About This Artist

I FOUNDED THIS WEBSITE in 2010 to share with you some amazing insights about “why creative people do what they do,” be they authors, poets, painters, sculptors, playwrights, filmmakers, or (like me) composers of music. Over the past several years, I’ve been learning to interpret the gradual evolution of an artist’s STYLE from the perspective of ARTISTRY—that is, the circumstances and dispositions which collectively shape the artist’s creative process in the long term.

I call these insights amazing because, when I first encountered them as a university undergraduate, they began to sort out some rather philosophical questions that had long troubled me as a student and musician:

• Why did my professors constantly encourage me to compose modern, atonal music when those styles were hardly my favorite? I hadn’t even heard of such music when I first started to compose.
• What had prompted artists and composers to explore abstract styles in the first place? Had something been wrong with the older styles?
• Why did I often seem to tire of music, films, or books—even those I had once counted among my very favorite?

My unease with these puzzles turned to fascination during a visiting studentship at the University of Oxford, where, in 2009, the first pieces fell into place. At Oxford, while continuing to compose, I also took a more serious interest in music history. This combination led me to realize not only that a composer’s circumstances and dispositions have always influenced the course of musical style, but that historically, those two factors often differed profoundly from how we experience them today. At last, some answers!

The time soon came to make a momentous decision: I would put on hold my aspirations as a composer, and instead pursue the study of musicology full-time. My present purpose is therefore to strengthen both (1) our understanding of how composers developed their musical styles in the past and (2) the ability of artists such as myself to navigate the powerful and often conflicting social, cultural, and economic forces which affect our creative habits today.

That journey has taken me from a small New England boarding school to the ancient halls of Oxford and beyond. Today, my graduate studies at Brandeis University promise to help me uncover the truth behind these new ideas, at least in the realm of music. But why stop there? As a lifelong lover of art, books, and film, I cannot help but observe the ways in which my theories seem equally valid when applied to the work of artists in those and other fields. From this broader interest, About the Artist has emerged.

Please take a look at the website’s introduction to learn what these ideas are all about.

Thanks for visiting!

Derek appreciates your comments and questions.