I define my music, for music fans, as normal music with more dissonance than usual. The added dissonance adds interest to the piece and is used to emphasize emotional moments as well as to serve as a greater contrast to beautiful segments. In Moses, an Oratorio, for example, in the segment called The Burning Bush, we have the orchestra sometimes in one key while Moses and the choir are in a different key. This creates a clash that the moment warrants. However, if you just listen to the soloist, you realize that the melody is easy to follow.
I refuse to believe that modern composers cannot use beautiful chords, that the traditional chords are the exclusive property of Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms. However, I also refuse to write using only those chords, as contemporary music has opened up the color palette of the composer and it would be silly not to use all the resources we have available to create more interesting music. In addition to that, I use devices of my own creation for transitions and many of my phrases end up in question marks.
One more thing. In choral music I tend to be more traditional than in my instrumental music. That is bdue to the nature of singing in a group as opposed to playing instruments. The singer orients himself with the notes of the other singers and the level of difficulty of a piece is raised exponentially if one decides not to use the traditional harmonic system. When playing an instrument you depend more on the written note than on other performers, so it is harder to get disoriented. So I go less far afield in my choral works than in my instrumental creations.
