This page is for composers and anyone interested in the creative process. To learn more about teaching composition, choose Teaching Composition from the Teaching menu.
Rudolf Nissim Prize: $5,000
Here’s a wonderful composition contest to enter for all my composer friends: This $5000 cash prize is presented annually to an ASCAP concert composer for a work requiring a conductor that has not been performed professionally. A jury of conductors selects the winning score. Dr. Rudolf Nissim, former head of ASCAP’s Foreign Department and a devoted friend of contemporary composers, established this annual prize through a bequest. Support for the world premiere of the selected work will be provided. Previous recipients are...
read moreArt and Self-doubt
I bought a book last weekend called Art & Fear: Observations on the perils (and rewards) of artmaking. I have yet to determine if it’s a good book, but there have been a number of good points made that I wanted to share. Especially for the very reflective individual, I found this particular quote quite telling: Making art precipitates self-doubt, stirring deep waters that lay between what you know you should be, and what you fear you might...
read moreFinale Music Composition Contest
Here is a great opportunity for collegiate students from Finale Music, makers of Finale notation software. 2012 Finale® National Composition Contest In partnership with MakeMusic, Inc., and the acclaimed American string quartet JACK Quartet, the American Composers Forum announces the 2012 Finale® National Composition Contest. The objective of this competition is to encourage creativity by student composers who are currently enrolled in graduate and undergraduate institutions in the United States. Three students from the total applicant...
read moreWriting is Easy
While this is not necessarily inspirational, it does remind me that it is normal if the process of composing is often difficult, tiring, and taxing. It also made me chuckle. Here is a reflection on writing from Gene Fowler: Writing is easy: all you have to do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.”
read moreFree Jingles
These aren’t just free, they’re fabulous! IMMusic Inc. has created 71 free jingles that you can use for practically anything you can think of! You could use them for presentations, commercials, collages of student pictures, etc. If you are needing jingles that not everyone else is using (of course lots of people use the free music available in the video making software on your computer), I highly recommend these jingles from IMMusic Inc. I used 2 of these high quality jingles for this Rhythm Menagerie video. They were...
read moreEternal Appetite for Infancy Source
Quite a few people commented and sent me messages about the life-altering quote from G. K. Chesterton on repetition. I thought it might be good to tell you the source of this in case you want to read this fantastic book yourself. The quote is from the 4th chapter called “The Ethics of Elfland.” Doesn’t that chapter title just make you want to read it all the more? Here is a beautiful centennial version of Orthodoxy along with the quote again. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit...
read moreThe Paradoxical Musical Life
I just came back from our KMTA conference where one of the college faculty on a panel answered the question, “How do you prepare a student who wants to study music?” with a “Well, I honestly don’t know if I would recommend a career in music these days.” While what she said might have been shocking to some, she went on to say some very valuable things about developing all the interests you have when you are college age and then seeing where that takes you rather than choosing too early to only focus on just one...
read moreAn Eternal Appetite for Infancy
At a recent conference, Betty Todd Smith, a wonderful conference presenter said, “Children never tire of repetition. It is we adults who hate the monotony of repetition.” That sentence really struck a chord with me as a piano teacher. I am also trying to think of ways to make the repetition more interesting to the student, but perhaps I am the one that gets bored. A few days later, my husband reminded me of this beautiful and even more life-altering quote about repetition given by G. K. Chesterton: Because children have...
read moreSpiritus Mundi
Here is a poem by Kansan Amy Fleury that I am currently mulling over and is this weeks’ featured Inspiration Point. Spiritus Mundi Listen around to the long sentence the land is saying, to the wind rumoring through the aggregate of grasses. Hear the soft explosions of all that is tilled under, a scumble of clods cleaved by the blade, the sheared leavings of wheat, and memory, memory, a root system still drilling down, searching out moisture, anything that’s useful, anything dear. Do you recognize your own...
read moreWhat I Gave…[Inspiration Point]
The Latin phrase sic transit gloria mundi means ‘thus passes the glory of the world’. Watts shortened it because his subject ‘was not so much the passing of the glory of the world but rather the end of all human existence’. The foreground objects symbolize the futility of material wealth. The ermine, used on robes of state, denotes power; the lute and book refer to the Arts; the laurel crown and goblet to fame and luxury; the armor and weaponry to military victory. The inscription reads ‘What I spent, I had, What...
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