Composer Tim Hinck’s “Symphony No.1” will receive its premiere via the Wichita Symphony Orchestra under Maestro Daniel Hege at Century II Performance Hall on Saturday, March 9.
Hinck, who is based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, will also give a short talk before the piece’s premiere.
He recently spoke with KMUW about the origins of the composition and his views on contemporary composers and audiences.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
What was the genesis of this piece?
A piece like this usually requires a commission or a grant. I was approached by a private commissioner who approached me about a full-scale symphony. His request was for something pretty big in scope, along the lines of the big Beethoven or Brahms symphonies, something that was multi-movement and a pretty good length, 30-plus minutes. That’s pretty much what we landed on. [We have] four movements, and I think we’re just under 30 minutes for full orchestra.
The nice thing about this commission is that it didn’t need a performance necessarily in order to be fulfilled. He was just interested in having the piece written. Then we started thinking about who was going to play it. I went into my shortlist of contacts I have with symphonies that I’ve either worked with before or I have very good relationships with the conductors. I just started having the conversation of, “This is already paid for. Now we’re just looking for the orchestra for the premiere.” It was a really a good fit for the Wichita Symphony for many reasons.
One of the most important reasons for me is the way that I like to work with my musicians. I like to have a really close connection with and conversations with as many of the audience members as I can who are interested and as many of the musicians as possible. The nice thing about your symphony orchestra is that they are very forward-thinking, not only on audience engagement but also experimenting with the musicians themselves. They’re all very eager. They’re not by any means just punching the clock and just being there for rehearsals. They’re interested in having conversations with composers. Talking about the music. Two-way give and take when a new piece of music is written. That’s what I really rely on. Not every orchestra is to that point and not every orchestra engages with their audience and says, “Hey! Let’s bring the composer in. Would you like to go out for drinks with the composer? Would you like to meet him? Would you like to talk about this work that he’s writing?” That’s the kind of stuff I was looking for in the orchestra to premiere this work.
My understanding is that this music is actually inspired by some time that you spent in Kansas.
The collaboration was not just between the musicians and myself [but also with] the audience. Part of the engagement with the audience was that we invited them to tell me where to go in Kansas. Where did I need to go? What did I need to see to draw inspiration from? One of … my early trips to Wichita was at the suggestion of one of the musicians in the orchestra (who) suggested we go hiking in the Tallgrass Preserve. We went out there and spent an amazing afternoon. There was beautiful weather. A lot of what you hear is directly inspired by that day and others like it, spent around Wichita.
When you do something like that, go out in nature for inspiration, is it fairly immediate? Do you start hearing things right away or do you take it in, go back home, and let it sink in?
Like you’re saying, a lot of what I draw inspiration from kind of percolates and doesn’t initially present itself as melodies or specific sounds. For me, it was little bit more in the structure of the piece. There are four movements. Immediately, when I was there and spending time there, I knew that there were some, if not exact scenes, at least some atmospheres, some environments that I wanted to capture. Obviously, the big sky, the expanse of how much sky there is out there was a huge part of the piece.
The piece is basically a 12-hour night cycle. The first movement is the sunset. Obviously, the big, grandiose, as you have in Kansas, incredible sky-filling sunsets with amazing colors. That’s what the first movement is meant to invoke. The second movement [involves] nighttime. The time I spent out there in the prairie was so interesting to me. All of the perpetual movement and scattering [of] insects; the little creatures. That’s what you hear in that second movement, the night section. It’s kind of a scherzo movement; it’s all about things chasing each other and running around in the night.
There’s a third movement about dreams and then the fourth movement’s the sunrise, the morning. A lot of that stuff comes directly from the time spent outside and downtown and [by] the river. It’s all woven into the piece itself.
When it comes to the composition process itself, do you work measure by measure or do you allow yourself the space to say, “I know what I need there, but I don’t have it yet. I’ll move ahead and come back to this later”?
That’s a great question. I think it is different for a lot of composers. A lot of composers either work on their big themes first, their melodies, and then flesh that out into full movements. And some, I think, write just all the way through, from start to finish. I think I did a little bit of both in this piece. I know that I was I always thinking about the way that it was structured and making sure that if I had a theme that was connected with something, like the idea of flight, is something that’s connected with the piece. When I was able to connect a melody or theme with something like flying then, of course, I was thinking hard about when it would be appropriate and interesting to bring those melodies back. The structure of the piece became very interesting to me, so that meant not necessarily writing from start to finish. But a lot of the sections were written in the order you hear them but there was some shuffling around that I did for structure and cohesion.
How long from seed to the first performance? I would imagine it’s probably been about two years.
If I’m remembering my timeline correctly, the commissioner reached out to me around January 2022. That’s a little bit longer than I actually spent writing. I probably spent a good solid year to 14 months in the actual composition process and that’s about as long as I ever take on anything. I think this piece was a case where I didn’t feel pressure for a performance date for the first several months of writing. Nothing was set. We were having these conversations and about halfway through the writing process we solidified this date. Then I knew there was a deadline quickly approaching but a lot of the writing was done before the stress of that deadline fully set in.
If I think back to maybe 20 years ago, there was this idea that new compositions were difficult to launch, orchestras were reluctant to engage with them. What do you think has changed?
I think it’s become part of the business plan for a lot of symphonies. In the arts, in a way, we’re all sort of making it up as we go. Like any good businesswomen or men, we’re seeing what other people do that works really well. Luckily, some of our best and biggest symphony orchestras in the world have dug into this idea of trying new things and trying to engage with younger and newer audiences in different ways.
You see orchestras like the L.A. Philharmonic, which is always trying new things and engaging in interesting and new ways. I think that, in the past, a new piece like mine would have been presented as though it were already an established work, as if people already knew it and loved it, which we quickly found out is not the case. If this is a brand-new work, you have to build that interest and relationship between the audience and the piece itself.
That’s part one, which I think we’ve figured out pretty well. You can’t just drop a new piece of music on an audience and expect them to be excited about it. You can’t just drop a piece of music that’s very difficult or requires some sort of set up without giving that set up.
I think the step two, which I’m really interested in, is engaging directly with the audience. Even more importantly, engaging directly with the musicians. I have a philosophy that I’ve talked a lot about in the last couple of years. My ideal audience, and who I think about the most, is actually my musicians. I spend a lot of time with my musicians, making sure that the parts that I write are fun to play. I think that’s been a missing component from new compositions. [Often the composer] has a vision of what they want and usually it’s something [along the lines of], “Listen to how smart I am,” or, “Listen to creative and experimental I am.”
That approach does a couple of things. It pushes the music in ways, very quickly, that stay a step ahead of the audience and a step ahead of the musicians. If you’re worried about the braininess of the piece, you’re not thinking about if your musicians are having fun, you’re not thinking about if your audience is ready and prepared for what you’re about to do. If I’m sure that the musicians love the music, then I’m sure that they can sell it to the audience. If my musicians don’t like to play it, there’s no way that the audience is going to want to listen to it. [Laughs.]
That’s been my philosophy, and I think a lot of composers are starting to think that way. They realize that it’s not their job to show the audience how smart or innovative they are. It’s their job to write music that the musicians want to play that they can sell to the audience and bring them along for the ride.
You have to know the character of the group that you’re writing for.
Right. I think there’s an amount of respect that has been lacking for the musicians. They’re sometimes viewed as merely tools to get this music out that the composer has written. I think if you do that, you’re missing the opportunity for a really rich and vast set of relationships and experiences. You’re also selling yourself short for not being able to have as good a performance in the end for your audience.
We talked a little bit earlier about new compositions being more prevalent than 20 years ago. I also sense that there are more active and more visible composers of new music in the landscape today as well.
I know that from where I started, even as a young musician who was encouraged to compose and taught composition from the age of 6-years-old, back then, in the ‘80s, I could sense that in the culture of the classical musical world that a lot of composers were silenced and sort of shamed if they weren’t doing something that was completely new all the time. This is something that I’ve blogged about a little bit and something of soapbox for me.
I think there’s a sickness that we sort of endured for the second half of the 20th century, where it was all about needing to be innovating as quickly as possible. The problem with that is, if you’re a composer who is maybe wanting to dwell on and develop a sound world or a style that maybe got a little bit of development but then maybe we moved on, you’re immediately passe, you’re not taken seriously.
The problem with that is that there’s an enormous amount of sound possibilities, of developments in music that were quickly thrown away. I think a lot of composers didn’t make it over the last 20 or 30 years [who had] really interesting and unique voices. But maybe they weren’t writing music that was considered the most cutting-edge thing of the moment.
What’s happening now is that we have a general audience who is more interested in how things sound, in being part of the conversation, being more in control of what they listen to. They’re saying, “Maybe this composer sounds like something that’s from the past or is using styles that were used in the past. But he also has his own original voice.” Or, “She’s doing something that’s a mixture of something new while also using tools from the past.”
I think that since we’re giving composers a chance to dwell in the past some as well as innovate and not necessarily always having to innovate, I think you’re hearing more [new] composers now. And, since this music tends to be more geared toward especially younger audience members, you’re getting a lot more music that’s more accessible by a wider number of people. If more people are buying tickets, you program it more and more. It’s a good time to be a composer right now because people aren’t scared to listen to new music anymore. They trust, if they’ve got a great orchestra like yours in Wichita, their conductor, and the directors of their board to choose music that they’ll enjoy. That trust has to be earned and built over many seasons of programming. That’s where projects like this come from.
