The Real, Never-Ending Struggle
I don’t believe a piece’s duration is intrinsically determined by its musical materials, but some materials do need time to unfold. And I don’t mean that in the romantic way, “let the ideas breathe more.” I mean that some techniques require it. Process-based music, which I’m inspired by, needs time for recurrence and repetition, and that implies a specific duration. Soft sounds seem to dominate in longer pieces, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. That’s the push and pull in our practice: write a dense piece of considerable duration, and people might call it “unbalanced,” “not transparent enough,” or “lacking dynamics.” Louis Andriessen’s music is a good example of pushing against that expectation.
And before moving on, let’s address the elephant in the room.
No, thinking about instrumentation, duration, or the workshops is not merely a “pre-compositional” phase. In my dissertation article, I argued against dividing composition neatly into pre-composition, composition, and, presumably, post-composition. The idea that you prepare to compose before “real” composition begins feels, to me, like a byproduct of industrial models applied to artistic production. It also creates a weird hierarchy: it privileges the moment when notes appear on the page as “real” composition, while diminishing the earlier decisions that make the piece possible. And don’t get me started on Schoenberg’s “musical idea” and the like.
At the conservatory in Bogotá, I don’t remember anyone using the term “pre-composition.” We had “the compositional plan,” a set of simple questions: how long is the piece, for whom, due when, for what instruments. I wrote the answers down, and I still do. I first met “pre-composition” in my master’s, about ten years ago, and as you can tell, I have never liked it. I suspect the film industry’s production model has something to do with it. But that’s another rabbit hole for another time.
So, where does a piece of music begin?
For me, and I believe for many others, composition is a continuum. It’s a flux. Of course, we can divide the process into steps, as I’m deliberately trying to do through this blog. But that’s not what I’m critiquing. What I question is the language of inevitability: “It has to be this way,” “This is the more efficient way,” “If it works, repeat it.”
For example, the moment I get confirmation that a project will happen, the piece has already begun. Thinking, planning, dreaming, imagining, procrastinating, doubting, sketching mockups, testing MIDI ideas, putting notes in Finale, deleting everything by mistake: all of these activities belong to the composition. In that sense, I’ve already been composing this piece for quite some time.
This brings me to director Bong Joon Ho (yes, the one behind Parasite. But have you seen Mother or Memories of Murder?). Asked in a recent interview whether he had a daily writing ritual, he answered:
“I try to avoid anything dramatic or some kind of fancy ritual... I want to be effortless, not making a big deal out of it.”
I love this idea of effortlessness. He added that, much like breathing, he just goes about his everyday life: writing in everyday places, watching TV, reading sometimes. This contrasts sharply with what many composition educators promote: the notion that composing should be painful, or at least involve some kind of struggle. That’s a clear sign of an overly dramatic approach to simply putting notes on paper… but as I always joke, “Who writes by hand anyway? Ah, the middle-class kids.”
The effortlessness I mean isn’t literal, of course. I compose happily at home. I don’t use a laptop unless I’m away, and yes, the process changes. I feel that kind of ease with technology: my mouse skills, my Finale superpowers, my empty Ableton Live files, etc.
Some people write by hand because it was the technology of their time. Others write by hand because they romanticize it and/or think it gives them a better understanding, a “closer contact” with the music. But if we’re going to romanticize, a MIDI cable is an actual connection. I don’t romanticize it; I’d love to go beyond. It’s a mystery! I still remember the day I connected my home computer to a Yamaha keyboard. It felt like magic! I posted about it on Facebook, of course.
Back to the pain thing. My Spanish-speaking brain feels that something gets lost in translation between the words hard and struggle. Creating anything is hard, despite today's AI slogan, If you can write it, we can create it for you. I just saw it on the subway. But calling it a struggle, or even just hard, makes me question the composer's way of life more than anything else. Music is a language, and learning it is like learning any other: the beginning is always hard, but mispronouncing a word doesn't literally cause pain. What we feel is the shame of being observed or judged while making a mistake. Maybe the distinction is that something can be hard without becoming a struggle. Sometimes the struggle comes from the expectations we attach to doing it. So it goes back to The Real, Never-Ending Struggle: expectations and assumptions.
But while writing this and talking with my bestie, I realized that if anything in the compositional process comes close to pain, it's anxiety. At least it is for many of us. (I have an imaginary book title for this: Millennial Anxiety and How Not to Poop in Your Pants.) To be fair, the professors I'm ranting about probably meant frustration with how difficult the task is, not anxiety. I said earlier that I compose happily at home. That's both the environment and the feeling. And I don't mean happy in the American way; I mean happy as in, I'm working on something I want to be working on, and I have food on the table.
The anxious, painful parts have been elsewhere: submitting a piece on time (remember the first section? Let's start by working backward), meeting performers I don't know (which is another reason I value workshops: they let us get to know one another through the music), speaking before a piece at a concert, reading the rejection email, etc. All of that has changed as I've learned to manage The Real, Never-Ending Struggle in its many forms: expectations and assumptions, part two.
Writing works the same way, including this blog. I’ve never done it before, and this first entry probably isn’t particularly good. But it’s fun! It’s a lot of work, yes. It’s fun because I like building structures, organizing thoughts, testing ideas, and so on. You get the point.
Maybe this blog is another small experiment in that idea. I haven’t felt any anxiety while writing this whole thing, and I don’t feel any about how it will be received. So maybe it’s actually possible: composing without anxiety, without pain, without anything more than curiosity. Curiosity for building sound worlds, for communicating, for whatever we call this.
If you find this writing helpful, you can buy me some “coffee” on Venmo: James-Diaz-Composer.
In the next entry, I’ll share how the process is going!
I dislike the idea of writing for generic categories like “professional orchestra” or “level-two band.” I like writing for people.
This is the first time I’ve publicly documented the compositional process for one of my pieces, in writing and in English, which is not my mother tongue, as the expression goes.
It goes back to 2022, when I began writing my dissertation article about compositional process and the importance of demystifying what is often treated as a mysterious or highly specialized path. So, how is this going to work? I’ll share how I’m approaching this particular composition through a series of posts here on my website.
After giving several lectures and presentations about my pieces, I’ve noticed that sharing the process often generates ideas for future works. Exposing the whys and hows behind a piece makes things clearer, at least for me.
I don’t know how many entries this series will have, but I’ll try to post one each Friday, starting in November. Expect writing about my own processes and techniques, thinking-out-loud opinions, a lot of passive voice, and some jokes!
Let’s start by working backward
The piece will be performed on March 5, 2027. The final score and parts are due on February 23. The Grossman Ensemble works differently from most commissioning organizations. Instead of waiting for the composer to deliver a finished score, they build collaboration into the process. They provide three rehearsals, or more accurately, workshops, and the musicians strongly prefer that the piece remain a work in progress so they can take part in its development.
This means a great deal to me. It’s the perfect scenario, and it’s how I’ve mostly composed: collaboratively. I write for musicians, not for instruments.
Submitting scores months before the premiere is a long-standing standard in the States. As you may have noticed, this schedule is a big departure from the usual two-month lead time before a concert for orchestras and other music organizations. I don’t see early submission itself as the problem. The problem is treating that submission as a point of no return. In Colombia, there isn’t necessarily a standard two-month lead time. Earlier this year, I sent the parts for a performance in Bogotá just one week before the concert. That might seem unprofessional, but if professionalism doesn’t give us flexibility, then we’re not doing a good job. I remember reading in John Adams’s biography how many revisions Harmonielehre went through. That kind of flexibility is hard to imagine for a young, emerging composer working with an established organization today.
Workshops, on the other hand, are valuable for everyone involved. For me, they are the very essence of making music. They let us composers experiment, test ideas, make mistakes, and revise. They also give performers and conductors the chance to contribute their musicality from the very beginning, so they become part of the creative process, not just its recipients.
This is different from receiving feedback once a score is finished. A workshop demystifies not only the musical ideas but also the notation and the countless changes a piece goes through. I recently learned that Reich never finalized a conventional score for Music for 18 Musicians during its original development. The piece took shape through the interaction between the composer and performers in the same room. In Reich’s case, that was even more direct, of course, because he was part of the ensemble. In general, the workshop puts us in a musical environment: the obsession with adding details to the score can wait, because the performers are there, rather than me sitting in that proverbial ivory tower, or its contemporary version: living in the woods with a nice view.
Yes, this is all to say I love workshopping. Sue me. Now, let’s get into some details.
The work should be between nine and fourteen minutes long. I’ll go for the full fourteen. I wish I could write longer pieces, but that’s for another time.
The instrumentation is the coolest part: flute, oboe, clarinet, alto saxophone, horn, percussion 1, percussion 2, harp, piano, violin I, violin II, viola, and cello.
Doublings in the woodwinds are possible, so I’ll go for bass clarinet and baritone saxophone. I need some low end, or a bass, to balance the instrumentation. I could use the percussion for that, but I need sustained pitch options. People often call this a “practical” solution, as if it were less artistic. As Ives said, “Is it the composer’s fault that man has only ten fingers?”
Electronics may also be used, but I won’t use them this time. No practical reasons, I guess; my ten fingers are full. But yes, this is a fantastic instrumentation.
Thinking about duration
Duration is often my first reference point.
At the beginning, the pitches, gestures, and structures are still vague ideas, barely there. So I try to imagine the duration itself: how do those fourteen minutes feel? At first, I used to make timelines on a landscape sheet of paper, with markers for each minute. I do it less now, but “seeing” the duration as a screenshot, a single page, always helped me focus on the big question: “What’s next?”
Only a few cue marking in relation to the timing.
I composed the second movement first. The shapes are guide for preliminar textural ideas
Closer view
Only a few cue marking in relation to the timing.
Other ways I’ve done this actually challenge the idea of form as a screenshot, and I find them just as helpful for envisioning the form: multiple landscape sheets taped on a wall, an Excel sheet, a colored MIDI track in Ableton, or a combination of any of those. These are different ways of taking a snapshot of something that is constantly changing. They help me see the bigger picture without necessarily defining how the piece will unfold.
Before any pitches I used this map of the orchestration to see the form more clearly. The graphic below shows the tempo or speed map.
I used a short sample to shape the whole form of the movement. So like 3-second sound became the form. I used Illustrator for this one.
More excel maps. For this time I combined the short-sample idea with the step by step feeling of the sheets.
Before any pitches I used this map of the orchestration to see the form more clearly. The graphic below shows the tempo or speed map.