Narrative Composing

Composers, orchestrators, musicians, and the like are always searching for sources of inspiration and new approaches in order to help their creative process.

I have personally used and encouraged my students to write short or elaborate narrative stories based on specific pieces of music as a method to help inspire an alternative approach for composing.

Once I had a wonderful past student who I had asked to write a short narrative story based on one of my favorite pieces of music... Beethoven's "Piano Concerto #4".

I naively assumed that he would bring back a nice basic story in order to fulfill the basic lesson requirement… instead and to my utter delight he had written a wonderfully elaborate three-act narrative that inspired fantastic visual imagery just like any professional screen-writer would strive for.

His story in short was that of a long sea journey along the lines of the classic… Homer's "Odyssey".

The images evoked by such a story or narrative can invoke visions and thoughts of character, color, objects, movement, emotions, etc... which can then be substituted with musical instruments, combinations, tempos, techniques, tonality, etc… to compose your own piece of music with.

Please try this approach for yourself and at the very least you will have a new way to look at one of our favorite pieces of music. Enjoy!