My principal method of investigation revolved around the composition of works. Every new work I composed over the past eight years (2003 - 2010) has become a part of the research. These include:
Whether the piece is for young players (Simple Song - 2003) or at a professional level (White Noise - 2009), whether it is complete (the majority of them) or remains in sketch form (Marissa's Song) all are included in the portfolio and most are interrogated in some form or another as part of this doctoral research.
This interrogation has included some reflections on what I did, and how the outcomes were achieved. This was done via a self-reflexive form of musical analysis, which involved personal reflection on the process of composing and scoring rather than a detailed interrogation of formal, tonal and harmonic structures. This also involved reflecting on the responses of performers and listeners to my works; those responses, both solicited and unsolicited, came via email, letter, conversation and informal survey. These reflections were constructed as journal entries and also via recordings of my reactions and responses as I sat and composed, wherever that happened to be, but mainly as I sat at my desk and scored the works. This was done most particularly with My Sister's Tears. The aim of these journal entries was to capture the 'life' of each work and, as each one arose from different circumstances, this did not entail the same procedure each time. At times, no process of review or reflection was engaged in; composition was the sole end in itself. At other moments, my reflections on the compositional process became more distant in an almost self-referential participant observation manner. Yet, during the process of reflection, the act of bringing the works to life in performance remained a crucial factor. Often I had the good fortune to be the conductor presenting the premiere of my new work, at other times I was a guest at the concert.
The pieces I have composed are thereby the central focus of the research and through regular journaling I have reflected upon the process of their creation, their dissemination (through performance, recording and publication) and on their reception. A list of the works and a synopsis of each can be found here. Each synopsis details the journey of the work from manuscript to concert stage and, at times, publication and recording. Each circumstance fed more data back to the journals about the thought processes which underpinned the compositional activity.
In an endeavour to capture some key aspects of the process of composing and its attendant outcomes, journaling became a meaningful source of explanation and de-mystification. By interrogating my act of composing and reflecting upon the outcomes, it provided much insight into many areas of my process, and even creative angst. In particular, it allowed me to unpack the skills used and locate them amidst musical and emotional conceptualisations. This has made me aware of what I did at various stages of the compositional process which, in turn, has informed my teaching practice in composition and conducting.
In some cases the reflections are focussed on matters of craft. For example, decisions about orchestration are frequently unpacked and at times, the tone may resemble that of a text-book - "do this and you will get this", "do that and you will not be able to hear this". Different journals explore different compositional issues in various levels of detail. For example, the procedure of journaling was almost exactly the same in the first journals for My Sister's Tears and for Jessie's Well though the outcomes, in a number of ways, were quite different in the level of detail. As My Sister's Tears was to become the central case study for this research, I later rewrote its journal in a style more like that of Jessie's Well in order to unpack the compositional process as transparently as possible.
Other types of journal entries were more personal and subjective. Though they may seem, at first, a little too raw, they are reproduced here unedited as, in this form, I believe they capture my reflections most graphically and honestly. The most subjective journal, where the agony of the personal and private come to the fore, reflects upon the genesis of a My Sister's Tears. (A list of the various journals can be found here)
The regular journal writing was suffused with my everyday life and even those more objective offerings, like Jessie's Well noted above, have an almost discursive style. It was important that these journals were a spontaneous expression of my thoughts and not hindered by the need to write in an academically rigorous way. They were often written in short spaces around my busy professional schedule and so it was imperative that, in the limited time available, the ideas were captured as honestly and directly as possible. As such, they were written in the vernacular - at times even jocular style - that comes most naturally to me. The journals thereby provided the raw data on which a more academically rigorous and disciplined reflection would be based.
Many of the compositions in the folio are commissioned works and a premiere usually ensued from each commission. Response to the premieres elicited reactions from listeners and replies from me, most often in the personal way of a letter or an email, and all of this material fed into the churn of research evident here (e.g. Report on New Music).
Many of the works faced peer review from editorial boards of publishing houses across the globe (e.g. White Noise). A number have also been recorded and released internationally (e.g. My Sister's Tears). Once again these outcomes have produced responses from others on which I have reflected in my journals (e.g. Camphouse - Of Stories Told, Simple Song - Stanton's).
Workshops and research presentations given during the period of my candidature also positively enhanced the development of my research framework. Those endeavours sharpened the focus of where I was heading. I wandered through many thoughts, straining to establish a position from which I could investigate my compositional outputs. I moved from autobiography – utilised in my Masters work – through considerations of ethnography, autoethnography, touching on phenomenology and even considering an atheoretical approach; possibly even an aparadigmatic position.
This meandering led me to ask significant ontological, epistemological and methodological questions of my project. It led me to question whether I could participate in and render a meaningful discourse about what I observed. Given the personal nature of the aforementioned data I collected, I repeatedly asked myself how I could research 'self' and unpack 'self' in relation to others and do so with depth and integrity, without becoming engulfed in selfishness and self absorption. As the following sections in this methodology chapter explain, such questioning led me to construct a research approach that was sensitive to both the needs of my personal and compositional life and the requirements of academic rigour and reflection.
Importantly, the endeavour was to present an enquiry in equilibrium; one where objective unpacking of my compositional craft was located adjacent to the inevitably individual subjectivity which comes from a personal immersion in the investigative exercise. C.S. Lewis, in his reflection on the relationship of 'belief' in science and Christianity, helped define my position solidly when he suggested that, "My hope is that when this has been done, though disagreements between the two parties (positions) may remain, they will not be left staring at one another in wholly dumb and desperate incomprehension" (1987, p. 14). I have tried to balance the more objective analysis of my compositional process with reflections on more subjective personal aspects.
Such a delicate balance, an attempted equilibrium, was vital for me. Knowing what I do, empirically, and understanding the underlying personal motivations for that action, provides a telling juxtaposition of the measureable and numinous. I seek to explore the shared plausibility gap between knowing and experiencing. For me, there is a significant resonance here with my Christian faith, between the acceptance of a position of faith and its attendant lack of proof, and the position I take up in this investigation. Such resonances with my faith will be evident, might I suggest 'heard', throughout this investigation. Though some of what is presented in this research may be underpinned by empirical observation, much more is located in the ephemera of feeling, being and emotion.
We discover in this equilibrium some awareness of what takes place for the composer in producing a work; a more vivid illumination of reason and process than may otherwise be accessible in more traditional modes of reporting about compositional processes. As Dunsby (in Cook & Everist) contends "understanding and trying to explain musical structure is not the same as understanding and communicating music" (1998, p. 246). I have therefore endeavoured to illuminate what is done in the act of composition by going beyond observations of process and locating it within the context of performance and reception and thereby exploring the meanings that were constructed through their performances (see Cook, 1998, p. 247).
In my research the 'after the fact' analytical observations were utilised alongside my 'during the fact' ruminating over the activity of composition in my journals. What I discovered during the process of investigation was that, as Dubiel (in Cook & Everist) contends, "we cannot draw a boundary between 'hearing what's there' and 'imagining something', because hearing sound as music always involves imagination, always involves reading something into the sound, ascribing characteristics to it beyond its immediate acoustical properties" (1998, p. 264).
This does seem to be the manner by which some practitioners compose, including myself and as seen in the previous section regarding Sparke and Wilson, for it displays the union between conscious awareness and the intuitive. As may later become apparent, it may also assist those affected by grief – practitioner, acolyte or non-musician – and aid their recovery, sensitivities or anger.
According to Dubiel (1998), the composer seeks to "...devise musical configurations likely to elicit, from a reader listener, a hearing like the one he has preconceived" (p. 264). He "...needs his responsive musical experiences and his willed ones to be continuous with one another" (1998, p. 265). Later in this document I tell a story, using both text and a musical work, to present a significant event in my life. As I tell it, in both forms, I both represent and reflect on it. Both are as legitimate as each other and inextricably linked.
I am not suggesting that the musical story is a direct translation of the other in the manner of Romantic programme music. As narratives, the two types of stories remain fundamentally different in form and nature but each may be called a story in its own right.
As Ellis asserts "the meaning of a story depends on the other stories it will generate" (2009, p. 232). Moreover, "the point of any present story is its potential for revision and redistribution in future stories" (Franks, in Ellis, 2009, p. 232). In my case here, the story told through music preceded the narrative text in words and it is evidence of affect more than description of an event. It presents feeling rather than documenting fact and provides the potential for multiple meanings to be found. In many ways it is an uplifting work yet the story in text is unquestionably sad. The work - My Sister's Tears - was composed as a response to my sister's suicide in November of 2003.
Often as I teach, I assert that music is potent because it is a unique way of telling and understanding ourselves and our place in life. Not all music does, or has to do this, but surely some of it answers that call and need in us for that form of experience and awareness. An example I use is a storm and I relate how the event may well be reported on (and revised and redistributed, as Franks suggests above) as:
A meteorologist might tell of the storm's winds gusting up to X kilometres an hour and an internal barometric pressure of Y kilopascals. The news reporter may scream into the microphone that it is a devastating event with the storm tearing the heart and soul out of the local community. An artist (such as Turner) may well cast broad sheets of colour across the canvas where–as the composer assails us with screaming violins, trumpets and booming percussion (Hultgren - class notes, January 2009 based on Kiester, in Pearson's undated publication, The Value of Music Education)
Here there may be the assertion that a response to a storm might not be through "screaming violins, trumpets and booming percussion." Sadness may pervade and be reflected in soft tones or gentle dissonance. That serves only to validate the point that all stories are simply responses of some kind. In fact, there may well be no 'pure' original narrative, especially given the position of Ellis and Franks above. Here there is a relationship between each of the storytellers and the event they depict. In relating, as witness to it, they tell of it in a unique and meaningful manner.
"Knowledge" suggests Small (1998), "is thus as much a product of the knower as of the thing known and can in fact be best thought of as a relationship between knower and known" (1998, p. 55). He has located the world of experiential relationships in what he has termed 'musicking', where musicking involves all those taking part in a musical performance; the audience, critics, ensemble members, conductor and those who may listen on radio or YouTube in addition of course to those who provide "...materials for performance..." (1998, p. 9) the composers.
In presenting my life-changing event I do so from both the constructed perspective of a text-based narrator, my least experienced position, and from my location in musicking, as a composition-based storyteller. In doing so I hope to make available to others some understanding of the methods and impulses related to composing and the stories which may be told through musical narrative. I seek to assist them to know it, the process and the impulse, in some way, for "…in knowing it (our world), we learn how to live well in it" (Small 1998, p. 50).
The endeavour here is to allow the reader into the mind of the composer in a vivid and present manner. To focus here theoretically on 'how to compose' would be to lose an opportunity to inform this field of musical and autoethnographic research. For example, the extracts below from my journals, can illustrate how I have approached this.
Look at 26 – 32 (ex. 17 above and ex. 18 and 19 below). The lines are moving and falling often. When the melody reaches a peak it ebbs away again and that flow to the peak and subsiding is evident in the scoring and the use of the instrumental timbres. Look at the reaching up in the low woodwinds. Yes, I know it is reaching up because it is an ascending part but consider the way it sounds not the way it looks! Hear the voice! Just seeing the voice misses what the composer wants. (Jessie's Well journal summation, 2005, p. 24)
Examples from the sketches and scores are provided and the journaling ruminates and reflects and, at times, concludes.
Second point was what I found here...Look at how much space there is between the horns and the trombone! The sound I will get from this will be of clear depth, from the trombones et al, and resonance in the upper parts. It's the timbre thing I alluded to earlier; the sounds of the 'voice' in its different registers. Some are calling out and some are sounding heroic and some are providing strength (Jessie's Well journal summation, 2005, p. 42)
Here I am participating in the investigation, an investigation which brings to the fore those matters known best by me, for I am the author of this text and also of the data; both self and the 'other', in fact. As Ellis asserts, "autoethnography is an autobiographical genre of writing and research that displays multiple layers of consciousness, connecting the personal to the cultural" (in Denzin & Lincoln, 2000, p. 739). I am counselled to be thorough for, as Etherington suggests (2004, p. 141), if "the researcher approaches the methodology without understanding its purposes sufficiently, their own motivations or without the skills to ensure that the outcome is of aesthetic, personal, social and academic value, then it might well fit the descriptions of the method's biggest critics, of being self-indulgent, solipsistic and narcissistic."
There is a potency in the telling about self which no one else can bring to it and its subjectivity is not a hindrance to its capacity to make a vibrant connection with readers and thereby a valuable contribution to this area of enquiry. As Spry contends, "autoethnographers argue that self-reflexive critique upon one's positionality as researcher inspires readers to reflect critically upon their own life experience, their constructions of self, and their interactions with others within socio-historical contexts" (Spry, 2001, p. 710). Because I have participated in the construction and deconstruction of my work, and observed the reaction to the works I have produced, and detailed them to the fullest extent, I am uniquely placed to embrace this autoethnographic position and commence my research from here.
My Masters research, completed in 1997, was a based on the study of a symphony I composed. My argument was that my composition is a form of autobiographical research and that the understanding of that autobiographical position was in realising that composing was a pursuit of my spiritual self. To begin with I sought to understand why I compose from a more positivist locus than the subsequent research presented then and here. The capacity to measure and account for outcomes weighed solidly on how I viewed why I composed for I felt "the demands of those who commission works from me: 'write something that will knock their socks off'. 'Don't write conflicting rhythms in the 1st and 2nd alto saxophones' and the myriad of other suggestions, pressures, insinuations and so on..." Though working in the creative domain those pressures of outputs and outcomes drove me to find results that were measurable and quantifiable. Yet, the spiritual pursuit composition seemed then to be for me came through in that research. In fact, "I...alluded to some of my personal thoughts and deeply held feelings and even ventured into the intangible areas of the soul and spirituality" (1997, p. 193).
Even in this current pursuit I often found myself attempting to weigh measurable facts to illuminate 'how' I write music. Though there is much that can be revealed through such an approach, I have discovered that 'why' I write cannot be addressed adequately by such measurements. What was uncovered was a more spiritual place; a position from which I sought to reach out and connect to others via my compositions. This spiritual circumstance was the ineffable that some would describe as creativity and others as the numinous, but I think it is God immanent in my life. I am confident in this position, as are others who share such an experience of faith.
As composer David Maslanka suggests "music is one of the direct channels to and from the 'other side'..." and that "...all musicians are drawn to this connecting point like moths to a flame" (in Camphouse 2004, pp. 198-199).
The place I am in now, informed by those such as Maslanka, seems diametrically opposed to where I was in my previous search. 'That' researcher, engaged in 'that' academic pursuit, never wanted to find that what he was searching for was spirituality. At that time, he was an aggressive agnostic; the last thing he wanted or needed to find was that he was engaged in some aimless spiritual pursuit. He was pursuing truth and meaning, not soul and spirit.
The ontological datum then was my Symphony for Wind Orchestra and all that I was 'aware' of consciously in my compositional activity. I had decided I would investigate, "The origins of my symphony....when was it written and what generated its creation...The processes of selection, combination or rejection of musical ideas...What artistic or architectural influences...Why choose one melodic fragment over another, or embrace polyphony at one point and not at another? I argued that, "Seeking to contextualise my work (was the) paramount objective" (1997, p. 162).
There "I...often considered the affective experiences that shape my writing but [leaned] toward the grammar and syntax because it [was] most easily described and practised." (1997, p. 176) I sought truth but admitted that even in a spiritual pursuit I was "...emotionally buffeted and cast about when caught in the infinite variety of truth presented to me" (1997, p. 177).
What I uncovered though was a deep spiritual vacuum. Despite the sense that what I was striving after in my research was a quantitative 'answer', it did in fact lead me to address the qualitative characteristics of soul and spirit. As I wrote: "It may be that my music is finding and communicating aspects of my search for truth and spiritual understanding. It may be that my need to be an evangelist is bearing fruit in the musical rather than religious domain" (Hultgren, 1997, p. 180).
The interrogation of my creative work brought a conclusion I did not expect. Facing the situation I found myself in meant confronting the limitations of objective, positivist approaches in addressing the questions I asked. I was also aware that such an approach may have opened me to academic and personal ridicule.
Despite my concerns, developments in qualitative research, in particular, through the growing acceptance of autoethnographic methods and approaches, provided me with the confidence to proceed along these lines. Nonetheless I have always been hesitant when my compositions are presented to the world; now I am hesitant about telling the story of them and the story they tell. Yet, "Evocative stories activate subjectivity and compel emotional response" (Bochner in Denzin and Lincoln, 2000, p. 744) and the unravelling of the story of the Symphony, and now the story of My Sister's Tears, unpacked much for me. It is my hope that this unravelling may do the same for others.
Investigating self must attempt to be quarantined from self-indulgence but should be suffused with self-awareness. Behar states most eloquently the danger I have tried to avoid when asserting that:
Efforts at self-revelation flop not because the personal voice has been used, but because it has been poorly used, leaving unscrutinised the connection, intellectual and emotional, between the observer and the observed. Vulnerability doesn't mean that anything personal goes. The exposure of the self who is also a spectator has to take us somewhere we couldn't otherwise get to. It has to be essential to the argument, not a decorative flourish, not exposure for its own sake. (1996, pp. 13-14)
Investigating self can bring with it an awareness of why decisions are taken and allow for a thorough connection with the process and utilisation of a work from its conception, through to its delivery in performance. This awareness is not just useful in a personal sense; it may be useful for others who may come in contact with it - the young composer, the conductor seeking to be more informed as to the genesis of a work, and in this specific case, the grieving soul, perhaps bereft of hope. I am cognisant of Behar's position and attempt to locate myself in this particular autoethnographic paradigm. My open and honest intention in this review of my practice - addressing why I compose and the processes and outcomes from the works I produce - may inform those seeking a greater understanding of compositional method but, more importantly, a more complete awareness of how a composer's life experience is so often the genesis of the creative output.
The ideas of Carolyn Ellis underpin this position, when she talks of, "...the vulnerability of revealing yourself, not being able to take back what you've written or having any control over how readers interpret it" (in Denzin & Lincoln, 2000, p. 738). She describes my apprehension at delivering this text-based portion of my work and illustrates vividly what the composer's position is when they 'give' their work to the world. In the giving, though, the story which is my composition, with all its vulnerability, takes on a new life and a new meaning. It flowers as a story to tell, with narrators placed on the concert stage across the world, or heard via compact disc in the intimacy of one's study or living room. It resonates with Franks (in Ellis) where "one story calls forth another, both from the storyteller him or herself and from the listener/recipient of the story" (2009, p. 232).
In composing the works and writing about the works here, I strive to connect the listener to the story. Of all the stories in my life and work, I have thereby chosen to focus upon a story of particular personal and emotional import, what Ellis and Bochner would surely acknowledge as "a story worth telling" (in Denzin & Lincoln, 2000, p. 735). That is why I have chosen to place this investigation within the intellectual and emotional boiling pot of My Sister's Tears. In doing so, the exegesis moves towards a position of self-awareness.
Stories just run from my mouth as I teach in the class room and on the podium. They also run from my heart in my music. Through the process of telling such a personal and traumatic story I have been faced with the dilemma of how much I should reveal both of myself and of others. I should protect those who are under my charge, my students and my family, especially my children. Similarly there needs to be appropriate ethical consideration of those who have responded to my music through surveys or in an unsolicited way. In the cases of some individuals, anonymity is problematic when trying to tell the story fully and honestly. The story cannot be truthful when there is no connection to the real characters which make the protagonists in this story unique or when the storytellers cannot be immersed in their own life and experience.
The views and feelings of family, colleagues and all involved in this investigation have been safeguarded as fully as possible. Following protocols set out by Griffith University, appropriate clearances were obtained from those participating in my study and I sought, at all times, to ensure appropriate ethical considerations were addressed. All matters pertaining directly to individuals in the story were presented to them for their approval and consent. They were given the opportunity to address and, where appropriate, make me reconsider anything I had written about them. The significance of their contributions would have been diminished without allowing them to reflect and respond to drafts of this document or by not asking their permission to have their words speak directly for them. Their trust in me and my work would have been abandoned without their willing consent and support.
In the storytelling portion of this research I ponder these matters in a more discursive manner. Even at the end of the process, I remain unsure as to what to reveal and what to sequester. Often a fear grips me at revealing personal details about those I love yet I hope that, in telling my story with as much truth and integrity as I can muster, it will illuminate the complexities of the story and represent the members of my precious family honestly and considerately.
For example, I allude to my eldest son Luke's trouble with substance abuse. Placing a matter of such personal agony on the public record like this did not occur without a harrowing interrogation of my own intentions and possible selfishness. However, I considered that to not recount Luke's journey within our family journey would be dishonest about the validity of our shared life; that life which included my sister Heather and her death. From the time of drafting this exegesis through to it taking this final form, Luke has agreed to his story being told candidly.
The traumatic nature of my story told here is comparable to Ellis's recounting of her brother's death and I have tried to emulate the highly emotional and evocative way her story was told. She tells how she and her husband
felt as though we were in a conspiracy, directing this event (a funeral for her brother), often from behind the scenes...we met in the hallway to plan and anticipate problems...(but) even with the planning, we did not anticipate the effect the flag-draped casket would have on my mother...she screams, 'My baby. Oh my baby is dead.' She collapses to the floor, while we stand rooted to the spot...my once-powerful father looks helplessly on... (1993, p. 720).
The candid and confronting telling of Ellis' story is infused with the wrenching emotion of the family in that moment and, though she may not tell all that might be told, her frank admissions about family tragedy provided a precedent for the approach I have taken. Her frank manner in discussing the relational ethical dilemmas which confronted both of us on the death of siblings, allowed me strength to address matters which I may not have otherwise approached. For "I had to seriously consider how I positioned other family members in the story and be concerned about their reactions" and what I found was that some were "...worried about the mere existence of the story" (Ellis 2007, p. 14). I concluded that "not only are there ethical questions about doing autoethnography but also that autoethnography itself is an ethical practice" and that, in the end, what I was endeavouring to do was to "show [myself] in the process of figuring out what to do, how to live, and what my struggles [meant]" (Ellis 2007, p. 26).
The resonance with my story through the personal and family angst is compelling. My heartfelt endeavour here is to be forthright and considerate in my portrayal of the family and what is their story too. The story of Heather and of me cannot be told outside of the blinding and revealing spotlight of the family's agony and joy, and this is why it is done this way.
Following Reimer's (2003) assertions, noted above, that music is composed when people desire to make and share it, have always done so, thus proving its value to them (Opening section, para. 1), I am led to believe that what I do as a composer is valuable and, in composing, I find a powerful medium through which complex self-other relationships can be negotiated. However, more importantly for me though is why I make music? What follows will include an explanation of why I compose bound up in a substantial event in my personal life. The emotional, spiritual and the 'everyday' imperatives that impact on me are evident in the story that is told there. The story is told as best as I can tell it. How it is accepted and understood will be different for different individuals. As Gardner notes music "...is not used for explicit communication" (1993, p.123) and as a result I must accept that what is meant in the works I produce is likely to have multiple interpretations. However, I believe that an understanding of why I composed them will nonetheless provide a useful guide towards an accurate interpretation of their meaning as I conceived them.
Various methods - ethnography, phenomenology, storytelling and narratology - enticed me as I sought to move into a place that more fully described what I endeavoured to do in this research; the pursuit of why I write music. Being frank, I approached some with interest because of what I thought they would allow me to do, not because of what I understood them to be, yet, there was some comfort in many, to an extent, as they gave a chance to explore 'self' and 'other' and not count and appraise in an empirical manner. These qualitative methods and approaches - such as participant observation and journaling - engage me for they are closer to my awareness of why I compose - the personal and the social context; the emotional and the meaningful. My principal method has been to compose music, to interrogate it from as many angles as I can manage and to view it as an autoethnographic pursuit.
Much of the description of qualitative methodology in Denzin and Lincoln (2000) might be used for describing music and more specifically, composing. As I compose I sense there is an "endlessly creative and interpretive" (2000, p. 16) process going on. In all of this investigation I am led to autoethnography as my primary methodology for this research because it allows me to tell my story within the richly drawn location in which it happens. As Denzin and Lincoln alluded to above, my "field notes" are my journals, my "raw observations", the "...artefacts, documents...and...personal experience". My sketches may well form part of my data collection yet they are redolent with the scent of subjectivity for they are my sketches, telling my story. Therefore, in reality, my work, like any good autoethnography, is "...closer to art than science..." and so I am not inclined to "...portray the facts of what happened accurately, but instead to convey the meanings... [I have]...attached to the experience." (Ellis, in Denzin and Lincoln, 2000, p. 751)
Almost all I have written in relation to My Sister's Tears, my words about my music, has been retrospective; "I used a process of 'emotional recall'...I placed myself back into situations, conjuring up details until I was immersed in the event emotionally..." (Ellis, 1993, p. 726). That retrospectivity requires that I do not construct this research in a manner where I produce clean, linear outcomes, for "memory doesn't work in a linear way, nor does life..." (Ellis, in Denzin and Lincoln, 2000, p. 752). The music is core to my story telling for it is as a composer and musician I feel most at ease in communicating. The compositions themselves speak as a narrative, not like a narrative, but as a form of narrative. They are more than just "...abstract sound patterns but...metaphors for patterns of human relationships." (Small, 1998: 87)
I present my story here in its harshness and reality with candour, and the scholarship which here supports it, with confidence. I do so with as much integrity and rigour as possible and with the utmost dedication to openness. I am also aware that all I have written and all I have composed can and may well be interpreted in various ways beyond what I intended but I am at ease with that.
In conclusion, I have attempted to address the question of why I compose through a strict regime of data collection, which has included journaling, literature review and related reflections on responses to my works, and, most importantly, through composition itself. I have focussed on the case study of a particular work, My Sister's Tears, to illuminate essential aspects of my creative process in depth. For this I have taken an autoethnographic approach but, in fact, the casting of the investigative net has been more broad than that. Denzin and Lincoln suggest that "the researcher has several methods for collecting empirical materials" and "they range from interview to direct observation, the analysis of artefacts, documents and cultural records and the use of visual materials and personal experience" (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000, p. 23). As the researcher and the researched in this environment, I have endeavoured to 'connect the dots' through a range of qualitative approaches. However, what should remain preeminent is the music. It is the centre piece of the entire research project.
Much of the music in this portfolio has achieved substantial notoriety since its creation. As I mentioned in the opening of this chapter, the majority of it has been played and recorded, and a significant number of the works have been published. My Sister's Tears has been published and recorded on compact disc in London - which is evidence of a significant peer review. Other works have received critical acclaim in various ways across the world. Jessie's Well has been performed across the world, with its premiere in Wisconsin, and an entry in Teaching Music Through Performance in Band (Vol 7) the leading repertoire and pedagogy series of band music in publication at this time. Of Stories Told was commissioned by Education Queensland and premiered at the country's largest music teacher conference at Maryborough, Queensland on the 10th of July 2007 and was subsequently published in the USA.
Many of the works have received enthusiastic critical reception. For example Mark Camphouse, a composer and conductor cited numerous times in this paper, said of Of Stories Told, "I am really impressed with your new work, Wonderfully fresh sounds! Great piece. 'Wish I'd written it!" (personal communication, August 6, 2008). After having heard Jessie's Well in concert at Chicago in December of 2010, British Composer Nigel Clarke sent "just a quick note to say how much I enjoyed `Jessie's Well' - you are the master of composing to subject and subject painting in sound. What I was most impressed with, is how you can write a successful work even when you are writing within the restraints of a Grade 3 level" (personal communication, January 6, 2011). Such responses illustrate the all-important connections my music has made with performers and audiences as they have become accessible, recognised and accepted.
Documenting the reception of my music has added another significant layer to the data collection. Responses from audiences and musicians, the listings on recommended repertoire lists, the acceptance of some works as core repertoire in academic texts, have provided substantial 'field notes' which add significantly to the depth and breadth of this enquiry.
How I have investigated why I compose has been located amidst a vast panorama of method and creativity but I trust the stories to be cogent, confident and honest. They are mine and they are born of the community of interest and families, in which I am resident.