalm chants performed at church in both elementary and high school, but also considering that it’s not like these were complete pieces, just rather complementary music aspects to either music already written (like a hymn) or a Psalm, which was intoned in speech-rhythm, not really sung as a piece… when would I say that debut was?

It was my eighth-grade graduation. Specifically, it was the final Sunday morning service that the choir did at the end of the school year. (Graduation was on the Saturday right before.) That was the service where the graduating eighth-graders got to pick the music for the entire service. It was quite an honor. That, and it was a cool rare opportunity for all the students in the class (for reference, my class had 9 people, which was about the average size at the time) to work together to assemble a musical set list that would please everyone. My piece, “O Lord our Governor,” which I had composed the summer before, and received some vocal part revoicing assistance by our music theory professor sometime during my final year there, was on the list. It was the first time that I had an actual standalone composition performed, in which I had determined everything musically, including the rhythm of the words and the tempo. It was a very surreal experience.

Four years later, when I was wrapping up my senior year in high school, I wrote another piece for the high school choir, which the chorus director completely supported. And then a piece for piano and cello duet for high school graduation. And then college. I could go on, because there were other sweet musical moments that I could name and pinpoint. But it all started with “O Lord our Governor,” and a choir and organist that believed enough in the piece to perform it.