How Important is Originality in Art

As I was writing today's blog entry ("Originality — Does it have any role in art?"), I kept thinking that I had written on this topic before, but I couldn't find the post where this happened, which confused me. It turns out I did write about it, but it was posted to an earlier version of my composition weblog (different, non-Blogspot URL), one that was distinguished by not having had a single visitor in the 2-3 months I had it up, which I think is quite impressive…

The earlier entry on originality was written about a year ago and covers some of the same points as were made in today's blog, but uses examples from the fine arts (as opposed to the one I wrote today, which is restricted to musical examples), so here it is in case anyone might find it interesting:

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How important is originality in art? I think most people would agree that it is an essential ingredient; if an extremely talented painter were to create a version of the Mona Lisa that was indistinguishable from the original it might sell for a few hundred (or a few thousand) dollars, whereas if the actual Mona Lisa is as close to priceless as is possible for a painting. Two identical works of art; one original, and one a reproduction, but the first is much more highly-valued than the second by virtue of its originality. The Mona Lisa's (and Da Vinci's) iconic status doesn't hurt either…

But there are cases where a lack of originality seems less crucial to the value ascribed to a work of art. Many artists have created numerous variants of the same thing, or similar things -- consider Monet's approximately 250 paintings of water lilies (as well as his London Houses of Parliament, Poplars, Haystacks, Rouen Cathedral, and Mornings on the Seine series), Degas' extraordinary penchant for dancers as a subject (more than half of his vast output of paintings, drawings, and sculptures is devoted to the activities of the ballet dancers and dance students), or Georgia O'Keefe's paintings of flowers — all highly regarded, but, thematically, not particularly original.

If you enjoy visiting art museums when you travel, there is a reasonable chance you may have seen Rodin's "The Thinker," his most famous work, and one of the most-recognized (and most-satirized) sculptures ever. The original was 27.5 inches high, but there are over 20 additional casts of the work in various sizes, most of which were executed by his apprentices, as I understand it. Their lack of originality does not prevent them from being prominently displayed (and hence valued) in museums around the world.

The paintings in Monet’s Houses of Parliament series are both similar – each is of the same subject, from the same vantage point, and on the same size canvas -- and dissimilar – each view represents a different time of day (which alters the lighting) and a different atmospheric conditions (hazy, foggy (or smoggy), different cloud formations). The point, as it relates to originality, is that Monet did not attempt to paint a series of completely different (and therefore highly original) paintings; he wanted to paint the same thing repeatedly in slightly different ways, and we value each individual painting highly nonetheless.

These examples, and many others, would suggest that the role of originality in evaluating art is sometimes relatively minor.

Stravinsky is supposed have said “good composers borrow, great composers steal,” ^{[ 1 ]←} which is itself an adaptation (or theft?!) of T. S. Elliott’s “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal” from Elliott's essay on English dramatist Phillip Massinger (1920). It is a clever line, the merits of which are of course debatable, but for me the point is that artists are influenced by one another, and part of the way we discover our own artistic voices is by emulating or appropriating, to varying degrees, the work of others.

Music is filled with elements common to different composers within an historical period and sometimes across periods. When we study tonal harmony, we learn that in the "common-practice period" (roughly 1700-1900, in Europe), there were guidelines governing the way in which chords progressed. These guidelines have numerous restrictions as well as some freedoms, but the fact that there are guidelines of any sort means that originality in chord progressions was not highly valued.

Other common elements from that period include the widespread use of a limited selection of musical forms, chief among them sonata form, as well as rondo, binary, ternary, and theme & variations, the use of Alberti bass accompaniment figures (although it had numerous variants), an extremely-limited selection of cadence types (virtually every composition from that period ended with an 'authentic' (V-I) cadence), phrase lengths and structure (although numerous exceptions can be found), and writing for commonly-found ensembles such as the string quartet.

And yet, despite the restrictive nature of these common elements, thousands of wonderful works were written. There is originality to be found in all great (or even good!) works to be sure, but, as with Monet’s parliament paintings, the differences are often fairly nuanced.

•More tomorrow!

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^{[ 1 ]}Although there are numerous attributions of this quote to Stravinsky all over the web, I have not come across any that actually cite a source for it. Did he actually say this? Or is it a sentiment that hacks the world over like to attribute to a famous composer in order to justify theft of intellectual property? [ ↑ ]

Originality — Does it have any role in art?

Compare these two songs (you may have to wait a few seconds until they load):





Someone posted the first of the above videos in a forum thread on MacJams.com, a site where musicians give and receive feedback on one another's music, and the title of the thread was "Lazy Songwriting."

The artist in the first video, MPHO ("pron. MM'POH") sings a song over the instrumental tracks from Martha and the Muffins 1980 hit, Echo Beach (the second video above). MPHO uses different lyrics and a different melody, and there are a few other differences, but it would appear that a substantial portion of MPHO's song uses the actual instrumental tracks from Echo Beach, or instrumental tracks that are so close to the original as to be indistinguishable from it.

The issue is this: Is this lack of originality in "Box N Locks" (the title of the MPHO song) problematic, perhaps to the point of being able to dismiss MPHO as a plagiarist, or do we applaud the creativity of the MPHO song in taking tracks from an existing song and coming up with a new treatment?

(Let's assume, by the way, that MPHO has acknowledged the debt her song has to Echo Beach, and that the owners of Echo Beach are receiving the royalties due them from MPHO's treatment of their instrumental tracks. I do not know if this is the case or not, but I am more interested in the ethical issues here than I am in the legal ones.)

Now, before we get too caught up in questioning the ethics of "Box N Locks," consider the following:

(Incidentally, the above video is itself based on a pretty famous YouTube video called "4 chords, 36 songs," so the idea for this video on unoriginality is itself unoriginal.)

… If you weren't willing to listen all the way to the end of the previous video, the gist of it is that it plays portions of 65 pop songs all based on the same progression of four chords. I would guess that the list is hardly exhaustive; there are probably lots more songs that could be added to that list.

I would also guess that the same could be said about some other oft-used chord progressions too, like I-vi-IV-V, and the ever-popular I-IV-V (or I-IV-V-IV), I-iii-IV, etc.

Ever hear of something called "Rhythm Changes" in jazz music? I remember my teacher giving this to me to learn when I studied jazz guitar, and after a few weeks it occurred to me to ask him about the origin of the name, and he told me that it is the set of chord changes in "I Got Rhythm" (Gershwin), which has been used in many other songs as well. Read more about this here if you like.

The title of this post — "Originality - Does it have any role in art?" — is mostly tongue-in-cheek; I suspect that most would suggest that it has an essential role in art, but, as I have suggested in at least one earlier blog entry, its importance may be overrated. If I were a pop musician and, in the course of writing a song, discovered that my chord progression was one that someone else had used, it would seem foolish (or at least impractical) to conclude that I oughtn't to continue writing that song because of its lack of originality. I suspect that the odds are extremely slim that I would be able to ever come up with a truly original chord progression while remaining rooted in the functional tonality used by virtually all pop songs.

If you concern yourself too much with the challenge of creating an original chord progression in pop music, you might never finish a song. On the other hand, I suspect that if everything you wrote sounded very much like the music of others, you would have a hard time carving out a niche for yourself that distinguished you from someone else.

I would argue that originality always has a role in art, but it is an impediment to the creative process for an artist to become overly concerned with it (as I have written in another blog), and so maybe the best way to proceed would be to (a) write music you want to hear, but (b) find ways to make that music personal and in some way distinguishable from the music of others.

And if by "original" we mean "unlike anything that has been composed before," we would be hard-pressed to come up with truly original music, and if we did it seems likely that it would be so strange that few could relate to it. Incidentally, I would never suggest that you "shouldn't" write original/unusual music for this reason; write what you would like to hear, and if it's totally bizarre, so be it!

I saw a YouTube video several months ago of a Beatles rehearsal of "I'm So Tired" (John Lennon's song, white album) where Paul was singing the tune in a goofy kind of way, but what struck me most about it was that the chord progression for the main part of the song was I-iv-IV-V, whereas in the final version (sung by John), the second chord is VII (yup, major chord built on the leading tone). A small thing, perhaps, but but using the use of the VII chord is unconventional, and gives the song a significantly-different feel:


… and it seems to me that one of the things that makes Beatles songs so musically compelling was the use of unexpected chords occasionally, while not going so far beyond the expected conventions as to alienate their listeners.

A final point: Borrowing is integral to lots of musical traditions, perhaps most of them. There is the matter of re-use of chord progressions already discussed, but there are frequent re-uses of melodic fragments as well. There is a standard 12-bar blues progression, and many variants of it. In jazz, playing standards — albeit in your own, somewhat original way — is a common practice. Ditto for folk music. I don't know much about rap music, but I understand it is common to borrow (or appropriate) "beats" and entire sampled sections of other songs in the creation of raps. Another very popular YouTube video is on the "Amen Break," a drum fill used in countless R&B and rock songs. And classical music is filled with cadence formulas that we learn in harmony classes, as well as numerous other commonly-used progressions, so it is a practice not just limited to popular/jazz music.

A couple more videos (thanks to MacJammer "Elevator Funk" for pointing out the relationship between these two songs):

De La Soul - "Me Myself And I" (1989)


Funkadelic - "(Not Just) Knee Deep" (1979)


From Wikipedia:

("(Not Just) Knee Deep") is considered a classic by many and has been heavily sampled by many artists. Hip hop group De La Soul sampled the intro to the song in their hit "Me, Myself, and I", which reached #34 on the Billboard Pop Charts and #1 on the R&B Charts.

Also LL Cool J ("Nitro"), Above The Law ("Never Missin A Beat"), Tone Loc ("Funky Cold Medina"), MC Hammer & Deion Sanders ("Straight to My Feet") and Snoop Dogg ("Who Am I (What's My Name)?"), G-Funk Intro & his unreleased track "Do U Remember". Geto Boys sampled the intro for "Homie Don't Play That". Dr. Dre also sampled the baseline beat for his song "Dre Day". The Black Eyed Peas also used the beat behind it to remix their hit single "Shut Up". X-Clan sampled the song in Funkin' Lesson. It was also interpolated in the song "Get Away" by Bobby Brown.

Adding multiple ossia measures in Finale

There appears to be no way to add multiple ossia measures in Finale. An ossia measure is an alternate measure, meaning a bar that illustrates a different way of playing a passage, or that suggests how ornaments might be performed, or that explains how "swing" notes should be performed, etc.

Finale has a handy feature called an "ossia tool," but it has two flaws: It only allows you to add a single ossia measure at a time, and it does not include ties. This last is obviously a glitch, and I see they finally fixed it in Finale 2009, although I believe they still don't allow you to add multiple ossia bars (i.e., alternative version of bars 23-25).

→ The workaround is to create a graphics file of the multiple ossia measures, and paste it in the desired location on the page.

1. Notate the ossia bars somewhere. This could be at the end of your file (i.e., on an extra page), or in a different file. If your ossia bars are on only one staff (as opposed to all staves), you may wish to optimize staff systems for those bars so that only the desired bar is shown (Page Layout Tool/Page Layout Menu). Don't worry about the size; you can adjust that later.

2. Use the Graphics Tool to select the ossia bars (double-click and drag), then choose "Export Selection" from the Graphics menu, and choose the desired format from the dialogue box (EPS, PICT, TIFF; DPI resolution, etc.), and save it to your desired location (some place you can easily find it!). Make sure you choose a very high resolution for best print quality.

3. Go to the page on which the ossia measures will be placed, and choose "Place Graphic" from the Graphics menu (Graphics Tool). It will then ask you to locate the graphics file, and once you do this, click Okay. The ossia measures should show up somewhere on your page; now you just grab the image (click and drag) and position it wherever you wish. If you want to reduce the size, which is common for ossia bars, control-click the graphics image on your page and choose "Edit Graphic Attributes," then enter the desired height and width percentages in the "Scale" section.

• Only thing to add is that this is now attached to your page, so if you change the measures on that page in any way you may have to manually reposition the graphic file.

What now?

Now that the winter semester (2009) course is over, I could let this blog lie dormant until the next course begins (presumably in the fall of 2009), but I may post occasionally during the summer. I sometimes find it helpful to work out work out composition-related thoughts by writing, so even if no one reads the posts, there is some value in the exercise.

Feel free to check in periodically; with any luck there will be something new from time to time.

Done!

Hi all, I just finished several marathon days of marking, and handed in marks for the course. Please pick up your scores from the box outside my door at your earliest convenience; I spent a fair bit of time writing critiques of everyone's compositions, so I hope you have the chance to read them, and that you find them useful.

If you are out of town and want me to send your critique to you electronically, please E-mail me and let me know.

Have a great summer!

Please Submit Recordings

Please send me an MP3 MIDI recording of your second composition I mentioned it in our last class (and it is listed as a requirement in the course outline), so I bring it up it here as a gentle reminder. (ASAP, please.)

Here is the course evaluation procedure, followed by information about participation in the class blog (which is what you are reading now) and your weekly journals, all taken from the course outline:

• Class participation 9%
• Blog participation: 8%
• On-line Journal: 8%
• Weekly compositional preparedness: 25%
• 2 Compositions: 50%

3) Blog participation marks are earned by commenting on, or joining a discussion about, blog entries posted by your instructor. 10 reasonably thoughtful comments will get you full marks.

4) The On-line Journal is your weekly record of (a) class/instructor feedback received, and (b) your brief reaction to it (and any other thoughts you may have about your own composition process). It can be in point form, and need not be more than a paragraph every week.

Some have asked how many journal entries are needed, and while the answer is relatively clear from the above (i.e., one for every week), to make things simpler for all I will set the number at 9. The only thing to add is that it is not too late to post to this blog or your journal; I will make Tuesday, April 14, 5 PM the deadline for doing so, so anything you post before then will be counted.

Keep? Discard?

Simon's guest blog (below; March 16, 2009) mentions having varying degrees of attachment to his own musical ideas, which I suspect anyone who creates things has experienced. You've come up with idea x, which you really like (and to which you become quite attached), but you're not so sure about idea y.

I think this is a normal occurrence in the creative process. More importantly, I think it is an essential aspect of the creative process. If a composer were to like everything s/he created, chances are that composer would be not a very discerning individual, and their music would likely reflect that.

One of the skills that I think composers need to develop is discernment; the ability to evaluate whether idea y is worth pursuing or not.

The difficulty for most student composers, as I have mentioned before, is that their level of musical sophistication exceeds their level of compositional technique.

Why? Because most students begin formal training in composition when they reach university, but, in order to get into a Bachelor of Music programme, they need to have spent years developing skills in one or more instruments, often coupled with some music theory and history training as well. This results in the phenomenon of knowing that a composition, or section, or musical idea, is less than it could be, but not knowing exactly how to go about improving it.

The solution I typically recommend is to just push forward with your musical ideas, even if you are not convinced of their quality, because it is often only by doing this that you discover the potential of that idea to grow into something bigger, or at least something to which you can feel more attached.

It doesn't mean you necessarily keep and develop every musical idea you ever come up with; it just means that you often need to work with an idea a fair bit until you come to a better understanding of what it can develop into.

Should you ever discard your musical ideas?

I don't think so. For two reasons:

1. If you have worked very hard on a musical idea, there is a good chance that it has value.


2. You don't have to use it right away. You may find a use for it later, possibly in a different section of the same piece, or possibly in a different composition. You also may never find a use for it, but since we don't know whether we will eventually find a place for it or not, it makes sense to keep the idea, but just set it aside for now if you don't feel it works in the particular section of your composition for which it was originally intended.

But it all starts with working harder with the musical idea to which you were initially not very attached — not being too quick to give up on it — and frankly, my experience as both a teacher and composer leads me to feel that, if you do this, you will usually find a place for that idea in the composition on which you are working.

Thematic Growth, part 3

[This is a re-post of 2 blogs from last August, since they are relevant to the "Thematic Growth" discussion]

4. The pros and cons of development
(pro) Do not abandon your babies! •Think of your musical ideas as your children (or, if that is too mind-boggling, your pets!). It is your job to help them grow and develop; be a responsible parent/custodian/pet-owner!	(con) Don't let ideas overstay their welcome! •Not all musical ideas need to be developed to their maximum potential. There needs to be a balance between the familiar and unfamiliar. (See below for more on this:)
•Growth is of fundamental importance to the European classical music tradition. It is essential to extend, develop, or otherwise 'grow' your musical ideas during the course of a composition.	•Is growth of equal importance to other musical traditions? Could a person write a good, extended composition that totally disregards the growth principle?
•How to grow: After you have identified musical ideas you have created (label them idea 1, idea 2, (2.1, 2.2 for variants) etc.), try to extend them. There are many, many ways to do this (see next entry), but the starting point is to want your ideas to grow. Yes, just like the 'How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb?' joke…*	•(i) Composers all limit the growth of any idea, probably because to do otherwise would make compositions sound like academic exercises. (ii) Consider Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. Is it a model of economy of means? If not, is it 'bad'? What about M's Pno. Cto. #21?

*Only one, but the lightbulb has to want to change.

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5. How to Extend or Develop Musical Materials; Specific Suggestions (may be used in combination with one another)
Repeat…	Vary…	Extend…
•… with different dynamic	•… selected motives (i.e., a, or b, or c, etc.)	• … a + b +b' (or a+b+a', etc.)
•… in a different register	•… truncate	• … continue with similar intervals, i.e., la-do-ti-fa, la-do-ti-fa-mi-so, la-do-ti-fa-mi-so-di-re, etc.
•… with different orchestration	•… invert, retrograde, retrograde inversion	• … reorder same pitches, i.e., la-do-ti-fa, do-ti-la-fa, la-ti-fa-do, etc.
•… with different harmony	•… insert/subtract rests	• … combine previous two, i.e., la-do-ti-fa, la-ti-fa-mi, so-fi-la-si-ti-la-fa-mi, etc.
•… in a different mode	•… reorder, interpolate (insert), substitute	• … using similar or different rhythms.
•… with different counterpoint	•… make nonretrogradable	• … make sequence
•… with different texture (i.e., pointillism, thicker, thinner, etc.)	•… rhythm	• …turn into a transition (how? Discuss…)
•… with different accompaniment figure	•… shift rhythmic emphasis, rotate	• … add dissimilar materials
•… in a different tempo	•… augmentation or diminution of all or any portion	• … gradually change character.
•… in a different meter	•… mode	• … create a dialogue
•… in a different key/transposition	•… articulation	• … reverse roles (melody/accompaniment)
•… with overlap	•… selected intervals	• … continue linear contour

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Guest Blog — Simon (Thematic Growth, part 2)

Simon wrote a remarkably thoughtful blog in response to my previous entry ("Thematic Growth"), and I thought I would post it here as a "guest blog" with his permission, since I fear not too many people would see it otherwise. (I would be happy to post "guest blogs" more often, if you think it is a good idea.)

SIMON MACKIE: I started out writing a reply to the blog entry on the main page, but it turned into a bit of a rant, I guess, so I decided to run with it and post it as full entry on its own. Here it is:

It's strange--I have two completely different mindsets and methodologies when I'm composing "art music" versus "popular music" (I strongly dislike those terms, but it gets my point across). With the latter I have no problem repeating ideas and figurations. If I have a cool countermelody that goes on behind the vocal or main guitar/keyboard line, I'm eager to reuse it and let it go on at length. I'll bring back a chorus three times if I think it's good enough. But with the former kind of music I feel pressured to keep changing things. Why? I'm not really sure. I have to force myself to develop some ideas, convincing myself that people aren't going to be bored hearing it the second time around. Though, in both styles I'm still driven by the fear of sitting on one chord for too long (though I'm getting a little better and allowing passages of harmonic stasis). More than just worrying about whether an idea has reached its full potential (as Kim mentions), I worry about whether I should even be using my ideas. Sometimes I come up with an idea that I'm so attached to, I don't want to use it until I can write the perfect context for it to fit in. Two reasons why: the insecurity of not coming up with as good an idea again; and not wanting it to stand out against surrounding ideas that maybe aren't as good.

Guess it all boils down to insecurity, doesn't it? It's really tough to separate ourselves from our pieces--because that's like tearing ourselves apart. Then we have to rely on our limited scope of objectivity without totally rejecting the subjective. Examining it pragmatically versus viscerally.

We also have the option of relying on an outside source of opinion. Even this presents a fair share of problems. Even if we accept external opinions, we will still weigh them against our own two views. For instance, take the following three scenarios, provided that your subjective view is that your idea is good.

-If the External matches your Objective, but disagrees with your Subjective, you face your original dilemma--though possibly in a more balanced manner depending on how committed you are to it.
-If the External disagrees with your Objective, but matches your Subjective (this may seem slightly odd), it's further reinforcement.
-If the External coincides with your Objective, which also matches your Subjective, you've probably hit the spot.

There are many other situations which would arise if you feel that your idea isn't any good but think people would like it. And, of course, all kinds of other results depending on the circumstances.

I definitely didn't answer any questions, and have probably created a whole new level of questions, but it was good to see the questions out there in the first place and see how other people react to the same dilemma.

Thematic growth, part 1

I see I have not posted anything in about 2 weeks, so I'd better get busy!

I mentioned in yesterday's class that many in-progress compositions I hear have opening ideas that are immediately captivating, but the material often feels to me as if it is truncated before having reached some sort of completion or fulfillment, and other ideas introduced. This is a relatively-common occurrence when learning compositional craft, and I suspect that even experienced composers find themselves struggling with this on occasion. I do, anyway.

I think it arises in part because of the extreme disproportion between the length of time it takes to compose a work and the length of time it takes to hear the finished composition; you often spend days working on a musical idea that may take only 30 seconds to play.

Because of this, it is often useful to just write a single line at great length, maybe 32 bars or longer, without concerning yourself with harmony, counterpoint, or orchestration. You develop a better sense of the theme as a complete entity, which in turn gives you a better sense of how to construct a composition whose proportions 'feel' right.

For ideas that are colour based — the principal interest is harmonic, textural, or the orchestration — this technique works less well, but you may be be able to adapt it by writing your harmonic progression on one or two staves which continue for as long as the progression needs to last. You could also insert indications such as, "flutes and oboes here," "only use bass-register instruments," or "light, transparent texture," to guide you when you come back to orchestrate or otherwise expand your short score to its fuller form.

Do all musical materials need to be worked out to their full potential? Absolutely not! But a sense that none of the ideas has reached some kind of musical maturity may lead to a feeling of dissatisfaction about the composition in general for listeners.

Incidentally, just because you work out an idea to achieve its full potential beforehand doesn't mean you have to use the idea in its entirety the first (or any) time the listener hears it. You could introduce it in snippets, interrupted by a contrasting idea, gradually working its way to the full presentation of the idea.

Don't buy it? I have a theory that all composers are contrarians to varying degrees. When a teacher says, "avoid parallel fifths," an aspiring composer may say, "oh yeah? We'll just see about that!" and decide to write a piece using nothing but parallel fifths, and ditto for any other musical 'rule' or 'guideline.' So, even as I write this, a part of my brain is saying, "but wouldn't it be cool to write a piece with absolutely no sense of thematic growth or fulfillment whatsoever?

My answer would be, sure; absolutely! It's certainly worth a try. But centuries of classical music practice suggest it is important to learn how to 'grow' your musical materials in a natural and organic way, which is why composition teachers often encourage their students to develop the skill and patience to work on this.

Final Project

Hard to believe, but there are only 5 weeks and 3 days of classes left in the semester (starting Monday). Our plan had been to spend about 5 weeks on the first project and 7 weeks on the second, but we must now adjust that plan somewhat to factor in the extra time we spent on the first project, the time it has taken to prepare for performances of this project, and the delays we experienced due to weather-related cancellations.

Here is the situation: I had originally proposed writing a piece for wind band as the second project, about 5 minutes in length, but last week I said you could write for a chamber ensemble of your choice (but run the idea by me first, please) instead, or write for string orchestra, or even a small symphony orchestra. While writing for concert band is still a great idea, it is a very ambitious undertaking, and you need to be practical and ask yourself what the likelihood of completing it will be, considering that we are approaching student recital and jury season, end of term projects, exams, etc.

If you still want to compose for band, however, I will support your decision and help you in whatever way I can. Here are some suggestions for how to approach writing a band piece, but they can also be used if composing for any other type of ensemble:

1. Compose using "short score" format. Essentially, this means writing something that looks like it could be piano music (i.e., written on treble and bass clefs), or possibly piano music with an extra staff thrown in. This gives you better control of the composing process. Much easier to get a sense of the form and create longer lines when you can write 4-5 systems of music on one page, as opposed to one humungous system per page.


2. Write annotations on on your short score that indicate the instruments you think should play particular sections or lines of music. For example, you could write "clarinets and flutes in octaves" over a line, or "brass" over a chorale-like chord progression.


3. It is usually best to begin 'orchestrating' ('bandating'?) your score after you have completed the previous two steps, but there is no rule about this; the orchestration could be done as you go as well.


4. Don't overscore. There is nothing wrong with having huge sections of your band piece with rests in the majority of the instruments. Overscoring — writing a dense and confused score — is a mark of an inexperienced/insecure orchestrator, so try to be bold and include many thinly-scored sections. Save a tutti for a special moment in the music.


5. Since you have a fairly wide variety of instruments at your disposal, consider using colour, texture, or density as organizing principles.


6. Remember that most music fits into foreground-background roles (prominent-supportive), or foreground-middleground-background roles. Work really hard at not confusing the listener as to what they are meant to be hearing most prominently. A relatively-thin texture can help clarify this.


7. Are there some techniques or styles you've heard (or heard of) that you'd like to try? Minimalism, world music, fusion, klangfarbenmelodie, etc.? Sometimes a good way to begin is just to pick something you're excited by and then try writing a composition that uses some elements of that style or technique.

Composition Class Concert - 7 PM, 27 February, 2009, P-C Hall.

Today's blog is about the upcoming concert - programme order, performers list, and dress rehearsal order (please provide any missing details in the comments area below).

Programme Order

Jon Rowsell — Brass Quintet #2
Jennifer Murphy, trumpet; Heidi Adams, trumpet; Jill Abbott, horn; Philip Holloway, trombone; Jon Rowsell, tuba

Jill Abbott — The Whirlpool (after Jane Urquhart)
Jennifer Murphy, trumpet; Heidi Adams, trumpet; Jill Abbott, horn; Philip Holloway, trombone; Jon Rowsell, tuba

Kim Codner — Quartet for Changing Time
Kim Codner, flute; Melissa Williams, clarinet; Kalen Thomson, violin; Ian Baird, piano

Simon Mackie — for the girl who got away
Katie Noseworthy, clarinet; Jennifer Emberley, english horn; Megan Buffett, viola; Josh White, double bass; Simon Mackie, piano

Jennifer Vail — Of Pearls and Stars (Heinrich Heine)
Erin Milley, soprano; Stephen Ivany, tenor; Kate Bevan-Baker, violin; Saird Larocque, cello; Ian Baird, piano

Michael Bramble — The Looking Glass
Heidi Adams, trumpet; Scott Latham, marimba; Kate Bevan-Baker, violin; Michael Bramble, synthesizer; Dylan Varner-Hartley, piano

Intermission

Meg Warren — Womanizer? (after Britney)
Meg Warren, soprano; Richard Klaas, Marimba; Scott Latham, percussion; Ian Baird, piano

Jessica Blennis — subconscious
Mitchell Hamilton, flute; Nelle Duinker, oboe; Richard St. Onge, cello; Ian Baird, piano

Melissa Butt — The Giving Tree (Shel Silverstein)
Melissa Butt, narrator; Stephen Hynes, flute; Richard Klaas, marimba; Kate Bevan-Baker, violin; Saird Larocque, cello

Dylan Varner-Harley — untitled
Richard Klaas, marimba; Kate Bevan-Baker, violin; Amy Spurr, violin; Kalen Thomson, viola; Saird Larocque, cello

Kate Bevan-Baker — The Crocodile's Toothache (Shel Silverstein)
Erin Milley, soprano; Kate Bevan-Baker, violin; Amy Spurr, violin; Kalen Thomson, viola; Saird Larocque, cello

• Please note that the compositions of Neil Bussey and Saird Larocque cannot be performed.

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Dress Rehearsal Timetable – Petro-Canada Hall, Friday, 27 February

1:00 

1:20

1:40

2:00 Kate Bevan-Baker

2:20 Dylan Varner-Hartley

2:40 Michael Bramble

3:00 Melissa Butt

3:20

3:40

NOT AVAILABLE FROM 4:00 – 5:00 PM

5:00 Simon Mackie

5:20 Meg Warren

5:40 Jessica Blennis

6:00

6:20 Kim Codner

Group Composition Lessons - Pros and Cons

Learning composition in a class format has its plusses and minuses. I've been thinking about this for a while, so I thought I would try to list a few, and ask for your thoughts on the issue.

Plusses:

• Students get to hear each other's work on a weekly basis, which can create a sense of shared mission, and can foster a supportive and positive learning environment.
• Hearing others' works in progress can give us ideas we can use in our own compositions.
• Commenting on the works of others can help develop critiquing skills, and the more developed these are, the better we can critique our own music.
• Students can draw upon classmates' performance skills to arrange readings of works in progress, and to get tips on how to write idiomatically or use extended performance techniques for the instruments they play.
• Feedback given to any particular student is often relevant to other students.
• It gives students multiple perspectives on their compositions, which, since perspective about one's own creations is easy to lose, is particularly valuable.

Minuses:

• There is less time for individual feedback.
• It makes it harder to deal with details, and, as I think everyone understands by now, details are of tremendous importance in composing music.
• The peer feedback process works really well when you get useful feedback, but it works less well when people either don't comment, or don't feel comfortable saying anything 'critical' about others' work.

Any other plusses and minuses you can think of?

What do you think of the the group composition class format?

Running into a Brick Wall

"Running into a brick wall" is, in this case, a metaphor for getting stuck, something that everyone who has tried to create something (music, books, art, science, relationships, etc.) has probably experienced. Things may go reasonably well up to a certain point, but then you begin to struggle with whatever it is you are trying to create, and, if the struggle continues, you begin to feel like you are stuck; you've tried x, y, and z, but none of them worked, and you may feel at a loss as to how to proceed.

I wrote about this in part 8 of my "Composition Issues" series that I posted last August, and, because I know that at least one of you is feeling stuck right now, I thought I would revisit and significantly expand the part of that blog that deals with this issue:

There is no simple solution for feeling stuck, so you may need to try several approaches until you discover one (or more) that helps you get out of your predicament. Here are some options:

1. Stop the piece you are writing and begin again. I keep a compositional "recycling" bin for ideas that didn't get very far. I once spent about 6 months working on a composition, but I eventually became so frustrated with it I packed it away and started a new and completely different piece ("Steppin' Out"), which I think I finished in about a month. The abandoned piece had something like 15 minutes of music completed, but I could never bring myself to even look at it again; too many bad memories.


2. The "boot camp" approach, AKA Suck it up, soldier! Bull your way through that brick wall until you break through! The main requirements for this are stubbornness on an epic scale and an extremely hard head. The upside is that it sometimes works! [This was the approach I used to finish "Dream Dance", for instance, ten years after having started it; the opening 30 seconds had been gathering dust in the compositional recycling bin mentioned above during that time.] The downside is that it can really make your head hurt.


3. When feeling stuck, we tend to focus our energies on getting unstuck from that point forwards. It sometimes turns out that the root of the problem was much earlier in the composition. We may need to go back several pages to identify the point where things began to go awry, and then 'fix' it from that point forwards. We may need to scrap (or at least set aside) several pages of music, but it will be worth it if doing so results in a better piece.


4. Take a break – do something else for a while. Frequently all we need is a different perspective, which may be gained by simply not thinking about the piece for a couple of days.


5. Analyze your music. We learn analytical tools to help us understand music better, but you might be surprised at how often composers don't fully understand their own music until they analyze it. The composition process is inherently subjective, which makes it easy to lose perspective on your composition, but analysis forces you to think more objectively about it. Don't just scan the score to figure out where the major sections are; do a full structural analysis that includes pitch centers, cadence points and types, phrase structure, musical character, and formal structure.


6. Did you have a plan? If not, now would be a good time to make one. A good starting point would be to analyze what you have written, then make your plan based on that (but don't be afraid to change what you have written if it doesn't fit the plan).


7. Lower the bar! Stop trying to write great (or even good) music! We can sometimes put too much pressure on ourselves when we do that. You may have to lower your level of expectations in order to finish the piece. You can always come back to it later, if you wish, and tinker away at sections that are less than you feel they could be. But frankly, my advice is generally to finish the piece, then start your next piece; your tenth composition will likely be better than your first one, or your first few, but you won't get to your tenth composition until you finish the one on which you are currently working!


8. Exercise. Some scientists suggest that strenuous exercise releases endorphins in the brain that make us feel better. And if you feel better, you might be able to think more clearly about how to get out of the 'writer's block' that you are experiencing.


9. Perspective; use it or lose it. That comes from a Richard Bach book (Illusions) – the point being that you may be stuck because you have lost perspective on your music. Aside from taking a break, analysis, or exercise, another way of gaining some perspective on your music is to show it to others (your teacher, another teacher, your classmates, a non-musician) to see what they might suggest. I have gotten some great suggestions about my music from my wife, who is not a musician.


10. Listen to other compositions that are in some way similar to yours. If you are writing a string quartet, listen to a few different models and study the scores as you do so. If you are writing for a non-standard collection of instruments, just listen to different examples of chamber music while studying the score. The models don't have to be of music composed in the last 50 years, but it probably would help if some were. Or just listen to any music, even if it has nothing to do with what you are writing; you may get some ideas that way.

• Getting stuck is common, so perhaps the most important thing to remember is that it is a normal part of the creative process. If you can learn to take it in stride you are less likely to stay stuck for very long.

• Sometimes, the solution(s) you come up with to being stuck end up being the the most inspired part of your composition. Here is an axiom that may sound trite or corny, but it is true, or at least it is if you allow yourself to see things this way:

Challenges present opportunities for inspired solutions.

Concert Date

WHAT: Composition Class Recital (1st project)
WHEN: Friday, 27 February at 7PM
WHERE: Petro-Canada Hall, Memorial University School of Music

We also have PC Hall from 1-4 PM and 5-7 PM that day, for warm-ups and dress rehearsals.

COMPOSITION DUE DATE: Monday, 16 February, in class.

Looking forward to the concert!

Festival Feedback, Please

The Newfound Music Festival, which had its final concert this past Saturday night, involved more than 100 performers this year, if you include the 4 evening concerts, the student performers concert, and the performance of Terry Riley's "In C" that took place Thursday at 9 AM. We also had 12 presentations on that Thursday, the list of which was posted in my previous blog.

If you figure that everyone involved spent a number of hours preparing for their various performances and presentations, and add in the administrative hours spent planning the event, you could estimate that perhaps over 1000 hours were spent on this year's festival…

All of which begs the question: Do you think the festival is a worthwhile endeavor?

And, while I am at it, here are a few more questions; answer as many or as few as you wish:

• What concerts did you attend?
• What did you think of them?
• What Thursday events did you attend, and what did you think of those you attended?
• How do you feel about being required to attend some of the Thursday presentations or evening concerts?
• Would you have attended as many presentations and recitals if you had not been required to do so?
• Do you have any ideas as to how we could get more students to take in festival events without making them required?
• Make a rough estimate of the percentage of the students at the School of Music who did not attend any of the Thursday presentations, and/or who attended only one of them.
• Do you have any suggestions for things you'd like to see/hear at future festivals, or things that you feel could be improved?

Newfound Music Festival - Thursday Daytime Events

The Newfound Music Festival begins on Wednesday evening with a concert sponsored by the Sound Symposium. There are concerts on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings as well, and below you will find the Thursday schedule. Almost all classes are cancelled that day, so I hope that you will take the opportunity to attend as many of the presentations as you can.

Time	Location	Presentation
9:00	Eleanor Mews Jerrett Instrumental Room	"In C" - Terry Riley's Minimalist Classic – It’s a JAM! Bring your instrument or voice! Chris Miller, conductor
	MU 2025	Melanie Redmond: Pedagogical Considerations in Selected Piano Works by Clifford Crawley
10:00	Charles W. Hutton Choral Room	Panel Discussion: Ki Adams, Paul Bendzsa, Scott Godin, Andrea Rose & Clark Ross: Bringing Your Creativity to the Classroom
	MU 2025	Ian Sutherland: Contemporary Sonic and Visual Arts as Sites for Knowing
11:00	Petro-Canada Hall	Larysa Kuzmenko: Retrospective I
12:00	School of Music Lobby	SMS Lunch Mingle and chat about the day, hosted by the student music society!
	Eleanor Mews Jerrett Instrumental Room	Paul Bendzsa & Richard Blenkinsopp: Interface; spatial music
1:00	DF Cook Recital Hall	Postprandial Recital – Talented students perform music from the recent past
	MU 2025	Scott Godin: Composing for High School Band
2:00	Charles W. Hutton Choral Room	Clark Ross: John Weinzweig; Composer – Maverick
	DF Cook Recital Hall	Chamber Orchestra Open Rehearsal with conductor Vernon Regehr and composer Clifford Crawley
3:00	Petro-Canada Hall	Larysa Kuzmenko:  Retrospective II
	MU 2025	Leila Qashu: Negotiating gender through dance among Arsi Oromo youths in Ethiopia

Atonality = Noise?

All comments that I have read in response to my previous entry were very thoughtful, and today's blog entry grows from one of those comments.

Simon wrote, "It's unfortunate that so much atonal music that we're exposed to (at least in my experience) forces us to equate it with noise."

I suspect that many fellow students would agree with this sentiment, and it has made me wonder how true that is, and why, if true, that might be the case.

I think that we are exposed to far more atonal music than we may perhaps realize; it has been used in the soundtracks to many movies and TV shows, but because the music's function is to serve the the drama, we tend not to process the fact that it is atonal.

On the other hand, I would guess that most music students' conscious exposure to atonality comes in the context of history and theory classes, and I wonder if there is something about the way we are teaching these classes that would lead many (or at least some) students to "equate it with noise."

What do you think?

Atonal — Even the word sounds unpleasant!

I find above all that the expression, 'atonal music,' is most unfortunate--it is on a par with calling flying 'the art of not falling,' or swimming 'the art of not drowning.' Arnold Schoenberg, Style and Idea, p.210

Do you have an unpleasant connotation with the word, "atonal?"

If you do, you're not alone; most people who understand what "tonality" means probably don't feel very warm and fuzzy about the concept of atonality.

But, strictly speaking, all that is meant by the word is that the music in question is not based on tonality. It doesn't really tell us anything about what the music is based on.

So, "atonal" could be applied to medieval plainchant, renaissance masses, most Debussy piano preludes, etc., or it could be referring to a work that involves hitting the keys of a piano with an aluminum (so as not to mar the surface of the bat) baseball bat with reckless abandon. It could be referring to "Le Marteau Sans Maitre" by Pierre Boulez, or to "L'histoire du Soldat" by Igor Stravinsky, or to minimalist works by Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and John Adams, or even parts of "Toontown Follies" by yours truly. It could refer to music that is as deeply moving and beautiful as any music ever composed, or it could be applied to very harsh, disturbing music.

"Atonal" doesn't necessarily equate with "highly dissonant." Don't try too hard to write dissonant music in order to make it sound atonal, unless you feel comfortable going there.

Explore the various sonorities that can be created by the scales and modes that you created for our first project of the semester. There is no ban on the use of major or minor triads; I am hoping that your scales will lead you to discover other sonorities that you like and feel can be used in your compositions, and if some of the sonorities happen to be major or minor, so be it! No problem!

But just try to use them in ways that go beyond their use in the context of tonality.

Class Business — Odds and Ends

• If Mu4100 students want to comment on a blog from last term, please go ahead. Comments on class blogs from either semester will 'count' towards the class blog participation requirement mark, as long as the comments are made this semester; that's why I posted the list of links in my previous blog entry.


• If you haven't already done so, please send me a quick E-mail with your blog's URL, or, if you're using the same blog as last semester, just let me know. I'll post links to student blogs on the right side of this page, as I did last term.


• If you haven't started your weekly journals, now would be a good time to do so. Bear in mind that I will be counting student journal entries on a weekly basis this semester, because (as explained in my outline) waiting until the semester is over to post all your journals defeats the purpose of the exercise. One paragraph, once a week; that's all you need.


• Good luck with everything!

Blog Index — Organized by Topic

Below is an index of most of the blogs I posted last term. I omitted entries that I didn't think would be very interesting or relevant, mostly because they contained information specific to the Fall-2008 composition course, like reminders of deadlines, concert congratulations, order of class presentation, etc.

Feel free to browse these — you may find some that give you ideas about composition techniques, or that contain useful things to think about when composing. In particular, I hope you will read the first two. They are loosely organized by topic.

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Why Atonal Music?
Express yourself?
Writing a Play
Creative Angst... Welcome to the club!
Notation Software Woes

---

On musical detail
Musical detail addendum
Nuts and bolts [more on musical detail]

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Kandinsky's Theories (1)
Kandinsky's Theories (2)
Kandinsky's Theories (3)

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Project 1 - More Details
Project 2: Using Musical Clichés in Creating Art Music
Project 2: Using a musical style or gesture as a point of departure
Project 2: Recontextualizing and atonality

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Composition Issues (9-part series)

1. Originality and Quality of Initial Musical Ideas
1.1. The quality of ideas may not matter very much in determining the quality of the complete composition that emerges from them; and
1.2. The degree to which these ideas are original may not matter very much. Shocking, isn't it?

2. How do you Develop Compositional Craft?
2.1. Study the music of others.

2.2. Compose as much as you can.

2.3. Invite criticism from others.

3. Understanding your Musical Idea

3.1. Live with it for a while.

3.2. What's it about?

3.3. Does it change character?

3.4. What is its function within the context of the piece?

3.5. Structural Analysis.

3.6. Harmonic (or Pitch, Scale, etc.) Analysis.

4. The Pros and Cons of Development

5. How to Extend or Develop Musical Materials; Specific Suggestions

6. Balancing the Old with the New, the Expected with the Unexpected

7. More Dichotomies to Ponder… 

7.1. Less is more, vs. More is more.

7.2. Always leave them wanting more, vs. Give them what they want.

7.3. Don't treat the listener like an idiot, vs. There's a sucker born every minute.

7.4. There can be 'too much of a good thing,' vs. If you have a good idea, then stick with it!

7.5. The George Costanza approach.

8. I think my idea has run its course. Now what?

8.1. The three models for composers' roles.

8.2. Mastery or Mystery?

8.3. The value of a plan.

8.4. Getting stuck, and possible workarounds.

8.5. Don't obsess!

8.6. Challenges = Opportunities for inspired solutions!

9. Taking your inspiration from wherever you find it

Class Blog & Student Blogs Explained

There are two kinds of blogging in my composition courses: (1) The Class Blog (an example of which you are reading right now), in which I write fairly regular entries (36 last term, but I don't plan as many this term), and (2) Student Blogs (to which there are links on the right side of this page), which are akin to journals.

Here's what they are each designed to do:

1. The Class Blog. My entries are usually an attempt to engender discussion, or at least thought, on topics relating to music composition (something we tend not to have time for in class), and usually fall into any of three main categories:
   
   1.1 Composition issues that you may find useful or interesting to think about, such as various dichotomies that composers wrestle with (i.e., the expected vs. the unexpected, "less is more" vs. "more is more," "always give them what they want" vs. "always leave them wanting more," etc.), notation conventions (i.e., the importance of clarity in the score and how to achieve this – see On Musical Detail, Musical Detail Addendum, Nuts and Bolts), specific notational challenges (i.e., how to notate chance elements, etc.), and aesthetics (such as Kandinsky's Theories);
   
   1.2 Further explanation or information relating to class projects (such as "Why Atonal Music?", written to further explain the rationale behind this aspect of the first Mu3100 project last term, or "Using a Musical Style or Gesture as a Point of Departure," which provided further information on last term's second project); and
   
   1.3 Basic communication, such as reminders of due dates and other course-specific issues, requests for help (i.e., when a student was stuck without a piano player just days before a class concert last term), class cancellations, party notices, etc.
   
   A fourth category that I am considering for this term (Winter, 2009) is links. The type of links I have in mind might include links to articles on anything relating to composition, audio recordings, or to sites that have software that may be of use to composers.


2. Student Blogs, or journals are intended to be primarily a record of feedback received on your weekly composition presentations, as well your response to that feedback. They need not be lengthy — point form is fine — and they need not take more than 5-10 minutes per week to write, especially if you take notes on suggestions as you receive them.
   
   The main reason for them is that thinking about feedback you receive can help you improve your composition. There have been many examples over the years of students getting the same kind of suggestions for several weeks in a row, but never responding in any way to these suggestions. As a teacher, I never knew if this was because the student disagreed with the suggestions, or never really understood them, or maybe just didn't hear/remember them. If a student keeps a journal, however, I can usually figure out pretty quickly whether it's a matter of not understanding, agreeing with, or having heard the suggestions. And if the journal indicates that it's a case of not understanding, then I can try to explain the suggestion in a different way. I have no problem with a student disagreeing with a suggestion, as long as I know they understood it.
   
   Sometimes students comment on other student journal entries, which some have found to be helpful and/or encouraging.
   
   For some students, their weekly blogs become much more than a simple record of comments and responses to those comments. This in no way is expected or required, but it is always interesting to me to read some of the deeper thoughts some have about their music, and the process by which it is created. It helps me better understand both the composition and the person creating the composition. But again, if journalling isn't something you particularly enjoy, do not feel the need to make your weekly entries anything more than a record of comments and your responses. Keep it short and sweet, if you like.

• But why make the blogs compulsory? Well, the simple answer is that past experience would suggest that if I didn't, there would be little student participation in them, and, since I believe they are a good idea, I use a pretty simple marks-based incentive to encourage student involvement.

• What is this 'pretty simple marks-based incentive' of which you speak? It is explained in the course outline, but basically, I'm looking for a brief journal entry every week as explained above, and if you do that you get 10 marks (i.e., 10% of the course grade). If you make a weekly journal entry but NEVER record the feedback you received, you'd get less than 10 marks, but it's hard to say exactly how much less without having a concrete example.

I also ask students to make one brief but thoughtful comment on one of the class blogs every week, and if you do that, you get another 10 marks (i.e., another 10% of the course grade). These also need not take too long, although they might require closer to ten minutes to do than five.

• Do you mark for grammar, spelling, and other nit-picky things? No. I need to understand what you're writing, so these things may have some bearing on that, but no, I am not nit-picky when it comes to grammar, etc. Put a little thought into your blog comment every week and you get an easy 10 marks, and ditto for student journal entries.

• Is there any evidence that students in Mu3100 thought this blogging process was a good idea? Yes; quite a lot! Most of the Mu3100 students in the Fall, 2008 semester had positive things to say about it, and, if interested, you can read their thoughts in their blogs, links to which appear on the right of this page. A sampling of comments:

• "Blogging is a great way for the class to keep in touch and discuss things we can't get around to discussing in class."


• "Man, blogs are fun! I should have been doing these a lot more this semester!"


• "I really appreciate this post as a good reminder of what should be included in the final scores of our compositions."


• "I think the whole blogging thing is a really good idea since it allows us to communicate with each other in a non-classroom setting and we can get our thoughts down in writing instead of passing in papers."

And no, I didn't make those up! Anyway, all I ask is that you keep an open mind about this blogging business and try it on a weekly basis, even if you are skeptical about it. You may find, as I believe most of the Mu3100 students did, that it is a useful and beneficial part of the course, and if you don't, then feel free to suggest changes at the end of the course.

New Year, New Composition Blogs!

Hard to believe, but a new year is upon us! Woo hoo! This term (winter, 2008), I will teaching Mu4100, the title of which ("Advanced Composition") is somewhat misleading, because it really isn't very advanced! It's just a follow-up course to the Mu3100 "Introduction to Composition" course, each of which is one semester long.

The format will likely be similar to the intro course: Works-in-progress will be presented (as readings, mostly) every week for the class, with at least one concert, very possibly two. All students are expected to provide feedback to each others' works. The main difference is that the class size will be smaller. There were 17 students in 3100, and while I'm not sure how many will be in 4100, I understand that it will be a lot smaller, maybe about a dozen or so. A smaller class size should allow for slightly more individual attention and feedback, and should hopefully feel a bit less rushed every class. That said, I've had 12 students in 3100 before, and, assuming four students present works in progress every class, it still leaves only about 12 minutes per student presentation, which isn't very much time.

Another aspect of Mu3100 that will be retained for Mu4100 is blogging — both my own blog (the class blog), and student journals. These two aspects of the course were experiments for me last term, and my perspective is they worked extremely well for most students, which is why they will continue to be a part of the Mu4100 course.

My next entry will have more on this.

FYI...

Just letting you all know that I just handed in the marks for the course, and all of the compositions are ready for pick-up outside my office.

Have a great Christmas!

Farewell, and thanks!

Thanks for all who commented on the various blog entries for this course over the past 3+ months. It has been a pleasure to read them, and I think many of you who read each others' comments feel similarly. It is definitely something I will incorporate into composition classes that I teach in the future. It would be nice to have the luxury of more time in every class in which to discuss issues of relevance to composers, but (a) we don't, and (b) some people seem to find it easier to be more reflective in a blog than they would be in a class discussion, so I think that even if we had time to discuss these things I'd still have a blog.

I have (as of 12 noon today) just finished counting up the number of comments made by each class member, and I must say there were some great comments made in just the past 2-3 days! In any event, the deadline for commenting has now passed, but if you happen to read this and are still in the process of commenting let me know ASAP, and I can still include your comments in my tabulations. But it has to be ASAP because I will be handing in the marks for this course first thing tomorrow morning (Tuesday).

Every member of this class has worked extremely hard this term, and you all have reason to feel very good about all that you achieved.

Best wishes to all, and I hope you have a wonderful Christmas break!

More congratulations, and loose ends

I thought our second student composers concert of the term went exceedingly well tonight, so I extend my congratulations to you all on a job well done! There was definitely more of a 'flying-by-the-seat-of-you-pants' feeling to this one than there was in the first concert, but it all came off very well nonetheless. There were pieces that we heard for the first time in any version tonight; I don't think that's happened before in previous years (usually, the class gets to hear works in progress, as was the case in with the first project).

I wonder if the performers of James' piece (Melissa, Heidi, Saird) would be able to find 20 minutes or so at some point next week to re-record it? If not, James, you can submit your MIDI recording with your score.

In addition to offering my congratulations, I want to tie up a few loose ends, since the course is now all but over:

1. Please come to class at 1PM Monday to fill out the course evaluation questionnaire.
2. We will have a pizza party on Wednesday (at 1 PM). Please confirm your attendance in the 'comments' area below so that I know how much pizza to bring.
3. Final version of scores and parts due 1PM Wednesday.
4. If you have any catching up to do with regards to writing your blog entires and/or commenting on my class blogs, now would be the time. I'll probably be submitting marks for this course a week from Monday, or thereabouts, so if your comments/blog entries do not take place by next weekend, they probably won't be counted.
5. drop by my office periodically beginning in about 8-9 days to look for your compositions. I'll leave them on a chair outside my door.

I guess all that remains is to congratulate you once again on your hard work and all that you have accomplished, and say that I hope each of you continues to compose because you all have a lot of talent and much to express.

Nuts and bolts

I just finished going through a submitted score for this second project, and, in the interest of saving you all some time and potential grief, I'll share with you some of the detail issues that came up. It's all very well to say, "I get it! My score must be more detailed!", but, while you undoubtedly 'get it' in the general sense, there are a lot of specific detail issues that I'm not sure are widely understood, like:

• Tempo indication (i.e., Moderato) should only be at the top of the first line (i.e., violin) in the score, and sometimes above the piano as well, since piano usually reads from the score. But each PART gets its own tempo indication. (In orchestra scores, each instrument family gets its own tempo marking.)


• If you change tempo, use the same format you used at the beginning of your score. In most cases, that will mean having a tempo indication word ("Moderato") as well as a metronome marking ("quarter = 92").


• As just mentioned, the pianist typically reads from the score, presumably because someone in the ensemble needs to know how it all is supposed to fit together. Sometimes the instruments above the piano use slightly smaller staff sizes, in part to make it easier for the pianist to distinguish his/her part from the others, and in part to allow more systems per page. But don't try for, say, 3 systems on a page if doing so results in a cramped appearance.


• EVERY entry following more than a bar of rest should get its own dynamic.


• Hairpins should have a destination dynamic, like "f" if crescendo, or "pp" if diminuendo. They also need a starting dynamic, but it isn't necessary to write a starting dynamic if it is clear from the previous measures what the dynamic should be.


• Don't attach dynamics to rests (!).


• Make sure there are no improperly-grouped rests or beams.


• If writing for wind instruments, where do they breathe? If you whistle through the part at tempo (don't worry if you don't get all the pitches right!), it will make it easier to determine where the best places to breathe would be.


• String bowings MUST be in the score. This doesn't mean the 'up' and 'down' direction indicators, necessarily (although you can put them in when there is some specific direction that you want, like a series of downbows, for example), but it does mean putting slurs over groups of notes that are to be played with one bow. How to do this if you're not a violinist? Go through your string part playing 'air violin' or 'air cello' (in other words, bowing through the music on an invisible instrument; probably best attempted in private!), and feel what the best way to group notes would be. Then, once you have marked in your bowings, take it to a string player and ask them to play through it with a real instrument, and figure out how close you came to achieving what you actually want. If you do this a lot, you eventually develop a natural feel for how best to bow your own music.


• Don't create big, loopy slurs; they tend to collide with other score elements, like other slurs, dynamics, notes, accents, etc.


• Speaking of collisions, AVOID THEM! Notation software sometimes creates (or at least allows) collisions between dynamics and articulations, or slurs and notes, or written instructions and slurs, etc. These must be fixed.


• Be picky in your page layout. If using multiple systems per page (which applies to everybody), make sure the two systems are far enough apart so that dynamics, articulations, slurs, etc. in the bottom line of one system do not collide with anything in the top line of the next system.


• Also, keyboard instruments only need one dynamic, in the space between the LH and RH, unless the LH and RH are playing different dynamics.


• And don't forget to find the clearest enharmonic note spellings possible; notation software is notorious for making poor choices for you in this regard.


• Proof-read everything, especially parts. It's amazing what you can miss if you don't go through every part, bar by bar, checking to make sure all dynamics and other score information are there.

And the winner is...

Just for fun, I thought I'd make a list of the blogs for this course that have received the most comments (as of today).

Right now, two posts are tied with 10 comments each, but, taken by topic, there are two clear current leaders:

• The two musical detail blogs have had a combined 16 comments, and


• The two blogs with explanations of why compositional/stylistic restrictions were imposed ("Why Atonal Music?", and "Express Yourself?") have also had a combined 16 comments.

The three blogs relating to our musical clichés project received 10 total comments, and both the Kandinsky series and my "Composition Issues" series have had 9 comments.

The number of comments received is in the first column. Each blog title is a clickable link:

10    On Musical Detail
10    Why Atonal Music?
7     Next Project: Using Musical Clichés in Creating Art
7     Creative Angst; Welcome to the Club!
6     Musical Detail Addendum
6     Express Yourself?
6     Kandinsky's Theories (1)
6     Notation Software Woes
3     Congratulations
3     Kandinsky's Theories (2)
3     Writing a Play
3     Available Instruments
2     Composition Issues (2)
2     Composition Issues (5)
2     Composition Issues (6)
2     Composition Issues (9)
1     Using a Musical Style or Cliché as a Point of Departure
1     Composition Issues (1)

I'm not sure if there is enough data on which to scientifically base any conclusions, but here are a few possibilities:

• The musical detail blogs may have helped make a number of you more aware of the importance of this issue, and engendered some good discussion;


• Some of you seemed to appreciate having the opportunity to read and discuss the reasons behind the restrictions in projects (Why Atonal Music?, and Express Yourself?);


• The more-philosophical thread about Kandinsky's Theories actually elicited a few more comments than I anticipated, which would suggest that at least some of you like to think and write about these things; and


• My 9-part Composition Issues thread got 9 comments total, which isn't terrible (I guess; but possibly it is!), but no single entry received more than 2 comments. This probably means that it wasn't a great idea to post them all in August, since people tend to be most aware of what ever blog entries are most recent. They are an attempt to get you thinking about issues of potential relevance to composers, so I'll probably continue to recommend them to students in future composition courses.

→ Any further thoughts on this from any of you? What sorts of blogs did you find most interesting, or helpful, or useful?

Below is the screenshot from which this data originated.

Musical detail addendum

Someone asked what I thought was a very fair question following my "On musical detail" blog, and, rather than edit the original blog to clarify this point (it may already be the longest of all my blogs thus far!), I thought I'd answer it here.

The question:

What's wrong with using English terminology? Lots of composers used their native tongue; Debussy in French, Bach in German, Ives in English... I'm just curious as to why it's such a big deal to write in Italian or German when our primary language is English.

Here is my response:

Let's start with the following assumptions:

(1) A musical score is written in code. It is a code that not everyone can understand, even excellent musicians sometimes (we frequently hear that the Beatles couldn't read music, for example).

(2) What we as composers are trying to do is to use this code to communicate our intentions as clearly as possible, so that performers trained in the interpretation of the code can translate it into music that sounds as good (or even better) than we imagined it.

Everything I wrote about in my previous blog stems from these assumptions, especially #2.

With regard to language, it is true that composers write instructions in dozens of different languages in musical scores, like English, Spanish, German, French, Russian, Italian, etc.

But of all these, the one language that is most widely understood by classical musicians, at least when it comes to performance instructions (tempo, dynamics, and expressive markings), is Italian, so, from a purely practical point of view, it works best to give these kinds of instructions in Italian.

I would guess that most classical music students in North America are not well-enough versed in German to understand many German terms found in scores, and French instructions may not be widely understood outside of Canada and other French-speaking countries either.

English instructions are readily understood throughout most of North America, as well as in and many other places in the world, but, as I pointed out in my last blog, they resulted in some confusion during the ECM workshop last week since it is a predominantly French-speaking ensemble.

Therefore, from a purely pragmatic point of view it makes sense to use Italian terms for most of the common text information needed in a score, because that is what classical musicians are used to seeing.

That said, if there are times when the instruction you want is not a commonly-used Italian term, then by all means, write it in English! (But just be sure that there isn't a widely-understood Italian term that conveys the gist of your meaning before reverting to English.)

On musical detail

This past Thursday (November 13, 2008), four of our students had a wonderful opportunity to have their compositions read by the Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal (ECM) under the direction of Véronique Lacroix, artistic director and conductor of the ensemble.

All composition/theory majors had been invited in early September to apply for this opportunity with the understanding that only four could be selected. A special composition course was set up for the four students, which consisted of a weekly two-hour meeting with Dr. Godin and myself, with the aim of composing a chamber music work (flute, bass clarinet, trombone, violin, and percussion) that the ECM would read.

One of the things that Dr. Godin and I stressed frequently (to the point of nagging, probably!) was the importance of musical detail in preparing a score and parts — It is an essential ingredient in conveying a sense of professionalism and compositional competence to the musicians performing your music.

Most of us have our music performed by friends when we start out as composers, and friends tend not to nit-pick too much when it comes to missing details. However, if your goal is to have your music performed by professionals, a thoroughly detailed-score is essential.

You've probably heard the saying that you don't get a second chance to make a first impression? Well, this truism applies to the scores you prepare as well, and the element that probably influences performers/conductors the most when making an initial evaluation of a score by an unknown composer is the professionalism in the appearance of the score, AKA musical detail. And, no matter how wonderful your music may be, if it doesn't make it past a conductor's initial evaluation stage, it isn't going to be performed.

The point of this blog is simple: If the score is impeccably prepared, it creates a good first impression; if it isn't, it the composer faces an uphill battle to gain the confidence of the conductor and performers.

Two more analogies, just because I am fond of analogies!

1. It's like having two strikes against you before you even step into the batter's box.
2. It's like showing up for a job interview with the remnants of your breakfast distributed generously and equitably over your face and clothes. :p

Of course, even an impeccably-prepared score needs to have something else going for it if a professional ensemble to commit to actually programming it on a concert, but the point is that an absolutely brilliant composition is unlikely to draw much interest or support if the score is poorly prepared.

Unless you're famous, in which case none of this applies... :)

In the workshop, issues that kept coming up (and slowing down the rehearsal) included:

• Missing, unclear, or inconsistent dynamics;
• Missing, unclear, or inconsistent articulations;
• Missing rehearsal letters in some parts;
• Use of English words (i.e., smoothly) as opposed to more standard, Italian terms (legato), which was an issue because the ensemble is predominantly francophone;
• The impracticality of including a page full of performance notes at the start of the score (partly because not all musicians read English, but partly because, as we were told, the conductor and musicians are unlikely to actually read these instructions! "If it relates to the music," we were told, "then put it in the music!"
• Use of a key signature (a rarity in contemporary music, and, because of that, completely overlooked by one of the performers).
• Questions on breathing, bowing, phrasing, and pedaling (although there was no piano in the ensemble, there were nevertheless pedaling issues; percussion instruments included a high-hat, vibraphone, and timpani, and there was a question as to how to pedal all three when this particular percussionist had only two feet, and elected to use one on which to stand!).

All of these missing or unclear musical details resulted in valuable (and expensive) rehearsal time lost, a significant concern when each composer had only a half hour of rehearsal time available. For that reason alone, it is important to produce more detailed scores.

But they also resulted in, I think, some uncomfortable moments for the student composers; having a conductor point out flaws in your score in front of the ensemble and all other workshop attendees is not a very pleasant experience, even if the conductor does so graciously, which she did.

Unfortunately, many conductors and performers are not nearly as polite, in which case the situation can become downright mortifying. Yes, I am speaking from personal experience!

Two more issues that I don't believe came up during the workshop readings, but which come up all the time in our class, are

1. Strange enharmonic spellings, and
2. unmusical rhythm notation,

The blame for these is often placed on whatever computer notation software that a student happens to be using, but IMO, it often comes down to a combination of carelessness and disregard for basic conventions learned in music rudiments courses (like notating rhythms to reflect the main beat and its subdivisions).

A good rule of thumb: Avoid information overload. Find the simplest way to notate your ideas. Consider the following two examples; they sound the same, but one is a lot easier to read than the other because it has less information:













So, as we reach the home-stretch of the final project for this course, I encourage you all to learn vicariously from the workshop experience of your fellow students and aim to produce professional-quality, musically detailed and easily-understood scores! And, if that is not incentive enough, remember that your mark will be better if you manage to do this, as indicated in the course outline.

Recontextualizing and atonality

Yet another blog entry based on a response I just made to a student comment...

A comment made about my previous blog ("Express yourself?") was: "At the same time, I don't think there needs to be an atonal section in everyones piece just to be creative and different. I think someone who has a completely tonal piece can set up unexpected passages just as well."

I agree completely!

I hope I haven’t been conveying a sense to the class that all pieces in the current project must veer into atonality, because I certainly don’t feel that way.

However, when I wrote my previous blog I was becoming concerned that, in the early stages of this project, some of the pieces I was hearing did not seem to be venturing very far beyond the cliché or idiom upon which they were based — If I were to listen to those pieces without knowing that they were intended as a recontextualization exercise, I wasn’t sure I would have been able to figure it out.

While it is clearly possible to write good music within a particular style or cliché, that was not the point of this project, so the possibility that some compositions might not have been heading in this direction concerned me.

One of the primary objectives in any of the composition assignments I give is to get students thinking about music in a way they might not otherwise do, AKA “thinking outside the box.” If a composition is not clearly distinguishable from the style or idiom upon which it is based, it probably means the student composer was not thinking sufficiently “outside the box” when writing it.

Which, to bring this back to the above student comment, is why I so often encourage/coerce(!) students to consider introducing atonality into their compositions. It is a way of recontextualizing a cliché or idiom, and it also compels the composer to make a personal discovery of a new harmonic language, something that the teacher in me feels is essential.

There are other ways, of course! But, quite frankly, I think that introducing atonality (or at least something other than diatonic or chromatic harmony) into a composition makes the task of recontextualization a lot easier than not doing so, in most cases.

Express yourself?

Possibly you saw the title of today's blog entry and were giddily anticipating reading about the Madonna song of the same name ("Don't go for second best baby, put your love to the test..."), and, if so, you may be disappointed to discover that it's just an entry on — you guessed it! — expressing yourself within the context of a composition course (like, say, Music 3100, for instance!). My apologies to all who may be feeling aggrieved over this, but perhaps you will find it an interesting topic anyway.

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Did you take this course with the expectation that it would afford you the opportunity to freely express yourself through music? Composition may be like no other music course in terms of this expectation, at least amongst some students.

We do not expect this freedom in performance-related courses, even if we can agree that performing the works of others can (and, IMO, must!) involve an element of personal expression, and we certainly don't have it in courses like 1st- and 2nd- year music theory, or renaissance and baroque counterpoint, where we learn (amongst other things) to compose "in the style of" other composers and periods.

The only other course I can think of where there might be a similar expectation of the freedom to express oneself is Improvisation, but even in that course there are conventions to be learned. Group improvisation involves listening to others and working collectively with what you hear more than it does unrestricted personal expression.

As I think you have all discovered, even composition courses involve some restrictions on expressive freedoms. Each of the project guidelines/descriptions in this course, for instance, set out goals and limits within which each student had to work.

There is still tremendous freedom within these limits, but they are there all the same. You couldn't write tonal music for the first project, for example (at least not if you wanted to do well in the course!). And yet, as I think we all heard during our class recital last Thursday, everybody managed to write very personal and individual music within the limits, which was great, and exactly how it should be!

The idea of compositional restrictions can come as something of a disappointment for some students, unfortunately, and perhaps understandably so, since composition, like writing stories, novels, or plays, or creating any art, tends to be regarded as an activity based on complete freedom of expression. What business do composition professors have restricting students' creative impulses? Who do they think they are, anyway???!

Well, here's the way I think of it:

If you were to write a short story and submit it to a magazine for publication, there would be an excellent chance that your story would be rejected. Famous writers sometimes keep boxes filled with rejection slips — it seems to go with the territory — as a reminder of how long they had to persevere before becoming successful.

But let's say you took your story to an experienced editor who told you in very specific terms what was wrong with it. Perhaps it was in need of plot development, or it had technical issues such as faulty grammar, overuse of the same words, misuse of other words, overuse of 'etc.,' etc. :p

What would you do?

1. Decide the editor is an idiot who doesn't know what s/he is talking about, and just keep sending the same story, unchanged, to as many journals as you can think of, in hopes that someone will one day see what a great story it is (after all, someone's got to win the lottery, right?).


2. Take the editor's advice to heart, and work at fixing the story.


3. All of the above (i.e., decide the editor's an idiot but take the advice to heart anyway!).


4. Berate yourself for allowing yourself to think that you could ever be a writer (believe me, most successful composers and writers have had thoughts along these lines at some point(s) in their lives!).

There are probably a few other options too, but hopefully, most of you would elect to go with option 2 on this!

Composing music is not a perfect analogy to story-writing, of course, but there are many parallels between them. Both, at their best, represent a mixture of conventions, creativity, and technique.

My goal as a composition teacher is to (a) encourage creativity, but, more importantly, (b) help you develop the technique to express that creativity.

And that is why every project has some restrictions!

Congratulations

On Thursday, 6 November, we had our first student composition concert, and all went well. More accurately, all went extremely well! I have already told you how impressed I was by the music you wrote and the professionalism with which it was performed, but don't just take it from me! Below are a couple of E-mails received from my colleagues that I thought you might like to read:

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On 8-Nov-08, at 10:27 AM, Rob Power wrote:

Hi Clark,

I just wanted to pass along my congratulations to you and the composition class for the outstanding concert on thursday night. These recitals are always fun and interesting, but this one was particularly creative. I also very much appreciated their professional attitude and support of one another. What a great bunch of composers and performers!

Please pass my thanks along to the group.

Rob

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On 7-Nov-08, at 11:18 AM, Paul Bendzsa wrote:

Hi Clark:

I was able to attend most of the first 1/2 of the concert last night. Fabulous! It was surprisingly fresh and and refreshing to hear so much originality.

Congratulations to all!

Paul

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Dr. Kristina Szutor and Dr. Scott Godin also relayed to me their enthusiastic enjoyment of the music they heard at the concert.

You did exceptionally well, so give yourselves a pat on the back (if you can reach; otherwise, ask someone else to perform this task for you)!

Using a musical style or gesture as a point of departure

Picking up on a issue raised in yesterday's class, perhaps the central challenge with in this project is the question of how to draw upon the source of your cliché (i.e., blues/disco/fiddle music, etc.) without making it sound like the actual genre upon which the music is based?

In my description for this project, I wrote:

"Your aim should be to write something that falls into the art music tradition. The question of what exactly constitutes the "art music tradition" is well worth considering and discussing, but for now just think of it as an attempt to create art through music."

and...

"Your aim in this, as in all our projects, will be to try to write music that fits somewhere in the continuum of contemporary art music."

Perhaps I should have written "the continuum of contemporary classical music," because "art music" may strike some as a rather pretentious term. What music ISN'T art music? (Rhetorical question; don't answer it!)

But all labels for contemporary classical music are problematic. Ask any composer how they respond when a stranger questions them about the kind of music they write, and chances are you will get a number of different answers, followed by an admission that we really don't know what to call the type of music we write, at least not when talking to people who don't normally hear this kind of music.

Possibly this is part of the reason this music isn't more mainstream!

In any event, the point I want to stress in today's post is this:

There is a fine line between a musical style or gesture and a work of art that recontextualizes that style or gesture, but it's a distinction that must be made by you in this project.

I am hoping that this will result in compositions that are clearly not in the style they are emulating, and just as clearly belonging to the admittedly-vague genre of contemporary classical music. If, for example, the 12-bar blues is the style/form you are recontextualizing, listeners should be able to hear the connection to the blues without thinking that it IS a blues composition.

Stravinsky wrote several compositions in this vein, such as the March from the Soldier's Tale, Ragtime for 11 Instruments, Piano-rag-music, Tango, and others.

I expect that everyone will come up with a different way of rising to this challenge, which is as it should be, but I hope no one will be offended if I express the concern that a work is sounding more like an emulation of a particular style than a contemporary classical work that uses a particular style or gesture as a point of departure.

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EDIT: And please keep this in mind as you compose (excerpted from the October 14 project description):

Form: Any form, including one of your own invention, as long as it it can be seen to be an organic, motivically-unified composition showing development of musical materials.

TIme keeps on slippin', slippin' …

This is the twenty-third year I have been teaching at the university level (5 yrs at U of T while doing my doctorate, 1 yr at MacMaster, and 17 yrs here), and the way time slips out of one's control EVERY SINGLE TERM never fails to amaze me.

One minute you're on top of things, next minute things are on top of you.

Sound familiar?

All of which is my way of explaining why my mostly-weekly blog entries have not been mostly weekly for the past three weeks. In fact, they have been entirely absent, ironically, coming very soon after my "Delinquent Bloggers" post!

My apologies for this. I'll try to get back into the regular blogging habit for the remainder of the term. And possibly beyond, who knows.

I'm catching up on my reading of student blogs as much as I can this week. I may not always leave a response, but I usually will, and I definitely read them all.

One of the secrets to regular blogging is to keep posts short, at least some of the time (it's less daunting that way), so I'll leave it at that. I'm cooking up a longer blog entry to follow this, hopefully today.

Next Project: Using Musical Clichés in Creating Art

Cliché:

• A comment that is very often made and is therefore not original and not interesting:
• Eg., "My wedding day - and I know it's a cliché - was just the happiest day of my life." (Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary (on-line))

Cliché:

1. A phrase or expression that is overused and has thus lost its original impact; a trite saying; a platitude.
2. Anything other than a phrase or expression (such as a plot device, etc) that is similarly overused.

• Putting a love interest into a film is a bit of a cliché. (Wiktionary)

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A phrase that has lost its original impact due to overuse is not usually desirable in art (except, perhaps, minimalism) or life, but what would happen if you were recontextualize a cliché in an unexpected way?

Consider this sentence (excerpted from an incredibly-famous novel with the permission of the author):

"My wedding day was the happiest day of my life," said Wanda Hufnagel dreamily. "It's not every day that an act of revenge works out so perfectly!"

It begins with a cliché and is then immediately followed by information that places it in an unexpected context, and if you have read my (incredibly-famous) 9-part series on Composition Issues (note the handy link to it if you missed it!), you will know that one of the dichotomies that I believe is at the core of all successful compositions is the relationship between the Expected and the Unexpected.

And so, with this in mind, here is your next project:

• Write a composition that makes prominent use of one or more musical clichés, placed in a context that is unexpected/fresh/original.


• Style: There is no restriction as to style when it comes to your choice of clichés, but your aim should be to write something that falls into the art music tradition. The question of what exactly constitutes the "art music tradition" is well worth considering and discussing, but for now just think of it as an attempt to create art through music, as opposed to, say, an attempt to sell refrigerators and colour TVs through music (to borrow a concept from Dire Straits' "Money For Nothing")!
  
  Can commercial music and art music ever be the same? Well, that's a topic for a different day, but my feeling is yes, absolutely! But your aim in this, as in all our projects, will be to try to write music that fits somewhere in the continuum of contemporary art music. And it's a pretty wide continuum!


• Duration: A single movement, 3-5 minutes in length.


• Form: Any form, including one of your own invention, as long as it it can be seen to be an organic, motivically-unified composition showing development of musical materials.


• Instrumentation: 3 performers. One of them can be a singer, and no two instruments can be the same.


• Due date of score and parts: Friday, November 22 (5PM).

In progress works will continue to be presented in class every week.

These will be performed at our end-of-term recital (Nov 29, Petro-Canada Hall).

Any questions you may have will be answered in class.

Delinquent Bloggers

The Thanksgiving break was a great opportunity to catch up on your journals and blog commenting, but if you did not do so, consider this a gentle reminder to spend some time on these activities in the near future.

Journaling can provide the opportunity to clarify your thoughts about your composition by keeping a record of the feedback received in class and your responses to it, but the longer you go without posting a journal, the less useful the process will be. I would also guess that if you wait too long to post your blog, it will be very difficult to remember what exactly was said about your piece.

And the reason I made it a requirement to make at least one weekly comment on my blog entries is that these provide a forum in which to think about and discuss ideas relating to composition and the creative process, something we tend to have little or no time for in class. These too work best if you try to make at least one thoughtful post per week, because doing so might give you specific ideas that you find useful in writing your music.

Most of you have posted a journal entry in the past week, which is great, but a few have not posted anything for anywhere from 2-5 weeks, hence the gentle nudge!

Order of Class Presentation

Nothing profound today, just an "official" order of presentation for Mu3100 students.

• You must be ready to present your work on the day scheduled (and don't forget about the late penalty if you are not!).


• If there are extenuating circumstances, you may switch days with someone, as long as you can find someone to switch with.


• The order of presentation within a class is free, however. Generally, we will start with compositions that involve performers that are not in our class, and, other than that, we'll proceed more or less in the order you arrive. We'll also try to change the order of whoever happens to be last to present on any particular day, since the last person often gets a little less time due to time pressures.


• Getting through 6 compositions on Wednesdays is obviously going to be an almost impossible challenge, so there may be times when someone gets bumped from their assigned day to the next class.


• Classes will start at 1PM sharp.

Monday: Saird, Mike, Kate, Melissa B, Kim

Wednesday: Dylan, Phil, Melissa W, Robbie, Meg, Mathieu

Friday: James, Heidi, Neil, Justin, Jessica

Kandinsky's Theories (1)

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) is one of the best-known 20th-century artists (he is regarded as the originator of abstract art), but he did not begin painting studies until he was 30. Kandinsky had previously studied Law and Economics at the University of Moscow and was evidently very successful, because he was offered a professorship (chair of Roman Law) at the University of Dorpat (Estonia).

And I thought I was a late starter… ^{[ 3 ] ←}

In addition to his accomplishments as a painter, he was also a theorist with strong convictions about the role of art and the artist in society, and more painting-specific issues such as colour theories (he believed that certain colors have an affinity for certain shapes; see more here).

My friend and fellow composer John Oliver recently wrote a blog ("Artist's Statement") in which he cites Kandinsky's three "mystical necessities" that define artwork of lasting value: The Personal, The Ephemeral, and The Eternal. This topic—the role of the artist—fascinates me, and it's something I try to get my students to think about, so I will follow my own advice about not getting too hung-up on originality (from my July 19-21 blogs) and reproduce John's Kandinsky quote below:

1. Every artist, as creator, must express what is peculiar to oneself (element of personality).
2. Every artist as a child of his time, must express what is peculiar to one's own time (elements of style ...)
3. Every artist, as servant of art, must express what is peculiar to art in general (element of the pure and eternally artistic which pervades every individual, every people, every age, and which is to be seen in the works of every artist, of every nation, and of every period, and which, being the principal elements of art, knows neither time nor space).

I will also add another quote from the same booklet, entitled "On the Spiritual in Art" (the publication date of which I have seen listed as 1910, 1911, and 1912 at various places on the Internet). Kandinsky also wrote:

Every work of art is the child of its age and, in many cases, the mother of our emotions. It follows that each period of culture produces an art of its own which can never be repeated.

Okay; lots to think about there, but this is getting long, so more later!

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^{[ 3 ]} I decided to become a musician after finishing my BA (humanities) degree. The decision was a rather odd one, in retrospect, because I could barely read music and couldn't play any instrument particularly well. Recognizing that my severe lack of musical skills could get in the way becoming a musician, I began the formal study of music (rudiments) in my twenties, and continued on weekends, evenings, and off-hours while working at a variety of jobs (bus information operator, stereo/electronics sales, department store sales clerk) over the next 15 years, leading eventually (and improbably) to a doctorate in composition. [ ↑ ]

Kandinsky's Theories (2)

(For part 1 on Kandinsky's theories, see previous entry)

Let's examine Kandinsky's three "mystical necessities" that define artwork of lasting value.

The first is a concept that I suspect most would agree with: An artist must express something personal through their art. Kandinsky goes even further, however, by writing that what the artist expresses must not only be personal, but "peculiar to oneself."

But what is unique to any of us? I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure that there is absolutely no attribute that I possess that is not also possessed by other people. We (or at least most people I know) like to think of ourselves as unique, but I would suggest that it is the combination of traits we possess that makes us and others feel that we are, and it is this combination of traits that makes up our personality.

I'm fine with the idea that there is a connection between one's personality and one's artistic creations, but I'm proposing that it is impossible to "express what is peculiar to oneself," because nothing is.

Just for fun, I'm going to flip Kandinsky's first 'mystical necessity' to:

1. Every artist, as creator, must express what is universal.

I'm not sure I agree with it 100%, but it seems to me that it is true of much artwork of lasting value. I recall reading at some point that most songs are love songs. If true, the reason for this would seem to be obvious; love is something that we've all experienced, and something that affects us profoundly. It is as close to a universal experience as there is.

But so are basic bodily functions, and you don't hear too many songs about being hungry, or needing to pee. You may conclude from this that there is a vast, untapped market for songs relating to bladder control (the "I had to pee but the teacher wouldn't let me" blues, for instance?), but my own take is that a quality in addition to universality must be present for my above statement to have some validity.

What to name this quality? Perhaps 'poetry,' or 'mystery,' or simply 'something that causes us to reflect on the subject in a different way.' And perhaps this quality, whatever you wish to call it, is tied in with the personal, which would bring it back to the territory covered by Kandinsky's first 'mystical necessity.'

Speaking of which, I don't know about you, but whenever someone says you "must" do something, my natural inclination is to refuse and/or do the opposite. I am not a fan of imperatives, I guess, which is probably part of the reason I became a composer. So when I read Kandinsky's three 'mystical necessities,' I notice they are all 'must' statements and right off the bat there is a part of me that bristles at being told what I must do.

My amended wording of #1 would be something like this:

1. Art of lasting value tends to have qualities that are both personal and universal.

And perhaps mysterious too, but this is getting long, so I think I'll leave it at that for today.

Kandinsky's Theories (3)

In my last entry I discussed Kandinsky's theory that the artist "must express what is peculiar to oneself," proposed as one of the three "mystical necessities" that define artwork of lasting value, and I suggested that this may be an impossible challenge to meet since I cannot think of any human attribute that is not shared. In trying to come up with a related set of principles that I felt I could agree with, I came up with:

1. Art of lasting value tends to have qualities that are both personal and universal.

Before I go on, I want to sneak in a second principle, one that was also mentioned in my previous entry:

2. It often causes us to reflect on the subject in a different way (Perspective).

And, while I'm at it, I'll add a couple more:

3. It speaks to us; people (but not all people, necessarily) feel a connection to it.

4. It often touches on the mysterious.

I think that #3 is self-evident (but I'd welcome input from anyone would like to suggest otherwise!); most of us value an art work because we feel a connection to it. I think this is where the notion that "art is in the eye of the beholder" comes from.

I touched on the quality of mystery in part 2 of this series. What I'm getting at is the idea that it is one thing for art to grab our attention, and it is another to hold it. There needs to be something there that makes us want to continue our engagement with the art, and perhaps that thing, or at least one element of that thing, is mystery. The Mona Lisa is a good example of this. What the heck is she half-smiling about? It's a mystery, but maybe if we stare at it long enough…

5. It often touches on the sublime.

Maybe #4 and #5 are two aspects of the same thing, but I made a separate entry for 'the sublime' because of the number of times I have heard people refer to God in reference to art; for some, great art is evidence of the divine, or at least of the way divinity is expressed through human creations. An art work that is highly valued is often said to be greater than the sum of its parts, and perhaps this is because it touches on the sublime, a quality that is difficult to quantify.

6. It usually demonstrates technical excellence.

I throw "technique" into the mix because it's one of my pet causes as a music teacher. The better your technical skills, the better equipped you are to create the kind of art you imagine. Are there 'great' works of art with poor or even average technique? Perhaps; both 'greatness' and 'technique' are qualities that are debatable (although the former more than the latter, I think), but it seems to me that most art referred to as 'great' also demonstrates excellent technique.

Kandinsky's second "mystical necessity" is that the artist "must express what is peculiar to one's own time," and that is something I think is undeniable. What makes it particularly interesting in our time is that post-modernist art often draws on the art of periods other than our own, but in a way that usually is distinguishable from the art of earlier periods. I do this in some (or much?) of my own compositions; "Dream Dance," for example has sections that evoke (for me, at least) the music of Bach, Haydn, Phillip Glass, Scott Joplin, and Gershwin. In my programme note for the piece I call it an example of "Poly-stylism" because of this, but a composition that mixes styles in this way could not have been written in any period other than our own.

Here's the way I'd put it:

7. It is recognizably of its own time.

Kankinsky's third "mystical necessity" speaks to a transcendent quality in art, which he calls "the pure and eternally artistic which pervades every individual, every people, every age, and which is to be seen in the works of every artist, of every nation, and of every period, and which, being the principal elements of art, knows neither time nor space."

He rather goes over the top here, does he not? In any event, I think I understand what he means, and I mostly agree with it, although I think it is important to add tha but it's hard to think of art that is felt to be meaningful to "every individual, every people, every age," etc. The Taj Mahal might come close to this kind of pan-cultural ideal, but for the most part, it seems to me that art's appeal tends to have a strong element of culture-specificity. The art of Beethoven, Kandinsky, and yes, even yours truly are not held in equally high regard in all parts of the world (or even within western culture), and, conversely, it has only been in the last few decades that many people in our culture have begun to appreciate and value music from non-western cultures.

Here is my wording:

8. Its appeal transcends some cultures and periods.

And that's all for today, and, probably for my Kandinsky-inspired discussion as well!

Notation Software Woes

Once again, this is based on a response I made to a student's journal/blog entry…

The notation programme I have used for the past 15 years or so is called "Composer's Mosaic," by Mark of the Unicorn (MOTU). As you might imagine, one I feel extremely comfortable with it, even though it is a more limited programme than Sibelius, Finale, or Notability Pro [Note that I cleverly made links to each of these manufacturer's websites in case you wish to find out more about them]. But, because I'm usually composing to meet a deadline, the thought of having to learn new notation software AND meet a deadline is pretty daunting!

Unfortunately, MOTU stopped supporting Mosaic in 1997! This means that I have to keep an ancient computer around for the sole purpose of running Mosaic, because it doesn't run under the current Mac operating system (OS X).

Obviously, at some point this will no longer be an option — all computers die eventually — so, a few years ago I bought Sibelius and Finale, intending to try both to see which I liked better, and then stick with that one.

But the frustration of having to learn a new notation programme and keep the creative flow going remains… So far, I have written one piece in Finale (Dream Dance, which Kristina Szutor played in the 2008 Newfound Music Festival), and I feel I am slowly beginning to get the hang of it, although the number of times I have to go to the manual to look up how to do something really basic is ridiculous!

Nevertheless, having learned Finale well enough to have completed one piece, I am probably ready to try a more ambitious composing project with Finale.

Not to say that Dream Dance wasn't ambitious! What I mean is that, having muddled my way through the process of using Finale to notate a solo piano piece, I think I may be ready to try writing chamber music with Finale next.

I should probably give Sibelius a try too. I know a lot of people insist that it's easier to use than Finale, although in my very cursory attempts to do anything with it I still found it less intuitive and more inflexible than I was hoping for.

Incidentally, one programme that really intrigues me is Notability Pro. It only works on Mac OS X, but it describes itself as:

• "easily the most sophisticated music notation software available on any platform. NoteAbility combines both musical intelligence and graphical flexibility in a direct and intuitive graphical user interface. Notate anything from simple melodies to complex avant garde orchestral music, play the score on your MIDI synthesizer or using Quicktime Musical Instruments and print a publishable copy of your score on any OS-X compatible printer."
  

And here's the clincher:

• "If you have been frustrated by the awkwardness and inflexibility of other notation programs, or by the time it takes to learn them, then you definitely should have a look at NoteAbility Pro."
  

Sounds pretty impressive, does it not? You may be thinking, 'but why believe the hype on the company's web page?" Mostly, I feel the same way; be wary of hype!

However, in this case, I am more inclined to believe it than not, because the product was developed by Dr. Keith Hamel, an outstanding composer and professor at the University of British Columbia, and he happens to be a friend of mine. Basically, if Keith says his programme is both easy to use and the most sophisticated music notation software out there, then I'll take his word for it! Another point in its favour is that, as I understand it, Notability Pro does not charge for upgrades. Both Sibelius and Finale release yearly "upgrades" and charge fairly hefty upgrade fees for them.

Okay, I've convinced myself! I'm going to try Notability Pro! Woo hoo!

But I have digressed somewhat...

The point is that I know some of you are just learning notation software for the first time so that you can use it on this project, and you are running into frustrations, and I can relate to this!

But, try to persevere (I seem to use that word a lot, don't I?), because it's useful to be able to create beautifully-notated scores with computer software.

Creative Angst... Welcome to the club!

Another entry based on a reply I just made to a student journal entry...

Some of you may be finding that you are not content with a composition; you know it could be better, or perhaps you feel it ought to be better, but you're not exactly sure how to achieve this. And meanwhile, there's a deadline fast approaching... Yikes!

We tend to want our music to be not only good, but personal as well. After all, people who hear unfamiliar works by well-known composers can often recognize who wrote them, which suggests that there is something of ourselves — almost like a strand of DNA — in the things we create; or at least this seems to be the case in the hands of most composers, bands, and artists in general.

And so, knowing that what we create is in some way a reflection of who we are, we sometimes find ourselves wishing our compositions were better, but perhaps feeling stymied as to how, exactly, we should go about making them better.

If it is any consolation, this "creative angst" is a normal part of the creative process. I think that all composers (or all people who create things) can relate to this feeling. Yup, even professionals.

The more you compose, the more developed and sophisticated your compositional skills become, so if this project is one of your first forays into writing music, rest assured that your ability to write the kind of music of which you are capable will grow in leaps (and possibly bounds, too; who knows?) as long as you keep at it.

Regarding your weekly composition projects, I would just encourage you persevere until you're pretty sure that each one is as good as you can make it for now, and then move on to the next piece.

When you start out as a composer your musical taste generally exceeds your compositional abilities (which is the compositional equivalent to the adage about one's reach exceeding one's grasp), so it is nearly impossible to reach a point where you are 100% satisfied with your creations. "I know what good music is," you might think to yourself, "and this [our composition] isn't it!"

Maybe. Or maybe it's better than you realize. But, more importantly, remember that your skills as a performer/music connoisseur weren't developed overnight, and the same is true of your compositional skills. If you keep at it, you will eventually reach the point where you become better able to express what you want through music, and therefore become more content with what you compose. When this course is over, you might even surprise yourself by how good some of the compositions you created are.

And they'll just get better if you persevere.

Writing a Play

This is adapted and expanded from a reply I just made to a student's journal entry. I have posted it here on the class blog in case anyone else might find the ideas useful too.

If you were writing a play, you would, for the most part, be writing dialogue. Dialogue tends to be sequential; that is, one person speaks, then another, then another, etc. Sometimes one character might speak at length; other times, the dialogue may be rather rapid-fire and choppy, with characters interrupting one another, and perhaps even speaking at the same time. And sometimes, characters are silent, but engaged in some activity that the audience can see, as indicated in stage directions.

Composing has analogies to all these things. You can feature one particular instrument for a while, then focus on a different one, and continue soloing instruments sequentially, but you can also have instruments interrupting one another in a way similar to the rapid-fire, choppy dialogue described above. You can even have players wander about the stage while playing their instruments, or not playing their instruments, assuming their instruments are portable.

However, a significant difference between play-writing and composing music is that music typically has multiple instruments 'speaking' at the same time, whereas it would be unusual to have multiple characters in a play speak simultaneously, presumably because it would make it hard to understand what they were saying.

What is it about music that makes multiple instruments playing simultaneously work so well as to be the norm?

The answer is easy: The composer/arranger assigns different roles to different instruments (or different groups of instruments), and those roles can change occasionally.

A trumpet solo might be accompanied by slow-moving chords in the strings in a work for orchestra. In this case, the trumpet has a foreground role, while the strings are playing more of background (but essential, nonetheless!) role. Or the trumpet could be in 'dialogue' with another instrument, perhaps the oboe, where they take turns 'saying something,' and perhaps they might even overlap sometimes, while the strings continue in their background role. In that case, both the trumpet and oboe have a similar role.

A division of musical roles that you learn about in orchestration class is:

Foreground — Middle ground — Background.

In this case, the orchestrator/composer decides on a role for each instrument or choir of instruments, and writes accordingly. This 3-part division of roles is a bit more challenging to manage when you are only writing for two instruments, but it is nevertheless achievable if one of the instruments is piano, because you could, for example, have a LH bass line supporting a trumpet melody, while the RH plays chords. In this case, the trumpet would be foreground, piano LH middle ground, and piano RH (chords) would be background.

One interesting thing about music, though, is that you don't usually see more than three roles represented simultaneously, presumably because, like having several people speak at once in a play, it would result in information overload. However, there may be times where information overload is exactly what you want — perhaps to convey a sense of chaos in the music — in which case you should feel free to give it a try!

In any event, as you compose, decide on the role of each instrument at any given time, and consider altering that role periodically, perhaps with unexpected interruptions, or by having the instruments take turns being in the foreground/background, or with the instruments having identical roles sometimes (perhaps one is rhythmically doubling the other), etc.

Another parallel is that just as you wouldn't try to write a dialogue between two characters in a play by writing lines for one character first, and then, once that was finished, writing the lines for another, you would typically write for your two instruments at the same time too. Not to say that you CAN'T do it the other way — anything is worth a try if you wish to do so — but composers typically write for multiple instruments at the same time, probably because it seems the best way to allow the instruments to be equal partners in the music.

17 Blogs!

The "Mu3100 Student Blog List" (on the right column of this page) shows that we are now up to 17 student blogs, which I believe means that all students in this course now have functioning blogs, which is good news... Woo hoo!

I have a few requests:

1. Most people's blogs are called "My 3100 Blog," or something along those lines. I would appreciate it if you could change your blog name to anything with your name in it (like: "Clark R's Mu3100 Blog"), as it would make them easier to identify for me .


2. Don't forget that you get 10% of the mark for this course just for making reasonably intelligent blog entries every week. Most of you are doing this, and doing it well, but there are a few slow starters who have posted very little, so if you're in the late-starters group try to get going on this a.s.a.p.


3. By the same token, another 10% of the mark is for making a reasonably thoughtful comment on any of the blogs on this page (especially archived ones), and I think a majority of you have yet to participate in this way, so please try to get started on that as well. The blog entries of mine that I'd most like you to read, think about, and discuss, are those in the 9-part series called "composition issues," so please read these and leave comments. These are all in the August archive, accessible on the right hand column of this page; or you could click on the hot link I just made to take you to the outline for the series, and from there there are links to each of the 9 parts.


4. And finally, if you haven't already done so, please click on "Composition Blog Followers" on the right column of this page in order to follow it. Right now there are about 6 students who have not done so.

Thanks!

Available Instruments

If you would like to write for an instrument played by one of your classmates, choose from the following:

Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Sax (any), Trumpet, Trombone, Euphonium, Percussion, Violin, Viola, Cello, Double Bass, Piano/harpsichord/organ.

If I have missed anybody, please let me know!

• Make sure you ask the person you intend to write for if they are willing to perform your piece!


• You can also select instruments played by other music school students, of course, but it makes things a lot less complicated if you choose one of the above instruments.


• If you are having trouble finding someone to play your music, let me know, and I'll help if I can.

What next?

Before I write about where to take your project from here, I just want to say how thrilled I am with the student composition journals I am reading, and with the comments that have been made on my class blog (i.e., this one). Doing these activities via blogs is something I had never tried before, so I wasn't sure what to expect, but everything I've seen so far has been really thoughtful and open, which is fantastic.

Okay; now back to your projects. Once you have created chords with which you are content, the next step is to compose a short character piece based on your chords.

• How short? Well, hard to say exactly, but perhaps somewhere between 1-3 pages of music. Obviously, the number of bars you squeeze into each system, and the number of systems you squeeze onto each page, affect the length, but the overriding consideration when it comes to deciding how long a piece should be is to determine how long it needs to be. I know that sounds a bit mystical, but that's the way I look at it, anyway. If you feel your composition has said all it needs to in one page, then great; your first piece is done! If you feel that, at the end of three pages, it still has more to say, then I guess you'd better keep it going a bit longer! If you're not sure how long it should be, don't worry, because you'll get feedback from your classmates and myself on this issue.

• In my project description I say something about trying to create a sense of "timelessness" through your chords. Basically, all I'm trying to get you to do here is to come up with rhythmic values for your chords that don't always emphasize the strong beats in a given meter (i.e., beats 1 and 3 in 4/4 time). This frees up the rhythm, and can cause the listener to be drawn into each sonority more deeply, especially if the chords do not change very quickly.

• You may repeat chords; you may repeat a given chord immediately, or you may bring back earlier chords and interpolate them in between later chords.

• You may switch registers; one idea that is often well worth considering is repeating a given chord in a different register (or in several different registers). It is interesting how the colour of your chord changes depending on register.

• You may re-voice chords (possibly while repeating them and/or while doing so in a different register).

• You may add passing tones and other "Non Chord Tones."

• You must add a melody to your chords, played on an instrument of your choice, but preferably chosen from instruments that your classmates play (for pragmatic reasons).

• Many students automatically start the melody instrument and piano and the same time, i.e., beat one of bar one. No reason you CAN'T do that, of course, but bear in mind that this doesn't usually happen in actual chamber music! Usually, in music for piano and one other instrument, one instrument begins, and the other joins in fairly soon thereafter. Consider trying this.

• Along similar lines, consider the role of each instrument. Are they in dialogue? Is one more prominent than the other? Do they take turns being prominent and being supportive? Are you using rests?

• Add dynamics and articulations as you compose. You can always change them later, but try to avoid the temptation to leave them out and then add them after you have finished the piece; dynamics and articulations are an integral part of the composition, not an afterthought.

• If writing for a wind instrument, where will they breathe? If writing for a bowed instrument, what kind of bowing do you have in mind? You may wish to brush up on bowing techniques from your orchestration text.

• Speaking of orchestration texts, you should obviously know the range of the added instrument, but even more importantly, you should review other aspects of that instrument as well, such as how the colour changes in different registers, how loud/soft it can play (and how well it can be heard) in different registers, what some of its challenges are (for example, flutes can't really play softly in their highest register, and their sound tends to be fairly quiet in the lowest register), how agile it is, what constitutes idiomatic writing for that instrument, etc.

• Somewhere in the midst of all this you need to think of a character for your composition. All you need do is come up with a character for this particular piece; remember that this will be one of three pieces you will be writing. Possible characters to choose from: Nervous, mystical (trance), bombastic, joyful, sad, angry, optimistic, etc.

Good luck!

Why Atonal Music?

Our first composition project of this course requires students to come up with 12-16 piano chords where the harmonic tension gradually increases to about the two-thirds point, and then gradually decreases to the end. The chords must be atonal.

Which begs the question, "why atonal?"

Well, there are a few reasons:

• The first is that almost every course that involves writing or studying music in the School of Music (1st- and 2nd-year theory, 16th and 18th-century counterpoint, orchestration, aural labs (mostly), keyboard harmony, analysis, jazz theory and arranging, etc.) concerns itself with tonal music, and composition is one of the few courses where there is an opportunity to write non-tonal music. If you don't try writing this kind of music here, it is possible that you would not have the opportunity to do so in any of your other courses!


• The 20th century was period of unprecedented stylistic change and contrast in music history. Graduating without ever having dipped your toe into the pool of 20th-century techniques would be difficult to justify.


• Just as we can better understand renaissance music by learning to write 16th-century counterpoint, we can better understand much of the music of the 20th century by learning to write atonal music.


• It gives you a broader palette of techniques from which to choose as you proceed on the journey to discovering your own musical voice as a composer.


• Developing your own musical voice as a composer is surprisingly difficult if you limit yourself to composing tonal music. You may wish to debate this point (and I would be happy if you did!), but this has been my experience, based on hearing numerous student compositions over the years. I, like many composers of contemporary classical music, often write music that can be said to be either tonal, or very closely linked to tonal music. I do not believe I would have been able to write music like this, however, had I not undergone a period of many years of studying and composing atonal music. It gives you a different perspective on the nature of tonality.


• It works. I've tried this teaching method for 16 years now, and, despite initial resistance or wariness by some students, it has always resulted in students writing music that I considered to be anywhere from pretty good to impressively good. I believe (in part, because students have told me this) that even the most skeptical students would acknowledge that they ended up writing music that exceeded their own expectations. I once gave a paper at an American meeting of fellow composition professors in which I played excerpts from several student works created in the previous semester's Mu3100 course, and the general response was to be amazed at the quality of the compositions they heard, especially considering that the works they heard represented the first attempts at composing for almost all of the students. It works, so I keep teaching this way!

Hopefully, these reasons make sense to you. I guess the main point is that my job is to help students become better composers, and at this early stage in the process (Mu3100 is an introductory-level course), I think it essential to explore atonality in order to discover new sonic possibilities.

Comments?

Composition Issues (outline)

This is a handout prepared for my introductory composition class, posted here in case anyone might find it useful or wish to make comments or suggestions for improvements. Its main objective is to provoke thought about issues that come up when composing, and to engender discussion on these issues. There are usually no right or wrong answers to the questions posed, but some may find benefit in considering and debating them.

Here are the 9 sections, and how they break down; each is a separate blog entry:

1. Originality and Quality of Initial Musical Ideas
1.1. The quality of ideas may not matter very much in determining the quality of the complete composition that emerges from them; and
1.2. The degree to which these ideas are original may not matter very much. Shocking, isn't it?

2. How do you Develop Compositional Craft?
2.1. Study the music of others.
2.2. Compose as much as you can.
2.3. Invite criticism from others.

3. Understanding your Musical Idea
3.1. Live with it for a while.
3.2. What's it about?
3.3. Does it change character?
3.4. What is its function within the context of the piece?
3.5. Structural Analysis.
3.6. Harmonic (or Pitch, Scale, etc.) Analysis.

4. The Pros and Cons of Development

5. How to Extend or Develop Musical Materials; Specific Suggestions

6. Balancing the Old with the New, the Expected with the Unexpected

7. More Dichotomies to Ponder…
7.1. Less is more, vs. More is more.
7.2. Always leave them wanting more, vs. Give them what they want.
7.3. Don't treat the listener like an idiot, vs. There's a sucker born every minute.
7.4. There can be 'too much of a good thing,' vs. If you have a good idea, then stick with it!
7.5. The George Costanza approach.

8. I think my idea has run its course. Now what?
8.1. The three models for composers' roles.
8.2. Mastery or Mystery?
8.3. The value of a plan.
8.4. Getting stuck, and possible workarounds.
8.5. Don't obsess!
8.6. Challenges = Opportunities for inspired solutions!

9. Taking your inspiration from wherever you find it

Composition Issues (1)

[From a 9-part series for my introductory composition class.]

1. Originality and Quality of initial musical ideas

Everyone who has ever played a musical instrument or sung has probably come up with their own musical ideas (a melody or melody fragment, chord progression, rhythm, etc.) at some point. Sometimes, this gives rise to the impulse to create a complete musical composition, but I have had many people tell me the did not follow through on this impulse because they felt their initial musical idea was 'not good enough,' or 'unoriginal.'
If this has ever happened to you, I would like to suggest two possibly radical concepts to consider:

1.1. The quality of these ideas may not matter very much in determining the quality of the complete composition that might emerge from them; and

1.2. The degree to which these ideas are original may not matter very much.

While it would probably be a better plan to start with a high quality, original idea, a good composition can start with an uninspired, not-particularly-original idea!

•Consider 1 & 2; can you think of any examples?

If true, what the above statements suggest is:

→ The way in which your musical ideas are extended and developed into complete compositions matters more than the quality/originality of the ideas themselves.

§

Composition is a craft. The harder you work at developing your craft, the better your ability to compose the kind of music you'd like to hear.

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Tags: compose, composing, music, how to, thoughts on composing