When 'Break-Even' Means Breaking the Arts: What the Kennedy Center's Transformation Tells Us About Cultural ValueAs both a composer and Artistic Director of Tannahill Arts Festival, I've spent considerable time navigating the tension between artistic ambition and financial reality. I've also taught on Glasgow University's Creative Industries programme, where questions about how we value culture, and who gets to decide, sit at the heart of the curriculum. So when I started following the dramatic transformation of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts over the past year, I found myself both fascinated and deeply troubled by what was unfolding.

The story is worth paying attention to, not because it's simply another American political controversy, but because it crystallises fundamental questions about the purpose of arts institutions and the future of subsidy-dependent art forms, questions that matter just as much in Paisley as they do in Washington.
What Actually HappenedIn February 2025, President Trump took the unprecedented step of making himself chairman of the Kennedy Center's board, firing the previous leadership and installing Richard Grenell as the institution's president. Within months, Grenell instituted what he called a 'break-even policy': all programming and facility rentals would need to demonstrate commercial viability through ticket sales alone.

On the surface, this sounds reasonable. Why shouldn't arts organisations pay their way? But here's where it gets interesting, and contradictory.

Grenell demanded that productions prove they could break even on ticket sales. Yet he also acknowledged (indeed, boasted about) raising £100 million in charitable contributions, admitting that no performing arts programming can actually sustain itself on ticket sales alone. So he's requiring something he knows to be impossible, then filling the gap with donations from politically aligned supporters.

The effect was immediate and devastating. Washington National Opera ended its 44-year relationship with the Kennedy Center. The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater declined to return after decades of residency. Composer Philip Glass withdrew the world premiere of his Symphony No. 15. Artists including Renée Fleming, the touring production of Hamilton, and dozens of others cancelled their engagements. Attendance dropped by 50%.

In February 2026, Trump announced the Kennedy Center would close for two years for what he called the creation of 'a new and spectacular Entertainment Complex'. Note the shift in language: not 'Performing Arts Center', but 'Entertainment Complex'.

The Economic Reality of Performing Arts. Here's what everyone working in the arts knows but often struggles to articulate to funders and policymakers: certain art forms are structurally unable to pay for themselves through ticket sales, regardless of artistic quality or audience enthusiasm.
This isn't a failure of management or marketing. It's basic economics.

Opera, contemporary dance, orchestral music, experimental theatre, new music commissions—these art forms typically earn less than half their costs from ticket sales, even when houses are full. This has been documented since economists William Baumol and William Bowen's landmark 1966 study: live performance faces rising costs that can't be offset by productivity gains. A string quartet in 2025 requires the same number of musicians and rehearsal time as in 1825, whilst manufacturing productivity has increased exponentially.

The solution, developed over decades, has been the nonprofit model: combining ticket revenue with philanthropic support and (in some contexts) public subsidy. This isn't a workaround or a failure—it's the only economically rational way to sustain art forms that create more social value than they can capture through market transactions.

Peter Gelb, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, put it plainly when asked about the Kennedy Center's new requirements: 'There's no nonprofit performing arts company in the country that can possibly operate without other sources of revenue or funding to complement ticket sales. If the Met operated that way, we wouldn't be able to perform at all.'

The Ideological Sleight of HandWhat Grenell has done, whether intentionally or not, is conflate 'public value' with 'commercial viability'. These are not the same thing.
Public value in the arts encompasses artistic excellence, cultural diversity, educational impact, innovation, and the preservation of art forms that require subsidy. Commercial viability measures market demand at a given price point.

Sometimes these align. Often they don't. And that's precisely why nonprofit arts institutions exist: to support work that creates public value exceeding its private market value.
The 'break-even' policy doesn't improve financial sustainability (the previous model achieved that successfully). What it does is impose a filter ensuring that only commercially proven or politically aligned programming receives institutional support.

Grenell has been explicit about this reorientation, stating the Kennedy Center will focus on 'big productions that the masses and the public want to see', citing Christmas celebrations and shows like The Phantom of the Opera and Cats as models. These are fine productions, but making them the exclusive focus eliminates institutional space for everything else.

What Gets LostWhen commercial viability becomes the sole criterion, entire categories of artistic work become structurally impossible:
New opera cannot meet break-even requirements whilst maintaining production standards. The art form becomes institutionally unviable.
Contemporary dance companies operate on particularly thin margins. The art form survives only in commercially proven contexts (established choreographers, holiday productions).
Experimental theatre - works by emerging playwrights, avant-garde productions, culturally specific programming for minority audiences—all require subsidy to offset limited commercial appeal.
New music commissions rarely achieve commercial success in initial runs. Commissioning new work becomes economically irrational under purely commercial criteria.
Educational programming - school matinees, community engagement, accessibility programmes—typically operates at a loss, cross-subsidised by commercial programming.

This creates what I'd call the innovation paradox: new work, by definition, lacks proven commercial appeal. Artists achieve commercial success through reputation built over years of subsidy-supported development. The break-even policy eliminates the institutional infrastructure that creates commercially successful artists in the first place.

Why This Matters Beyond Washington. I'm writing about the Kennedy Center from Scotland because the underlying tension isn't uniquely American. In my own research on cultural funding in Scotland, I've documented similar patterns: systematic bias in public funding towards commercially viable projects over subsidy-dependent artistic practices.

We see versions of this across the UK cultural sector. Austerity-era funding reforms increasingly privileged 'what sells' over 'what matters'. The 'creative industries' framework, whilst generating valuable political support for culture, risks reducing arts policy to its commercial manifestations.
As Artistic Director of Tannahill Arts Festival, I navigate these tensions constantly. Our community opera productions, contemporary music commissions, and work with marginalised communities will never break even on ticket sales. That's not a failing - it's the nature of the work. The social value, educational impact, and cultural significance far exceed what we can capture in revenue.

If we applied a strict break-even requirement to festival programming, we'd eliminate precisely the work that makes the festival culturally significant rather than just commercially successful.
The Hollow Centre ProblemWhat troubles me most about the Kennedy Center transformation is what might be called the 'hollow centre' problem: an institution retaining the infrastructure and prestige of a major cultural centre whilst abandoning the mission that justified its creation.

The Kennedy Center receives federal subsidy for building operations, tax-exempt status, and donor support specifically because it functions as a national centre for the performing arts, including subsidy-dependent forms. If it operates primarily as a commercial entertainment venue, the rationale for these privileges becomes unclear.

This connects to broader questions in the nonprofit arts sector. When organisations founded for charitable purposes adopt purely commercial operating models, they risk losing both the mission that justified their existence and the competitive advantages of commercial operators. You end up with the worst of both worlds.

What Would Kennedy Have Made of This? There's a particular irony here that feels worth noting. The Kennedy Center was created as a living memorial to President John F. Kennedy, who said: 'I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.'

He also said: 'We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda. It is a form of truth.'
The transformation of his memorial into a venue where programming requires either commercial viability or political alignment represents a rather haunting inversion of those principles.
The Broader QuestionThe Kennedy Center case forces a question that every arts funder, board member, and policymaker needs to answer: What is the purpose of nonprofit arts institutions?
If the answer is 'to provide commercially viable entertainment', then they should operate as for-profit businesses and compete on those terms.

If the answer is 'to serve the public good by supporting art forms that create social value exceeding market value', then commercial viability cannot be the sole criterion for success.
You cannot have it both ways. The break-even policy tries to, and the contradiction is destroying the institution it claims to improve.

What Happens Next. As I write this in February 2026, the Kennedy Center is scheduled to close in July for two years of renovation. What emerges in 2028 remains to be seen. Will it be a performing arts centre serving diverse publics and supporting subsidy-dependent art forms? Or will it be an entertainment complex focused on commercially proven productions and politically aligned events?
The answer matters far beyond one institution. If major nonprofit arts organisations adopt purely commercial criteria, where do opera companies premiere new works? Where do contemporary choreographers develop experimental pieces? Where do emerging playwrights find institutional support? Where do community-engaged artists work with marginalised populations?
The elimination of institutional infrastructure for subsidy-dependent work doesn't simply reduce such work. It makes it structurally impossible.

A Personal ReflectionRunning a small arts festival in Scotland, I'm acutely aware that we operate in a very different context from the Kennedy Center. Our challenges involve securing £50,000 grants, not managing £300 million budgets. Our 'resident company' is a community choir, not the National Symphony Orchestra.
But the fundamental question is the same: Do we programme based on what we believe has artistic and social value, or based on what will sell the most tickets?

We've always chosen the former, using commercial programming (our more accessible concerts, our popular holiday events) to cross-subsidise the less commercially viable work (contemporary music premieres, community opera with participants from areas of deprivation, experimental collaborations).
That's not unique to us. It's how the entire non profit arts ecology functions. Remove that ability to cross-subsidise, impose strict break-even requirements, and you don't just change programming—you eliminate entire categories of artistic work.
​
The Kennedy Center story suggests what happens when commercial logic completely displaces artistic value as the metric of success. It's not pretty, and it's not sustainable, and it betrays the very purpose that justified creating these institutions in the first place.
As we navigate ongoing challenges to arts funding across the UK, that's a lesson worth heeding.

Alan is a composer, Artistic Director of Tannahill Arts Festival, and Associate Lecturer at the University of Glasgow, where he teaches on the Creative Industries degree programme. His research interests include cultural policy, arts funding mechanisms, and the economics of subsidy-dependent art forms.

A Multi-Agent Model of Compositional Process: Sketching, Assembling, and Managing Musical Salience

​
Alan Fleming Baird
University of Glasgow (PhD Candidate)



Abstract
This paper proposes a three-stage model of compositional process consisting of sketching, assembling, and evaluating that explicitly accounts for the multiple layers of agency involved in musical communication. Drawing from cognitive musicology, semiotics, and music theory, the model addresses how musical meaning transforms through contextual relationships and how composers must navigate between grammatical correctness and semantic function across a chain of intentional agents from composer through performer to listener.

Keywords: composition, sketching, musical salience, semiotics, cognitive musicology, multi-agent systems





1. Introduction

Contemporary compositional practice operates within what Nattiez (1990) characterises as a tripartite semiological framework, encompassing the poietic (compositional), neutral (score-based), and esthesic (receptive) dimensions of musical meaning. However, existing models of compositional process have inadequately addressed the dynamic relationships between these dimensions, particularly how musical materials undergo semantic transformation as they move from private sketch to public performance. This paper proposes a systematic approach to understanding compositional decision-making that integrates insights from cognitive psychology, musical semiotics, and practical compositional experience.

2. Historical Context and Contemporary Practice

The use of sketching as a compositional methodology has extensive historical precedent, though its systematic theorisation remains underdeveloped. Mozart's compositional process, long mischaracterised as spontaneous inspiration, has been revealed through sketch studies to involve extensive drafting and revision. Analysis of Mozart's surviving sketches demonstrates that even his apparently effortless compositions emerged through conscious processes of material generation, contextual testing, and structural refinement (Tyson, 1987). Similarly, Beethoven's compositional method involved what Kerman (1982) characterises as "slow and laborious" sketching processes, with extensive notebooks documenting his systematic approach to developing musical ideas through iterative revision.
Contemporary composition pedagogy increasingly emphasises sketching as a fundamental practice, though often without explicit theoretical frameworks for understanding how sketched materials transform through assembly. Educational approaches typically advocate for multi-stage processes involving initial idea generation, rough structural planning, and subsequent development, yet these pedagogical models rarely address the cognitive and semiotic dimensions of compositional decision-making (Hickey, 2012). Some contemporary composition educators have begun implementing systematic sketching methodologies as teaching tools. Bussick (2017) advocates for structured sketching principles, including limitation-setting, focus on characteristic material, and strategic omission of redundant elements, positioning sketching as "stage two of the composing process" that bridges initial conception and formal assembly. This pedagogical approach aligns with the theoretical framework proposed here, demonstrating practical applications of systematic sketching methodology in contemporary composition education.
The relationship between sketching practices and contemporary cognitive musicology has remained largely unexplored. Whilst research in music perception and cognition has generated a sophisticated understanding of how listeners process musical information, these insights have not been systematically integrated into compositional methodology. The sketching-assembling-evaluating model proposed here represents an attempt to bridge this gap, providing a framework that connects practical compositional experience with theoretical understanding of musical communication and cognition.

3. Positioning the Current Model

What distinguishes the present model from existing approaches is its explicit integration of three theoretical dimensions: semiotic analysis of musical meaning-making, cognitive research on musical perception and expectation, and systematic attention to the multi-agent nature of musical communication. Whilst individual composers may intuitively consider how their materials will be interpreted by performers and received by audiences, the systematic articulation of this "chain of intentional agents" within compositional methodology appears novel.
The model's emphasis on managing musical salience through contextual evaluation also represents a distinctive contribution. Whilst composition teachers often advise students to consider how materials work "in context," the theoretical framework provided by research on musical salience (Lerdahl, 1992; Dibben, 1999) offers specific analytical tools for understanding why certain contextual combinations succeed or fail. The integration of this cognitive research with practical compositional decision-making provides a bridge between scientific understanding of musical perception and creative practice.
Furthermore, the model's focus on "contextual transformation" (how musical materials change meaning through assembly) addresses a gap in both compositional pedagogy and music theory. Traditional analytical approaches often treat musical meaning as relatively stable, focusing on the inherent properties of musical objects rather than their relational dynamics. Schenkerian analysis, for instance, tends to identify structural functions that remain consistent throughout a work, whilst set-theory approaches in atonal music analysis emphasise the invariant properties of pitch collections. These methodologies, whilst valuable for understanding musical structure, provide limited insight into how meaning emerges and transforms through the juxtaposition of materials.
The present model emphasises the dynamic, emergent nature of musical semantics, recognising that a chord progression, melodic gesture, or rhythmic pattern may function differently depending on its contextual position within the larger work. This perspective challenges the notion that musical elements possess fixed semantic properties, instead proposing that meaning arises through what might be termed "semiotic negotiation" between materials in proximity. A dominant seventh chord, for example, may function as a stable sonority in one context, a transitional harmony in another, and a source of harmonic tension in a third, with each contextual placement activating different aspects of its semantic potential.
This dynamic view aligns with recent developments in musical semiotics, particularly Hatten's (2004) work on markedness and correlation, which demonstrates how musical meanings emerge through networks of stylistic associations that can be activated, suppressed, or transformed through contextual manipulation. Similarly, Agawu's (1991) concept of musical "play" emphasises how signs acquire meaning through their participation in larger structural games rather than through inherent referential properties. The sketching-assembling-evaluating model extends these semiotic insights by providing practical methodologies for composers to actively manage these transformative processes.
For compositional pedagogy, this approach suggests moving beyond instruction focused solely on grammatical correctness towards teaching strategies for contextual evaluation and semantic management. Students might be taught to consider not just whether a musical idea "works" in isolation, but how it might function differently when placed in various contextual relationships. This could involve exercises in deliberate recontextualisation, where the same musical material is placed in different structural positions to observe how its semantic function shifts. Such pedagogical approaches would prepare composers to think more systematically about the communicative dimensions of their work, recognising composition as an active process of meaning construction rather than merely the arrangement of pre-existing musical objects.

4. Theoretical Framework

The proposed model builds upon Peirce's (1931-1958) triadic conception of the sign, where musical gestures function simultaneously as signs (the material itself), objects (what they refer to), and interpretants (how they are understood). Within compositional practice, this triadic relationship becomes particularly complex as musical materials move through different contextual frames, each potentially altering their semiotic function. As Hatten (1994, 2004) demonstrates in his work on musical topics and gestures, meaning in music emerges through correlational networks rather than fixed referential relationships.
The cognitive dimension of this process draws heavily from research in musical expectation and statistical learning. Huron's (2006) ITPRA theory (Imagination, Tension, Prediction, Reaction, Appraisal) provides a framework for understanding how listeners construct meaning through predictive processing, while Pearce's (2018) work on statistical learning reveals how stylistic knowledge shapes expectation formation. For composers, this research suggests that effective composition requires not merely the organisation of sounds, but the careful management of listener cognition through the strategic deployment of expectation, confirmation, and surprise.

5. The Sketching-Assembling-Evaluating Model

5.1 Stage 1: Sketching and Grammatical Constraint

The initial sketching phase involves the generation of musical materials ranging from individual chords and gestures to extended phrases. At this stage, evaluation criteria operate primarily within what Jackendoff and Lerdahl (1983) term "well-formedness rules": the syntactic constraints that determine acceptable combinations within a given musical idiom. This phase aligns with Bregman's (1990) concept of auditory scene analysis, where individual musical elements must first establish their perceptual integrity before entering into more complex relational networks.
However, the grammatical acceptability established at the sketching stage proves insufficient for determining the ultimate function of musical materials within the completed work. As Krumhansl (2001) demonstrates in her research on pitch hierarchies, musical elements exist in states of semantic indeterminacy until contextualised within broader structural frameworks. Individual sketches, therefore, represent what Saussure (1916) would characterise as signs awaiting their full semiotic realisation through syntagmatic combination.
The sketching process also involves what Larson (2012) identifies as the operation of "musical forces" (gravity, magnetism, and inertia) that govern the local behaviour of musical elements. These forces operate most clearly at the sketch level, where individual gestures can be evaluated for their internal coherence and directional tendency. However, as materials move into assembly, these local forces may conflict with or be overridden by larger-scale structural imperatives.

5.2 Stage 2: Assembly and Contextual Transformation

The assembly stage presents qualitatively different compositional challenges, operating within what Agawu (1991) characterises as the realm of musical play, where signs enter into complex relationships that can fundamentally alter their semantic function. Materials that demonstrated grammatical coherence in isolation may undergo what can be termed "contextual revaluation": a process whereby their structural significance shifts through relationship with surrounding elements.
This phenomenon is particularly evident in harmonic progression, where voice-leading relationships between individually acceptable chords can produce unexpected tonal implications. Tymoczko's (2011) geometric approach to harmony reveals how voice-leading parsimony creates pathways between harmonies that may not be evident from their individual properties. A chord that functions as a stable sonority in isolation may, through efficient voice-leading, become a pivot point between tonal areas, fundamentally altering its structural role within the work.
The assembly process requires continuous evaluation along two primary dimensions: kinship and contrast. Kinship assessment involves identifying materials that share what Klein (2005) terms "intertextual resonances": structural, gestural, or topical similarities that create coherent musical discourse. Contrast evaluation, conversely, requires understanding how differences between materials can articulate formal boundaries and create a dramatic trajectory. As Meyer (1973, 1989) argues, musical meaning emerges precisely through the tension between conformity and deviation from established patterns.
This stage also involves what might be termed "reverse-engineering" of musical materials: composing backwards from perceived structural needs rather than forward from spontaneous inspiration. When gaps are identified in the assembled materials, composers must generate sketches that fulfil specific functional requirements whilst maintaining stylistic consistency with existing materials. This process draws upon what Cenkerová and Parncutt (2015) identify as "style-dependent expectation," where compositional decisions must account for the specific predictive frameworks established by the emerging work itself.

5.3 Stage 3:

Managing Musical Salience and Semantic ControlThe evaluative dimension of assembly centres on the management of musical salience as theorised by Lerdahl (1992). Musical salience operates through multiple hierarchical levels (local accent patterns, metrical structure, harmonic rhythm, and large-scale formal articulation), creating what Lerdahl terms "event hierarchies" that guide listener attention and interpretation. Compositional success requires careful calibration of these hierarchical relationships to ensure that salient events correspond to structurally significant moments.
The challenge lies in distinguishing between intended and unintended salience. A musical gesture that appears unremarkable in sketch form may, when contextualised, create implications that exceed the composer's original intentions. Narmour's (1990, 1991) implication-realisation model demonstrates how musical meaning emerges through the dynamic relationship between expectation and fulfilment, making contextual positioning crucial to semantic control. What Narmour characterises as "bottom-up" processing (driven by immediate melodic and harmonic relationships) may conflict with "top-down" processing driven by learned stylistic patterns, creating interpretive ambiguities that composers must carefully manage.
Dibben's (1999) research on structural perception in atonal music reveals how salience functions differently across stylistic contexts. In tonal music, salience often aligns with functional harmonic relationships, whilst in atonal contexts, factors such as registral position, rhythmic placement, and timbral differentiation become primary salience markers. This research suggests that effective composition requires style-specific understanding of how musical elements achieve perceptual prominence.
The concept of "musical red herrings" (gestures that inadvertently signal structural significance through their perceptual prominence rather than their intended function) represents a critical challenge in salience management. Drawing from Schlenker's (2017) work on music semantics, these false signals can be understood as instances where the compositional "speaker meaning" diverges from the performative or receptive "audience meaning." Effective composition requires strategies for preventing such semantic drift whilst maintaining the spontaneity and surprise that characterise compelling musical discourse.

6. The Chain of Intentional Agents

This compositional model operates within what can be understood as a series of intentional agents, each contributing to the ultimate musical discourse. The theoretical framework for understanding this chain draws from Cumming's (2000) work on musical subjectivity, which reveals how musical meaning emerges through the interaction of multiple interpretive perspectives rather than through simple authorial intention.
The composer's initial intentionality represents what Nattiez (1990) terms the "poietic" dimension of musical creation. However, this intentionality undergoes transformation as the emerging work develops its own internal logic: what might be termed the "Narrator's Intentionality" of the piece itself. This concept aligns with Hatten's (2004) understanding of musical "agency," where musical works exhibit emergent properties that constrain and direct compositional choice-making. The work begins to "speak" through its own structural imperatives, creating a dialogue between creative agency and systematic necessity.
The transition from compositional to performative agency involves what Barthes (1977) characterises as the "grain of the voice": the irreducible physical and interpretive specificity that performers bring to musical realisation. Performers function as intermediate intentional agents, decoding compositional cues and re-encoding them through performance decisions that will ultimately guide listener comprehension. This process involves what Juslin and Lindström (2010) identify as the translation between "composed" and "performed" features, where structural indications must be converted into acoustical and gestural realities.
The performer's interpretive task is complicated by what London (2012) terms the "temporal" dimension of musical meaning. Unlike visual artworks, music unfolds through time, requiring performers to make real-time decisions about phrasing, timing, and emphasis that directly shape listener cognition. These decisions operate within the constraint networks established by the composition whilst drawing upon performance traditions and individual interpretive insight.
The listener serves as the final intentional agent in this chain, actively constructing musical meaning through what Schäfer et al. (2015) characterise as "emotional memory integration": the process whereby current musical experience is understood in relation to previous listening experiences. This process involves multiple cognitive systems operating simultaneously: expectation formation based on statistical learning (Pearce, 2018), emotional response mechanisms (Varga and Parkinson, 2025), and structural pattern recognition (Müller, 2015).
The composer's task involves not merely organising sounds, but curating the listener's cognitive pathway through the work. This requires understanding how musical structures interact with perceptual and cognitive processes to create what Huron (2006) terms "predictive engagement": the active mental participation that constitutes musical experience. Effective composition must therefore account for the statistical learning processes through which listeners develop stylistic competence whilst providing sufficient novelty to maintain engagement and interest.

7. Implications for Compositional Practice and Pedagogy

This multi-agent model suggests that effective composition requires simultaneous consideration of multiple interpretive perspectives, essentially functioning as cognitive modelling of musical communication. The sketching-assembling-evaluating framework provides a practical methodology for managing this complex interpretive ecology, offering systematic approaches to the contextual testing and refinement of musical materials.
The model highlights the inadequacy of purely grammatical approaches to compositional evaluation. Whilst musical grammar provides necessary constraints for material generation, the semantic function of musical gestures emerges only through contextual relationships. This observation aligns with Tagg's (2013) critique of formalist analytical approaches that divorce musical structure from communicative function. Compositional pedagogy might therefore benefit from greater emphasis on contextual evaluation skills alongside traditional grammatical training.
Furthermore, the model suggests that composition involves managing what Monelle (2000) terms "musical semiotics": the systems of signs and meanings through which musical communication operates. This requires understanding not only how individual musical elements function, but how they combine to create larger-scale semantic networks. Such understanding demands integration of theoretical knowledge about musical structure with empirical research on musical cognition and perception.
The framework also has implications for understanding compositional style and historical change. As musical languages evolve, the relationships between grammar, salience, and meaning shift, requiring composers to adapt their contextual evaluation strategies. This perspective offers a dynamic view of musical style that emphasises the cognitive and communicative dimensions of stylistic change rather than purely formal or technical considerations.

9. Parallels in Poetic Composition: The Sketching-Assembling Model in Literary Practice

The sketching-assembling-evaluating model proposed here for musical composition finds remarkable parallels in poetic practice, suggesting that this approach to creative work may reflect broader cognitive principles of artistic creation. An examination of documented poetic processes reveals that many poets employ remarkably similar strategies of fragment collection, contextual assembly, and semantic evaluation.
Emily Dickinson's compositional method provides perhaps the most documented example of poetic sketching and assembly. Dickinson left approximately 100 fragments or scraps, which scholar Marta Werner characterises as "extrageneric" documents that exist between prose and poetry. Her process involved jotting first drafts on odd scraps of paper, which were later transcribed and "neatly copied in ink on sheets of folded stationery which she arranged in groups, usually of sixteen to twenty-four pages, and sewed together into packets or fascicles". These fascicles recorded "the variations in word choice Dickinson considered," demonstrating her evaluative process.
The parallel to musical sketching becomes particularly evident in Dickinson's practice of jotting down "single lines and raw snatches" of poetry, which functioned as poetic equivalents to musical gestures or harmonic sketches. Like musical materials that change function when placed in different contextual frameworks, Dickinson's fragments underwent transformation when assembled within the formal constraints of her fascicles.
Walt Whitman's compositional approach demonstrates a similar process of collection and assembly on a larger scale. The Thomas Biggs Harned Collection of Walt Whitman Papers documents his extensive use of "notes and notebooks" in developing his poetry. Whitman's expansion of Leaves of Grass from "a slim book of 12 poems" in 1855 to "a thick compendium of almost 400" by his death exemplifies the assembly process, where individual poetic fragments were continuously reorganised and recontextualised.
Contemporary poets have continued this tradition of fragment-based composition. Mark Strand, in his interviews and essays on poetic craft, described collecting what he termed "scraps of language" in notebooks: fragmentary phrases and observations that would later find their way into finished poems through a process he characterised as "assembling the pieces" (Strand, 1990). This approach mirrors the musical sketching process, where individual materials await contextual integration.
Mary Oliver's compositional practice provides another well-documented example of the sketching-assembly approach. Oliver, described as "an avid walker," often pursued inspiration on foot, and her papers include extensive notebooks documenting her observations during these walks. She would jot down fragments (single lines, image sketches, or brief nature observations), which were later developed and combined into complete poems. The Mary Oliver Papers, comprising "some 40,000 items in more than 118 containers," include extensive documentation of this process through her notebooks and draft materials.
This poetic sketching-assembly process exhibits several characteristics that parallel the musical model proposed here. First, both involve the generation of fragmentary materials that possess local coherence but remain semantically indeterminate until contextualised. Second, the assembly process requires continuous evaluation of how fragments interact to create meaning, with particular attention to what might be termed "poetic salience": lines or images that draw attention through their contextual prominence rather than their intended function.
The evaluative dimension of poetic assembly also involves managing reader cognition in ways analogous to the composer's management of listener expectation. Poets must consider how the juxtaposition of fragments will guide reader interpretation, ensuring that salient elements contribute to rather than distract from the overall poetic discourse. This suggests that the multi-agent model of creative communication (involving creator, work-as-narrator, intermediate interpreter, and ultimate receiver) may operate across artistic domains.
The existence of parallel processes in poetry supports the hypothesis that the sketching-assembling-evaluating model reflects fundamental cognitive principles of creative work. Both musical and poetic compositions appear to involve similar challenges in managing the transformation of meaning through contextual relationships, suggesting that insights from one domain might inform understanding of creative processes more generally. This cross-disciplinary perspective offers potential for developing more comprehensive theories of artistic creation that account for both the cognitive and communicative dimensions of creative practice.


10. Conclusion

The sketching-assembling-evaluating model provides a framework for understanding compositional process that accounts for both the creative and cognitive dimensions of musical communication. By recognising composition as a multi-agent communicative act, the model offers practical insights for composers whilst contributing to broader theoretical discussions about musical meaning and interpretation.
Future research might explore how this model applies across different musical styles and cultural contexts, investigate the specific cognitive processes involved in contextual evaluation, and examine how technological tools might support composers in managing the complex relationships between musical materials and their emergent meanings. The model's emphasis on the communicative function of musical structure also suggests fruitful connections with research in musical emotion, cross-cultural musical cognition, and the social dimensions of musical meaning.





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Like spoken language, music has its own grammar and vocabulary that composers use to communicate meaning. My research explores how composers strategically manipulate three key elements—cultural symbols, arresting musical gestures, and emotional cues—to communicate musical 'meaning' with listeners.  I've mapped out how music functions as a sophisticated communication system, revealing that successful compositions aren't just a collection of coherent sounds, but are deliberate acts of meaning-making that bridge the gap between a composer's intentions and what listeners actually experience.

After using sample libraries for years I've gotten used to looking at a wave form of a sound file and knowing, before I even hear it, which kind of sound quality it will have. It has no relation to it's dynamic (how loud of quiet) the recoding is but how 'harsh' it will be, based on the 'spikes' in the wave form.

The goal is to achieve musical sounds which I've chosen for their tonal quality and not just because of HOW they are played and not just relying, as is more conventional, on tempo or register or dynamics. The convention for writing music which sounds anxious or angry being music which is probably loud, and high, and fast.

Below is a recording of a loud single note from a cello  (which I've recorded twice since it's quite short).

Below is what that wave form looks like.

The above wave form is a cellist playing loudly a single pitch.

The following sound clip and wave form are recorded by a different cellist in a different studio. It is played at a quieter dynamic. Here is the sound clip.

..and below is what the wave form for this sound looks like.

As can be seen above, the peaks in the sound file in the second example are higher and there is more of an aggressive pattern to the sound. It is not how loud or quiet it's played since the "softer" note is the more aggressive sound wave.

Below is an example of a sound wave from an angry male voice saying "stop it"

You can see there is more in comment with this sound wave with the second cello example which, I would say, has the sound quality of being more angry.

One more example, this time a trombone playing loudly with this "angry wave form", and then the same instrumentalist playing a crescendo from soft to loudly and aggressively and then starting at loud and returning to soft you can see the transition in the sound wave.

Here is the audio of the trombone playing a single note in it's "aggressive" form.

...and here is what that sound wave looks like.

Here is the same sound wave as above but just zoomed in, so it's even clearer how much information there is around the fundamental pitch.

It is not just harsh sounds and more smooth wave forms but how gradations of tone quality can be achieved that will be of use to me.

Here is the audio of the trombonist going from soft to loud and then back again.

...and here is what the sound wave looks like.

The last sound clip example I'll use here is this single note from a French Horn played softly (to show the contrast from these examples above).

Here is the sound clip.

...and here is how that clip looks as a sound wave. There are no peaks and troughs.

Again here is the above example but a zoomed in version, to show how smooth the wave pattern by comparison.

In the paper "Even Violins Can Cry" it posits the question

​ "It remains unknown whether specifically vocal expressive cues, such as the unstable phonatory muscle control of an anxious voice, the nonlinear vocal fold vibration of a scream, or the bright resonating quality of smiled speech, also trigger comparable emotional reactions when they occur in music."

APPLICATION

After identifying the link that might exist between sound waves and the emotion it might suggest from our experience of spoken language, I then need to find a way to communicate to the instrumentalist what effect I want from them. So, basically, can I find a way of notating these different tones. As I mentioned above I'm trying to achieve the effect I want not from how loud or quiet the notes are but HOW they are played.

I first need to do a deep dive into how these different tones are produced to ask for that from my performer.

The performer I'm using to record some experiments in this way of working suggested two books to me. The first is "Principles of Violin Playing and Teaching" (Galamain, Ivan, 1962) and the other is "Violin Method Basics" (Fischer, Simon, 1997)

Below is a link to the Galamain book.
www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/tdq3tcdgeutt6p0uy6g5x/Galamian-Principles-of-Violin-Playing-and-Teaching-1.pdf?rlkey=6u9f2wvq0ep441t430ejoza2k&dl=0

In this book it's Chapter three which takes on "tone production".

Here is a quote from the description of this chapter which says it's concerned with "tone production, the three main factors - speed, pressure, sounding point; the slightly slanting stroke, the character and colour of the tone, and various styles of tone production". The chapter, of which this is a description, explain for the player how to get different sound properties from, for instance, playing at a different point of the bow, or a different point of the string, or bowing with the hand a different angel to create different sound qualities.

I intend to rehearse with the player (who learned using this book), to see if I can explain what kind of bow, or placement of the bow I want to get the sound I'm looking for and then see if the resulting sound waves look like what I imagine they will be.

Below is a link to the book by Simon Fischer.
www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/i25bxq7jiv1tsr01je4lf/simon-fischer-violin-method-basicspdf-pdf-free.pdf?rlkey=suz8toxyri2yfqaod1wlu1c56&dl=0

This is a newer violin method but takes on the issues of "gradation of tone" which is related to my trombone sound clip above (where the performer crescendos from soft to harsh and vice versa). Here is a section of one of the pages from this book asking the player to use these exercises to develop a sense of tone gradation.

Finally, as in this blog pots, I'm focusing on violin and brass instruments. These have more control of tone production during the sounding of the note. For instance, the pianist can only control how a note is produced, an organist can only pull out specific 'stops' to produce tone colour. Whereas a violin can start a note with a certain tone quality and change that tone several time in a controlled way.

From the PhD supervision

The one here is the one which breaks with the convention of stresses in the original text.

After discovering a few weeks ago that in 2013 an opera was made of “The Masque of the Read Death” I looked for any online interviews about the work. Cecilia Livingston, on being asked “Please talk about the challenges in creating your adaptation of the story” answered: “The principal challenge in adapting Poe’s Masque to the requirements of drama, and opera specifically, is that Poe’s work typically has very little dialogue or ready-made mise en scene.”
(taken from https://barczablog.com/2013/10/14/10for_cecilialivingston/ accessed on 15/05/23)

She is also asked “What do you love about Poe and especially his story The Masque of the Red Death?” to which she answers: “I have mixed feelings about Poe as a writer, but as a provider of dramatic material with operatic potential, he has left a great legacy.”

These two quotes from this interview have been the difficulty I have found in the process of adapting Poe. It is dramatic and therefore suited to being staged, but finding text you can extract from the source material into something suitable for a libretto I have found very difficult. Since Poe returns often to the same themes it was quite easy finding poems of his which were suitable for adapting into the libretto.

Below is a video clip of Livingston's opera where The Red Death appears. The libretto seems more narrative and there seems to be space in the sung material for mime and choreography.

In the Edgar Allan Poe poem "Alone" Poe writes in iambic tetrameter meaning there is an even pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables which I always find a problem since the style of the music for the rest of the opera is striving to changing meters in the music. I'm looking to break up the evenness of the stresses in the poem with changing time signatures, while still making sure to keep the stresses of the original poem in the "correct" place. Here are the first few lines of text set to music and focusing only on the role of the singer.

In my original proposal for PhD I had mentioned trying to use "non-lexical vocables" which are inspired by the band The Cocteau Twins use of an "invented language" to use which services the music (rather than text being set to music). In order to generate vocables in the style of The Cocteau Twins I asked chat GPT to generate some, It took a while to give the right prompts to the Artificial Intelligence but, eventually, it came up with something close to what I was looking for. Below is a link to the conversation which led there. Below that is how I set (as a hocket) the text the AI gave me.

A pdf of the chat i with the AI can be found HERE