Exhibits

The Ross Hastings Project

So You Want to be a Composer!

by ROSS HASTINGS
Chief Editor
Bourne Company
Music Publishers
New York, N.Y.

Some months ago I was invited to speak to classes of music majors at the State University of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Since I was being presented to the students as the editor of a major music publisher, I assumed they would want to know something about how what I do for a living relates, if at all, to what they are studying. The experience forced me to reexamine this relationship more closely than I had ever had occasion to do before, and my findings rather surprised me.

First of all, stripped to bare bones, the composition of music is an art, whereas the publishing of music is a business. This is not to say that the creative artist is deaf, dumb and blind to all the requirements and/or inducements of bu$ine$$. And, believe it or not, artistic considerations and aspirations are not as foreign to the people who work in the Publishing Industry as might be generally supposed. However, though it is a preposterous over-simplification to say so, the relationship is one which revolves around music as a commodity: "You produce it and we'll sell it" -- or, if one wanted to be brutal about it, "You hoe potatoes on Long Island, and we'll hawk them on Ninth Avenue."

This suggests a line of demarcation, a barrier if you will, between composer and publisher, and barriers often result in misunderstandings which can parlay into distrust and antagonism. Too bad. As one who has spent three times as many years as a composer than as a publisher, I would like to assure you youngsters that I am on your side -- as well as on that of the lovely lady who pays my salary for editing Bourne publications. I understand you and your hopes. If I did not, I would not be much good as an editor. I wouldn't even be fully qualified for the job.

I envy you young composers the big thrills that are ahead of you. But there will be large, very large heartburn, too. Irving Stone was right on when he wrote of the creative process in terms of agony and ecstasy. And note that he put agony first -- probably because creation itself usually begins that way.

You agonize because you can't get an idea, or you agonize because you can't do anything with the idea you have; then you agonize over the thought that maybe it isn't a good idea anyway, and this can lead to the agony of self-doubt and the fear that, at the age of nineteen or so, you are already burned out. But you keep at it, and finally the music begins to come. When it does, there is no thrill like it in the world. I urge you to cling to these moments and hang on for dear life, because this feeling is the only --repeat -- ONLY reward you can count on from all the blood, sweat and tears of being a composer. Other things are possible, fringe benefits you might say, like fame, wealth, or being invited to appear on the Johnny Carson Show. These things can happen, but don't count on it.

You may never be paid for what you write. Or if you are, it will probably be at an absurd rate when you break it down per hour -- per heartburn. There are and always have been a few wealthy composers, of course, but don't let this lure you. Financially, you can get better odds at your friendly neighborhood race track. If you work in forms which require large forces to perform, they may never play what you write. Or if they do, they may not play it very well. Or if they do, the critics may not like it. Or if they do, you may not like it, for it is rare indeed that you ever hear an actual performance of something you have written that comes up to what you heard in your head during those moments of ecstasy. Sooner or later, you will ask yourself, "What am I doing this for?"

There is really only one reason for you to write -- one legitimate reason, that is. All the others are false, and I would admonish you not to be seduced by them. You should write simply because you can't not write; you must do this thing or burst your seams, because the agony of not doing it would be worse than the agony that goes with doing it. If you do not feel this way about it; I would advise you to step aside. There is a long line of composers standing in back of you who do feel this way, and they can very easily supply all the new music the world needs. Humbling though it is, you had better face it: nobody needs you to be a composer nearly as much as you need you to be a composer.

For the fledgling trailblazers and avant guardsmen among you, I have a word of caution about the intoxicating thrill of being a rebel. Young people sometimes find such excitement in being a revolutionary that they lose perspective and come to feel that revolution is the name of the game, that the important thing is to be new and different. Not so. Revolutions do not last forever, and neither do revolutionaries. Consider some of the most famous ones in music, men like Gluck, Berlioz, Wagner, and Stravinsky. It really isn't all that important any more that they were revolutionaries. It is mildly interesting to read in the history books about how daring they were in their day, but what we remember them for now is that in the course of their rebellion they wrote wonderful music. My point is that it is not enough, not nearly enough, just to be new and different. The trick is to be beautiful in a new and different way --which is quite another thing. The very young may look upon this as a hopelessly romantic, perhaps even outmoded concept. So be it, but I insist we are not discussing a cerebral exercise here, or some kind of computerized adventure; we are dealing with an art, and for the life of me I can't get past the thought that art has its aim and purpose in beauty.

But enough of art for the moment, and on to business. Let us say you have decided to disregard all advance, warnings, etc., and are going ahead with this madness of being a composer. So you complete your studies (at least that's what you think!) and now, as old Verdi put it, you "Lay your hands upon your heart and write. If you have the stuff of artists in you, you will be composers."

One day you will finish a piece you think is pretty good. Well, now that you are a musician you have enough objectivity to know it is good. You get to thinking it over and say to yourself, "I must do something about this." At this point the Devil laughs, because you have let vanity enter your head. The moments of ecstasy were not enough; you've just got to show someone else what a beautiful thing you have wrought. (Don't feel guilty about it. There is nothing new or wrong in this. It happens to all of us.) So you pack it all up and have someone type a letter, "Dear Sir: Enclosed is the manuscript of my ---" and you send it to me, or someone like me. Some time later you get it back with a rejection letter. You are teed off, and you mutter things like "What's the matter with that stupid editor? Doesn't he know good music when he sees it?"

Yes, we know. But who asked you to send us good music? Think about that a second or two. Does it shock you? Well, consider this: you have committed a rather violent and shocking act yourself, very much like having yourself shot out of a cannon aimed at the moon. You have abruptly left the realm of art and entered the world of commerce, where we have a completely different set of rules governing our aims, purposes, and general behavior. That piece of music is not a piece of art anymore; it is a piece of merchandise and must be judged accordingly.

I am an employee of a commercial establishment. It is part of my responsibility to find material that we can sell enough copies of to pay for the engraving, the printing, the promotion, the overhead, and maybe show a little profit besides. My superiors certainly have no objection to good music, but the main idea is to make money. As a musician and as a music lover, I still maintain it is possible for music of quality to have a good sales potential, but to create it composers must be willing to work within the confines of rules as set forth at the market place.

The Basic Law, to which all others are like embroidery around a cantus firmus, is to be practical. For instance, don't send me a string quartet or a symphony or an opera or an oratorio. You might as well send them to General Motors, because we are simply not in the business. Hardly anyone is these days unless you can first manage to become so well known through frequent and highly successful performances of your work that there is a demand for the printed music. But I'm not going into the ordeal of how you go about getting performances. That's a whole different ball game, and believe me it is no ball game. You're on your own there.

The company I work for, and the only kind of publishing company I have ever worked for, specializes in so-called "educational music." This is a misleading term, of course, as it does not mean music that necessarily educates; it is simply music useable in, therefore saleable to, an educational institution. For us at least this means band* and chorus. We take occasional excursions into orchestra and miscellaneous instrumental ensembles, but for the most part our efforts are directed toward these two major areas of educational music.

Even here you must be realistic. If it is band you are writing for, do not fall into the trap of composing monumental works for the few great bands you may have had the good fortune to hear. Wild horses could not drag out of me which bands I have in mind, because I don't want the rest of them sticking pins in waxen images of me or forming poison pen anti-Hastings correspondence clubs. Let it suffice to say there are very few truly great bands in existence -- perhaps less than a dozen. Say there are two dozen, but even if there were a hundred, the commercial truth of it is you can't make money selling 100 copies of a band piece. The concert band market is like a pyramid. At the tip are the greats. In a wider area just below are the average college bands. Then come the junior colleges, high schools, junior highs, and at the bottom, i.e., the widest market are the thousands upon thousands of elementary school bands.

Here you should bear in mind that, though this music is the easiest to play, it is by no means the easiest to write. Nor is it particularly rewarding for the composer who wishes to express himself artistically. For example, you think you have something nice going, and suddenly you come to a place where the melody you have given to the cornets calls for a C# the kids have not yet learned to finger; or a beautifully expressive clarinet passage gets all fouled up in that terrible no-man's-land across the break. A few men, less than can be counted on the fingers of one hand, have done remarkably well at this level. In all cases they are men who learned all about band problems through many years of teaching in elementary schools, but more importantly they are men with the intelligence to see that being simple is not the same as being silly. They have learned well the First Commandment to the music educator: THOU SHALT NOT SELL KIDS SHORT. What they write always makes musical sense. It makes the band sound, often before the players have learned to blow their little noses. I would love to give you their names, but there must be some code of ethics to forbid this. Anyway, these fellows are friends of mine who know very well who they are, and once again I doff my old 7 3/8 beret to them.

For you composers who would like to strike some sort of compromise between artistic expression and commercial feasibility I would recommend that you stay within the grade of difficulty achievable by any good high school band. This is a big enough market to be attractive to the publisher, and it still gives you considerable scope. Personally, though, as a composer I prefer an even broader potential: material easy enough note-wise to be playable by a good junior high band, but music of sufficient validity to be worthy of high school or even beyond.

If your preference as a composer runs to choral writing, please do not send me a masterpiece inspired by the time you heard Robert Shaw do the Brahms REQUIEM. We are looking for easier and shorter pieces that will sell to high school choruses, maybe even junior high. Think about ranges. Think about the average student accompanist, who is often awarded the position because he or she has done so well with FUR ELISE. Think also about the countless Protestant Church volunteer choirs. We sell to them, too. By the thousands they each sing an anthem every Sunday morning. Keep your music simple and easy to rehearse. Divisi? Well, if you must, but only the outer voices, i.e., sopranos and basses. You are lucky to have an alto or tenor section at all. Do not force your luck or dissipate their strength by dividing them.

It occurs to me that in my editorial anxiety to find publishable material and forestall the impractical, I may seem to have forsaken so-called "serious" composers and discouraged them from creating music with a purely artistic purpose. Nothing could be further from my intentions. I still believe with all my heart in great music, and in the people who create it. Besides, far from wanting to discourage them, actually, I do not believe it is even possible to discourage them. Once the Muse had spoken to the deathly ill Mozart, the deaf Beethoven, the aged Verdi, it was impossible to stop them from finishing their final miraculous masterpieces as to dissuade Mme. Salmon from the agonizing efforts of her upstream swim to lay eggs.

If you are a composer with the stuff of the above three giants in you, you do not need me for advice of any kind. I would, though, like to assure the less than great that, despite all I have said, there still is a place in the world for your music. My only admonition is that a publishing company is not necessarily the right place. This certainly does not mean we as publishers are your enemy, or that we are out to hurt you. A rejection letter from us does not always express our opinion of your work as music, but only as merchandise. Let us be friends. Write us some good merchandise. And please, for the sake of all us long-suffering editors as well as for your own self-respect, let it be good music.

Now, just in case you didn't understand it the first time, let us to back to those potatoes on Ninth Avenue. I do not like potatoes with dirt or blemishes on them, and neither do our customers; so I must clean them up before I can sell them. Furthermore, we cannot use potatoes which are malformed, undersized, or in any other way unhealthy. I must relentlessly discard any such that I find in your lot. If I find that too many of your potatoes are, for one reason or another, unacceptable or unmarketable, surely you can understand I must turn elsewhere and do business with someone who can supply me with better quality. That's how it is with editors. And you have no idea how many people are growing potatoes these days!

*Concert band that is, as opposed to marching band ("football music") and stage band (jazz). These are distinctly different areas in which other publishers specialize.

About the Author

Born and educated in Los Angeles, Ross Hastings migrated to New York in 1955, returning only to serve as staff arranger-orchestrator at the Hollywood Bowl for six seasons (1957-62). In 1962 he joined the staff of the Warner Bros. publishing arm, becoming Editor-in-Chief two years later. He now occupies a similar position with Bourne Co. His published compositions and arrangements number in the dozens and include works for all media associated with the educational market.