CJ Replay: Composer & Conductor

“Composition has increased my ability to understand music in general. There is no pedagogical device quite so incisive as the primary creative process. When you learn how to make a fugue or a scherzo, you learn how a fugue or a scherzo should be performed. You begin to really understand the architecture of music and to know which elements are the important gestures and which are simply practical moves to get from one foreground place to the next. (Incidentally, those transitions are much harder to write than the great soaring melodies.) This carries through to conducting. Almost any smart conductor with a good heart and some adrenaline can convincingly deliver the places in the music the audience will remember, but it takes talent to make the crafty connections. If you don't convince there, if the connections are awkward, the audience will forget everything you do.”  (From the Choral Journal article, “Podium and Pen – Choral Conductor as Composer: An Interview with Theodore Morrison,” by Jerry Blackstone.)