The composer’s tools

Some implements of the art, from left, top: A non-reproducible pencil whose marks won’t be picked up on a photocopy, a cassette player with earphones for travel, an ordinary pencil, a dip pen, a raised ruler with cork, a trinome or three-speed metronome, a miniature composition book and a letter opener. Not pictured is an electric eraser that Harbison says all composers have and use constantly for taking out such things as a single notehead. The ivory letter-opener near the composition book was a gift from a composer friend. The bound score beneath the tools is of the Concerto for Double Brass Choir and Orchestra. And the sketches beneath that are for Harbison’s Third Symphony, scheduled to premiere next February with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. But, Harbison says, “all you need to compose really are a sketchbook and a pencil.”