I was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Arlington, VA. My
parents were not musically inclined, so before the age of about 11 I
heard classical music played only occasionally, at school. But then my
brother (five years older) became very interested in classical music,
and prevailed upon our parents to buy a piano and phonograph. After
that, I heard a fair amount of serious music, chiefly from the classical
period.

During my early teens I taught myself to play the piano. I began to
dabble in musical composition, and even made some sketches for a
symphony. When I went to college, though, I majored in chemistry, which
was another of my hobbies. After graduating from George Washington
University with an M.S., I spent 30 years working for the U.S.Department
of Defense as a research chemist. Over all these years, however, music
remained my main hobby. In addition to hearing a lot of it, I read much
about musicians and music theory, improvised at the piano, learned to
play the recorder and flute, and occasionally would try my hand at
composition once again.

But as the years passed, I had also developed strong interests in
philosophy, psychology, human evolution, and the frontiers of physics
and cosmology. In order to be able to discuss such topics at an amateur
level, I formed and ran a discussion group, called at first the
"Baltimore Philosophy Club." Needless to say, working at my official
job, finding time for sex, pizza, and house repairs, reading in the
difficult subjects mentioned above, and running the discussion group
kept me hopping. So it was not until I was 48 years old (in 1978) that
musical composition suddenly came to the fore.

Why, I'm not sure; probably it was because good (to me, anyway)
themes began to pop into my head, spontaneously. (This was different
from the past, when finding a good theme [if I got one] was about as
easy and pleasant as pulling one's own teeth, without anesthetics.)
Sometimes the themes were short; at other times, they constituted a
sizeable hunk of composition. I also found myself improvising such
material at the piano, and discovered that extending it could go pretty
rapidly, on occasion. But in most cases, it was (and is) still very
difficult for me to extend themes, and "arranging" them for the intended
medium (piano, string quartet, or whatever) was (and is) excruciatingly
slow.

Thus, my total musical output since 1978 has been very low, even
though I retired from government service in 1985. It's because of the
just-mentioned difficulties, my desire for quality rather than quantity,
my other interests, and long breaks in composing caused by changing life
circumstances. A list of my compositions appears at the end of this Home
Page. Most of them are pretty conservative in style, since I try for
melody, simplicity, and accessibility, and dislike a lot of dissonance.
However, I also try to make them unmistakably modern, original, and not
pastiches.

I recognize the desirability of exploring radically new things in
music: new harmonies, rhythms, forms, styles, means of tone production,
microtones, use of computers, musique concrete, etc., etc., etc. But I'm
happy to leave such explorations to others, because of my musical
preferences. On the other hand, I really enjoy discussing musical
aesthetics and the future of music, as well as other topics from the
arts, sciences, and humanities. If you would like to participate in such
discussions, please visit my "Philosalon" Website, at
"http://www.erols.com/alandkw". This is not a Chat Room or an online
Discussion Group, but is about old-fashioned, F2F (face-to-face)
discussion groups, with real people. You're welcome to join our group,
if we have room; we serve the Greater Baltimore area.