Foreword to Musicianship: Composing in Choir

Abstract

The act of composing is often shrouded in mystery and confusion. Composers are not seen as craftspeople who have learned a particular set of skills that allow them to construct musical scores, but rather they are seen as divinely-inspired, ever-suffering musical savants who live in dark mansions and spend their free time brooding over a piano with ink­riddled manuscripts littering the floor in disarray. When not walking through the forest and listening to songbirds for inspiration for their next magnum opus, the composer is beset by requests from royalty and wealthy patrons for a new opera, or a new symphony, or a new string quartet. We see these composers nearly always as male, white, European, and long-dead.