What Got Me Into This

ABOUT

“A creative artist works on his next composition because he was not satisfied with his previous one”

— Dimitri Shostakovich

One can easily live life’s journey without reflection. Of course, there is no guarantee that a more fulfilling life will be the consequence of reflecting upon it from time to time.

I have found that when something complex and difficult to understand is happening in my life, it has been beneficial for me to write for myself an essay of what I am experiencing.  For example, I wrote what turned into a small book “Left Behind” after the loss of my wife in 2010.  For me it is a method of trying to digest what is going on in my life.  

Classical music has been the love of my life since I can remember. I played a number of instruments (none that good that I could be tempted to become a virtuoso) and had music pop into my head all the time.  My wife used to say to me “stop your senseless humming” when we used to go out together!

After she passed away, I decided to retire from the little software company I had started and be more serious about music.  I went back to playing the piano and started turning the snippets of music in my head into small compositions.

Playing Bach on the piano was a so much fun that I could do it all day.  Olivia, my daughter noticed this and asked me if I wanted to become a pianist or if I wanted to compose.  

I suspect it is a bit like wanting one’s golf handicap to get better (mine was never anything to write home about to start with) but I realized what a drug wanting to play something better could be for me and decided that creating new music was what I should be doing.

I have been a regular Amazon client for many years (with science fiction another of my hobbies) and getting books on music theory was very easy.

In addition I decided to move to Germany (my father who had died in World War II had been a German, my mother from Holland, where I was born in 1942) and attend classes at the Musikhochschule at the university in Mainz.   One of the lecturers there became my tutor and a personal friend, so this was indeed very helpful for me.

I love composing music, even though at times it can be quite frustrating, particularly after you just decided that a week or more of effort is really not worth keeping and you have to start all over again.

Each composition is a piece of magic, consisting of a gift of intuition, an effort of engineering and a labor of sweat and love.  It deserves a process of completion, a place to rest and to be shared and for reflection to be possible at a future review.