Motivs for composition

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Shortly before the pandemic began I started writing my own music for piano. I ended up with several miniature pieces, all between one and three minutes long.

The first piece was actually a means to deal with my own frustration. My Girlfriend at the time and me had a short but intense ‘episode’ of jealousy. Coping with my frustration left me with my first piece of my own music, that I actually really liked. At the same time it became somewhat of a reconciliation culture between me and my former girlfriend.

That sold me on the conviction that, from what I learned, is shared by so many artists, that it’s become a kind of a cliche. Namely that art needs a strong emotional approach by the artist and a narrative element in order to come across as authentic.

I’m talking about a conviction mind you, and not about watertight evidence. But since then I can confidently say that composition feels easy as soon as I get to narrate a personal story.

The emotional connection

The emotional connection can be astoundingly abstract. I don’t have to integrate my biography into my music, in order to find a personal and emotional approach. It’s enough to have a story that invokes an emotional reaction from me, which I then express in music.

Now that there is war on European soil for the first time in generations, I feel that my grandparents’ war stories are sufficient, to feel really uneasy about what happens on the eastern side of this continent right now. I can never write music from the perspective of a war inflicted person but from the perspective of someone who is afraid of war. And that fear is absolutely authentic!

The narrative element

When artists talk about telling stories with their art, that does not necessarily mean the writing of a novel or short story in musical Fform. The narrative element or story can be of a very simple nature and even have an open ending.

A simple precondition is enough, to imply to the listener how a story could unfold. Here is an example:

>A child walks into a toy store and with shining eyes looks at a doll. For lack of money the child knows it cannot have that doll.

For the listener this precondition can get a story rolling in which the child is given the doll by the well-meaning store owner. For another listener the child may become a thief.

Because music can be as wonderfully indirect as the composer wants to, they don’t even have to pick one of the possible outcomes. As long as he is able to develop a clear emotional language for this short and open narrative, authenticity will come naturally. For the listener this only means, that the emotional content will be very convincing even if the music invokes different emotions than the composer intended to.

Conclusion

When I’m telling an emotional story in music, I don’t write a novel for the listener and code it into notes. I rather want to set the emotional content of a very simple story to music. As long as I’m honest with myself, the audience will notice. Even when they don’t associate the same story or emotions with the music as I do.

The authenticity of my own emotional connection makes the music so believable for the listener that his own emotional connection will feel authentic. And that’s all I can ask!

So if your honest with yourself and you have something to tell with your music, you have nothing to loose. You will find an audience. Where you find them is on a totally different page!