Finding Resonance

Listening and responding constitute a different attitude from planning, doing, and calculating.—Hartmut Rosa, The Uncontrollability of the World, 2020

Aesthetic identity—I like that. I’m like that. —Virginia Postrel, The Substance of Style, 2003

"All things are not shining, but all the shining things are."—Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly, All Things Shining, 2011

In my teens and twenties, I composed and arranged music in a variety of styles—from rock and jazz to extended classical traditions and modernist atonality. I was searching for musical materials to work with that I found deeply resonant. A lot of my explorations led to dead ends—to materials that, for me personally, lacked sufficient resonance to sustain my interest.

I learned from the writers quoted above that the things any of us finds exceptionally resonant are only semicontrollable.¹ The “shining” things that move us deeply as individuals are partly idiosyncratic, and may change as we age. To sense resonance, we have to remain open to the world as we experience it.

Fortunately, in my explorations I discovered a range of musical materials that for me have remained deeply resonant—materials that I continue to relish working with. I get the greatest sense of resonance by composing music that establishes a clear sense of propulsive direction in melody, counterpoint, harmony, and rhythm.

I discovered that exteriorized expression is a key value for me. As I have written elsewhere,“Depending on the expressive needs of the work at hand, I set out to evoke joy as effectively as sorrow, delight as convincingly as rage, and malice as persuasively as innocence.”² My mature style began to develop only after I started focusing solely on materials and techniques I intuitively found deeply resonant. After that, I began composing works that consistently ”felt like me."