Mental barricades

Sometimes it happens, I start working out an idea and I do not know where to go next.  I start over thinking the music.  That is what happened today as I sat down to continue working on my flute quartet.  There are a variety of reasons as to why this happens to me.  I can subconsciously put too much pressure on myself... this happens during times when I especially like a passage.  Sometimes, albeit vary rarely, the music just cannot be developed.  However, it seems that most of the time the mental barricades happen because I am mentally distracted and I can not focus 100% on the composition.  This was the case today.

While this is frustrating, I think that I handled it well.  When I realized that I was not going to be able to develop the sketch, I decided to put it aside and work on something else.  I started sketching other ideas for flute quartet.  In a sense, I pretended to start over.  I wiped the slate clean and tried something else.  In fact, I did it twice.  Of course, I am not saying that I am not going to continue with the original sketch.  I think it still has value and I will go back to it.

Composing is not always a linear process.  Sometimes ideas and sketches that come first are not always the beginning.   Sometimes when I work on multiple ideas, I find that they work together and are different parts of the same piece.  The point is that composers need to keep an open mind.  When I am writing a piece, I am constantly thinking about where the music wants to go and not about where I want the music to go.  Some would argue that this is the same thing since I am the one creating the music.  I think that music has a direction it wants to go.  I am helping to lead it in that direction.  Ultimately, I am in control of the piece, but I do not always force it to do what I want.