The day I realised I would never be a ‘career composer’

Preface:
This reflection comes from an early stage in my artistic life, when I was still trying to find my footing in the world of contemporary music. I had been invited to attend Brian Ferneyhough’s composition course at Royaumont Abbey in France — an experience that, for all its prestige, taught me more about the culture of careerism than about music itself. It was there, amid a mix of brilliance, vanity, and quiet cruelty, that I began to understand what kind of artist I was not destined to become.

Royaumont Abbey (1994)

I remember walking one afternoon between lectures and concerts with Brian Ferneyhough and Olga Neuwirth on the grounds of Royaumont Abbey. Our conversation was in English, until at a certain point Neuwirth switched to German. Brian followed suit. They both knew perfectly well that I didn’t speak German, yet neither returned to English. I’ve often wondered why Brian didn’t insist on continuing in the language we all shared. Perhaps it was easier to let the moment pass. Still, I felt the small sting of exclusion — a reminder of how fragile courtesy can be when social positioning is at stake.

That week, I learned much about the culture I was supposedly entering. Brian told me, half-amused, that some of the composers on the course arranged to receive “important” phone calls during the lunch hour, simply to appear in demand. Another, when his piece was performed, delayed taking a bow so that the applause would last longer. These weren’t isolated incidents; they were symptoms of a world obsessed with appearances, where calculation stood in for integrity.

At one lunch, Marc Texier — the course’s director — remarked that I wrote “Irish music”. I had no idea what he meant. It later emerged that he was from Morocco and a composer of sorts; so I asked him, quite sincerely, whether he wrote Moroccan music. He didn’t seem to find the question amusing.

Experiences like these clarified something for me: to my mind, you cannot be a ‘career composer’ and an artist at the same time, because one demands conformism while the other demands authenticity.