Even more than in the concert hall, in church there are things you can and cannot do, just out of respect. You would never have the sound of someone being nailed to a cross, or the sound of a child being born, because everybody knows the story. We know that we're meant to feel a complicated raft of things.
Nico MuhlyWriting orchestra music, you need for the emotional content to come from everyone doing everything together, adding up as it goes, a crowd mentality.
Nico MuhlyComposition is interesting because, in a sense, you always have to let it go. Unless you're a true composer/performer, you're always sending a PDF and then someone else makes it. It's like instructions for a short story, faxed to every English student who's studying it.
Nico MuhlyI didn't entertain the idea that my music would ever become available in any of the ways that I had previously known music to be available.
Nico Muhly