Day 2 of the UMKC Composition Workshop started out with Dr. Mara Gibson sharing some of her past and recent projects with us. Her musical focus is on collaboration. She says that 90% of the music she writes now is for people she is acquainted with so that the process feels more like a joint effort rather than a “capital-C-Composer” dictating music to others. She has also done some fascinating and beautiful work with videographers. I think that the lesson of collaboration is such an important one. Even to this day we composers feel the burden of tradition. We feel Beethoven, Brahms, and Boulez starring at us from some stormy cloud in the sky. Something that Dr. Gibson said during our first meeting on Saturday puts my preceding ramblings into concise perspective:
“Write music for people, not posterity.”
Later, we took a tour of the Nelson-Atkins Museum. It is good to know that the fine people at UMKC running this workshop understand the importance of art appreciation and would treat us to such a wonderful experience. I am not alone as a composer in being intensely interested in things outside of music, and this seems to be true of a lot of great composers. We sometimes need something extramusical to inform our work, whether it be politics, science, or sculptures.
Nelson-Atkins Museum