Blast From the Past

Blast From the Past

I just ran across some music that I wrote in high school, and it’s
bad.

Written By

Colin Holter

I just upgraded my rapidly obsolescing iBook G4 to a new MacBook. In the process of transferring all my old files to the new machine, I ran across some music I wrote in high school that I probably haven’t seen since the last time I moved everything from one hard drive to another. It’s bad. It was clearly slapped together by someone who was digging on Copland, Barber, Stravinsky, Adams, et. al. but lacked the technical acumen to construct satisfying phrases and periods, let alone entire pieces. I’d just kind of write whatever I heard in my head, drawing on a network of conventions from the “classical” music I knew: early 20th-century chestnuts, late 19th-century opera, minimalism and neo-romanticism, and film and video game music. It’s way worse than my least favorite conservative new music being written today. In short, it’s shameful, and I’m relieved that none of it ever got played.

I graduated from high school in 2001, about six and a half years ago. In another six and a half, I hope to have completed my terminal degree and maybe even found gainful employment. Will I look back on the music I’m writing now with horror? It’s possible. But I’ve certainly learned more about writing music in the past six and a half than in the seventeen before that. If I learn more in the next six and a half than in the previous, I should be fine.

With all the recent hubbub on NewMusicBox over how good one’s ear is (“My freshman musicianship teacher said she should have been paying me!”), I’ve thought a bit about how my music might have developed differently if I’d possessed aural fluency of the sort some respondents claim. Without striving to overcome a mediocre ear, my natural complacency might have tempted me to keep taking dictation from the muse. And my muse was no Calliope, especially in high school.