Understanding myself as a composer

I’ve been composing an arrangement of the Lord’s Prayer for the St. Maria Goretti parish for the last year or two, and progress has been brutally slow since I started. This was until a few weeks ago when I had a lesson with Alexander Rapoport, my composition teacher for the coming school year. I was amazed at how (in only one lesson) he was able to simplify what I was doing with this piece, to the point where my process became accelerated without compromising any compositional integrity. He did this while simultaneously lifting away from me the hindrances of pretentious academia — the cause of much anxiety to the musical part of my creativity over the last year. How skillful this man is!

In addition to working on this piece, I’ve been reading a ton of scores, lifting jazz, and singing while playing to try and give myself a crash course in listening. My ears have opened up a lot in the last few months, and because of this, my sensitivity to certain sonorities has increased.

While experimenting with part of the arrangement today, I found something interesting in parallel 7th chords, the major 7th interval, and chords that have a particular “crunch” to them (minor 2nd and major 7th dissonances): they all move me emotionally, more so than other types of sounds. I can’t exactly articulate what the feeling is, but it feels powerful, satisfying, and liberating. Is this what it means to be a composer?