For Cindy McTee, regents professor of composition in the University of North Texas College of Music, earning a fellowship means a rare gift: paid time off to write music.

McTee recently earned one of the first fellowships of UNT’s newly established Institute for the Advancement of the Arts. The institute will develop the university’s visual, performing and literary arts faculty through fellowships, and develop arts students by bringing professionals to campus to pursue projects and teach through artist-in-residence programs. 

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Cindy McTee, regents professor of composition, was recently named a fellow of the University of North Texas’ new Institute for the Advancement of the Arts.

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McTee will spend her fellowship on a nine-minute symphonic piece called Tempus Fugit, Latin for “time flies,” which she’s writing for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

The piece is a two-phase project. First, she’ll complete the score for a June performance by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Then she’ll re-orchestrate the piece for the UNT Wind Symphony, which will perform it next school year.

“I function best as an artist when I can set aside large blocks of uninterrupted time to compose,” McTee said. “Some composers might rather work every day for a few hours to ensure continuity, but I prefer to compose nonstop for at least a week to achieve greater depth.”

McTee’s preferred method of composing is hard to use when she’s teaching, she said.

“But because the fellowship will release me from my teaching and service obligations for a full semester, I will be able to engage in the kind of immersive composing experience I find most efficient and meaningful,” she said.

Composing is technical work as much as it is about art. McTee said she’ll meet the challenges of the score, which needs a composer’s organization even when it sounds like something organic is happening.

Tempus Fugit will include sustained, rich sounds, dissonance and lyrical melodies by the principal musicians as the ensemble navigates tempo changes.

“My Tempus Fugit will begin with the sounds of several pendulum clocks ticking at different speeds, and will take flight about two minutes later using a rhythm borrowed from Leonard Slatkin’s Fin for orchestra,” she said. “Jazz rhythms and harmonies will inform the work, and in general the piece will celebrate the musical and cultural energy of modern-day America.”

The fellowship, which officially started Friday, won’t be spent just writing, McTee said. She’ll spend some time on the road listening to professional orchestras in the U.S. and Europe — including rehearsals of the same music over a five- or six-day period.

“Listening to multiple performances of the same music within a short span of time unveils important details about the music that would otherwise go unnoticed — sharpening the ear, educating the mind and stimulating the imagination,” she said. “The technical and artistic lessons learned will be passed along to my students.”

McTee commended the university for keeping the humanities — art, music and literature — in the forefront.

“Establishment of the Institute for the Advancement of the Arts further demonstrates UNT’s commitment to the idea that creating art is very important to the mission of a student-centered public research university,” McTee said. “This initiative also stands to have far-reaching effects on those who look to UNT for guidance and encouragement at a time when the arts are in particular economic peril.”

LUCINDA BREEDING can be reached at 940-566-6877. Her e-mail address is cbreeding@dentonrc.com.

Cindy McTee

Education: bachelor’s degree, Pacific Lutheran University, 1975; master’s degree, Yale School of Music, 1978; doctoral degree, University of Iowa, 1981

Highest honors: Guggenheim Fellowship and Fulbright Fellowship, both granted from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; Composers Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts; Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s Elaine Lebenbom Memorial Award for Female Composers

UNT course load: Seventy-five percent of teaching is in private lessons in composition. Twenty-five percent of teaching is in orchestration courses, among other disciplines. She has taught at UNT for almost 26 years.