Congratulations to first-year student John Stout, who won gold in the Erik Satie International Music Competition for orchestra and silver for original composition. The original composition, Symphony No. 1 – Lessons from my Mother, the Living, and the Dead, grapples with topics like mental health through a musical lens. CAMD had the chance to chat with Stout about the experience and how his time at CAMD has influenced him. These answers have been edited for length and clarity.

Can you share a bit about the process of developing your original composition?

For this piece, I wanted to write a piece about mental health issues and the effects that those issues may have on someone’s life. I began by dividing the piece into four movements, which are essentially like different songs in an album but for classical music.

The first movement of the symphony begins with a tapestry of counteracting independent melodic lines, which introduces the main theme in a very subtle way, representing the development of person-hood and identity in a child. The main theme then erupts with confident orchestration (choice of instrumental arrangement) to show childlike joy, a poised child. After this, anxiety begins to build and the orchestra erupts, which then transitions to a newer theme in a slower tempo, which represents a traumatic experience. This theme then develops into a massive build up where the orchestra explodes in a massive bitonal chord (meaning that the chord draws from notes in two keys) for a very unique sound, which in combination with the intense orchestration, provides the listener access to the stress felt by the subject of the piece. The first movement then transitions to a very fast sonata-style expression of the extreme experiences, thoughts, and feelings that struggling with severe PTSD brings. Rhetorical strategies like multitonality, (using multiple musical keys simultaneously), intense orchestration, the use of different themes, and well thought-out harmonic structures for those themes all contribute to a musical painting of those experiences.

The second movement is about a friend of mine who committed suicide about a year ago today; it paints a picture of a conversation between me and him in heaven, using multitonal harmony, unique textures, fervent orchestration, and ritualistic melodies. It dives into melancholic feelings of guilt, regret, loneliness, isolation, and ends on a major chord representing the resolution of these feelings. Grieving is hard, and it is so easy to blame suicide on the victims, but we as a society have to remember that people who commit suicide had to have been going through such intense pain that suicide felt like the only option. Thus, my piece celebrates my friend’s life, and even though it discusses the pain felt by my friend, it does not focus on his death.

The third movement serves as an apology to my mother. Because of the effects of severe trauma, and the crazy experiences, thoughts, and feelings that struggling with severe PTSD brings, I made some huge mistakes in my teen years. This really stressed out my mother as she had to guide me through everything. Thus, it uses simple harmonies, beautiful melodies, and amorous orchestration to give a depiction of my mother’s simple inner and outer beauty.

The last movement then shows how life for people with PTSD can improve with treatment. It takes the main theme from the first movement, and reharmonizes it to show more maturity, however the lingering effects of PTSD are still evident through new moments in the melody that represent stress. The temporary nature of these stressful moments, evident in a consonant (not dissonant) release on a personal motif, goes to show that mood can vary widely in a person in recovery from PTSD. The piece ends in a very similar way to the way that the piece started, striking a sense of the return of the same childlike joy that is evoked at the beginning of the piece, a feeling that had not been felt in a long time. The ending serves as a hopeful restatement of the fact that joy is obtainable, even if it feels impossible, and though recovery is a long journey, it is well worth it.

Is there anything you learned during the competition that you’ll be able to bring into your classes at CAMD?

I would like to tell other people interested in composition to compose music that they want to hear and not follow modern trends in music. Be inventive and come up with new ideas. Don’t follow the status quo, be controversial. As a composer, I have this internal fear that people won’t like my music because they won’t think it is good enough, but once you stop caring about what people think, you are free to express whatever you want, in whatever way you want to, and that is very liberating.

You’re in your first year at CAMD. What helped you decide on Northeastern/CAMD to pursue music + business?

I am a self-learner, and even though Northeastern may not offer a specific composition major, they have a wonderful music program and a fantastic business program. Northeastern gives me the opportunity to focus on my art, as well as learn the business side of things. In my opinion, being able to develop your artistic style without too much stylistic influence from professors is extremely useful, as it allows some of my music to sound completely different from anything else that’s out there. While you might recognize some Mahler, or some Stravinsky in my organizational or harmonic style, going to Northeastern lets me develop my own unique compositional identity that I don’t believe I would have been able to develop anywhere else. I am also hoping to set up a co-op with some orchestra, or film composition company like remote control, that is my dream.

Is there a project you’re currently working on that you’re excited about (either in class or outside)?

I have started brainstorming ideas for Symphony Number Two, which is probably going to be a political discourse on authoritarianism, in an Americana style. I have also started working on a Chinese-Western fusion opera that takes instruments from around the world, and from the western orchestra to paint scenes of the current geopolitical strife between the USA and China in modern times. This piece also serves to give general lessons to people, like how communication is so important in any relationship, and even how cultural differences aside, we are all human and should want to get along. I want to make it a multi-part affair, and I have never written an opera, or anything of an operatic length so it’s very exciting