With a 10-day trip to Italy this past month, I have let composing sit on the back burner. When I would think about getting back to it, I kept worrying that it would be insurmountable. However, when I opened my file for the second movement of the string quartet, and just started listening to what I had already written, little ideas would come to me. It's like working on a crossword puzzle, and when you fill in one word, perhaps another becomes clear. I would work on a little motif, and then it would want to expand itself. Yesterday, before I knew it, I had written another 30-45 seconds of music.
Of course, the big difference between writing music and filling in a crossword puzzle is that I have no idea what the final product will be, exactly. I basically know where the parameters are, even though those can be bumped out or pulled in.
I know that fiction writers talk about listening to their characters and going where the characters lead them, and sometimes I feel that way about the music.
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