How did your education shape your attitudes about music? Joshua Cody, Composer and Director of the Sospeso Ensemble

How did your education shape your attitudes about music? Joshua Cody, Composer and Director of the Sospeso Ensemble

Joshua Cody Photo courtesy Sospeso Ensemble I studied with several very gifted composers at Northwestern University, where I was also able to study some literature and philosophy. I’ll always feel uneducated-learning is an ongoing process. Of course the deeper one’s knowledge of the repertory and of the history of music, the more opportunity for depth… Read more »

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Joshua Cody
Photo courtesy Sospeso Ensemble

I studied with several very gifted composers at Northwestern University, where I was also able to study some literature and philosophy. I’ll always feel uneducated-learning is an ongoing process. Of course the deeper one’s knowledge of the repertory and of the history of music, the more opportunity for depth and richness in one’s own compositions. Still, I feel the artist’s relationship to the corpus of knowledge will always be different than that of, say, a lawyer’s. As Harrison Birtwistle told me, “I use whatever I have and whatever I’ve got.” Or as Picasso said, simply, “When I run out of red, I use blue.”