Writing and ScholarshipA grammar that minimizes implied periodicity in successions of up to 4 timespans valued 2-11. Carson, “Hearing Time Freely,” research in progress (2008-2009). Click for larger view.

[In-progress…]

Unlike most composer-theorists, my writing has tended not to be about composition — I haven’t written much commentary on the compositional process, or discussion of contemporary music literature or practice. Instead, I have asked questions similar to those of conventional scholars; hopefully the results are a contribution to academic knowledge, but the research is motivated by a need to develop an approach to composing. 

Looking at the main topics that interest me — experiments on voice distinctions and rhythm perception, analyses of late-Romantic and early-modern music literature, applications of post-psychoanalytic theory to musical “identity” — one might mistake me for a music theorist. (And a somewhat scattered one.) I do theorize music, and theory is probably the best description of the writing you see here. But given the apparent restlessness and ambivalence of these projects, it seems important to say that my motivations are somewhat narrower than those typical of music theory — rather than contribute to human knowledge in a general way, my main goals here are just to understand better how to compose. Scholarship usually serves human understanding by noticing gaps in our knowledge and trying to fill them, with a series of related inquiries that can last a lifetime. As a composer, I am much less ambitious; I only pursue research to the extent that it serves an approach to music-making. That should help explain the far-flung list of topics that interest me. I might ask one question to help me think about large-scale form, another to help me think about rhythm, and yet another for way music is situated in culture and history. Five years from now, I’ll still have the same compositional motivation, but the chosen topics and methods may have shifted.