Like most kids, I didn’t really care for doing homework. And so like many youngsters, I decided the best way to do homework was to listen to music while I studied.

I put on the album Rubber Soul, The Beatles 1965 album. I tried, but it was hard for me to concentrate on my homework! Not with all that great music going on. During the song “You Won’t See Me” I truly learned what was meant by active listening.

It wasn’t Paul McCartney’s lead vocal that was drawing me in. Instead, it was the background vocal harmonies. This was before I knew much about music theory, but I recognized the dissonance of the major second being sung in harmony, and the stepwise motion to resolving the dissonance. As you can see from the example attached, the voices lead naturally to the harmony of the piece.

I remember losing myself in the piece so much, of not paying much attention to the words, but only to listening to the harmony and its resolution.

Active listening indeed! Homework had no chance.

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Mr. Deemer narrows his query with some qualifications:

…when I first posed this question to most of the composers, usually they would begin talking about the first time they discovered composing before I had them go back and answer the original question. I thought this was a fluke until the fifth or sixth time it happened in a row, after which I had to specify “Why do you compose¬†now?” and mention that I’d follow up with the “discovery” question. I have found it interesting that so many of us equate “why we compose” with “why we started composing,” and hope that once this project is complete we can all have a clearer picture as to how and why composers get started (and obliquely, how to introduce composition to younger students effectively).

Interesting questions! I think many composers and many creative people can relate. There’s that initial itch to be creative, spurred by some feeling or experience of the aesthetic. For me, personally, I wanted to take up composition seriously when I heard Beethoven; I’ve always answered with, “The way Beethoven made me feel with his Moonlight Sonata, I wanted to do that for others.” This development generally leads to some style imitation, and is the why behind getting started. I must add that for me, my musical inclinations were long incubated by a love of pop music, especially The Beatles. I also wanted to imitate them.

But having first experience Beethoven at the age of 13, I began my piano studies in earnest, and broadened my musical horizons. I wanted to make others feel the way music made ME feel.

So that’s the¬†why. But as Mr. Deemer asks, “why do you compose NOW?” There must be another step beyond–not why did you get started with composing, but why do you keep at it?

I have become less concerned with influencing your feelings and more concerned with expressing my own. I wonder: Does this work the same way? Or in different ways?

Feelings, of course, are both personal and universal. We all feel sadness, elation, depression, or love (etc.) from time to time. The “big terms” are universal, but our own experience is quite personal. Two people may feel sad, but in the same way? This might help explain how Beethoven’s (or any composer’s) expression of feeling can be so personal and universal at the same time.

What does a composer do, then? I think you grant privilege to the personal and hope it appeals to the universal. This is the reverse of why I started composing. If music made me feel sad, then I wanted to write sad music. In time, it is hoped, a composer will transition to a specific, personal sadness (or other emotion).

I’ve seen much less “error” (for lack of a better word) when a composer speaks in personal musical terms. On the other hand, when a composer shoots for the universal, frequently he (or she) says nothing specific, but only general.

So, Mr. Deemer’s question, “Why do you compose now?” is very much worth considering. The reason I got into composing still exists, but my perspective on that reason has evolved. I’m less concerned with influencing your feelings, and more concerned with expressing my own.

It is worth the time for a composer to consider where he (or she) is on this spectrum.

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“I wouldn’t let him listen to kid’s music in the car. I was playing The Beatles, Paul Simon, Fleetwood Mac.”

What struck me about this is that whenever I would get in the car to go for a drive with my own family, we also listened to the popular music of the day: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Jesus Christ Superstar or whatever was on the radio. I don’t remember being exposed to that era’s equivalent of The Wiggles, Barney, and Raffi.

So I wondered how much does this make a difference? Does this (or does this not) affect a child’s musical development? It would be easy to say that listening to too much Wiggles might dampen musical creativity., Yet some of the criticisms that can be made of children’s music can be said of pop and rock: it is repetitive, harmonically unsophisticated, annoyingly catchy.

And what to make of the whole Baby Einstein, Baby Mozart, etc. genius development records out there? Will we see a new wave of classical music giants in the next generation?

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What composers today forget is that there is more to human existence than just this! From time to time, hopefully we feel lightness, happiness, and joy. Mozart, Beethoven, Bartok, The Beatles: they all wrote both happy and sad music, among many other emotions.

Paul Moravec captured this thought perfectly. He asked, “What music written since World War II is joyous? Where is our contemporary “Ode to Joy?”

Art is supposed to reflect the human condition. Without a doubt, the human condition in the 20th Century has been rather pitiful. But let’s not forget: Art also elevates and illuminates. Don’t forget all the possibilities you can compose.

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