How I compose (sometimes…)

An interview with myself.

F.J. How do you compose?

F.J. Let’s first of all talk about what I am doing when I compose. For me, I like to think that I’m decorating time. It’s not original, I didn’t think of it, but it is how I like to think of it - visual art decorates space; music decorates time. So the first thing I need is a time-frame. Generally first of all, I have to have some idea of how long the piece is going to be, so I can plan it’s architecture. It might be bigger or smaller, but that doesn’t matter. It’s a start. Nothing is fixed…

F.J. …so you start with nothing!

F.J. Yes! If nothing is fixed, and one must start from a fixed point, then one must start with nothing. Then I find a sound or a texture, and it can be anything, but it is usually misty. If it is a beginning, then that makes it harder, because I have to extrapolate from there forwards. If it’s an ending, then that’s hard too, for the same reason but with a different direction. Ideally the idea is in the middle somewhere, where I can expand out in both directions, asking myself, how could I have arrived here, musically? What could have gone before this, or after this? I was stuck when composing the Flute Concerto’s first movement for a while, until I realised where the music I was writing fitted into the overall arc, and it turned out that it wasn’t where I thought it was, and Samsara I started in the middle, the big chord that starts to spin and glisten - I heard it in a dream and rushed downstairs when I awoke to write it down, and then I composed the piece out to the edges. Sinfonia came to me as a conceptual memorial-wall type of piece of music.

F.J. You mention the overall arc of the music. How do you come to this?

F.J. When I’m thinking about a piece, I’m wondering about its internal dimensions, as well as what it sounds like. I’m wondering about the surfaces inside the piece. What do I mean by that? I’m referring here to texture and tempo, really, and to how different sections of the piece are going to relate to each other. To use an analogy, if you are in a randomly designed room, with a number of different walls, floors, ceilings, of different shapes and curvature, when you are looking at one wall, or in one direction, you can’t see the other walls, or look in the other direction at the same time, and this is like listening to a section of a piece of music. You can’t experience the entire room all at once, but you have to look around and give it time for its dimensions to impinge on the senses. I’m thinking about tempo, and if tempo is a constant, then it’s like a flat surface, but if it alters, if it slows, or speeds, then it is as though this surface has curves in it. Then there’s the question of rhythm inside the tempo, rhythm which can alter, although the tempo remains constant, and that’s like looking at a surface which is flat, but which has distortions painted or projected onto it. 

F.J. Could you give some examples?

F.J. Well, each of the openings of the three movements of Cusp; take the ending of the second movement of  CUSP, where the violin maintains a constant 72, while the piano slows down from 117 to 44 or something. It’s curvature is felt in the piano rallentando, but the flatness of the surface is suggested by the violin playing gradually shortening lines at a constant 72. Another example: Piano study Number 1 has a number of flat surfaces at different angles to each other, because it is has the structure of a journey across a half of an icosahedron, and the differently angled surfaces are represented by the different tempi which happen simultaneously.

F.J. These sound like complicated procedures.

F.J. They can be complex, but they don’t have to be complicated. How they are notated is very important. But not all I write is so internally complex: I like the simplicity of articulation of renaissance forms; instrumental fantasias by composers like Byrd and Dowland always interested me, with their sections of self-contained gestures that connect and contrast. Méadú and Morrigan are both clearly written this way, as also are Binn an tSíorsholais (which properly should be called “Binn an Solas Síoraí” I think) for orchestra, and Líofa for octet, a piece suggested by the flow of the River Liffey, although within the first section of Líofa, there is a large degree of complexity, chaos even.

I like boogies also, ground basses in effect, or passacaglias. There is an improvisational freedom to composing within the rigidity of repetition. Brahms Begins the Day would be an orchestral example, Bog Boogie for piano, and Introduction and Boogie for piano and accordion are others (the clue is usually in the title).

Finally, my music is expressive, and that’s considered old-fashioned these days, but I have depressive phases, and have difficulty writing when I feel numb - not sad. Numb. Void. Carn for two pianos was a huge struggle, until I had almost finished the piece. When I can work in a period of “normality”, everything flows more easily, and I take a greater pleasure in what I am doing, a feeling which asserts itself through the music.