Happy Friday, and welcome to another edition of 5 Questions with…, a series where I interview musicians via email.
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If you’ve read ready my bio, you might have noticed some name-dropping. 🙂 One such name is none other than Dr. David R. Holsinger. And guess who today’s blog guest is!
Keep reading for 5 Question with…Dr. David R. Holsinger.
How has music composition changed in your years of experience?
Holy cow Barbara! One could write a book with this first question alone. I have been published since the early 1970s and composed music in the decade before that. Keeping track of the changes in composition in that time would take dozens and dozens of books, and it has! Ask any college music major! If we all lived before 1900 it would be so much simpler to answer. When Mozart was writing, almost everyone else was writing in the same style, just not as good. When Beethoven was alive everyone tried to compose similar to Beethoven, just not as good. Obviously, that’s a very very simplistic statement.
It’s just not that simple anymore. Contemporary music today is in upheaval; there are more possible choices for medium and style than ever before. It’s a plain fact that the number of composers in any era who are really, profoundly original, in ways which move people, is always going to be very small. Too often, a frantic search for originality ends up being an incentive to just make your music strange. It is not hard to be strange; the problem is that the number of innovations which really have any expressive impact is very, very small.
In short, in my lifetime, there have appeared hundreds, if not thousands, of composers all attempting to do something different. Some have succeeded and others have not. By far the most common weakness in poor music is distraction: Various aspects of the music don’t contribute to the emotional effect, in fact, they may even contradict or weaken it.
But I can say that “real composers” write because it is part of them, because they love the music they write themselves. In other words, they love doing it. If you are also a performer, you will have the pleasure of playing music (including your own) all your life. And nobody can take that away from you. Making music should be an activity which enhances your quality of life, and which allows you to share what is best in yourself. It is worth quite a lot of work to make that happen.
What is your favorite part of your work as a musician?
Much shorter answer on this one – Being a teacher-conductor. And by that I don’t mean just demonstrating patterns and motion, but instilling in the young conductor his or her actual beliefs about the personal attributes of expression, how to facitate and provide a meaningful experience for the musician, as well as establish a positive environment in which to make music.
Do you have any advice for aspiring composers?
The most important thing to realize is that composing is first and foremost a craft. You have to become an artisan before you can be an artist. The sooner you forget the romantic idea of the artist as a divinely inspired madman, the better off you will be. No matter how much talent you have, without a thoroughly professional training, it will go to waste. (If you get this part right, everything else will be easier.)
Another point: There are very, very few serious composers who have not spent a lot of time learning to play an instrument. And I don’t mean two years of guitar study; I mean learning an instrument to the point where you can really perform in public, where you understand how performers feel and think, where the reality of musical performance is absolutely visceral for you.
One last word about the nature of this training: The final result should not be to pack you full of a bunch of “recipes,” but to show you what to demand of yourself as an artist. The conventional, known, solutions to common problems are only useful if you know why they work. In fact, this little word, “why,” is the most important tool in your musical education.
You will need to have a positive attitude about your own music, especially while you are a beginner: Your first pieces can’t be perfect. But it is very important to complete them anyway (you can always revise them later, if you want to). There is a kind of experience which comes with completing pieces which is critical to developing a good sense of form. The latter is the last thing which will develop in your craft training, because it requires working in longer spans of time than your first exercises will permit.
Nobody can teach you more than you can teach yourself. And your best tool for learning is listening, active listening. Keep asking questions. Why does this piece fail in a given place? Why does another piece succeed?
Eventually – but not soon, you will start to realize, through your listening, that music is always changing. You may realize that the composer in 1790 writing a piece in ABA form takes a lot longer to come to the point that a composer using somewhat the same form in 1990! THAT is the concept of “changing information supply.” You will begin to see, perhaps, that the technique of pitch selection has also morphed over the centuries.
By now you will be asking how to find and choose a good teacher. A good question, but not an easy one. Unfortunately, in a very subjective field like music, “an average teacher” is not very good. So what should you look for in a teacher? (And I say “a teacher,” not “teachers,” because everything I have ever seen has shown me that one learns 90% of what one knows from one or two people. The trick is finding the right one or two.)
Don’t judge them by how famous they are, or by how famous the school is. Not all good composers are good teachers; we are talking about two very different abilities. Teaching composition is also very personal, and you must have a good rapport with your teacher.
Listen to their own music. You don’t have to love it, or want to imitate it, but you must respect it. If you don’t respect it, you won’t enjoy working with them. Also, make sure they respect what you want to do.
Watch out for ideology. While most teachers will say that they want all their students to find their own voice, in fact many will push you, often quite hard, towards certain modern composers they believe in, and will want you to avoid others who they think are on the “wrong” path.
Be especially aware of some common errors of logic, typically used by ideologues to “prove” their points. For example: “Most great composers’ music was considered difficult in their time.” The incorrect implication here (even assuming the first premise is true, which is already debatable) is that because you find some new music difficult, it must therefore be great. Even surprisingly intelligent people sometimes spout this kind of nonsense. “Difficulty” is not a measure of musical quality.
Avoid teachers who spend lots of time talking about style, and have little or nothing to say about technique. Beware of teachers who emphasize abstract systems: This, again, usually means that they have nothing practical to say about music.
“Difficulty” is not a measure of musical quality.
-DR. DAVID R. HOLSINGER
Would you tell us a little about your trains?
I have a hobby. My basement is filled with model trains. I have lots of track, sculpted mountains, tiny trees and bushes, buildings, houses, cars and trucks, and little people glued to miniature grass and concrete. When we moved to Cleveland, TN, my wife was adamant with every realtor that we find a house where there was room for me to rebuild the layout I had had to tear apart upon leaving The Ft. Worth-Dallas area. In retrospect, she had a deeper understanding of my hobbies significance than I.
This hobby information is offered as an answer to yet another important compositional question, “Do I ever get writer’s block?”
Several years ago, my wife passed a book on to me by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, former chairman of the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago, entitled “CREATIVITY.” As the book sleeve states, it is an examination of the flow and psychology of discovery and invention, based on histories of contemporary people who know about it firsthand. The book begins with a description of what creativity is, reviews the way creative people work and live, and concludes with ideas about how to make your life more creative. After reading the ten dimensions of complexity, ten pairs of apparently antithetical traits that are often present in creative people, thankfully, my wife figured all of them out years ago. I didn’t think I was that complicated.
However, getting back to my trains, one section of the book deals with creative surroundings. Dr. Csikszentmihalyi discusses how creative people gain control over the immediate environment and transform it to enhance personal creativity. He points out that Jonas Salk liked to work in a studio where, in addition to the material he needed for writing on biology, there was a piano and an easel for painting. Csikszentmihalyi’s supposition is that surroundings influence creativity in different ways, in part depending on the stage of the process. During preparation, when one is gathering thoughts and problematic elements, an ordered, familiar environment is necessary for concentration.
At the next stage, when thoughts about the problem are in an “incubation” mode, a different environment may be more helpful. The author states that “this distraction allows the subconscious mental processes to make connections that are unlikely when the problem is pursued by the linear logic learned from experience.” After the unexpected connection results in an insight, the familiar environment is again more conducive toward completion of the project.
Do I get “writers block?” Of course I do. I sit before the computer screen dealing with little black dots and little white spaces, fragments and shapes, complex time-designs, working at a miniature world inside a large formal structure, and suddenly, nothing seems to fit. I arise from my chair, walk down two flights of stairs, and begin “to build a tree” or tinker with a rail car. I begin dealing with miniature fragments and shapes, trying to match the complexity of nature’s design, working at a miniature world inside a large formal structure. It is not unusual that in the midst of “play” the answer to my problem two floors above is formulated and solved. My world of distraction is still very much akin to my world of creativity in terms of micro-manipulation, but it really doesn’t have to be.
Or maybe I just have fun playing with trains! LOL. Not so deep, afterall.
Who else would you recommend as a guest in the “5 Questions with…” series?
I don’t know. My circle of friends and colleagues are not very diverse. Which, I suppose, from a collective sense, is somewhat disappointing for your purpose.
And there are “5 Questions with…Dr. David R. Holsinger”! Who else would you like to see interviewed on the Fischarper blog? Send me a message and let me know.
-Barbara
DAVID R. HOLSINGER presently serves Lee University, Cleveland, Tennessee, as conductor of the Wind Ensemble and Professor of Music. An elected member of the American Bandmasters Association, Holsinger is the recipient of numerous awards for his compositions. He holds a BME from Central Methodist University, a MA at the University of Central Missouri, a DMA from the University of Kansas, and has been award a LHD from Gustavus Adolphus College. Further information about the composer can be found at www.davidrholsinger.com, along with current errata and FAQ’s concerning his life and works.
Want to be interviewed or have a suggestion for a “5 Questions with…” interviewee? Let me know via the contact form!
Fischarper interviews may be edited for accuracy (spelling, punctuation, etc.), sentence flow, space, etc. Interviewee views are not necessarily endorsed or shared by Barbara Fischer or Fischarper, LLC.
Barbara Fischer runs Fischarper, LLC and loves her job as a harpist and private music educator. She enjoys blogging about various aspects of the music field on fischarper.com/blog. For more music resources, check out the Fischarper store. Find out where you can find Barbara on the interwebs here. And you can sign up to receive Fischarper updates by joining the email list.