Composition has been central to my musical career, and my involvement with it predates my specialization in theory by a good many years. In fact, it was my involvement with my high school band that generated my interest in composition, long before I ever considered in majoring in composition in college. I began writing music for band in high school, and to this day composing band music comes more natural to me than does composing for any other medium.

The first music of mine which achieved success and was noticed was a series of marches (composed during the late '50s and early '60s), and the public performances of these marches had very much to do with where I went to college. My original intent was to become a high school band director, and with that goal I began studying music education at the University of Alabama.  After considerable thought and much insistence from some very wise faculty members, I began my sophomore year as a composition/theory major, and from there I never looked back.

My studies in the UA Music Department, now School of Music, ultimately led me into learning to compose in an idiom quite different from marches for band, and my catalogue of compositions gradually began to contain chamber music, choral music, and music for orchestra, and the idiom became one of twentieth-century rhythms, harmonies, and forms quite far removed from those found in my earlier music. My composition teachers were Alan Blank, David Cohen, and Frederic Goossen. During the first year of graduate study at UA I submitted a composition to the Southeastern Composers' League (SCL) for possible inclusion in the annual Composers Forum; Variations for String Orchestra (1962) was chosen to be included in the 1963 forum, and I became a member of the SCL.

After moving to Brevard to teach, I continued to compose, to submit works for the Composers Forum, and to attend the annual event. Subsequent performances at the forum were Quintet for Woodwinds (1964), composed as part of my M.M. thesis at UA, and String Quartet No. 1 (1967), composed at the beginning of graduate study in the School of Music at Indiana University.

At IU, although my primary discipline became music theory, my work in composition continued; one of my to minor fields for the Ph.D. was composition. I first studied with Roque Cordero, producing my String Quartet No. 1 (1967). The work employs the twelve-tone technique, which Cordero uses and teaches in a uniquely idiomatic style. I also studied with Bernhard Heiden at IU for the greater part of my composition minor. Under his tutelage, I composed the Brass Quintet No. 1 (1969), Three Psalms (1971), the final two movements of the Sonata for Tuba and Piano, and Palindrome (1971), an orchestral composition composed especially for and premiered by the Bloomington Youth Symphony.

At Brevard College, my work as a composer expanded in various directions. In addition to continuing the work begun at the UA and IU, I also began to compose music for special occasions (such as ceremonial music for Brevard College), music for specific individuals (such as works for student performers), music for BC ensembles (the concert band [now Symphonic Winds] and the choral ensembles), and occasional commissioned works. In recent years, the major portion of my music for band has been performed by the Symphonic Winds, notably Toccata for Wind Band (1962), Britton Lane (1966), Introit and Alleluia (1968), Symphonic Essay for Band (1988) (composed for the BC band), and several of the earlier marches. The work most recently performed by the Symphonic Winds is Centennial Celebration, a march composed in 1961; this performance, in November, 2000, was the first time the march had been performed in almost forty years.

Other compositions have been performed by the Mountain Chamber Players, the Asheville Symphony, and the Brevard Chamber Orchestra.