Pursuing Eloquence
Interviewer: How much revising do you do?
Hemingway: It depends. I rewrote the ending of Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.
Interviewer: Was there some technical problems there? What was it that had stumped you?”
Hemingway: Getting the words right.
—Paris Review INTERVIEW
Several composers whose music I love reworked some of their compositions over periods lasting years. Berlioz, for example, based his Damnation of Faust on a work he had written 17 years earlier. Tchaikovsky completed the final version of Romeo and Juliet 20 years after the premiere of the first.
Such long-term decisions to revise usually stem from an obsessive pursuit of eloquence. From a rhetorical viewpoint (see Artful vs Plain) getting your language “right” is essential—the particular way something is expressed is an integral aspect of its content.
Over the years I have discarded numerous early compositions and revised several others. Composing stage works with plot considerations increased my ability to reconsider the structural organization of my works, as well as the dramatic impact of individual passages. I learned from working with experienced writers and directors that in the theater you need to be willing to search pragmatically for “what works.” Time spent working with them has helped me better hear my works as perceptual experiences.
It is almost frightening to realize how much our larger impressions can be changed by simple changes of detail—by shifting the placement of an element, or by making a subtle change of orchestral texture. In The Creative Habit Twyla Tharp relates that director Mike Nichols once asked Jerome Robbins how to fix a stage scene that was failing to get laughs. Robbins watched the scene and then told Nichols to change the color of a towel hanging at the back of the stage from white to yellow. Incredulous, Nichols made the change, and every night after that the scene got laughs.
Having gained more experience as a composer, and having adopted a more rhetorical approach to composing, I sometimes hear that some aspect of a passage in an earlier work is not contributing to the desired overall impression. If so, I usually revise that passage. Figuring out how to get the sounds right so that the passage “works” can be a challenge, but worth whatever effort it takes.