Composer Questionnaire
I prepared this questionnaire for one of my PhD students. I did so because we were thinking about how her project had changed and how it could be possible to articulate that in terms of her personal ideas and goals around composition. While in a research project one might be focused on the research questions and end goals, in any creative practice research project many aspects of the work are also highly determined by the individual, such as their ways of working and approaches to the discipline, their collaborators and materials. The questions I wrote were as broad as possible and not directed to considering a single project. They are more aimed at eliciting the kind of information that one might find in an artist manifesto, and the kinds of ideas that might seem implicit to an individual but that it may be helpful to externalise. As I wrote them, I wondered what my personal answers would be and how these would be different from in the past. This made me think that I would find it a useful exercise to answer these questions myself! At the moment many aspects of my creative work and practice are having to be re-assessed as is the case for every artist and musician. Answering these questions may help me evaluate what would be important to me to do and not do in the future. So, I am sharing my questions here in case anyone else finds this a useful prompt to think about where their work is during these strange times and where it may be going.
Which musicians/artists influence you most in your work… …in the past? …now?
What is most important to you as a composer? What do you most want to create?
How do you work when you want to create a new piece?
What kind of performance of your work would you consider unsuccessful?
What is the role of composition for you? Why compose at all?