You are travelling, staying in a Spanish villa at the beachside. It is hot. You enjoy a third glass in the sun with pintxos at the café, gazing – but not really looking – toward the horizon. Some folks are singing. You stumble back, happy.

Now, it is dark. You awake, forgetting where you are. You can’t find a light switch. You grope, slightly panicked, around the room. Is that a lamp? An alarm clock? Is that a sculpture? A vase? What are all these things? Where is the loo?! Slowly your eyes and mind adjust. There is an El Greco print on the wall. Yes, that is a vase . . . an empty bottle.

Huw Belling. Photo © Bee Elton

For me, and for others, this is composing. Not the staying in the villa, sadly – but the stumbling in the dark. The thrust of my fieldwork (on composing) to date is that all musical material is received. It’s for artists to discover its nature – what it ‘wants’ to do. At first, blindly, then as our eyes or fingers adjust, we can invent or discover (or steal) these objects –...