It can start so simply, the voyage into the sea of composing.
It does not have to be at a conservatoire, it does not have to be complex, you do not need to compose a full-length symphony or an extravagant opera. It can start with a single note.
I play a single long note, a drone, and I ask my cello student to play anything she wants over it.
"Anything?"
"Anything. Remember, there are no wrong notes. If you think you've played one, no-one will die. Well, apart from that one time..."
And off she goes. Her name is Lina. She is fifteen and music drapes around her body like a cat with a favourite human. Lina takes her cello into her arms and begins tentatively, as if her new music might scratch her. As she moves deeper into the music universe, she relaxes and begins to knead and work her music like a baker with bread dough, going over and over the same notes, finding where they want to go, what they want to say, what she can say with them.
As Lina improvises, she begins to find that the fewer notes she plays the smoother the line of the music. She falls into a simple pattern, almost a riff, and a knowing smile descends on her face, as she realises she is doing it. She is making music.
I return for Lina’s lesson the following week and Lina proffers a sheet of manuscript paper with a few scruffy smudges of erasings and crossed-out notes, but the music is there. Lina’s first piece of music. She starts to play. It begins with that same riff, a repeated sigh of falling notes, which turns into a simple, sad song, singing from the top of Lina’s cello and the bottom of her heart.
"So, Lina, how did it feel to compose your first music?"
"Well, I figured, since I’m always playing music by men, I needed to compose. And then, when you said nobody dies if I make a wrong note, I just went for it!"
And Lina sits back into her cello (or does her cello sit back into her?) and she plays her music again. She calls her piece 'Song of a Girl'.
This journey into her music might not be a perilous journey, but it is a musical adventure like no other. Lina is finding her voice through her music. Lina is speaking up.
Ed Ayres presents Weekend Breakfast on ABC Classic (Saturday and Sunday 6am–9am).