Nico Muhly is a twenty-six-year-old composer. This is different from the archetypal image of old men with creased suits and wild white hair, but rather more realistic. Muhly lives in New York’s Chinatown. His two albums, Mothertongue and Speaks Volumes, were released not on a “classical label” but on Valgeir Sigurðsson’s Icelandic label, Bedroom Community. His work has also appeared in traditional concert format, such as the cantata on Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style and the various orchestral works premiered by the American Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops. He has scored a handful of films, and has also worked as an arranger, performer, and conductor for distinctly nonclassical artists such as Björk, Will Oldham, Antony Hegarty, and folk musician Sam Amidon.

Muhly talks like someone who knows he is precocious, but any affectation is undercut by genuine curiosity and warmth. His music demonstrates these contrasts, with both the devotional yearning of Philip Glass, for whom Muhly has worked since college, and a light playfulness that recalls the composer Benjamin Britten. It’s a synthesis of ’60s minimalism, Renaissance choral music, and also some of the bleakness and buzz that have marked indie folk over the past decade.

Cooking us dinner, Muhly was exact in his inexactness: he measured quantities by eye, but without sloppiness. We ate pasta, drank wine, and then watched YouTube videos about military robots and theremins. “The worst,” Muhly said, “is when you just remember, without meaning to, the last seven digits of the URL for a YouTube video. Like ‘Y2078645’—that’s that one with the camel.”

—Sean Michaels

I. THE SCORE TO STAR WARS IS LIKE A YAK CARRYING PEOPLE.

THE BELIEVER: What’s the process like when you compose a piece?

NICO MUHLY: It depends on what you’re doing. When you’re writing for an album you can think very broadly, but writing for a commission—it’s a different concept. Someone says, “OK! Six minutes for orchestra. Two flutes, two oboes, two bassoons. On March 16 of next year. It’s got to be between six and eight minutes, and we’re paying you this much money….” You have a list of facts—so it feels like the best way to counteract the list of facts is by coming up with another list of facts. The second list of facts is: “OK, for you nice people, you’re going to have, um, a piece of music about… whatever.” You can almost say any word and see if it takes you anywhere. For me, sometimes it’s anecdotal and then you completely erase the anecdote when you’re writing it.

So this piece was spurred by when I was at Tanglewood and I was walking from...