[Part 2 of a two-part comment; Part 1 can be found here]
Given that you’re someone with recent experience of having abandoned a project dwelling on personal trauma (albeit as a composer rather than a listener), to wit…
Those of you who have followed my work over the years may occasionally have heard or seen reference to something i was working on with a provisional title ‘TACET.’, which was originally intended to be an enormous project containing many hours of music. However, as this music was born out of and confronts a very difficult and painful period of my life, i eventually realised that it wasn’t particularly healthy to persist with the project beyond a certain point.
…I’d appreciate your insights on the point at which the deleterious (pun semi-intentional, given the context) effects of a musical undertaking on one’s wellbeing begin to outweigh its benefits to the extent where its abandonment becomes the only viable course of action regardless of the “worthiness” of its commencement.
Thanks for asking about this, it’s an interesting question. In my experience the ability of composition to be cathartic – as opposed to being, say, merely observational or anecdotal – depends to a large extent on being exercised at the actual time of crisis. In the case of what i previously called TACET. – now completed as 間 – the pieces in the cycle were composed in precisely this way, when things were still very painful: begun in the autumn of 2008 (with Negative Silence (detail)) and completed in January 2012 (with from Silence; of Nothing). By this time, a mixture of catharsis from the composition process along with life just moving on meant that the creative imperative to articulate this stuff had passed, and so to create anything further would involve a kind of ‘reopening the wound’, so to speak, which was the last thing i wanted to do. Hence the ambitious plans i’d had for this project were abandoned, and the pieces i’d completed sat around in limbo until earlier last year when i let a few people hear them, leading to the Crónica release. While abandoning the project was a difficult decision, in the circumstances it seemed like the only sensible and healthy course of action, and to be honest was a relief.
(If you’re interested in what never saw light of day, the original, very carefully worked-out plan for TACET. was a cycle that would comprise seven large parts:
from Silence; of Nothing (c. 40′ – most of what appears in 間, including a tiny, 10-second piece that only appears on the cassette)
Ex Tenebris (c. 61′)
Negative Silence (c. 50′ – an extended re-invention of the ideas and material of Negative Silence (detail))
Lunga Pausa (c. 60′)
ROOD (c. 60′)
Ma (c. 60′ – nothing to do with the Crónica release; this was designed to be a kind of ‘dynamic inversion’ of ROOD)
Cæsuræ (c. 40′ – tracks 1, 3, 5 and 8 on 間 were originally created to be part of Cæsuræ)
All of the above were in progress to different degrees: for example, the first three minutes of Ex Tenebris are completed, and the first five minutes of Negative Silence (the latter of which still terrify me; it’s (deliberately) like sitting next to a gigantic, glowering killer hornet), whereas ROOD and Ma – both of which, i have to say, i was very much looking forward to composing – were merely sketched out in readiness to start work. Whether i’ll end up recycling any of these materials or just delete them all remains to be seen/heard.)
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[Part 2 of a two-part comment; Part 1 can be found here]
Given that you’re someone with recent experience of having abandoned a project dwelling on personal trauma (albeit as a composer rather than a listener), to wit…
…I’d appreciate your insights on the point at which the deleterious (pun semi-intentional, given the context) effects of a musical undertaking on one’s wellbeing begin to outweigh its benefits to the extent where its abandonment becomes the only viable course of action regardless of the “worthiness” of its commencement.
Thanks for asking about this, it’s an interesting question. In my experience the ability of composition to be cathartic – as opposed to being, say, merely observational or anecdotal – depends to a large extent on being exercised at the actual time of crisis. In the case of what i previously called TACET. – now completed as 間 – the pieces in the cycle were composed in precisely this way, when things were still very painful: begun in the autumn of 2008 (with Negative Silence (detail)) and completed in January 2012 (with from Silence; of Nothing). By this time, a mixture of catharsis from the composition process along with life just moving on meant that the creative imperative to articulate this stuff had passed, and so to create anything further would involve a kind of ‘reopening the wound’, so to speak, which was the last thing i wanted to do. Hence the ambitious plans i’d had for this project were abandoned, and the pieces i’d completed sat around in limbo until earlier last year when i let a few people hear them, leading to the Crónica release. While abandoning the project was a difficult decision, in the circumstances it seemed like the only sensible and healthy course of action, and to be honest was a relief.
(If you’re interested in what never saw light of day, the original, very carefully worked-out plan for TACET. was a cycle that would comprise seven large parts:
All of the above were in progress to different degrees: for example, the first three minutes of Ex Tenebris are completed, and the first five minutes of Negative Silence (the latter of which still terrify me; it’s (deliberately) like sitting next to a gigantic, glowering killer hornet), whereas ROOD and Ma – both of which, i have to say, i was very much looking forward to composing – were merely sketched out in readiness to start work. Whether i’ll end up recycling any of these materials or just delete them all remains to be seen/heard.)