Like many graduates (I don’t have the exact figures to hand, but I assume especially those of arts subjects), my current occupation just a couple of months after graduating (virtually of course in these times) is not related to my degree subject. However, going from 5 years of being focused on one thing to suddenly spending my days doing something completely different is not purely of interest to the NSS or Graduate Outcomes Survey, but indeed to myself, and here I will attempt, probably not in a particularly structured or academic way, to unite these two things.
So now I have moved to Cornwall, I am harvesting and working front of house in the tasting room of a vineyard/orchard. Music has of course not disappeared from my thinking or activities, still being a part of my leisure time as well as my semi-professional time, for example in my capacity as a trustee/social media manager for a musical charity, as an entrant to a few calls for scores/competitions (unsuccessful as of yet), lending my voice to a few lines of an associate’s forthcoming Arts Council England-funded EP and (as the first direct link here between my previous and current predominant activities) as a piano teacher for one of my new colleagues, it is fair to say that most of my time is spent doing things other than music for now (however, see the picture attached to this blog, showing me eating an apple in an orchard on the way to a folk festival in a folk band’s t-shirt- how many more links do you want?). Being thrown into the deep end of an entirely new world has however yielded food (or should that be drink?) for thought, regarding wine and music and life.
There is a term used in agri- and viti-culture, terroir, which is used to describe the conditions/environmental factors/techniques of a growing location and the character the combination of these give the crop and eventual products. Much like the term ‘thin places’ discussed in a previous blog, I believe that this is something that can be applied to music too.
As a composer, it is the combination of one’s own experiences, modules, concerts, mentors, etc, that creates your voice, that makes your music distinct. With wine and cider and beer for example, there are very few ingredients, so the way you get the immense variety is with varietal selection (of grapes/hops/apples for example), variation of temperature and timing, and the countless types of yeast that you find on the crops, determined by the prevailing conditions of the growing context (i.e. the terroir).
With music, there are only so many ‘ingredients’ (often called the elements of music), e.g. pitches and rhythms, but it is what you do with these, what instruments you use, what textures you create (with these decisions often subconsciously determined by your history as a musician) that makes it a piece by you.
After I got the results for my MA, a former tutor from university offered further feedback/advice. One of the things they suggested, and which I admit with moving and starting a new job and navigating everything else the past couple of years has thrown up I have not devoted maximum potential attention to but have kept in mind, was going back through pieces I had written at uni and the associated feedback and attempt to identify some technical features that give my music its character (a word that I also use when running people through wines at work). Identifying these things and what you want to do with them was also much of the advice I got from a Cornwall-based composer who kindly invited me to their house after I moved to advise on the local scene from their experienced perspective.
To summarise, our voice as composers is and is determined by our musical terroir, the specific history, conditions and environmental factors that precede and surround us. The details of these are worth identifying, as they can help present the intended ‘notes’ in our music. Recent times have been tough for artists (and so many others of course) but by finding what it is that we enjoy, as listeners or performers or composers, we can be sure of more fruitful harvests and finer vintages ahead.
Yeghes da.