GREGORY SPEARS

At Princeton, you teach a writing seminar on Music and Madness. What's the fascination?

I've always been interested in the allure of the Romantic composer and the pervasive societal myth that art arises from angst. I'm also curious about how and why we pathologize exceptional mental ability.

Who are some of the people you discuss in the class?

We start out talking a lot about Schumann, Romanticism, E.T.A. Hoffman and so on. Then we discuss how musicians are portrayed in pop culture. We touch on Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Wilson. After that I try to let my students steer the class a bit. I have pretty amazing students.

What do you say to young musicians who deal with emotional disorders who fear therapy and pharmaceuticals will harm their craft?

Creativity to me seems to be a very durable quality. Fed by hard work, it can flourish in times of anger, boredom, happiness, depression. The myth that a troubled mind promotes craft is pervasive but ultimately reductive.

This brings us to Paul's Case, about a young man who at the end of the story commits suicide. Along the way we are given very few clues to his suicidal tendencies, a literary conceit that also pops up in works like Salinger's "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," the poem "Richard Cory" and even on the TV show "House" this season. Will your music give clues to Paul's inner turmoils?

I think that it is very important that the piece not treat Paul as a psychological "case." Diagnosis can be a very violent way to classify and treat difference. I want to avoid figuring him out for the audience. I would rather that they confront him than judge him.

Do you feel like the music for Paul's Case illustrates Paul's outer world or inner world more?

Certainly not his inner world. I tried to avoid the gruesome task of filling characters with musical guts, so to speak. (I never really buy it when movie soundtracks attempt to coat characters with psychological innuendo.) Rather, I enjoy hearing how characters' melodic styles mark a musical environment with traces of their personality.

How do you keep from romanticizing suicide?

Goethe's Werther caused a rash of copycat suicides across Europe in the 18th century, shamelessly capitalizing on the idea that inner angst might climax in a sort of aesthetic self-annihilation. Paul to me represents something both less tragic and more horrific than Werther. Paul's final leap is more American and cooly objective. In any case, both romanticizing and condemning suicide implies judgment, which I want to avoid. Music to me seems the ideal medium for a narrative that must remain open ended in this way. This nonjudgmental quality is what makes music so valuable and humanizing.

Gregory Spears
Brooklyn, NY
May, 2009

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Gregory Spears
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Gregory Spears's opera Paul's Case is currently in development at American Opera Projects. A concert reading of Act II will be presented at Manhattan School of Music on March 14, 2010 and at South Oxford Space on March 20. See the AOP Events page for details.