<<  -- 7 --  Carson P Cooman    LETTING THE MUSIC GROW

CC: Although you did some of your degrees in the New York State, you grew up in North Carolina and then returned there after your doctoral studies. Has the landscape, climate, or environment of North Carolina had an impact on your development as a composer?

DL: I guess it was 1981 when we had snow in Binghamton on June 1. I said to myself: 'This Southern boy is heading home!' I've never been a cold weather person and I like to see the changes of all four season. Professionally and personally, I enjoyed my years in Binghamton in so many ways. I loved the summer weather and was glad to be so close to New York City. But, I must say that I never did really adjust well to the winter climate. Place is very important to me. A native of North Carolina, I feel my Southern roots strongly and truly love where I am. I like to believe that this contentment has, in a number of ways, influenced my work.

CC: You met your wife after moving back to North Carolina and she is a museum curator and director. Tell me a bit about that.

DL: I moved to Winston-Salem, NC in August of 1982, Paula and I met at a concert the next month, and we were married the following July. We celebrated our 21st anniversary this past year. In 1982, Paula was Curator of Old Salem Inc (which is one of the original Moravian settlements in the US). She is now Vice President of Museums and Collections for Old Salem Inc. An Ohio native, she came to North Carolina after finishing her undergraduate degree at Hollins College in Virginia and wound up spending her career here. I'm so glad she did!

CC: Have you seen any trends, style-shifts, or major changes in your compositional language over the years? As a composer myself, I realize that's a very difficult question to answer about one's own music -- because we're so close to our own work.

DL: It's an extremely hard, if not impossible, question to answer, really. Not to trivialize this, but if you're 'follicly challenged' like I am, then it's sort of like that! You look back at an earlier photo and say 'Wow, I had much more hair then!' But, without the comparison, you don't really notice so much the loss since it happens gradually over time.

I think the evolution of a musical style is similar (though certainly more profound than hair loss!). The shifts often happen so gradually and you don't really notice it yourself. If I hear pieces of mine from the 70s or 80s, I can certainly see how certain things have changed or evolved. But equally importantly to me is to see what has remained constant, for that, to me, is the core of musical personality.

I think honesty and integrity in what you're doing are important qualities. Over time the musical personality may remain rooted in similar foundation points, but it evolves to take on new depths in varied directions. If somebody asks (which they occasionally do) 'what does your music like?', you honestly can't answer that more accurately than you could meaningfully answer, 'What are you like as a person?' To the musical question the one thing you can answer concerns what is important to you. In my case that would be rhythmic excitement, lyricism, a search for beauty and color and writing the music that I want to hear. But that doesn't really say anything about what the music really sounds like.

A case in point is if you re-read those writings of Andrew Porter in The New Yorker, where he often lauded works of Elliott Carter and spoke about their sheer beauty. Reading that characterization, if a person did not know Carter's work he or she could easily think that Porter was speaking of a beauty as found in a work of, say, Debussy. Of course, when you hear Carter's music, it hardly sounds like the connotation of 'beauty' that seems conveyed in Porter's writing.

Interestingly, with certain composers like Elliott Carter, a change in style was a very conscious thing. He has written and spoken about this on a number of occasions. He felt compelled to dramatically move from an Americana (for want of a better word) style to a more complex one that sought to, among other things, fully challenge the extraordinary technical expertise of performing musicians. Personally I've never felt compelled to try and change my musical personality (and am not sure that I honestly could). As the years have passed I have simply let my music grow as I have grown.

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