In Process: Bricks and Details, Structures and Forms

For many of these composers, once a piece is underway, their work tacks back and forth between small ideas—bricks and blocks, and large ideas—forms or structures. “Everything’s basically building blocks,” Miriam Cutler explained, “A building block can be an instrument, a melody or a harmony. I love chords and chord progressions. It can be a style. It can be anything,” perhaps a problem. “I come up with some very specific problem and think small,” Steven Bryant commented. Thinking small can be very pragmatic. Anne McGinty revealed, “Sometimes, especially with the beginning band music, I would base a piece on a motif that I was determined they had to learn in their lifetime, like dotted quarter and eighth.” At the same time, “even the easier pieces have to have a form to them, some sort of shape,” she explained, and experimenting with those forms and shapes could make the music interesting for both composer and performer.

In the spirit of “less is more,” Steven Bryant described the way in which working with small ideas develops into larger pieces:

Take as little a bit as possible and build everything out of it. It’s similar to writing a paper: the more focused you are, the less material you throw in, the more discipline you have, the easier it is to build something that feels like it belongs together. I tell people, “Restrict what you’re doing. Take all that other stuff out. Those four notes and that one rhythm—that’s enough to build an entire piece.” Learning how to develop a motive is an incredible skill and a way of constructing something that all belongs together. And that’s very important to me—music that really is lean.

For Mari Esabel Valverde and Eric Whitacre, structure might evolve from a poem. “I usually print out the text on two sheets of paper,” Valverde explained, “On one sheet, I record my gut reactions to the text. The second page I’ll use for analysis on the structure, where the shifts are, if there’s any rhyme or imagery.” Jennifer Jolley also noted that form is important, regardless of genre or ensemble. “I try to map out a form first,” she explained, “Usually I know how long the piece is supposed to last, and then a form dictates kind of what I want to say about the piece.” Jessie Montgomery also felt that she worked best “when there’s already a form in place,” though that form could be inspired by art, sculpture, or a narrative.

Eric Whitacre described his creative process as “the focusing of ideas and intentions,” beginning with what he calls emotional architecture and the golden brick. “I actually make pictures before I write anything,” he said, showing drawings that included geometric forms, descriptive and aspirational words, and a few notes of music. “I draw what I’m hoping the piece will be, what I call emotional architecture,” he said. “I map out the emotional journey I hope the audience and the performers take as the piece unfolds” And then:

I spend a lot of time looking for my golden brick. It’s different than just a musical motive or an idee fixe. For me the golden brick is a chord, a note that just hums with possibility, or a couple of notes that contain all of the DNA for the entire piece. It’s got within it some meta material, that golden brick idea. And then there’s the structural idea. If I don’t have a structure, like from a poem, I spend a lot of time building the structure.

For me, the creative process has two parts. There’s the lightning bolt or the jumping down the rabbit hole part, and there’s the learning how to swim part. The learning how to swim part is an endless series of tiny revelations, over and over and over. It’s one thing to imagine building a cathedral; it’s a whole other thing to build a cathedral. Building the cathedral is where the little inspirations come, and that has to do with the focusing of ideas and intentions. You start, and you have a sense of what you want it to be, and then it becomes about little decisions. Those are the two parts—the macro part and the painting the house with the Q tip part.