Composer Tidbits

Today, we had a Q&A session with Israeli composer Shulamit Ran. A vivacious woman who just lives to compose, she had a few choice tidbits that I thought you might enjoy reading:

Her bio says that she wrote her first songs at age 7. When asked about this, she said that she had no idea she was "composing" - it was just something natural for her. Age 7 was when she started to be comfortable with reading. She would come home from school and read to her mother. In the stories she read, there would occasionally be text that was formatted differently, indicating that the character was singing that part. There were no notes attached - just the words. But when Ms. Ran got there, she would sing the words.

Her mother asked her where she learned the tune.

"It's here," replied Ms. Ran, pointing to the text.

"But the melody," queried her mother, "did you learn that in school?"

And Ms. Ran again repeated, "It's here" and pointed to the text. To Ms. Ran, the notes she was singing were obvious. She thought that anyone reading this text would come up with the same notes. It just seemed implied by the text. She had no idea that she was creating the melody.

Pretty neat, no?

Another great comment she made was about the obligation to the audience. I'll try to recount it in her words as best as I can remember them:

"We occupy people's most important possession -time. Music occurs in time. So when someone comes to hear a piece, whether it's 20 minutes or 2 hours, we ask them to sit there and give their time. So I figure I'd better offer something very special in return."

The final anecdote I'd like to tell you is her answer to a question about how she "stretches the envelope" with her music.

"There's nothing new under the sun," she began. "Everything has been done before by somebody else. And if I'm the first to do something, there will be five, ten, twenty-five people after me. So it doesn't matter that I'm the first. What matters is that I make it personal and authentic."

She then recounted a story about interviewing another Israeli composer who pointed out that, in the opening of The Old Testament, there's the phrase "God created the heavens and the earth." The Hebrew word for that "created" is unique, different than our normal conception of "created". It conveys a true sense of "first", of creating from nothingness.

"So," she said, "each of you probably has a different notion of God. But whatever your conception, the idea is that only God creates. The rest - it's all been done before."

As the moderating professor pointed out, this is a refreshing idea for an artist. It means we don't have to search so hard to come up with the completely original interpretation that's never been seen before. Rather, we just need to be authentic, personal, singing with our own voice and soul.

An interesting day.

~Hope