People have been asking the question What is composition? and What is composition [in] music? with increasing frequency since Google started tracking trends in 2004.
Composers in the time of Bach and Beethoven copied each other everywhere as a matter of course. Imitating models was how music was both taught and created.
Welcome to Of Music, A Life. My name is Vasili Byros. I’m a Yale PhD and multiple award-winning tenured professor at Northwestern University. I’m a composer in the traditions of Bach and Beethoven. I’m a father and husband. I started this blog to share my perspectives on Classical music in a way that blends my artistic, scholarly, and personal experiences of European music of the past, while in part documenting my process on an ambitious book project that examines the problem of historical composition from the lens of my own compositions. Whether student, novice, or professional, I hope to reach you and connect with your own relationship to this music. As Dante had Virgil for a creative and philosophical guide, I had Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. They lie at the center of the broad range of topics in music theory and analysis, composition, criticism of works and performance, and stories from my own journey of making a life of music that fill the pages of this blog. The common thread in it all is how the past may continue to reach us and teach us, in matters technical, aesthetic, and philosophical, on our own journey of musical life, of music-historical life, of Classical life. Of Music, A Life.
We look on past ages with condescension, as a mere preparation for us … but what if we’re only an after-glow of them?
—J. G. Farrel, The Siege of Krishnapur
And I think if you look at the present state of the world, it is pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistake. We are on the wrong road. And if that is so, we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on.
—C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity