How My Music Is Made: “Tantôt Libre, Tantôt Recherché”

This chapter explores the way in which harmony creates the structure of my music. Harmony operates through space (register) and time (rhythm) to shape and pace my compositions, both in concert works and opera. As my examples illustrate, harmony is implicit in melodic line as well as explicit in ‘vertical’ sonorities. European modernism in art, literature and music has been the single strongest influence on my work. My harmony is functional, using pitch centres and sets to create clear hierarchies. My pitch sets are chosen to encapsulate the sound world I seek for each work. I create a network of relationships, developing musical images through transformation. I like to move out from chromaticism to a diatonic harmony or to a microtonal language. To use a visual analogy, I am creating different harmonic planes in order to suggest perspective. I am a practitioner, not a theorist: theoretical or systematic process is inimical to me. However, intuitive composing is not a case of bumbling around in the dark. The imagination must be nurtured through performance, analysis, study and sketching. It is for this reason that I like to cite Beethoven’s prefix to the Grosse Fuge: “tantôt libre, tantôt recherché.”