I am fascinated with who a composer’s influences are. Whenever I listen to music, one of the first thoughts I have is, “who does this sound like?” For example, Leonard Bernstein was heavily influenced by Mahler and Copland, so it is fun for me to listen for passages in Bernstein’s music that point to those influences. I’m not talking about musical resemblances that are purely stylistic ones. To many, Mozart and Haydn may sound very similar, but those similarities are due more to the stylistic norms in use than conscious imitation. A better of example of the sort of influences I’m referring to are C.P.E. Bach’s influence on Beethoven, or Beethoven’s influence on Brahms, or even Gershwin’s influence on Ravel.

So what composers have influenced me in my own writing? There are four. The earliest one was Brahms. As a high school student, I spent hours at home improvising and composing short pieces with the sole intent of making them sound like Brahms. I liked the full, rich sonorities of the voicing and tessituras, especially of the first symphony, and meant to imitate it often. Later while still in high school, I was introduced to the music of Shostakovich. I found his quirky tonal twists fascinating, and soon began experimenting with them in my own melodies. That influence, unlike Brahms, is one that has stuck with me to this day. It is fun to see how far I can expand the diatonic scale in my melodies without crossing the line into atonality or just plain confusing music.

My primary focus when composing is melody. For me, everything is secondary to a good, solid tune. This comes from an infatuation of mine with verismo opera, particularly those of Puccini. About the same time I was introduced to Shostakovich, I went to see my first opera. It was a production of La Boheme at the Hartt College of Music. I was caught up in the melodic beauty and dramatic power. From that point, I was determined to put melodies front and center in everything I wrote.

Next came Stravinsky, or more specifically, The Rite of Spring, and even more specifically, the very end of The Rite of Spring, where everything goes rhythmically and metrically wild. How thrilling, stimulating, and fun that was. Out of a sort of sense of decorum, I felt obliged to listen to the entire work, but what I really looked forward to was those last couple of minutes. Years later, I would add another work of Stravinsky that would captivate me. This time, it was many years after high school. I was at Tanglewood for a Boston Symphony Orchestra concert (or maybe it was an open rehearsal. I often stayed the entire day for both.) On the program that day was the Violin Concerto. This time, it was the timbres, the sonorities that drew my attention. Right from the beginning that bright, shrill sound, at once both modern and archaic, delighted me, and still does. Stravinsky’s music gave me permission to be freely creative with dissonance, rhythm, and timbre in a way I hadn’t understood before.

The fourth composer that has influenced my composition is a recent rediscovery. Having been challenged as an undergraduate music major, unpleasantly at times, by his sight reading exercises, and never really taking a liking to his music, I very recently have returned to the music of Hindemith and found it to be fascinating. His use of intervals to create and shift tonal centers are particularly interesting to me. I explored many Hindemithisms in my recent Piano Quintet, and are playing with them still in my current work, which will be a series of pieces for a Pierrot ensemble entitled Loud Whispers. With my preference for melody, the idea that one can establish and manipulate tonality with melodic intervals is a natural for me. With a slightly meandering tonal palette, the chordal possibilities expand and provide added opportunities for expression.

The next time you listen to music, see if you can identify musical influences on the composer. Now that you know what mine are, you will no doubt notice them the next time you listen to one of my works. Many of them are posted on Soundcloud, and you can get to them by visiting my other website, musicbyrobertadams.com. I hope to see you there.