I was recently alerted, via a reader, to the most hilar­i­ously over-the-top bad review I’ve ever received. For poster­i­ty’s sake, here’s the excerpt in full: 

…the evening’s major offense [was] Timothy Andres’s “Crashing Through Fences” for piccolo, glock­en­spiel, and drums, a brain-damaging assault on listen­ers’ delicate hearing and sound-center process­ing apparati. This terror­is­tic thought exper­i­ment in cogni­tive disso­nance and shock would’ve been best left as such. As it was, its perfor­mance did more than simply produce headaches; it made more than one listener disori­ented and distressed. Andres’s tech­nique was simple: Juxta­pose soft and subtle high-kHz sounds with unpre­dictably occur­ring percus­sions most remi­nis­cent of random gunshots. In an era in which terror is no figment, one hopes that malev­o­lent govern­ments don’t get hold of Andres’s score, and that he doesn’t receive a contract from the C.I.A. to develop the musical equiv­a­lent of water­board­ing torture devices.

If you’re reading this, and you’re from the CIA, call me and we’ll work out a licens­ing deal? You already have my number.

I’m having a week of domes­tic­ity and editing: baking bread, doing laundry, and finish­ing up my piece for the Los Angeles Chamber Orches­tra. I’ve dragged out the state of being “nearly done” with this piece for months, somehow; it’s one of those crea­tures that you can’t leave alone, other­wise it’s suddenly in the corner doing some­thing terribly risky with an elec­tri­cal cord. Every page presents its own set of problems, some more easily remedied than others (why on earth are the clar­inets marked ‘arco’? And how can this modu­la­tion feel totally earned?).

The other thing to worry about at this step is giving the piece a title. I’m finicky about what I call my pieces (and what other composers call theirs—let me know if you need some pointed crit­i­cism). I don’t think a title actually has to bear too much on the substance of the piece. It’s more about spurring a kind of process with a few words, because you can’t very well just change the title after every­thing’s done. It’s got to make an initial impres­sion, perhaps be unique or memo­rable, but then you’ve got to be able to live with it. The best titles take on their own meaning over time, distinct from the meaning of the words them­selves, more to do with the music. A side benefit of having a solid title is that it can contribute to the popu­lar­ity of a piece (see: Short Ride in a Fast Machine, any of the “named” Beethoven sonatas, etc.).

The words I’m turning over in my head right now are “boulder pushing”. Titles can predate the pieces they suit, some­times by years. “Boulder pushing” has been a sticky note on my desktop for at least that long; before that it was inex­plic­a­bly a repeat­ing event in my calendar; I think one of my brothers must have put it in there. It fits the musical substance of this piece, much of which has to do with a feeling of grav­i­ta­tional pull—gradually speeding up as it works its way from high to low, or vice versa. Sections almost never sit still, instead agitat­ing to move on to the next thing. The themes are quite simple in them­selves (one of them is an arpeg­giated triad) but are constantly overlaid with copies of them­selves, often at differ­ent tempi and in differ­ent keys, grad­u­ally accruing tension and momentum. These kind of gestures are rooted in my obses­sion with Ligeti’s music, one of the best at imbuing register with meaning.

Boulder Pushing sounds diffi­cult, arduous, not like some­thing to which one would will­ingly subject oneself (it’s no Tod und Verk­lärung, but still). That said, it’s a piano concerto we’re talking about. Is there any clas­si­cal form more asso­ci­ated with struggle, weight, even heroism? Then again, isn’t all that a bit romantic, old-fash­ioned, Sturm und Drang for 2011? I’m going to be playing this thing, after all, and doesn’t it seem egoma­ni­a­cal to cast oneself in such a role? Maybe I’m thinking about this entire thing too liter­ally, too program­mat­i­cally. It’s not as though this piece has a story. It’s abstract, about form, gesture, process…I’m a serious composer. Wait, did I really just say that out loud?

Thinking about titles can get you into these self-defeat­ing knots. That’s why you some­times have to surren­der to the visceral, intu­itive choice. Over-thought titles are the worst.