To compose a piece of music is to turn notes into symphonies that draw complex thoughts, feelings and relatability among musicians.

“For me personally, music is about connecting to my kind of experience, and experience for me is a full turn of a combination of my body, my emotions and my mental activity,” said Adam Roberts, associate professor of music and composition theory in the School of Music.

“I think it’s why music can be so meaningful for some people; it engages so much of your experience at once,” Roberts said.

Your personal experiences are what help you navigate situations, and often are complex, creating a feeling specific to each person. Music is a more abstract way to convey these feelings.

Roberts has been composing the album “Book of Flowers” for piano for over a year. Each individual piece of music takes between 1-2 months to create, depending on the length.

Each piece of music Roberts created ranged between five and nine minutes, depending on the emotion that was being conveyed or the idea he was trying to get across. Roberts initially hoped to create a 10-piece composition, but as new ideas came along, so did more music, he said. By the time the album was released, the composition had grown to 16 pieces.

Creating music tends to be a combination of the mixture of the known and unknown, Roberts said. Pulling from a place of familiarity — whether it be a harmony or symphony — and then mixing it with something “just out of reach.” 

It’s an experience that may reveal something new, and “touch some part of you that maybe needs to say something that it doesn’t get to say very often,” Roberts said.

When composing, you can’t help but include not only your experience, but the aspects that create your experience. Sometimes, these aspects are well known or even conveyed by other artists. There is always room for borrowing from or building onto the existing experiences of others, keeping the piece original but acknowledging what is already known. 

“I think about how I can engage in this kind of tradition of trying to make something that is connected to all of this music that also tries something out that is a little different or new,” Roberts said. “It’s kind of about respecting what has shaped you but also trying to create your own.” 

When contributing to or borrowing from pieces comes into question, there really isn’t a penalty or specific permission that must be granted for someone to use your piece or even “steal” it. In some way, it’s actually flattering.

“In this profession, we’re not making lots of money. If I steal something on purpose, it would be an act of love. The issue of stealing or plagiarism doesn’t come up the same way as it does in pop music,” Roberts said. 

Roberts quoted Igor Stravinsky, a Russian composer and conductor: “Good composers borrow; great composers steal.”

Most pieces that are well known are considered property of the public domain, so borrowing is somewhat of a free-for-all to do what you please, Roberts said.

When writing, you try to create a piece in a certain form, and this comes from other volumes, ideas and structures of music from other composers. You tend to gain a sense of the different composers and their harmonies. 

“It gives you a snapshot of all their different personalities,” Roberts said.

Roberts wanted to create this experience that had a “great deal of variety,” as if you went on a journey that allowed you to feel full and complete, he said.

“You know, there are these parts that are louder, there was one that was more delicate and this one that was more painful. I wanted to see how I could do that within my pieces,” Roberts said.

New ideas caused new energies among the music as well, going back to the emotions or ideas trying to be conveyed. Each piece tied into one another. Regardless of the emotion, there were always “threads” that kept everything together.

“You get these kinds of energies that come back at different times,” Roberts said. “There were these delicate phrases in pieces six, nine and 10, but then I wanted this aggression to be spread out within the pieces as well, and then the threads of the overall delicacy of the entire composition tie them all together.”

When composing, you can’t help but borrow and convey raw emotion that others may also be feeling, but in a way, that makes it unique to you.

“My job is not necessarily to make music different from everything else that exists, but to make it particular to me,” Roberts said.

Zion Williams is a reporter. Contact her at [email protected].