On Theater

While composing, I function in part as a dramatist. This is particularly true when I’m composing music for an opera, but this frame of mind carries over to other genres.

When composing an opera, I strive to create vocal lines and musical textures that aptly express the dramatic situation and the characters’s emotions. When I compose orchestral music, I often have poetic concepts, expressive moods, or imaginary scenarios in mind. For vocal and choral works I hunt for texts that can be treated dramatically.

This theatrical approach colors my choices and treatments of materials. For example, I often use the rhythms of social dances—from ancient to modern—to evoke associated qualities of energy, ambiance, and a sense of human action. And I treat all elements of music (timbre, texture, register, dynamics, articulation, and so on) as means of expression, particularly dramatic expression, from comic to tragic.

A tendency toward dramatic expression exists in some of my earliest compositions. In my mid-thirties I embraced this tendency fully. As suggested by Virginia Postrel’s aphorism, “I like that. I’m like that.” — working from a theatrical/rhetorical worldview became crucial to my aesthetic identity.