Carl Donsbach grew up listening to '60s and '70s rock 'n' roll.
Over the years, his musical tastes expanded, and last week, his composition "Palomita Cancion for Piano Trio" won the New Mexico Composer's Competition held by the John Donald Robb Musical Trust at UNM.
He began writing his piece in the early summer and submitted it in October. The melody he used was one Robb collected while he was researching folk melodies in New Mexico. Donsbach gives partial credit to his appreciation of pop music for his compositional emphasis on melody.
"My music is probably more melody oriented than it would have been if I'd led a more cloistered life," he said. "I like to have something to hang the melody on, to hang the musical idea on."
"Palomita Cancion for Piano Trio" is based on a poem about a young woman who is anxious about her lover. Donsbach said the nature of the problem is not clear, but it alludes to the woman's lover being in some kind of danger. She addresses the poem to a dove, he said, possibly in a dream or fantasy.
"I thought about the song and what it means," he said. "I wanted to be true to that idea."
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Donsbach likes to have a piano around when he's composing, but will even work out ideas on his kitchen table. Lately, he's been using composition programs on computer.
Donsbach received his master's degree from UNM's Music department. He began college with his sights set on a degree in guitar performance, but said professor Scott Wilkinson changed his mind by encouraging him to write.
"It kind of snuck up on me," he said.
Donsbach advises aspiring composers to listen to all different kinds of music and to attend as many live performances as they can.
"That's where the music is most immediate," he said. "In a live performance, you're in the same physical space as performers and total strangers who are listening too. I think that brings something out that is lost over repeated electronic media."
He said the feedback loop that occurs between performers and audience often inspires him, even though he's never done much performing himself.
Donsbach said a gap exists between art music and popular music, but it will soon start to decrease. What we consider classical music now was the pop music of its era, he said.
"We're going to come to a time where that division goes away again and classical music will become less cerebral," he said.
