Breaking Barriers in Composition

Derek Martinez

Washington, U.S.A

Anybody can be a musician, if you really think about it. Whether you’re singing in the shower, playing piano, or remixing audio in a digital studio, there’s not one real definition of what a musician is or should be. One of the most amazing aspects of musicianship is composition. It really encompasses all areas of music, whether it be performance, music theory, structure, and many other aspects. Just like being a musician, there’s not one real way to be a composer. You don’t have to write a tune down for it to be a piece of music; any tune that you create is, in and of itself, music that you composed. There’s no need to go to music school, write a huge piece of music, or have a certain style to be considered a composer. However, this has not always been the case.

Composers like Bach, Beethoven, and Shostakovich are considered some of the most monumental musicians in history. Though it may be surprising, they all experienced hard criticism in their careers that pushed them to write what is considered “traditional”. Bach and Beethoven were much ahead of their time with their musical ideas, and they broke several musical barriers with their works. Though we know them as geniuses today, they were criticized and told to write like their contemporaries instead of exploring new ideas and styles, particularly Beethoven. Shostakovich faced a much more oppressive form of criticism from the Soviet Union, facing censorship and threats against his family from the government. This resulted in Shostakovich having to find ways to get around to express his actual style of composition.

Women, BIPOC, and LGBQTIA+ musicians and composers have also been known to face multiple barriers but because of their personal identity rather than musical. Women and BIPOC often did not have access to education in classical music or publishing. Some women, like Clara Schumann, had to publish under another name to be taken seriously in the music industry. There are multiple well known LGBTQIA+ composers like Bernstein, Tchaikovsky, Aaron Copland, and Ethel Smyth, but most of these composers had to keep their sexuality a secret to the public, or were discriminated against if they were openly gay, queer, bisexual, or any other gender identity or sexuality that was not cisgender and heterosexual.

Though classical music has grown to have more diversity in gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and style, there’s still a lot of room to diversify classical music, especially the repertoire. Being Latino and a composer, I found it surprising that I didn’t discover music by Latino composers until my freshman year of high school, and that these composers even existed. I did not discover these composers because I played their repertoire for my instrument or in an orchestra, I found music by these composers on the internet simply by coincidence. This showed me that I can truly coexist as a classical musician and a Latino.

This year during the COVID-19 pandemic, I worked with a french hornist, who is Latino as well, and he said to me: “You don’t have to write music a certain way for it to be Latino or classical. Your identity is being a Latino, and a classical musician. So no matter what you write, it will be considered a Latino piece of music.”

Those words ignited a fire in me, and I realized that a lot of what I wrote in my earlier pieces tried to replicate the traditional romantic classical style, with only a minimal amount of inspiration from Latinx music. Whether it was something that was a moment of pure inspiration, or complete impulsivity, I decided to rewrite a piece I was already working on. To take it and write from my heart and who I am rather than what I wanted to be. I found that I had much more satisfaction in writing from a combination of classical and Latin American styles of music, rather than attempting to completely copy another style of music that isn’t who I am.

So what can we do about “traditional” classical music standards? Well, this is my advice to young composers and any musician. Write music that breaks barriers. Whether it be diverging from the norm, or taking inspiration from your culture, write music based on who you are, not what you’re expected to be.

Astor Piazzolla - one of the most influential latin composers of the 20th century who wrote argentinian tango. His music is still relevant in classical music today.

Picture Credits: Astor Piazzolla. (2020, August 13). Retrieved August 26, 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astor_Piazzolla