I will never forget the scene: it was an undergraduate music history survey course, and the mood of the class grew increasingly tense as the professor handed back graded exams. Frustration and indignation were palpable. As the professor began to justify himself and his liberal use of red pen, he descended into a touching, but almost pathetic and slightly uncomfortable, soliloquy on how everyone loved music. With impassioned tones he spoke of his fervor for teaching and exploring the material. He spoke of how the evaluative process for teaching was a necessary evil, but a kind of evil nonetheless. It was the part of his profession that he detested the most. Than it happened. The unthinkable. He burst into tears and fled the scene--an emphatic rhetorical climax to what had been an increasingly surreal seven minutes.
Evaluation is a necessary evil when teaching in the arts. Almost by definition, those of us drawn to creative pursuits start by deliberately placing ourselves at odds with the academy. What could be more befitting the portrait of the artist as a young man or woman than to question tradition and attempt to overthrow the authority of his or her teacher? Yet, in one of life’s cruel but appropriate ironies, the young upstart finds a willing patron in the academy. In accepting our teaching posts, something of our youthful idealistic fire is quelled by cool institutional enticement. In the vernacular, we abandon the 99%--the unruly and indignant; the impassioned and undisciplined. We become judges, critics, and gatekeepers with a hand in our students’ professional creative destiny. We yearn to give praise where it is deserved, but must at other times levy criticism. Sometimes we have to break with our creative childhood of indiscriminate acceptance and say the hard things.
I developed late as a composer. Although persistent with my teachers, forcing them to defend their assessment of my work and potential, I withstood significant criticism (sometimes in the form of indifference). I understand the depth of what such criticism can do when such seeds are planted in young minds. At the same time, I knew things about my own ability to hear and conceptualize and imagine that my early teachers could not see. That ability was not initially apparent in my work as I lacked the technique to make it transparent. As semesters wore on and I moved on to two different graduate schools, that kind of criticism came less often. My technique grew sharper and what I was able to do with notes and sounds more clearly depicted the landscape of my aural imagination. I suppose that made the criticism sting more--as I could no longer hide behind the smoke of sloppy technique. Always the pain of these confrontations would linger for a few days. The thought process would unfold in stages:
Stage 1 (Reeling): This is humiliating. I have no talent and have been lying to myself about this for years. I have always known that I can’t do this. Dear self (or god): why did you let me do this? How could I do this to my family?
Stage 2 (It’s not too late to change course): This has been an important learning experience. What else would I have chosen to pursue back when I made this choice? It made sense then. Although I have spent a lot of money in pursuit of this, it is not too late to try something like law school. I am still young, and the opportunity cost has not exceeded what I'm still willing to pay. Musicians make good lawyers: we are creative, disciplined, inclined to find patterns in complex objects, we diversify the law school class.
Stage 3 (Thoughts of law school are making me sick): I have weighed the pros and cons of applying to law school, and now I have lost my appetite.
Stage 4 (Siren Songs): Like a soothing cup of chamomile tea, I need music. I need to make music. I am a composer.
Stage 5 (Even though it sounds like it, I do not have Stockholm Syndrome): I am grateful for that criticism. I will never make that mistake again. I will redouble my efforts to: project better orchestral balance; avoid triadic harmony; inject more gravitas into my work; stop writing pops music; write darker music with darker themes; be experimental; imitate Ligeti; listen to Stockhausen; comprehend George Perle’s essays.
Stage 6 (Confession: I am not a cerebral composer): This musical exegesis of ___ philosophy is boring. I want to watch the entire first three seasons of Scrubs on Netflix again.
Stage 7 (So I have a weakness for well-written show tunes, #@$% you!): I have lyrical gifts. I have things I do. I will use them with impunity.
Remarkably, after going through these various stages of grief, pathos, and recovery, I appreciated the intentions of my tormentors. Moreover, I was in a position to implement useful advice and discard the inapplicable. Through it all I experienced a rejuvenating cycle of resilience. The absence of which makes life in the arts impossible.
These days, I get little of the experience of approval or disapproval from artistic authority figures. I often miss it. My place is now on the other side of that desk. From week to week I meet with nearly a dozen young composers that I attempt to encourage and inspire. I offer advice and speak as candidly as I can about how I believe their attempts at music making are working. Still, the most difficult moments entail my laboring to tell a student consistently that the work they are producing is not working. How do you gently tell someone that their work lacks even the most fundamental grasp of musical narrative, their musical intellect apparently devoid of an aural imagination? One cannot but tell them. Either he or she will recoil and pursue avenues more attuned to their talents, or I will have planted the first seeds of essential resilience--and thus the beginning of my overthrow.
