Finding Your Own Path
written by Harry González
Bahlest Eeble Readings Cycle 19 Fellow
“Find your own voice” is what they say when you are taking composition lessons towards the end of undergraduate studies, and especially at graduate school; it is very much an entry requirement if you want to pursue doctoral-level studies in composition in most schools. Now, I am pursuing a doctorate in Composition at Rice University, and I still don’t know what the heck that is. Is it a brand, a market signature, a chord, or a melody that people should remember you by when listening to it? What does it really mean? Am I supposed to figure that out and realize that unique aspect of my music that makes it different from whatever everyone has ever done in the world and in human existence, and then make all my music based on it? Is that even possible? Or am I supposed to compose based on a particular concept that I want to explore in every piece from now on until the day I die, so people can identify it as mine, or to make the jobs of musicologists easier?
I don’t know the answer to these questions. Do I care about them? Maybe. Do I want to do the same thing in my music for my career and compose in the same “style”? For that, I can answer: Hell No! That sounds like prison to me, or more like having the same lunch daily for 10 years. What a torture! The electric chair sounds more interesting. At least that one you get once in life! Anyway, you may be wondering: what does this guy want from making music? Why is he making music in the first place, and what are his goals with it? Short answer: I love life, and life is beautiful with music, good music. I love the feeling of it, the sound, the movements, the colors, the rhythm; I love whatever it tickles inside my brain and in my body when I listen to it live, on a recording, or just in my head; and I love when people feel that with my music, which I hope they do. Whatever I write about, whatever notes, chords, or techniques I use, all I want is for people to feel the music. And I want you, human being reading this blog, to feel it too.
How to achieve that, you might ask. Well, some theories are trying to answer it; the Greeks had their theory on the affect of modes, which are different from the medieval ones. You may also have heard of the emotional affect of the different major and minor keys on people’s mood, or the effect of music without a tonal center. Forget all of that meaningless stuff. What I believe is really important in music is authenticity. Honesty. Doing what you love, what you care about, enjoy, feel; not what the market says, not what competitions want, or what a mentor expects you to do. True art comes from an open heart, and it comes with all its desires, purpose, seeking, but also with its sufferings, sorrows, and pain; all of it together.
Doing what moves you is what is going to make the difference, not that highly, extremely difficult multiphonic in the clarinet that will get lost in the instrumentation, or the fancy notation system, or the sophisticated gestures that might get you a composition prize. Needless to say, these are cool, and I like them. But they are meaningless by themselves; just like the notes, durations, or the letters in the abecedary; they are just symbols, tools, like a piece of furniture or an ingredient for a recipe. Maybe not the latter, there are special ingredients indeed. Back to the point, ask yourself what it is that you love and care about. I will answer for myself as thoroughly yet as concisely as possible. Bear with me!
When I started composing, I just did it for the music itself; I loved it. Out of curiosity, I started playing with the chords I was learning in my theory class at the school of music. After I got a muscle contracture that prevented me from playing violin in 2017, my music reflected that. And from that, there is a visible trend in my music towards composing about things that I care about, putting all my energy and heart into it. In this arch, there are pieces like Duelo (2018), about my muscle injury; Habrá Futuro? (2020), about the Covid-19 Pandemic and the confinement; and later into my master’s in Missouri, Speechless for ensemble (2024), about the animals suffering the effects of trash in the environment.
Meanwhile, things were going on in my personal life that were tormenting me; therefore, they made their way into my music. For instance, suffering from insomnia, I composed Insomnolence for string trio (2023), about the lack of sleep, and Dreammares (2024), an electroacoustic piece inspired by different dreams that could happen in a single night.
Although these last two are unique in my “musical language,” these are pieces that I may wish not to write again because of their costly nature. Nevertheless, the idea of Dreammares II fascinates me as I love dreams, but please don’t ask me to write Insomnolence II; that was not a fun time. I love the piece, though. But if insomnia was bad enough, I couldn’t imagine what life was preparing for me next.
When I was a Fellow in Cycle 19 at the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, I was going through one of the toughest times in my life. Probably the biggest challenge I’ve ever faced. That made its way into the piece Unknown: Traces of the Unspoken (2025), which was performed amazingly by Ráyo Furuta (flute), Kathryn Schulmeister (bass), and Haruka Fujii (percussion). This piece has its own solemnity, and it got me scared the first time I heard a complete run-through. Sometimes, I even forget that I wrote when I think about my recent pieces. There is just something unsettling about it, and that is precisely what made it so impactful. Please listen carefully to it; you may find something in it.
Switching to more cheerful themes, let’s talk about things I love. Before writing Unknown, I wrote a piece called Three Tired Tigers Trying To Thrive in the Tricksy Town of T’Vive (2025), performed by Longleash at the Connecticut Summerfest. This is a game-like piece, in which players could choose their own paths individually and make decisions as a group. This was a very fun piece to write, bringing into music one of my favorite hobbies, video games. It was a new experience for me, quite a bold piece for its layout, and it was quite a success at the concert. Definitely something I want to keep exploring in future pieces!
Continuing on the environmental theme in Speechless, I composed Interwoven Voices (2026), for contrabass and multimedia electronics with recordings of animals and the “hand-trumpet,” an instrument that I play, inhaling with my lips and hands akin to an oboe and a trumpet. Throughout my travels in Colombia and in the US from 2018 to 2025, I took spontaneous recordings of animals while playing the hand trumpet for them. I got dogs, my cat Manchas, crows, chickens, geese, a cow, a turkey, and a squirrel! Many of them reply in the videos, and with some, I even had a full back-and-forth conversation. I put them all together in a video, transcribed their sounds into the score, and wrote the contrabass, providing its own insight. This piece was premiered by my DMA colleague, Ella Sharpe, at Rice University, and we had the most fun time ever! Just imagine a rehearsal: “play from the cow; listen to the chicken here; play like the squirrel; like the turkey; wait for the little bird.” I love this piece!
Now, if you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you may notice that I post more stories of food than music; mostly food I make. Some people think that I am doing a doctorate in gastronomy instead of music. Well, they may not be wrong, as I like cooking so much since it brings the flavors and smells I miss from Colombia and my mom while I am living far away in the US. Sometimes, I like to make big Sancochos and invite all Colombian friends, neighbors, and colleagues; everyone I could possibly feed with my pots. How is that related to music? Well, I was trying to find lyrics for a song cycle; I went to poetry events, searched authors, asked friends for poetry, but I failed to find anything that makes me feel something.
Then I got a better idea. Instead of looking for poems, I looked for something that moves my gut way more! I did some research and found a fascinating book, Sabores del Pasado: Recetas y hechos diversos de El Estuche by Lácydes Moreno Blanco, containing hundreds of recipes from Colombia compiled by Jerónimo Argaez in the XIX Century. I was incredibly amazed by it, and I was tasting the flavors just by reading the recipes. Did you guess it? Yes! I am working on a song cycle using recipes from this book, and hopefully, we will get to hear the recipes and taste the food in a concert!
Did this reading so far provide a good insight into what “finding your own voice” may mean to you? You may agree or disagree with everything I said, and that’s great. I, from 2016, would be shocked by the music I am doing now, and hopefully, I would be shocked by the music I write in 10 years from now. We are humans, we are constantly evolving organic matter. We change, and our ideas change with us. Maybe tomorrow I will write about the sun rising in the morning, an opera about the Sancocho, or another Dreammares. Who knows. Just like recipes, our music identity, or the so-called “own voice,” is not a static expression, and it constantly evolves as we interact with the outer world while figuring out our inner selves. Instead of “finding your own voice,” maybe start thinking about finding your own path. I think that is beautiful.
Rice University has been a great place for me to write anything I want and develop my ideas freely, which I am very grateful for. I am also very grateful to the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music for allowing me to collaborate with amazing performers, Rayo, Kathryn, and Haruka; pair up with great colleagues, Carlos, Keith, and Eliana; and provide a space for me to put my thoughts into this blog after culminating my process with the Bahlest Eeble Readings program. I am also grateful if you read this far. I look forward to continuing to write about more fun stuff, and of course, more sorrowful pieces as life is not always happy. Maybe we can connect and sympathize on similar topics that you want to treat in music. Let’s talk!
Harry González
Harry González is a Colombian composer, violinist, pianist, and conductor. His music reflects his interpretation and feelings on existential human issues, personal experiences, and personal adventures through a constant seeking of new sounds and techniques in his compositional process. He constantly likes to play with contradictory ideas to create ambiguous sonorities and sensations, and defy listeners’s expectations.. His music has been commissioned by organizations like The Sheldon Arts Foundation, the Mizzou New Music Ensemble, the Mizzou New Music Initiative, the Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, and the new music ensemble Periscopio of Universidad EAFIT. Professionally, González has gained important experience conducting his works with Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra and St. Louis Symphony Orchestra players; playing violin with Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra and popular music ensembles; premiering his pieces that include violin or piano; editing music by Manuel Maria Párraga and Pedro Morales Pino for the project Historias del Piano Colombiano; accompanying Mizzou students in the piano; working as a teaching assistant for the Mizzou New Music Initiative with production tasks, programs, teaching and grading undergraduate courses; and working as production assistant for the MICF 2023 and the Missouri Summer Composition Institute.
Recently, González won first place in the Humanities division of the Research and Creative Activities Forum at Mizzou with his research on how music can be used to convey climate change and his piece Insomnolence for string trio was selected to be performed at the New Music on the Bayou Festival 2024. Currently, González is pursuing his Master of Music degree in Composition at the University of Missouri with the guidance of Stefan Freund and Utku Asuroglu.