I frequently talk with compo­si­tion students about the diffi­culty and neces­sity of gaining multiple perspec­tives on one’s own music. When immersed in the minutiae of writing the thing, it’s nearly impos­si­ble to under­stand how a piece will feel to an actual audience. What’s more, you’re unlikely to ever be surprised by hearing yourself, to have your own expec­ta­tions either foiled or confirmed, when you know what’s around every bend. 

I’ve been thinking quite seri­ously that the best way around this quandary would be for a composer to write so much music that remem­ber­ing all of it would grad­u­ally become impos­si­ble. The details of each piece would blur together, such that after enough time had elapsed—say 15 or 20 years—the composer could then listen to a perfor­mance of their own work with true objec­tiv­ity and without preconceptions. 

There have been occa­sions when I’ve felt vertig­i­nous hints of this unlearn­ing process, not yet for entire pieces, but in short bursts. Listen­ing recently to a live record­ing of It takes a long time to become a good composer, I remem­bered the major facts of the piece, but found myself surprised by the way certain tran­si­tions unfolded, or how many times a figure repeated. It struck me as being one of my strangest pieces, not disagree­ably so, but in the tenuous ways the chunks of music related to each other, like floating objects in a surre­al­ist painting. It takes a long time is nearly a decade old, but it’s not a piece I’ve heard performed frequently or recorded, which is perhaps why it makes a good case study. I’m excited to neglect it for another decade, writing another 50-some­thing pieces in the meantime, and revisit this exper­i­ment in 2029.