"I still do not know where the notes will come from when I accept a commission for a new work"
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A confession of uncertainty sits at the heart of a seasoned composer’s craft. Lukas Foss recognizes that even after decades of writing, conducting, and performing, the origin of the next piece remains a mystery. The statement is not an admission of incompetence but a declaration of faith in discovery. Accepting a commission before the notes exist binds him to a promise and simultaneously opens a space where surprise can occur. The obligation provides a frame; the content arrives through exploration, error, memory, and the friction of ideas.
Foss’s career makes this stance plausible and persuasive. A German-born American composer who moved from neoclassical clarity into experimental and polystylistic terrains, he cultivated methods that foregrounded unpredictability. He formed an Improvisation Chamber Ensemble, toyed with chance and indeterminacy, and loved to refract Bach, Handel, and Stravinsky through contemporary lenses. Such practices depend on not knowing in advance. They require listening as much as asserting, inviting performers, history, and accident to collaborate with intention. To say he does not know where the notes will come from is to commit to a living process rather than a formula.
There is also artistic ethics in this posture. By resisting the security of a fixed method, Foss preserves the vulnerability where genuine music can surface. Commission culture can tempt composers to repeat themselves, delivering a reliable product. He counters that pressure with curiosity, allowing each new piece to propose its own rules. The notes may emerge at the piano, in a rehearsal room, from a misread sketch, a remembered cadence, or a noise outside the window. What matters is not the initial certainty but the responsiveness that turns a faint glimmer into form.
The remark ultimately casts composition as an act of trust: trust in craft to shape whatever appears, and trust in the unknown to supply something worth shaping. Creativity, for Foss, is not control achieved but discovery sustained.
Foss’s career makes this stance plausible and persuasive. A German-born American composer who moved from neoclassical clarity into experimental and polystylistic terrains, he cultivated methods that foregrounded unpredictability. He formed an Improvisation Chamber Ensemble, toyed with chance and indeterminacy, and loved to refract Bach, Handel, and Stravinsky through contemporary lenses. Such practices depend on not knowing in advance. They require listening as much as asserting, inviting performers, history, and accident to collaborate with intention. To say he does not know where the notes will come from is to commit to a living process rather than a formula.
There is also artistic ethics in this posture. By resisting the security of a fixed method, Foss preserves the vulnerability where genuine music can surface. Commission culture can tempt composers to repeat themselves, delivering a reliable product. He counters that pressure with curiosity, allowing each new piece to propose its own rules. The notes may emerge at the piano, in a rehearsal room, from a misread sketch, a remembered cadence, or a noise outside the window. What matters is not the initial certainty but the responsiveness that turns a faint glimmer into form.
The remark ultimately casts composition as an act of trust: trust in craft to shape whatever appears, and trust in the unknown to supply something worth shaping. Creativity, for Foss, is not control achieved but discovery sustained.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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