One question I'm frequently asked is "What is this piece about?" It happens to be one of my least favorite questions, too (along with "What were you thinking of when you wrote this?"‐-which compares composition to painting the likeness of a bowl of fruit arranged on a draped table--and "What does this piece mean?"‐‐a question of hermeneutics that I have little patience or concern with, but which can be summed up by stating my belief that music does communicate meaning but it is a musical meaning, one that cant be translated to other realms of understanding--a paradoxical tautology). When asked, I bite my lip, count to ten, and think pleasant thoughts--because someone took enough interest to meet me and that deserves more than a snide remark or half-hearted, half-truthful throwaway answer. The truth is that I don't write narrative music; there is no story line behind my music, no musical representation of historical events or noteworthy persons, no hidden symbology (as if an ascending scale could represent a squirrel climbing a tree; or does it depict prayers rising to heaven? or water filling up a tea kettle? or the rate of inflation from 1950 to 2020?). If I say that it's a piece about a lonely sea turtle who gets swept up in a massive typhoon. . . it would only be an effort to help you appreciate the music on a level you'd be interested in, a story contrived long after the last note was written and having no more connection to the music than Homer's Iliad or the Mona Lisa. It would, though, be utterly false to say that the music has no meaning because of this--far from it! Music does mean something; music is chock full of expression and emotion; and music does communicate with us. A major triad, a descending blues scale, the lilt of three-four meter--all of the stuff that music is made of--means something. Further, I think of these objects as having not only properties but as having their own interests, likes and dislikes, hopes, and motivations: this chord "wants" to go to that chord; this particular melody doesn't "like" to be contained by the meter; this little figure "hopes" to grow into a majestic theme. Music has deep, deep meaning to me; every melody communicates something. That "something", though, cannot be expressed in any way other than music. I can describe in detail how the phrases, sections and movements are arranged, the harmonic progressions utilized, and the specific scale patterns used. This doesn't get to the meaning of music, though, any more than cataloging the Pantone numbers used in a Jackson Pollak painting can tell you what it means. I want to say, when asked what a piece means, that they're asking the wrong question. A question I'd really like to talk about is "Why did you write this [any specific detail]?" or "How did you write this piece?" I often turn the question around and ask my own question: "What do you think it's about?" I think, though, that the question itself is like walking in the park and asking a tree what it's about: it's about being a tree. There is no more than that, nor does there have to be to appreciate the beauty and complexity of a tree. If it makes me smile--or frown, or wonder who else has walked by this very tree--that is enough reason for there to be a tree. And so with music. It is "about" itself, and that is enough.