A few weeks ago a certain musician who has played a lot of my music kindly sent me an email which included these arresting sentences:

“I love the way you handle the melodic and harmonic elements in your music: a relatively straightforward melody is melded with more sophisticated harmonies and compositional approaches.
The listener is welcomed by openness and easy accessibility, while the adventurous harmony and intricate development sustain interest and
attention.
A very satisfying combination!”

Arresting? You might ask, “What is arresting about that?”

What arrested me and left me pondering is the fact that these words are a perfect expression of what I have tried to do in almost every piece I’ve written.

It is startling to see my career summarized so neatly. This musician handed me my artistic “mission statement” along with the assurance that mine is a “mission accomplished.”

I almost always begin a piece with a simple idea, a short phrase, “a relatively straightforward melody.” Such an opening can seem inane, hackneyed, clichéd. Worse, predictable.

But before long, things take a different turn. The music flows in unexpected directions. Contrasting ideas are presented. Opposites are established, then reconciled.

It is as if the opening simple idea is the hero of a fairy tale who, as his story unfolds, gets lost in a dark forest, encounters strange beasts and mysterious beings, who have something to teach him, from whom he learns.

Finally, as the piece concludes, he returns home, wiser and more self-confident, because of what he has experienced. He has not merely survived; he has thrived.

Or so it seems to me and, apparently, to my musician friend. Not everyone is convinced. Some critics and listeners prefer art that is complex. For them, simple = vapid.

If complexity is what they want, they will find an abundance of it in the classical music of the past 110 years, much of it very great indeed.

I do not believe that they are “barking up the wrong tree” nor that the tree up which I bark is the ‘right’ one. Just different trees, that’s all. Different values, different goals.

I could not have written “L’Histoire du Soldat,” let alone “Le Sacre du Printemps,” but then I doubt Stravinsky could have written my music either. To each his own.

It was Emerson who said, “Do your own thing and I shall know you.”

A good example of my approach is a piece I wrote last year for cello and piano which I titled, aptly, “A Simple Tune.”

Hardly anyone has heard this new music; it has been performed only once, in a service at my church and then recorded at WGUC.

To be among the first to hear it -- beautifully performed by cellist Michael f and pianist Earl Apel -- all you have to do is click on the link above.

There's also a link to the PDF of the score.