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kenjariIn a little notebook Lou Harrison put together on composing, he mentions that Virgil Thompson had a good method for dealing with creative blockage: write one short piece a day. Eventually a larger idea will come along. I now know from experience that this works.
In the fall, I decided to write a series of brief piano pieces, things I could complete in a few days (Thompson and Harrison say one day, I know, but with a full-time job and applications to complete, I had to give myself more leeway). My foremost reason for doing so was a sense of creative fatigue. I had been working almost exclusively on large pieces for the last three or four years, and I was feeling like I had run out of steam. So I wrote smaller, simpler things that wouldn't require quite so much of me.
And lo and behold, a large idea has finally come along. Or rather it grew out of the most recent brief piano piece, a little waltz. I'm going to write a piano sonata, complete with the usual four movements and the use of sonata-allegro form (although I will probably modify the structure somewhat, since it is no longer the era of Mozart and Beethoven). I've never done this before. It's quite a challenge, but it's all taking shape in my mind surprising quickly and well.
In the fall, I decided to write a series of brief piano pieces, things I could complete in a few days (Thompson and Harrison say one day, I know, but with a full-time job and applications to complete, I had to give myself more leeway). My foremost reason for doing so was a sense of creative fatigue. I had been working almost exclusively on large pieces for the last three or four years, and I was feeling like I had run out of steam. So I wrote smaller, simpler things that wouldn't require quite so much of me.
And lo and behold, a large idea has finally come along. Or rather it grew out of the most recent brief piano piece, a little waltz. I'm going to write a piano sonata, complete with the usual four movements and the use of sonata-allegro form (although I will probably modify the structure somewhat, since it is no longer the era of Mozart and Beethoven). I've never done this before. It's quite a challenge, but it's all taking shape in my mind surprising quickly and well.
