How
to describe my composition? Not "modern," certainly.
I am too fond of tunes for that. Not "postmodern" either, however.
My music is not aimed at the sonic erasure of boundaries and categories,
nor the solipsistic declaration of self through the ceaseless search for
the claim of originality. Rather, my musical purpose is the delight of
engagement—communication, through the shared, of something that
renews the cultural conversation. If music is unintelligible, there can
be no communication, no sense of the musical act as a commons. But as well,
if music is a mere stale repetition, there is no renewal—no sense
of interconnected aliveness, of the on-going and the going-on, of the past
made future in the unexpected joy of an unpredicted present.
Call it a participatory sound. Call it the sensibilities of the folk musician, which is where I began my musical life, singing and playing in a family band with my father, two brothers, and an older cousin. Or call it what I prefer to term it. Not modern. Not postmodern. Not anti-modern. Rather, call it dialogic music—that is, music which is in conversation with performer and audience about our future pasts and past futures.
In this sense, I am happy to consider my compositions as contributions to a tradition: that of "classical music." I also contribute to keeping folk traditions alive, as may be discovered elsewhere on this site. For me, classical music is as much about tradition as folk music is. There is deep collective history in the term "classical" and the living body of music it helps hold together. Too much, say some dismissively, casting it aside and proclaiming instead an allegiance to "new music." I am also happy to consider my music new—but also old. For me, the new does not have to be a "modernizing" or a "post-" or an "anti-" any more than we need to reject all existing words to say something which has not been said before.
Rather, we speak the new through reshaping meanings that others already know. Indeed, every use of a word or a note reshapes its meaning, giving it a new context, a new life, a new suite of connections. And it is the reshaping of meaning, not the abandoning of it, that gives it intelligibility as something which is alive and relevant to human purpose. That is, there must be something to reshape. The history of musical meaning must be apparent in its very reshaping, if composition is to be a dialogue with others, and not a monologue we attempt to impose.
"Art," wrote Modest Musorgsky, "is a means for conversing with people, not an aim in itself." Such is the passion I too try to bring to music.