A Change of Worldview
I composed a few pieces of music as early as high school, but I focused on performance (French horn) until I had completed a masters degree. Then, while serving in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, I began to compose in earnest. After discharge, I completed a doctorate in composition at the University of Illinois.
Much of the music I wrote from 1970 to 1979 was dark in tone, and I set several texts that dealt with dark subject matter. I was interested in the theater, and such subjects can create powerful drama. Then in the late 70s I also began to work with comic texts, and when I tackled a tragic opera that included some darkly comic scenes, the resulting musical schism created a deep crisis in my work (see Laughter and Tonality). Resolving that crisis became a turning point in developing my voice as a composer and eventually caused me to reject the way I been viewing the world.
Confronting the Serious Worldview
The new works I began to compose were sometimes overtly playful, and this disturbed some serious-minded composers. One of my composer friends told me I was “throwing away my talent.” A grants panel spokesman told me my new work had caused heated arguments. But he also assured me that controversy was desirable and encouraged me to submit only my latest works.
When one of my former composition teachers heard a new work of mine that included some congenial sections, he told me he hated me for writing it. I laughed. When he told me he was “serious,” I said, “I know. That’s what makes it so funny.”
The prevailing view was that “serious” music needed to be solemn or esoteric in tone, and should therefore avoid melodies, rhythms, harmonies, and textures with sensuous qualities that might immediately “please” an audience, or remind them of music that was in any sense “popular” or “theatrical.” This attitude seemed pitifully restrictive to me. I had a strong interest in the theater, and I wanted to compose music that could evoke a wide range of human feelings. I wanted to be able to express frivolity as effectively as despair, delight as convincingly as rage, and seductiveness as persuasively as innocence.
In the following years I read scores of books on theater, rhetoric, literary theory, comparative philosophy, and similar subjects. These readings helped me understand that in the process of composing my recent works I had inadvertently rejected various assumptions fundamental to the “serious” worldview. I also realized that most of my upbringing and education had been based on “serious” assumptions, and that these assumptions stemmed from various redemptive ideologies intended to save us from falling prey to earthly pleasures. Since my recent work strived to create such pleasures, from the standpoint of those who adhered to the “serious” worldview, I looked like a heretic.
The more I learned about the “serious” worldview, the more at-odds I felt with its austere assumptions. The “serious” attitude seemed puritanical in its unease with worldly pleasures such as frivolity and sensuality. “Seriousness” was also opposed to displays of style which might seem consciously playful, beguiling, or theatrical. Given my personal interest in the audience-aware world of acting and the theater, as well as my desire to compose music that evoked a wide variety of feelings (and have fun doing it), I realized that for me the “serious” worldview was a disastrous fit.
Fortunately, in my readings I had discovered that the assumptions supporting a “rhetorical/theatrical” worldview fit me as if custom tailored. Sure of my aesthetic preferences, I changed to the worldview that matched the way I wanted to work.
Working from the Theatrical/Rhetorical Worldview
The metaphoric models for this worldview are plays or speeches, with creative artists being like actors or orators who display their skills for an audience. Because an actor is to some extent aware of himself as an actor (as a player on the world’s stage), the word “playful” is also sometimes used in describing this attitude. In contrast, descriptions of the “serious” worldview tend to emphasize sincerity, plain speech, and remaining true to a single “central” self. (For more on the theatrical/rhetorical worldview, see Artful Versus Plain.)
For me, consciously shifting to a theatrical/rhetoric worldview has been artistically liberating. I now only write for performance groups and situations that deeply interest me, and this allows me to assume that most of the potential audience members are seeking an aesthetic experience that aligns with my sense of aesthetic identity. I approach my work wanting to communicate with someone else (an audience that I choose to write for). And I take pleasure in striving to communicate artfully, eloquently, and sometimes even playfully. Rather than feeling isolated from the audiences that I write for, I feel we are interconnected by our common desire for exciting, entertaining, rewarding, and memorable experiences.