On finding one's own voice as a composer 

Practical considerations

How I found my own 'voice'.

First of all, and this is very important, I never consciously tried to find a specific 'voice' that I could call my own! It was never an issue for me. Neither did I ever consciously 'find' even my own 'voice', let alone 'a voice', because my own musical 'voice' was simply what naturally emerged, just as my own vocal voice didn't have to be 'found'! 

Self-conscious searching for or contriving a personal 'voice' rarely if ever works well in terms of producing real quality in art, because it diverts attention from the basic need to cultivate openness of one's inner creative source, which arises out of fundamental consciousness itself — and that is, in effect 'the Ultimate'. Hence the widespread combination of cleverness and mediocrity / shallowness (or worse) in our art! How many even of our most recognised and widely performed contemporary composers write music of the lasting quality of, say, Domenico Scarlatti, J.S.Bach, Beethoven, Stravinsky or the best of Sibelius?

One thing that helped me myself to effortlessly evolve my own musical voice was a 'gift' that I'd been landed with in this lifetime. And this gift that I refer to isn't exactly what you would think of as a gift. You see, this tremendous gift that I was landed with was an immensely frustrating impediment — I couldn't and still cannot sight-read music! And because of this I've had no formal musical education at all. So, for most of this lifetime of mine it had seemed to me physically impossible that any music that I heard within me could be realized and shared with others. A very lonely experience, I can tell you!

The great virtue of this situation was that I had absolutely no motivation to find any skills, techniques, gimmicks, clever effects and all that, which would impress other people (especially critics and academics) with my abilities or any show of a contrived 'individuality' — nor to follow any rules of composition that were not intrinsic in my own creative process.

All I had was music of increasing power and integrity emerging from the depths of my consciousness and working itself out in my mind. It involved musical sounds, colours, events and processes that were intensely meaningful to me. I wasn't trying to express anything in the music; rather, the music of its own volition embodied inner experiences that I couldn't possibly have expressed if I'd actually been consciously trying to do so.

My first compositions were really what I regarded as crude sketches extracted from large-scale ideas in my mind. They were mostly flute duets, with the odd song, and were very laboriously written on paper in 1978–80. I gave up doing that as it was so draining for me and there was no way that I could write out the larger-scale ideas that were always in my mind, and from which these small pieces were drawn. As these little pieces were written really only as experimental sketches for my own purposes, my only concern was to be true to what I could hear within, and what had meaning for me. Trying to gain anyone's approval wasn't in the equation at all.

Even then, with all the difficulty of trying to write down music that I couldn't read (I used a flute to translate it!), I was amazed at how, when I started putting ideas down on paper, they tended to work out in ways I'd not previously thought of — for my compositional processes have always had much to do with the form and structure of a work being organically derived from the potentialities of the starting material (often just one or two motifs), rather than my fitting it into a preconceived form.

My outlook on form had and still has a lot in common with mature Sibelius or Holmboe — though my approach was always more varied, for I saw each nudging starting-point for a new work as being an opportunity for some sort of experiment with form and the very nature of the creative processes involved.

It wasn't till 1995, when I was 53, that I finally started properly realizing my works as formal, 'opus number' compositions, thanks to an upgraded computer system that enabled me to break through my musical 'literacy' barrier. I initiated this outbreak of overt composing serendipitously, by stealth.

Instead of thinking, 'Now I will try and compose' (which would at once have blocked the creative flow with my ingrained and stultifying belief in my inevitable failure), I rather forlornly took one of those previous crude attempts at composing — a little flute duet that I had called The Wanderer, and simply thought to try and orchestrate it as a little experiment to assuage my curiosity, because my new sound card had come with a software package called MIDI Orchestrator Plus, and I understood that this new sound card actually had orchestral instrument sounds on board. I was using a piano-roll display for my editing, not standard music notation, and I found this very simple, easy and intuitive to do editing work upon.

Indeed, it was so easy that, as I started assigning the lines of this flute duet to different instruments of the orchestra, straight away I found myself starting intuitively to put melodic phrases in canon and to combine instrumental sounds and make orchestral textures. Where I'd put elements together in particular ways that came out beautiful and powerful, I then realized with excitement that these put-together blocks could themselves be treated as though they were larger-scale melodic motifs, and indeed blocks of a developing musical structure, and so a process of rapid expansion and elaboration ensued.

Within a day or so, to my absolute amazement I had to accept that my First Symphony was rapidly emerging before my eyes. Because I could instantly play back what I'd just created on-screen, and with the right instrument sounds, I knew at each point when I'd got notes, phrases and instrumental parts combined in ways that were meaningful to me, and to my delight it was a process of mostly successful 'trial' and very little 'error'.

With this as with all the succeeding compositions, the question of seeking individuality in my music was never an issue, for I was being true to my 'inner ear', and that was what mattered. I couldn't see how my music could be as good, let alone become any greater, through my becoming less true to myself in order to seek somebody else's — say a critic's — approval.

My compositional processes have always ensured that the bulk of each work would be discovered serendipitously through my being a bit like a chimpanzee playing with Lego bricks, simply getting hunches like 'Oh, now let's put a copy of that phrase against itself in the clarinets …let's say, half a bar later…'. Clearly I had (and indeed still have) a very acute inner ear, so that I knew what 'clicked', or was likely to 'click', without needing any formal rules taught to me. Most of my seemingly blind hunches as to what to put where actually worked spectacularly well, usually at first try.

Indeed, it seemed very much as though templates for these works, or at least for many parts of them, already existed somewhere within consciousness at a more or less universal level, so for a lot of the time I was simply intuitively recognising what was most likely to fit where in the template, without having to rely on anyone's instructions because I had a better way.

Not only that, but time and time again I had a sense of recognition of what I had just put together, as though remembering it from before this lifetime. As I now understand, this impression was significant — though in a slightly different way from how I was understanding things at the time, for I've more recently gained new and challenging insights into the nature of reincarnation and what are generally taken to be one's own past life memories.

So much of this process comes down again to listening deeply to deeper levels of my own consciousness, and remaining true to that. Indeed, the way this happened often seemed downright spooky, as though I were being given guidance from 'a higher dimension' — maybe a so-called spirit guide*. But whether or not one could accept such an explanation, the key has always been listening acutely to and being guided by the 'inner voice', the core of intuition, however it may be ultimately explained.

I should add at this point that in one important respect I was a bit unusual for a chimpanzee playing with Lego bricks. My acutely analytical listening to classical (mostly 20th Century) music over most of my life had actually been my great tuition, to the point that I had an intuitive feel, not only for melodic and harmonic relationships and organic development (without knowing any of it in words that one might be 'taught'), but also for how the instrumental sounds in an orchestra fitted together, and the sort of balance they'd have.

The only textbooks I used while composing were an old slim one by Gordon Jacob on orchestration and Walter Piston's standard work on the same subject, which I kept beside me while composing, to ensure that I kept within the range of each instrument and didn't give it things that only some 13-fingered big green extra-terrestrial high on amphetamine could play.

Because my learning-through-listening over the decades had been completely self-directed and not interfered with by any theories, rules and concepts that music tutors would have sought to inculcate into me, I found that I perceived what was going on in various works more deeply than various professional musicians who I occasionally got talking with, prompting surprised comments like That's a bit deep!, and even puzzled queries as to where I'd studied music.

Well, yes, my perception was deeper than what they had been taught — not because I was some sort of superhuman* but because I'd not been as tampered with as they'd been, and I was thus able to listen more deeply, relating what I perceived to whatever awareness was closer to my creative source, rather than to theories, rules and labels that one is taught.

Anyone who wanted to listen to my works to find fault could notice my failure to do many of the normal clever things done by other composers — which is often because I really don't have that sort of experience or ability. But such limitations have been powerful in forcing me to stay with the basic content and integrity of my music. Every composer of integrity works within constraints that (s)he sets up. Working within a tradition itself involves accepting great constraints.

Now, I'm not seeking to pooh-pooh the using of bountiful compositional skills and having a broad range of techniques — not at all! But what I am saying is that having or at least using only a limited range can be very helpful in encouraging one to focus on the essence of one's music. How many people who go through a formal musical training and learn all the skills and methods write music that is of really compelling depth of inspiration?

In my experience, only the odd ones here and there get much beyond being merely functional, craftsman-like or clever — although undoubtedly some of them gain financial success, presumably usually through knowing the right people or/and being good instrumentalists and being able to perform works of theirs and so gain themselves some public respectability.

Why do you want to compose anyway?

My impression is that for many composers the nature of their motivation is part of the reason for their not really opening up their inspirational core. Okay, this is conjecture, but at least somewhat inspired conjecture! For myself, I have no direct wish to compose, and that greatly helps. Rather, it's the music within which was driving me and demanding to be written, periodically nudging me to 'try this…' or 'experiment with these two…'. This is the normal way a new work of mine is initiated. If I actually 'wanted to compose', that would at once skew my whole attitude away from my connection to the innermost source. I'd then be much more in the world of seeking material results and a reputation rather than simply allowing the creative source within to touch people in positive and constructive, horizon-broadening ways.

Now, I'm not saying that one way is right and the other wrong, but if we understand what is going on for us, then we have the possibility of directing ourselves in the way that aligns best with our deepest life purpose, whatever that may be. I know that there are many people who want to be more in tune with their core and to be writing music of real inspiration, and for those people it's important to understand the issues that for most of us lie in the way of that happening.

Of course there are many uses to which music is put, which on the face of it don't require great depths of inspiration. I certainly don't mean to dismiss those who compose various functional types of music such as that for films or adverts, or indeed for whatever gets them some income that they can live on. I wish them all well, but that type of work isn't what I myself am addressing here — though in reality the world would be a better place if ALL those composers produced really inspired music even for films or adverts.

One measure that I would suggest to help cultivate a healthy 'core connection' is to train yourself not to allow 'composer' to be your self-identity, but instead to view yourself as a person who happens to compose. From that broader self-view it becomes easier to perceive the creative process as an opening up of the core of this precious human being and letting the inner source flow out to touch the hearts of other humans. On the other hand, if you maintain the self image of 'I am a composer and I want to make my mark…', then to some extent you are in what I'd call end-gaining mode, which restricts the flow from the source and actually restricts the quality of your manifestation as a full human being in any area of your life.

The thorny question of 'individuality'

All too often people unthinkingly equate individuality with quality. This works both ways. Some composers are widely acclaimed because of their supposedly strongly individual musical idioms, even though they commonly don't have the depth and transcendent quality in their work really to justify such acclaim. On the other hand, other composers have marvellous masterpieces dismissed by the critics just because their sound has resemblances to particular other well-known composers, even though in truth not being materially imitative. Indeed, on that basis we could throw out of the window certain symphonies of Schubert because they have strong echoes of Mozart or indeed lighter-vein Beethoven!

When a music or other artistic work is dismissed as 'derivative', we need to remember that ultimately almost all widely accepted and acclaimed work is derivative, in various ways. Few creative artists fully 'reinvent the wheel', and the results of doing so are very mixed — undoubtedly with some wonderful 'hits' but also many over-academic 'lead balloons' (i.e., clever but not deeply connected or inspiring).

Another problem that can arise through a fixation on having an individual voice is that, even if music of real stature results, the idiom can be very restricted, so that there's a 'sameness' about the composer's various works that can easily lose the listener's interest, and which in any case greatly restricts the breadth and variety of vision that the composer can convey. One very well known composer with this sort of issue was Robert Simpson.

I felt, too, that even Vagn Holmboe, who composed some wonderful masterpieces (listen, especially to his 8th Symphony), was trapped within an ultimately restrictive idiom and really had needed to broaden his outlook and palette. In his case there was a definite running out of steam of the sense of fresh discovery after the 8th Symphony (some would say, not till after the rather dark and gloomy-seeming 10th); in his subsequent works he seemed simply to be reworking the vision he already had, rather than opening new horizons. His process of thematic metamorphosis within a highly polyphonic framework had a much greater potentiality, which wasn't realized because of his strong attachment to a certain modal colouring, which to my perception was related to a certain type of emotional trauma that he was carrying and never resolved*.

Alan Hovhaness also suffers with a restrictive idiom — all the more so because of the simplicity of that idiom and the prodigious number of works that he produced. In his case one answer would have been not so much in varying the idiom further but in composing vastly fewer and more carefully considered works. That would have allowed the works that he did compose, and especially his real masterpieces, to have much greater impact.

In the case of all three of these composers, there are works of theirs that are truly wonderful to me, so in no way am I saying that they are bad composers. Rather, I'm underlining the point that even well known and highly regarded composers have been manifesting only a fraction of their potential in their work, and we all could learn from this.

To you composers reading this I'd say: the real way forward is to be true to yourself, and compose with what sounds, melodies, modes, rhythms and effects turn you on most — not what others tell you or imply that you ought to use. This involves keeping on listening deep within yourself for what 'clicks' into place most readily within you. Maybe it does have resonances of certain other composers, which might lead to your work getting criticized. But it's surely better that your work is fully true to yourself and deeply 'connected', rather than made to sound how somebody else thinks it ought to sound!

The use of 'modernistic' idioms

No 'modernistic'-sounding (i.e., strongly atonal / overtly discordant) idiom is wrong in itself, and in my experience (BBC Radio 3 broadcasts plus my own explorations in recorded classical music over the decades) such idioms have been used effectively at times by a small number of composers. Particular examples are Iannis Xenakis and Giacinto Scelsi, and some of Stravinsky's incursions into serialism. For the most part, however, the use of such an idiom is to be questioned.

Quite apart from the fact that only a tiny minority of music listeners can really 'tune in' to such idioms, my general impression is that these idioms are usually taken up because the particular composers have difficulty in opening up their deeper aspects and attuning properly to their innermost creative source. — And please note that I say 'usually', for I'm not expressing a dogmatic opinion about all 'modernistic' composers.

What happens here reminds me of people who feel they have to go around wearing sunglasses all the time, because they have some difficulty in relating to and revealing their true selves. And just as the wearing of sunglasses makes people look more alike, and indeed robotic, so the writing of music in, say, a serial idiom, usually imparts upon the composer's work a 'serial' sound that is much the same between diverse composers, so abandoning any possibility of having a truly individual voice. It is modes (in the broad sense) that give music so much of its colour, and when they're abandoned or at least greatly chewed up, or highly chromatic modes are used, much of the potential for distinctive colour in a particular composer's work isn't realized.

I suspect many composers get led astray into 'modernistic' idioms by pressures that they feel, to sound very different from their 'great masters'. So they end up writing music that sounds like that of many of their contemporaries instead! They are just following a fashion and not listening deeply into themselves at all.

I view hard-core atonality and particularly dodecaphony as being rather like an artist putting a jumble of all colours on his canvas or even painting it uniform white (because white is effectively all wavelengths of light and thus is implicitly all colours combined). The effect is, to varying extents, to lose differentiation in the artistic works. In fact differentiation and contrasts are key in art and indeed in all life experience.

The use of modes in music enables the composer to bring in a high degree of differentiation and contrast that is lost in dodecaphony. I find the term 'chromaticism' quite bizarre, because the more extensively it's used, far from increasing the sense of colour in a work, it actually destroys it by reducing the amount of melodic and harmonic contrast. It is those contrasts that really give the sense of colour, and, to a large degree, the individual voice of the composer.

Dissonance in music

Overall discordance of a work, so fashionable in contemporary music, is physically fatiguing to listen to, at least for extended periods — certainly for me and many people, though I know I cannot speak for everyone. Indeed it isn't only fatiguing but usually ugly, and I question whether it can serve any positive purpose in its emotional and 'subtle energy' effects upon us. Generally speaking, such music cannot be arising from a composer's deepest source, which is of an extremely harmonious nature. What is interesting is that even in the works of Mozart and Bach, for example, there is a fair amount of dissonance, but instead of jumping out at you as ugly discord it fits into the euphonious structure and intensifies it by producing moments of tension and resolution.

In my own music composition work it's been striking to me how at particular points one particular dissonance 'fits' and another does not, so it's clear that dissonance per se isn't what is wanted, but a very specific sequence or harmonic relationship. My own inner source determines that while plenty of dissonance is acceptable and indeed beneficial, each work has an overall uplifting beauty and every dissonance has to 'earn its keep' — in other words, it must serve a function that enhances the beauty of the work, and it isn't there just for dissonance's sake or as a merely theatrical gesture. A dissonance that is contrived and not part of a beautiful musical structure or argument does not belong in my music.

One of my works containing a particularly high level of dissonance in fact is the distinctly euphonious 7th Symphony (Ancient Cry for Freedom). The multi-layered canonic structures were all set up to create constantly appearing and resolving clashes, the dissonant interval being mostly major seconds. The effect here, however, isn't the brutish discord that is so synonymous in many people's minds with modernism, but a tremendous intensity, which not only intensifies the experience of euphony but adds a visionary effect of great profundity.

Probably the most dramatic discord in my whole oeuvre is the crashing one that terminates the first movement of Nordic Wilderness Journey. It is, however, a logical conclusion of the musical 'argument' — a gigantic exclamation mark at the end of that movement — and it has its own haunting quality imbued with the colour of what had led up to that — and it's all the more powerful for there being nothing else like it in my oeuvre. That is very different from a general tendency to discord that to many would be perceived as 'just noise' without a truly musical reference.

I respectfully suggest that many 'contemporary' composers of last century and this one don't understand the truly artistic use and purpose of what we call dissonance, so that their music descends to the level of ugly theatrical gesture. One currently highly regarded composer who this applies to is James Macmillan, whose music (what I have heard of it) is in my estimation greatly overrated and lacking in real depth. He certainly has his passages of real beauty, but it's a superficial beauty that gains little or nothing on repeated listenings, and in what works of his I've heard he contrives theatrical discords that, at least for me, wreck any sense of an overall deep and uplifting whole.

Interestingly and significantly, the much more subtle and elevated music that can be created with Himalayan or Tibetan singing bowls can contain sustained intervals that our Western musical tradition would consider excruciating discords — particularly the minor second, the major seventh and those intervals' extensions through adding octaves.

Yet here these intervals — often within the overtone spectrum of even just one singing bowl, are not ugly and have a tremendously exalting and purifying effect. Also, this type of music incorporates many microtonal intervals, which, from the standpoint of our Western musical tradition would make for a chaos of discord, but in fact the effect is uplifting and purifying.

I suggest that more composers who are wanting to move on from the limitations of traditional Western euphony work with singing bowls, bells and other sounds of a similar character, rich in overtones. Some composers are already working, at least some of the time, with electronic 'spectral' music, and this is part of the same direction — except that the physical singing bowls or bells generally have more subtle sounds that are much more rich in overtones than electronically derived sounds.

On the other hand, really sensitive use of harmonic and overtone relationships even with more or less conventional instrumental ensembles can produce music of a deep and compelling quality — though almost all contemporary composers who have attempted this have failed to produce works of great worth, simply because those individuals didn't have sufficiently deep awareness to create music or indeed art in any field that would have much depth or vital quality about it.

One particular exception here who has produced immensely beautiful and compelling visionary music is John Luther Adams* — not to be confused with the much better known and more populist John Adams. So also, in different ways, has Toshiro Mayuzumi, particularly notably in his Mandala Symphony and Nirvana Symphony — the former starting in a most unpromising-seeming disjointed modernistic manner but then opening out into something intensely visionary.

The use of 'accessible' idioms

Having cast a question mark over many people's use of 'modernistic' idioms, I also have to point to something similar with regard to actively seeking to be 'accessible'. There is nothing wrong with accessibility per se of course, but it's the deliberate choice of 'sounding accessible' that is problematical. This again denies the uniqueness that is inherent in one's creative core, and misses much of the depth that would be present in works resulting from an unrestricted flow from the source. The term 'dumbing down' has been used for this practice of deliberately making one's work 'accessible'. It may make you popular in some quarters; it may also make you money, but it isn't about finding the unique deep 'heart and soul' in your art.

Enabling your own true idiom to emerge

To composers who are writing currently in 'modernistic' or deliberately 'accessible' idioms, but who are open to the idea of deepening their connection to their creative source, I have the following couple of suggestions — though these would equally benefit any other composers too. They will probably seem as insultingly obvious to some as they appear to be 'lifesavers' to others!

1. Musical 'meditation'. During your moments of mental repose during every day's activities, allow all your own extant musical works to fall away from your immediate awareness, and invite musical ideas from the depths of your being and let them run their course in your mind, without trying to force them to be one thing or another. They don't have to be anything special, but allow everything external that you can see, hear or feel to resonate within your core and trigger musical notes, phrases, harmonies or what-have-you.

Stay with those musical sounds that excite and inspire you, and let the others go. Don't discard anything because it sounds like, or even is a quote from, another composer's music. Just stay with what 'turns you on' at that moment and let it develop and improvise in your mind.

A lot of my own musical ideas are actually triggered by the sound of machinery. During each session at a particular local launderette I experienced wonderful musical visions that arose from the sound of the drying machine motors! The initial strands that developed into my 7th Symphony were triggered by elements of the sound of my fridge-freezer! Then there's the whole set of musical ideas that have emerged from a deep resonance in my mind with wilderness and the sound of rushing water in the Scottish Highlands.

The starting point of one of my works (try figuring out which one!) was the sound of the run-up from start to full speed of an MSE Superspeed 50 ultracentrifuge in a biochemistry laboratory where I worked in 1963–65 — while the starting point of a particular movement in one of my symphonies was the drumming sound of the water in a shower cubicle while I was having a shower, accompanied by a continuous moderately high tone from the extractor fan there.

The point here is that by allowing external sounds and other experiences to resonate within, it's possible for musical ideas to be triggered from a deep level within one's being, without interference from the ordinary, conscious mind with all its shallow preoccupations. Now, the question is, what's the nature of such ideas that arise in your mind and engage you? Are they still the way you've been writing your music, or are they in some way different?

Make an everyday practice of this sort of impromptu 'meditation', and over time you are bound to find some transformation beginning to occur, as you get more attuned to your deeper aspects and more used to letting go of the externally originated musical habits that you'd picked up over the decades.

If you want to deepen your source connection and become truer to yourself and your art, then you need to follow up what emerges from deep within you and gives you some sort of 'buzz'. That might well mean letting go of a particular idiom that has even been getting you critical acclaim — a scary thing to do! But fear is just a feeling — not a statement about reality — and the rewards for breaking through the fear barrier in order to be fully true to yourself in your art are great in personal 'growth' and the true quality of your art, whether or not it meets immediate approval from the critics or indeed your peers.

2. Personal transformation — broadening horizon — healing and self-actualization — opening up of the deepest awareness. By doing this sort of work upon yourself, you progressively dissolve the various personal issues such as emotional traumas, rigid patterns and negative self-perceptions, that obscure much of your deeper consciousness, so that you help clear and open up your connection to your innermost creative source and your underlying life purpose, whatever that may be.

An essential part of this process is a broadening of horizons and looking more outward in your life. Try activities you haven't tried before. Listen to music beyond your normal range without judging it. Explore, explore, explore, and allow yourself to enjoy!

If you currently live in denial of major issues in your life, then your music will lack a lot of the depth that it could otherwise have. Or if you're rather preoccupied with major emotional issues in your life but not working through them for positive transformation, then your music, although possibly powerful, will most likely have a preoccupation with those issues, which would limit its potential to be a strong and positive inspiration to others. These are all issues that can ultimately yield to the process of personal opening up, so opening and deepening the musical vision.

I should remark here that religion isn't helpful for the necessary opening up of awareness or self-actualization. This is because religions like Christianity instil a belief that we are intrinsically imperfect and perfection is outside ourselves (as 'God' or similar). That is a big lie that has diverted countless people from the possibility of true self-actualization, which involves opening up your deepest aspects and finding 'the Ultimate' within yourself. If you perceive perfection as being outside yourself, then it's going to be much more difficult to get in touch with the artistic perfection that is within you.

One tremendously important but all too often overlooked ingredient of the deepest and most vital quality of ALL art is a strong connection with Nature. I thus strongly recommend regular outings into wild and particularly rugged landscapes as an essential part of the cultivation of the deeply connected, vital and compelling beauty that marks real quality work. Substantial hikes are MUCH more effective than just getting out of a car and doing a little wandering around! And walking up (if not climbing) some real mountains would also greatly help!

"I couldn't do such a thing!"? — Then that's part of your problem, and all the more reason to go getting yourself on some major hikes and up some wonderful mountains, to clear that block in your awareness and perceptions! Then your creative work is bound to be of greater quality too! You don't properly appreciate Nature if you don't fully engage with it!

Some powerful methods for opening up your innermost nature may be found in Healing and self-actualization — The safest and quickest way.

Life interests and pursuits to underpin one's creativity

I've already said Explore, explore, explore, and allow yourself to enjoy! — but for anyone who wants her art truly to flower, it goes deeper than this. It's a matter of getting deep insights and understanding in various aspects of the life experience. In the personal opening up process that I call self-actualization or self-realization you gain a lot of this anyway, but there are many areas in our life experience that appear to be more optional and therefore can easily be left out of the equation, to the impoverishment of one's art. In particular, areas of the 'natural' sciences are well worth pursuing. And it's not just a matter of following up various curiosities, but actively challenging oneself and opening up new horizons.

For myself, before I finally broke out into overtly realizing my compositions, I had accrued the following areas (and more) of experience and insight in addition to my music explorations and personal development / and early rudiments of a self-actualization process:

• At age of 6, at the instigation of my father, I developed a keen interest in pond life. My father had obtained an ancient compound microscope, at which I spent hours on end enthralled at all the microscopic organisms that I was observing in drops of pond water. Many of them I roughly identified from books on the subject.

• Within a few years this interest had moved to insects in general, then focused to Lepidoptera (butterflies & moths). I collected, killed and set specimens, building up a small collection, progressively becoming a dab hand at identification. The individual moths or other insects, and their taxonomic relationships to each other, and even their scientific names, had a great beauty for me that went far beyond what people commonly mean by 'beauty'.

  It was as though in these living things and their relationships to each other and their natural surroundings (hunting for them took me alone into the wilds, which itself was powerful) I was observing and gaining some fundamental insight into some natural order of my own being.

• I also developed a great interest in geology, though never followed this up so actively, having nothing much in the way of fossils or impressive rock outcrops near my home, but family holidays in the Purbeck area of Dorset made me internally buzz with excitement at all the fossils and exposed Earth history in those beautiful cliff formations.

• By my late teens my active interest had extended to keeping terrestrial vertebrate animals as 'pets'. These were primarily reptiles, but also included a number of small(ish) exotic mammals. Through my 'reading around', I got to know a good deal about the world's different groups and species of vertebrate animals — especially reptiles and amphibians.

  As a curious aside here — one musical idea that came to me in May 1958, which I associated strongly with a particular female guinea pig that I had in a hutch in the back garden, eventually got used for O Death, indeed I ask, | O where is thy sting? | Behold, I passed through death | Yet for evermore I live!, in the choral final movement of my 6th Symphony. There's the creative process at work!

• Also by my late teens I'd taken up a very strong interest in meteorology. I started keeping a daily weather log, and quickly developed a deep insight into cloud formations and synoptic situations (i.e., what is portrayed on weather maps), and could often thus fine-tune or even correct particular weather forecasts that had gross errors or omissions.

  I used for my reference three meteorology books that were published by HMSO at the time (late 1950s — no longer available), one of which I remember was called The Weather Map and another was Meteorology for Aviators. In recent years I've failed to find any meteorology books that were like those and not only reasonably accessible in their language but not 'dumbing down' for short attention spans and missing out most of the important stuff.

  I would spend much time watching the sky when there were dramatic and evolving cloud forms — especially in thundery weather. Thunderstorms were and still are one of my peak life experiences — this effect being enhanced by their great rarity where I live. It's not just the lightning, thunder and often intense precipitation that would engage me so, but the cloud forms and the way they evolve, and the whole 'atmosphere' of the experience. How I'd love to experience some real tropical-style thunderstorms (from a safe viewpoint)!

• Prompted by a camera as a 21st birthday present, I launched into nature photography — initially primarily insects, though some 20 years later this was to branch out into flowering plants, lichens (which became a new area for study and intense interest), fungi, and mountain and wilderness scenery. The commencement of the photography enabled me to let go of my compulsive keeping of animals in captivity, which even then I recognised as a psychologically unhealthy thing to be doing.

• My first (and only) university degree was in biology (with ecology emphasis), not music!

• In 1980, following my first experience of mountain walking (in the Scottish Highlands), I started going on regular long hard hikes in the wilderness, mostly on my own, getting onto mountains when I could. These experiences were ones of great multiplicity, for all my nature, meteorology and geology interests and knowledge and understanding were integrated with the more direct aspects of 'taking a walk'.

• And what were the magazines that I'd been a regular reader of over the years? Just four — The Great Outdoors (TGO), which is a hikers' mag, New Scientist, The Gramophone, and Hi-Fi News / Record Review. When I started composing in earnest I stopped reading the two latter, and indeed also largely stopped listening to Radio 3, the BBC's classical music station. That gives you an idea of my priorities. (Incidentally, my interest in science doesn't mean that I espouse in any way the materialist-reductionist belief system that pervades Western science and is (lamentably) strongly promoted in the New Scientist.)

Well, I could go on (and on…), but I guess I've written plenty enough here to make my point. All these elements and countless others are distilled to produce the sound, shape, structure and processes of whatever music emerges in my mind or falls into place on my computer screen. If you don't have a history of such interests yourself, take heart that it's never too late to broaden your horizons with your own new interests and get enriching your art as a consequence.

To be or not to be — critiqued, reviewed or damned with faint praise!

I was initially prompted to write these notes by my feelings of considerable (friendly) circumspection about the regularity with which various fellow composers seemed to be submitting pieces of their music for review and asking each other and even me for comments and criticism. Now, one thing I'm not saying is that it's inherently wrong to submit your work thus. The plus side of doing so is that you may make more people aware of your work. Indeed, submitting work for review can be considered to be an integral part of the promotion of one's work.

However, among writers and composers there does seem to be a widespread unhealthy culture of continually and somewhat compulsively seeking assessment of their work by their peers and others. Actually in a fair number of cases what they appear really to be seeking is simply approval, as I discovered when I did give constructive comments to the odd composers who asked me for such comments, and never heard from them again.

In fact most people who are frequently seeking critiques are tending to overlook a most important point — that their best and most effective reviewer and critic is at least potentially themselves. Only you yourself have the full information (within you) to know exactly how your work would best go, and exactly what each part of it would sound and 'go' like for best effect. The first thing that many of these criticism-seeking artists need is actually to cultivate their own self-esteem — to develop their own outlook and self-image in a more positive way. That could bring about much more improvement in their work than keeping asking others for comments about their works.

Let me put this bluntly. Do you aspire to greatness in your work, or mediocrity? Mediocrity isn't bad in itself, but only highly dysfunctional people would aim for that and prefer it to greatness! Is that what you really want yourself? Continual assessment of one's work by others is highly conducive to mediocrity, even though it may prompt you to improve your technique at times. I've seen this in various writers' groups, and I risk being shot (only verbally, I hope…) by some of those writers for saying this! 'Sheep' are everywhere!

Whatever field of art you're creating in, the same applies. You can certainly learn from other people, but if your art is to have the real distinction and stature that it could if you allowed a proper connection to your creative core, you need to wean yourself out of the 'sheep' mentality and learn to be your own critic, and be not harsh upon yourself, but lovingly and gently exacting.

If a detail in a new work feels not quite 'there', then there's no sense in caning yourself, harshly thinking to yourself This isn't good enough; I must do something better here!, or simply getting despondent and assuming that you're not much good, when instead a better response to that possibly weak spot in your work would be to think, Hey, it sounds as though I can make this sound still better; let's see what I can work out…! — or Hey, that doesn't fit at all; now let's find something different to put there, or add in something that helps it fit!

The latter is how my own self-critic facility works, and I commend it to others. You can be an extremely exacting critic of your work while remaining totally loving, positive and encouraging towards yourself, making the whole process a pleasant, exciting and inspiring one. While I'm composing, and especially after I've finished a piece, I put myself into the role of listener, and ask myself, Does this work for me, as a whole and at every level of detail?.

And so I listen in this way as my work's audience, being a really picky b*gger of a loving friend of myself, attending to the different levels of detail, and pick up things that may or may not be exactly 'wrong', but which suggest possibilities for getting a greater 'buzz' out of parts of the work. Indeed, I should say that I even set aside as far as possible any idea that the work that I'm checking through is 'mine', aiming to treat it as though it were the work of a colleague who is totally accepting and therefore cannot be hurt or offended by whatever I might pick up on.

Let me say this again, because it's so important — the real way forward is NOT to be a harsh critic upon your own work. Instead, be a totally loving yet exacting one! Be a picky b*gger about finding ways you can improve your work — not about finding what's 'wrong' or 'bad' about it for the sake of caning yourself! That way there will be more love and positivity in your work and you'll feel better about it. Indeed, because of the way that all areas of one's life are interlinked, you'd feel better about yourself and other people too — a pretty good deal! Let your composing as well as your whole life be or become a joyful series of horizon-expanding and life affirming experiments rather than a wearying struggle of 'trying to achieve'.

Here's an example of a (now dead) local university music lecturer's critique of my first significant work (i.e., my public Opus 1) after I'd sent him an early — indeed, premature — cassette recording of a very crude MIDI realization of it. This lecturer already knew me because at that time he was the choirmaster of Exeter University choral society, which I belonged to at the time. My point here isn't to vent personal feelings about an individual, even though I do recount some of them, but to use this particular experience of mine to make some more general points about criticisms that may be directed at one's works.

In my covering letter I made it clear that I was sending it to him not for a critique but to make him aware of my music and to put to him the suggestion that at some stage he might consider including that particular work in one of the Exeter University Symphony Orchestra concerts that he conducted. The letter I had back from him was negative in all sorts of ways and clearly he was determined not to see me — apparently a naive self-taught amateur with ideas vastly above my station — recognised without my first bowing to and being 'formatted' by the music education Establishment. This is what he said about that work of mine:

…a general comment I will make about your music is that you tend to overdo motivic development, almost to an obsessional extent, at the expense of the wider perspective. Such development of musical ideas can be extremely rewarding to the composer, but can fail to hold the attention of the listener after a time. Structure isn't merely about deciding on a form before you begin — fast, slow, contrast, development, inversion and so on. Structure depends on building a shape that fits the musical content, and on building a shape that will carry the listener along with you.

Pretty damning, huh? In my inexperience of responses to my music I was shocked that he could be so 'blind'. He'd seen exactly what were the underlying features and great strengths of the work — in particular, motivic development — and in his ignorance of other composers such as Vagn Holmboe (and conveniently forgetting late works of Sibelius, which he presumably did know) who used such methods to great and powerful effect, he dismissed it as a major flaw!

He was also lecturing me as though I wasn't composing in, and should compose in, exactly the way I was already composing my music in that very symphony, and which was particularly evident in the recording I sent him — Barmy! Talk of responding out of a personal agenda of his own rather than really paying attention to my own message to him! Basically, he was expressing a belief that I didn't yet know how to compose, and he was putting across the clear message that he would hold that belief no matter what the quality of my work.

To him, because I wasn't a music graduate nor a recognised composer, I was just an ignorant novice — something that, as I say, was clear from other parts of the letter he'd sent me. Well, fortunately I received that missive from him just a few weeks after I'd had an experience of a very different sort, relating to the same work, which put his words into a very different perspective.

On that prior occasion I had one of my weekly visitations to my abode from a character who was quite a rough diamond — good hearted yet spouting out harsh negativities about seemingly almost everyone and everything. His rather gnarled facial expression had sourness and cynicism deeply etched into it. He always claimed not to be musical in the slightest and referred with a slightly inquisitive but also quite sneering tone to my musical activities. So, on that occasion when I told him I had just notionally completed a significant composition and recorded it, he pulled a face and said, Right, let's hear it then!, in a tone that said pretty clearly, I know it's all rubbish, but you do tend to be interesting, so I might as well hear what sort of rubbish you've produced.

Once the playing had ended, I turned to him and was amazed to see that there were tears down his face — this man in whose mouth butter wouldn't melt! His face lit up as I faced him. Congratulations!, he exclaimed, beaming, almost losing his normal sour expression for about half a minute, and shaking my hand"I was really moved by that!". So, this fellow who supposedly had no musical experience or interest and was loaded with enough negativity, one would think, to sink the Titanic, was definitely carried right along by my own approach to musical form.

So, that shows well just how ignorant and wide of the mark were the remarks of that music lecturer. And what was the work which the latter had so damned? My First Symphony. If you don't already know it, have a listen to it and see whether you recognise it from that lecturer's critique! I've had plenty of positive responses to that work since, which demonstrate well how out of touch that lecturer was with reality.

Of course I did learn things from that lecturer's critique, but what I learnt wasn't about my music, nor music in general (he told me nothing I didn't already well understand), but a little bit more about the sorts of emotional problem — a lot of personal insecurity and consequent compulsion to judge and control people — that drive many people into teaching and lecturing positions — especially in the light of things I learnt subsequently about that lecturer's very negative treatment of various of his students!

It also gave me a pointed lesson about the need to follow my own direction and not to be deflected by the words of others, while still keeping my awareness open to take on board any grains of useful truth that I may find anywhere. It also suggested to me that academia wasn't the best direction to look for approval or support of my work — something that has been borne out by subsequent experience. After all, I was and am a living demonstration that the pillars and minions of academia are not as essential to music composition as they would like the world to believe, so they can hardly be expected to acclaim my work.

Another important message for us all in that experience is the old one — you can't please everyone or gain their approval all the time! Seeing that that is true, you might as well drop any urge to please people or seek their approval and instead think in terms of touching them deeply, of inspiring them. Touch them deeply by allowing the creative force to flow with love from that unimaginably deep place within — the fundamental creative source — and by doing so you are reflecting your true, underlying uniqueness!

Be assured, if you open up that direct flow from the core, many people will thus be touched and indeed pleased without your trying to please anyone, even though others won't connect and indeed in many cases may feel threatened by what you are achieving and so seek to dismiss it.

So far, in general I haven't been submitting my works for review, and I certainly don't solicit comments about my work from anyone else (apart from asking about the odd details of instrumental technique), because I myself am the only one who really knows how my works need to 'go', and, as I say, I've had enough responses from people listening to my music to know that I'm on the right track.

To some people, that demonstrates my 'arrogance', but, let's face it: any original artist who is being true to himself will be seen by some as arrogant, so to a fair degree such attitudes need to be accepted as part of the lie of the land and even be seen as a good sign. Indeed, I myself get routinely labelled as 'arrogant' in whatever field of my life I do things differently from the sheep of this world and dismiss or ignore their ignorant advice, admonishments and criticisms / condemnations.

 

If my music has any distinction, it's through its not having been tampered with by anyone else, so that my true originality could flourish. It's true that I may have a stronger and more analytical self-critical facility than some composers, but my message to those composers is that significant improvements to the stature of their own work would more likely come through their developing their self-esteem and cultivating and improving their role as their own listener-critics rather than repeatedly passing that responsibility to others, who are really not competent to advise on more than various technical details.

No composition class or tutor that I know of can teach inspiration or genuine originality; those things come only from within. They are a matter of your degree of self-actualization or otherwise — not a musical issue at all, even though they profoundly affect one's art.

The function of a reviewer is a bit different from the tutor or peer critic, for the reviewer is not, and certainly should not masquerade as, an advisor to the composer on how to compose. The reviewer can only give a view from one person's viewpoint, and the prime value is for informing others about the work. Sometimes a reviewer does this well, whether the general assessment of the work is favourable or otherwise, though it's often done in a very subjective manner that is really not very helpful to anyone, even if the review is apparently favourable.

This's why I don't concur with my various composer friends who put much weight on whether or not they get a favourable review of a work that they have submitted. If they want to get more publicity for their work by having it reviewed, as indeed I might at times, that's fine, but it would actually be healthier, once a work has been submitted, to turn one's back on the matter and get on with life without regard to what a particular reviewer has said. A review is really for potential listeners and not for the composer who submitted the work.

Beware of praise! — I've so far concentrated on negative comment upon one's work. But it's important to understand that while we all can benefit from genuine positive feedback about our work, verbal praise can be false or, even when genuine, greatly misleading. In writers' groups especially I've heard horror stories of really destructive negativities being bandied about through the operation of personal power politics — but the flip side of that tends to be the 'mutual admiration club' syndrome, whereby everyone supposedly 'likes' each other's works and says nice things about them regardless of their stature or otherwise — colluding in a certain level of mediocrity.

It's just such an easy cop-out to tell a friend or fellow group member that their new piece is 'great', you enjoyed it very much, and so on, just to be encouraging, when you're in truth not exactly grabbed by the particular work or simply you're very easily pleased. I'm not criticizing people for seeking to say positive and encouraging things — indeed I'm very much with them in that sentiment — but rather, as the recipient of nice words from people, I know I do have to take it all with a pinch — sometimes a shovelful — of salt.

My own approach to this is, rather than get cynical about it, to keep an open mind on what is being meant by the kind words, and to look for other signs that the particular work of mine has had a direct positive effect upon the person. The more you can read people's emotions from small cues, the more you can pick up about how your work has really gone down. And then, if a particular person has had a very strong positive emotional response to the work, that could reflect some particular emotional issue of that person's rather than a tremendous strength of the work that has affected the person so.

It's important therefore to observe the effect of the work on a range of people rather than be swayed by one person's enthusiasm. You may of course get to respect the views of particular people and be able to give much more weight to their words when they have positive words for your work — but still be aware that we all have our mental blocks and so may occasionally express a passing enthusiasm for something that isn't so tremendous, just as we can have our negative aberrations!

As to whether you need to change anything in a work because you haven't had any very positive signs from people — well, that really isn't for anyone to advise you about; you are 'God' and are the decision maker — but it's worth bearing in mind that if immediate general approval is what you are seeking, you're not really looking to be genuinely true to your deeper self, and, for better or worse, are set on the path of the Great Mediocre!

The matter of favourite works — Here is a common problem that artists come up against when their work gets reviews or peer criticism. You've had favourable comment from a particular person about several of your works, and then a new piece of yours is damned by that same person. What are you to make of it? Have you then produced a bad work? I see frequent peer pressure among composers and especially writers to bow to such criticism.

There is little point in simply reacting in anger — though you may need to express this feeling in private just to release it from your system and clear your mind. But an important thing to bear in mind is that most or all of us have our favourites and 'also-rans' in any particular composer's output, and while this often does reflect the relative quality of the works, other factors operate too, such as personal 'resonance'.

In my own output I'm well aware that some people who like my music generally find my Symphony 3 difficult to relate to because of its disturbing atmosphere and emotional content, and because of this it tends to be the butt of criticism, usually about its unusual form. I myself regard it as an unhealthy work to dwell upon because of its particular emotional resonances (indeed, apparently a particular type of second-level night hell experience, as already noted), and if it didn't have so much beauty and haunting quality I'd have discarded it long ago.

As it is, I used to feel that I'd rather keep it 'under the counter', to be listened to only by those who already are 'hooked' on my music. I could well imagine it getting dismissed by reviewers, especially with its particular approach to form. Yet I've been amazed to find that among the people who appreciate my music generally, there are individuals for whom that is one of their favourites. So clearly it doesn't make sense to say that because even a highly regarded reviewer dismisses that work, there is necessarily something wrong with it. It simply has a different effect that's appreciated by different people.

The message underlying these observations must surely be, always seek to gain the broadest possible understanding of why a particular work of yours has received a particular response from a person, whether it seems positive or negative. Look for elements of truth, certainly, in what the person has said, but never take it only at face value. Look for the subtext, the 'personal agenda' too. Unsolicited criticism in particular can be intimately linked with the latter and is generally best totally disregarded..

And one thing I take great heart from when I do get somebody telling me what is supposedly wrong in a work of mine is this consideration: Does that person himself compose and understand the composition process? Does he have any real understanding and competence to assess my work in the way that he is doing? Has he composed work of equal or greater stature himself? I wouldn't get preoccupied with such considerations, for they can quickly become the voice of resentment rather than part of a healthier, more balanced appraisal of the criticism, but they're still part of the context.

Too readily we all at times jump into the role of 'expert', giving advice to somebody that we're not really in a secure position to give; we're then reacting on the basis of certain feelings rather than a full understanding of what we are commenting on. I myself have done it, and almost certainly you've done it, but nonetheless it's a tendency that's best let go of and recognised for what it is in others when they give unsolicited and unhelpful criticisms of one's work.

General theoretical considerations of the composition process

Perfection — sacred goal or old bogey?

In our art, all too often we tie ourselves into knots through our attitudes towards perfection. We need to understand that perfection appears to us all the time in a multitude of guises. Ultimately, no object in the cosmos has any intrinsic quality of 'perfection' or indeed 'imperfection'. These are simply labels of subjective judgment, like 'good' and 'bad', that we place upon objects and experiences according to how we perceive and feel about them. Things are simply as they are. That's the reality.

Haydn symphonies, Mozart piano concertos and Bach fugues are often hailed as examples of absolute perfection in music, against which many other masterpieces are seen as relatively flawed. This, however, is a very limited and limiting view. In the former case the label of 'perfect' is given simply because those works conform to certain criteria that people have set up — criteria with which those compositions conform exactly. Thus, compared with a Haydn symphony, later symphonies of Beethoven or Sibelius could be reasonably described as having many rough edges and flaws, regardless of their power to bewitch and uplift.

So, some composers put together their musical elements in neat, precise ways that are beautiful in their balance and sense of geometrically symmetrical order. If that's what you mean by 'perfection', then, music working in a different way can be regarded as being less perfect. Also, this notion of perfection doesn't explain why some works are apparently perfect constructions and yet don't have a strongly inspiring effect upon us. But let me now ask an apparently absurd question.

Which is less than perfect — an object that is a 100% accurate dodecahedron, or Mount Everest? The latter has no precise symmetry, and bits are falling off it all the time. In the snow and ice that adorns it there are human remains and also plenty of human waste! But can you really say that one of those two objects is more perfect than the other? Clearly Everest isn't perfect as a dodecahedron-shaped object, but it is perfect as Everest. Likewise, the dodecahedron object isn't doing a very good job at being Mount Everest, or even a mountain at all, so I could damn it for its imperfections in being a miserable failure to meet my criteria (I rather like Everest)!

Let me thus damn Haydn symphonies, Bach's '48', Mozart piano concertos and so forth for not having the same powerful qualities as Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Nielsen's 5th Symphony, Stravinsky's Petrouchka or Xenakis' Kraanerg! Okay, that may look like a facetious comment, yet that's the sort of underlying irrational and negative logic that shapes the attitudes of most people towards art in all its different fields. We as composers need to understand that this is a consideration when our work is judged by others, whether by peers or in formal reviews.

I suggest that we learn to let go of the idol of so-called perfection and think instead of achieving the maximum and most harmonious flow from the creative source that is possible at any particular time, and the maximum and most harmonious and constructive effect upon oneself and other people through one's works. And we also need to keep aware of what we want the music to achieve — for example, to uplift and inspire people, or to soothe and comfort them, or whatever.

That way we keep our minds open always to further improvement, without limiting ourselves either by assuming that we ourselves are not 'great' and cannot reach a particular level of achievement, or by aiming to compose in a particular way that we believe to be an embodiment of perfection beyond which it isn't possible to advance. We do ourselves and the great composers of the past a signal disservice by idolizing them and not understanding that even they had unrealized potential, no matter how great and wonderful were their achievements.

We can learn from their music of course, but we could learn even more from it by understanding not only its strengths but also all the limitations and indications of other possibilities that were not realized, both as a result of their individual emotional quirks and also their adherence to the particular musical norms of their time.

Over 26 years of regular amateur choral society singing, my greatest peak experiences were in two very different works, both of them terrifyingly difficult to sing for an amateur choir and both of them carrying a variety of quirks, rough edges and imbalances that have been and still can be regarded as flaws. The works in question? Beethoven's Missa Solemnis and Britten's War Requiem.

They are both works in which the composers broke new musical ground while still remaining rooted in tradition, and gained a lot of criticism for the unorthodoxies of these particular works. In both works it's the sense of exploration and breaking out of traditional constraint while remaining true to the inner source and conveying something vital in human experience, which so enthrals performers and listeners alike. Both works contain 'flaws', yet they are towering masterpieces, albeit the Britten work being one whose emotional content does need eventual moving on from.

This is where reviews can be misleading, for reference to supposed 'flaws' in a work could in certain cases turn people away from truly great works, and extant composers without a great deal of self-confidence who come out with great works can become seriously demoralized and discouraged from further composing after they've received such reviews. Another tremendous example of one of these towering and enthralling masterpieces bristling with supposed 'flaws' is Havergal Brian's gargantuan Gothic Symphony — and I say this as one who is turned right off by most other works by that composer. Would that I could ever have an opportunity to sing in that one! Truly, to damn it for its apparent flaws misses the most vital point.

I prefer to think of perfection in music as relating to whether, and how effectively, a piece is true to the composer's inner source, and to what extent the piece falls short of its potential (or in other words, could be improved) to convey its unique effect and 'meaning' to the listener. This view of perfection can include anything that is traditionally regarded as a flaw, provided that in the particular circumstances the supposed or notional 'flaw' isn't getting in the way of the 'expression' of that innermost source.

What to do with the composer's emotions…

A common and simplistic view of art is that in it you 'express yourself', this normally meaning 'express your emotions'. Certainly in music many composers, either awarely or unawarely, seek to do just that. It is a perfectly valid level of artistic communication, but a limited, relatively superficial one. Just as we have deeper levels of experience that transcend the emotions, and are what are aimed for in our self-actualization process (what many people would misguidedly think of as becoming 'more spiritual'), so the ultimate goal in our art is to communicate through those deeper channels.

To some extent all romanticism in works of art, however great the latter may be, is a limiting factor that stands in the way of the deeper and broader vision that could flow from the inner source if it were given a chance.

Please note here how I'm not talking of good and bad or better and worse, but rather of cause and effect and what would most improve our lives. If you directly express emotions in your music you cannot expect to be very effective at conveying what is beyond that — but actually most people are living at the level of emotional expression at the moment and cannot yet relate very much to music that 'goes beyond', and so such emotions-centred music is bound to be their main interest. My prime interest, however, is in pointing beyond, because that is where the fullest expression of the innermost creative essence becomes possible, and the manifestation of the uniquely individual voice that reflects that essence.

Likewise, I'm talking of traits in our art and I seek to avoid labelling individual works or composers as simply 'romantic' or whatever. Most composers have a combination of traits in their music, so, just because somebody may compose a predominantly emotionally expressive symphony, that doesn't mean that there's no more deeply sourced vision in it at all — only that the strength of deeper sourced vision could be a lot more if there were a shift of balance towards letting go of direct personal emotional expression.

Igor Stravinsky was widely quoted as saying that you cannot express anything in music. I don't remember the exact quote or its context, but the resulting controversy was quite illuminating. Some musical commentators used that quote to support their own taste for modernistic music that seemed largely to lack humanity; others dismissed the quote as nonsense from a gnarled little man who just loved to make provocative waspish comments about others' work, while others sought to explain to the world that poor misunderstood Igor had had that much-publicized statement taken out of context and hadn't meant that at all, and of course all good composers express themselves and their emotions in their music, as he did (i.e., they claimed he did).

A more meaningful version of that statement, which is what I suspect the good man was really getting at, would be: you can't be effective in conveying the ultimate in music while you seek to express your emotions or personal ('ego') identity.

To my own perception, for the most part Stravinsky parted with direct emotional expression very early in his musical development, and used combinations of musical ideas and sonorities that tended to allow a deeper level of communication to operate. However, the scale and intensity of the deeper sourced vision was somewhat constrained by certain rigidities that he never resolved. He appeared to have a certain aversion to emotional expression, and, with that sort of denial of part of his own inner reality, his musical vision would have been similarly restricted, even though expression of the emotions directly in the music wasn't what was needed. He had certain prominent musical mannerisms, which again would have put a constraint on the range of experience that he could communicate.

Now, supposing he'd got himself into the sort of process of personal opening up or 'self-actualization' that I encourage, I expect his music would have 'opened up' as his personality opened up and he became more outgoing, generous and warm-hearted to others and he let go of all his negative judgments — indeed he had a lot of negative self-judgment material to let go of. However 'great' his music was in fact, there was still a lot of unrealized potential there, which could have been tapped if he'd started addressing and resolving his various personal life issues. The mannered dryness of much of his later music could have been tempered with a greater warmth and generosity, thus touching more people, and more deeply.

The place for emotional expression is really directly, by yourself, not in your public art, so that you can release stored painful emotions from your whole being and you can function better, with more clarity and vision, and your art can have that greater clarity and vision as a consequence. I myself many times burst out crying at things I had composed, but I never sought to compose emotional music. As previously explained, I just put the various constituents together on-screen according to seemingly outrageously ad-hoc intuitions, which, as I've previously remarked, would have actually been coming primarily from my own deepest aspects, though with the normal sort of garbage related interferences that affect any composer or indeed artist in any field of the arts.

I think of my own music for the most part as having an elemental rather than directly emotional quality — probably much as Sibelius did of his later masterpieces. If I allow my music to reflect the forces of nature — the severity of a mountain, the timeless austerity of remote moorland, or indeed the flapping of ducks in an autumn gale, then there is plenty of energy in the music that in an indirect way does still reflect emotions that I feel* without my seeking to express them at all. In this particular form the music can inspire similar or different powerful emotions for other people, yet still convey a broader vision that goes beyond all emotion.

My own 3rd Symphony and particularly my De Profundis Clamavi are in effect strongly emotional works, yet even these I had not actually written to express any emotions, with the result that despite their emotional content they have a beauty and elemental power that constitutes the real 'rationale' and point of listening to them.

It's particularly worthwhile aiming for that deeper vision in large-scale works such as symphonies, because the latter can become quite heavy-going if they're being used as documents of your emotional or life struggles. The symphonies of Mahler are an unusually brilliant example of doing that latter, but even there they're really works that the listener needs to move on from, for they reflect a limited, superficial and indeed overall quite tormented view of the life experience that's so much based in the composer's ordinary, conscious mind and fears associated with his non-understanding of his true nature as consciousness itself. I myself experience them as shallow and pretentious — often grandiosely so.

Many composers today are still writing symphonies that are trying to do the same sort of thing. These symphonies may have a certain cathartic function for the particular composers and indeed certain listeners, but they have limited function as truly great music of enduring value, no matter how much power they may wield. Those composers could speed the opening out of their symphonic vision by attending to their personal life change and self-healing / self-actualization as I've already outlined.

"Artists' block" and the cycle of creativity

Many literary writers just love agonizing and writing about their writer's block. The same phenomenon occurs for artists in any field. This experience is in general the result of a lack of understanding of or harmony with the natural cycles of the creative force and indeed of life and even life experience as a whole. These cycles have the following general form: stasis ('low') — expansion — stasis ('high') — contraction. One such regular cycle we are very well aware of is the natural cycle of the seasons.

If we get attached to a particular season, then we don't get a good experience out of the seasons overall, for we're always hankering after our favourite season and thus judge the others negatively against it. I myself have tended to be attached to spring, Mother Nature's annual big expansion phase, and letting go of this attachment has helped me to get much more enjoyment out of life.

In our creativity, if we don't honour and harmonize with the natural cycles of our creativity we actually create blocks in the flow of the creative force, and we create stress and lack of enjoyment for ourselves by commonly feeling that things should be happening that are not happening at the particular time.

Our innermost essence — the creative core or source — is a very subtle 'base' to our consciousness. Within it all possibilities, both conceivable and inconceivable, are implicit. The creative process is a matter of spontaneously taking up particular possibilities that were previously merely implicit and unmanifest, and making them manifest so that we can explore them. Once the work has been created, we savour the fruits of that creative process — the work of art and the associated new insights — and share it with fellow humans.

Then comes a time when the artist needs to let go of that particular work, assimilating its essence into his broader life experience in the process. This corresponds with the contraction phase of the cycle. Then comes the stasis phase at the bottom of the cycle, where the artist needs to have time to himself, apparently not creating anything new.

This phase isn't a negative state but an intrinsic part of the creativity cycle. Whereas during the stasis phase at the top of the cycle the need was to savour the new work at the worldly level and share it with others, the stasis phase at the bottom of the cycle involves savouring the new state of being that has been created by assimilating the new experiences and insights gained during the just-completed creative cycle. Each time we create a new work and assimilate the experiences that it has given us, we become just that little bit more open to our deepest aspects (or your could say, self-actualized).

The cycle is summarized as follows:

1. Expansion — The phase of active creation;

2. Stasis (at the top) — Savouring the new work and sharing it with others;

3. Contraction — Letting go of involvement with the work; assimilating its essence;

4. Stasis (at the bottom) — Solitary contemplation; savouring one's own essence, now enhanced. In its own time, the impulse, the energy, of the start of the next expansion phase spontaneously arises from the core essence…

This understanding isn't just an academic exercise. It gives us the key to freeing ourselves from many blocks to our creativity. We're out of harmony, and thus prone to blocks in the flow, as long as we allow our ordinary, conscious minds and our feelings of attachment and aversion, to direct the process. The big problem for so many of us is that we get attached to the expansion phase, and perhaps also the following stasis phase, and we tend to misunderstand and try to deny or avoid the contraction phase and especially the final stasis.

We want to be busy, all the time creating, without understanding that the process requires phases of apparent non-creation, in which the newly completed work becomes integrated into the life experience, the cosmos and eventually our deepest essence, which itself is an aspect of fundamental consciousness ('the Ultimate' as far as anyone can tell).

This doesn't mean that every artist needs very long periods of total non-creation, for in practice various creative cycles may be at different stages simultaneously. My original writing of this article represented one particular expansion phase, but in terms of my music composition work I was at that time at stage 4 in the above summary of the cycle. I had completed Sunrise on Ama Dablam a few weeks before, and already had the suggestions arising in my mind for the next work. I didn't hurry this; at the appropriate time, when I actually started on it, it would materialize remarkably quickly, and without any great difficulty.

During that 'fallow' period I actually had another music-associated cycle arise; I edited two organ works of a friend of mine and produced MIDI realizations of them and an orchestral arrangement of one of them. The next work of my own to emerge, which came not that long after, was the one that eventually was renamed to my 10th Symphony.

I postulate that in general the occurrence of apparent blocks in a person's creativity is related to his seeking to avoid the contraction or final stasis phase of the cycle, and thus obstructing the arising of the next cycle. One tries to keep going at the creating, not understanding the need to let go and stop so that the next cycle be given a chance to start. At other times the cycles may be running reasonably well, and all that may be happening is that we're worrying ourselves about the apparently non-creative nature of three of the four phases of the cycle. It's a complete misunderstanding to think that you have to be actively creating all the time.

Note this well: If you keep yourself in constant creative busyness you'd be progressively harming your physical and mental wellbeing, and would end up making yourself ill, quite apart from not producing the best possible work. That's a distorted and unbalanced way of living.

End-gaining.
Problems with the cycles of creativity can also be related to the ubiquitous and negative practice of end-gaining. Much is made of a full understanding of this in application of the Alexander Technique. By end-gaining I mean, setting a goal to be achieved, probably by a specific time, and then just going ahead and achieving it without any real attention to the process by which the intended result is to be achieved. In this mode the notionally important thing is the end result rather than the process.

End-gaining is invariably driven by the ordinary mind or what people often think of as the 'ego', which exerts its will without reference to the deeper nature of the individual or the life process, and it tends to lead one eventually into physical problems through misuse of the body, quite apart from emotional ones and generally limiting one's ability to enjoy life.

To operate outside of end-gaining habits requires the development of a certain mental aptitude — that of being able to let go of habitual responses to situations and to maintain awareness of the means by which one achieves one's intended results, so enabling one to have full control over the process to optimize it. We need to remember that our life experience is a process and not just a series of achievements and failures; goals are needed to direct the process, but it's the process rather than the goal that makes the major part of the life experience.

Living in this way, attending all the time to the process rather than the end results, is much more harmonious than end-gaining, and makes it perfectly natural to recognise and synchronize with the cycles of creativity. Instead of trying to achieve, you allow yourself to function efficiently and harmoniously, so enabling desirable things to happen rather than trying to make them do so. One of the reasons why most music composed for commercial purposes isn't of great stature as 'pure' music (although it may be brilliant for the specific purpose) would undoubtedly be that it's normally produced in end-gaining mode, with no significant respect for the natural cycles of creativity. It thus has less opportunity to spring from an unobscured inner source.

An afterthought — small-scale vs the broader outlook…

It's been brought to my attention that much of the contents of this essay could give the impression that I'm stressing the importance of producing 'great' or weighty works while overlooking the importance of works that carry their charm and beauty on a small and unpretentious scale. As the late composer Eleanor Dimoff remarked, I admire climbers of Everest but would throw down my backpack at the sight of a tiny flowering plant somehow lodged in a crag! With that sentiment I heartily concur, to a point — all the more so as I myself have spent much time admiring and even photographing flowers and other living things on challenging mountain walks, sometimes to the bewilderment of other people on the mountain, whose eyes and thoughts were just for mountain and not for the beautiful living things that had made it their home!

It's therefore worth taking this opportunity to emphasize that all the issues that I've raised apply across the board for all levels of composition. Greatness in art isn't synonymous with large or weighty works, but is a label that we put on works that, whether large or small, simple or complex, have a deep inspirational source and have a positive consciousness-raising effect for those who experience them.

However, a particularly important part of my task is helping to point people away from so many people's fixation on the small and 'modest' rather than the large-scale or immensely deep, just to get into a proper state of balance. Too many people come to me seeking to pressure me to spend all my time at those flowers (or nowadays electronic willies — aka smartphones — and social media trivialities) and forget the mountains — a reflection of the way their awareness has been closed down by soul programming that they've received from the garbage (as most people have). People who have such programming constantly seek to impose their shallower and more limited outlooks on those like me who lack such programming and thus naturally have a deeper awareness and more expansive outlook.

The aim in really improving as a composer isn't to achieve a specific outcome, such as greater power, weight, depth, or what-have-you, or get habitually very serious about the matter, for that would be end-gaining and would to some extent obstruct the further opening up of one's creative core. It's the process of opening up that needs attending to, keeping the mind open as to how one may compose in the future. That's the way to discover and realize more fully what is truly and uniquely you. Your music would thus gain depth without your actually trying to achieve that.

My discussing all these issues may have sounded rather serious and heavy-going, but the process of opening up isn't like that. Indeed for most of us it involves a lightening of the life experience at the same time as it's deepening. This way, just as people who've been previously writing only rather shallow works could start producing works of new depth, so people who regularly compose weighty works may actually find themselves starting to compose smaller and lightweight ones as well, and their further substantial works could in various ways develop more of a light heart. However, lighter weight here wouldn't equate with superficiality. As the core connection deepens and strengthens, so even supposedly lightweight works would have more 'magic' about them than they could have done before, as indeed would life itself.

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Further reading:

• Musical influences on Philip Goddard's music & literary works

• Do you want to be 'appropriate'? — or authentic?

• Clarity of Being (homepage)

• Exit 'spirituality' — Enter clear-mindedness

• Philip Goddard's self-actualization methodology — Introduction

• Philip Goddard's Music Digital Download Store