This blog began in the fall of 2008 as a forum for the discussion of issues relating to classical music composition. Although my primary objective has always been pedagogical – posts are generally aimed at students and others wishing to improve their composition skills – feedback from all interested readers, irrespective of their background, is welcome via the "post a comment" link at the end of each post.
I used to get my composition students at Memorial University's School of Music to write their own weekly blog posts reflecting on things that went well and things that were challenging in the process of creating their own compositions; links to these student blogs can be found at the bottom of the right-hand column, grouped by course number (Mu3100 is "Introduction to Composition," and Mu4100 is the follow-up to that course).
Enjoy your visit, and please leave a comment on anything that interests you, even if you are not taking my courses! I receive automatic notifications of all comments, irrespective of how old the original post is, so if you leave a comment, I will see it.
I am a composer of music for soloists, chamber groups, orchestra, voice, and electronics, as well as a guitarist and professor of Composition and Theory (since 1992) at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.
I teach Composition, 2nd-year Music Theory (chromatic harmony and large form classical music), Renaissance Counterpoint, Baroque Counterpoint, and Music Technology. I have also taught Electronic Music, Orchestration, 20th-Century Techniques, Music History, Ear-Training, and Classical Guitar.
I welcome feedback from all non-spam bots! If you have any suggestions of topics you'd like me to cover in future posts, please let me know!
(This is a stub; my plan is write more on this topic soon,)
Harmonic Rhythm: The rate at which harmonies change.
Hypermeter: Meter on a larger scale, such as when bars are felt as beats.
In good or great compositions, most of us are unlikely to notice the harmonic rhythm and hypermeter, unless it does something unexpected, or there is something wrong with it.
This is part 2 of a series; I encourage you to read part 1 before reading this.
Here's the backstory:
In 2015, Jessy McCabe, 17, petitioned one of Britain’s biggest exam boards to include female composers in its A-level music syllabus.
Ms. McCabe found that Edexcel’s A-level Music Syllabus featured 63 male composers and no female ones. She also observed that on 8 March 2015, BBC Radio 3 managed to programme an entire day of music by female composers to honour International Women’s Day.
“Surely, if BBC Radio 3 can play music composed by women for a whole day," Ms. McCabe wrote, "Edexcel could select at least one to be part of the syllabus alongside the likes of Holborne, Haydn and Howlin’ Wolf?”
Edexel was initially unwilling to acquiesce to Ms. McCabe's challenge. Its head of music wrote: “Given that female composers were not prominent in the western classical tradition (or others for that matter), there would be very few female composers that could be included.”
After a Change.org petition subsequently launched by Ms. McCabe received 4,000 signatures, Edexcel apparently bowed to public pressure and changed their 2016 syllabus to include works by five women: Clara Schumann, Rachel Portman, Kate Bush, Anoushka Shankar and Kaija Saariaho.
He discussed works by several women composers – Clara Schumann (1819–1896), Fanny Mendelssohn (1805–1847), Amy Beach (1867–1944), Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944), Elizabeth Maconchy (1907–1994), and Thea Musgrave (born 1928) – to support his conclusion that women composers were not as good as their male counterparts, and therefore their music did not merit inclusion in the list of composers to be studied by British A-level students.
The counter-argument proposed by Ms. McCabe was that the inclusion of women composers in the Edexcel A-Level syllabus was important, “so that girls are freely able and inspired to become composers, to enrich the A-level syllabus and to ultimately ensure that women’s works are valued, as they should be.”
Here are a few thoughts further to this episode, and Mr. Thompson's response to it:
As I pointed out in my previous post on this topic, the article's title, There's a good reason why there are no great female composers, is completely unrelated to the actual article. At no point does the author propose or discuss a reason, good or otherwise, why “there are no great female composers.”
Further to the previous point, an unbiased and well-researched article exploring reasons for the extreme gender imbalance among composers of the common-practice period (roughly 1650-1900) would perhaps be enlightening to those that blithely assume that women and men competed on an equal playing field throughout history. They didn't, and, some argue, still don't, although the situation has improved significantly since the 1960's. Historically, the roles available to women were severely restricted, and, within this, the roles of women in any field within music were even more restricted. Yes, Clara Schumann managed to develop a career as a concert pianist, but women were barred from European orchestras; the Vienna Philharmonic did not accept a female member until 1997; The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra did not hire its first female musician until 1982 (violinist Madeleine Carruzzo). I would be curious to know how often these all-male orchestras performed works by women prior to 1900; if it occurred at all, I suspect it was extremely uncommon.
Only one of the five women composers selected for criticism by Mr. Thompson was included in Edexcel's syllabus: Clara Schumann. He therefore spent the bulk of his article arguing against the inclusion of women composers whose music was not subsequently included in the revised syllabus, but perhaps Edexcel's syllabus was published after Thompson's article.
All works discussed in Mr. Thompson's article were selected by him. It seems possible that musicologists with expertise in the music of the named composers might have been able to find other, stronger works by these composers for discussion; when one's intention is to prove that music by women composers is not very good, it can hardly be a surprise when the examples chosen to illustrate this point do so rather well.
The threshold for inclusion in the Edexcell Syllabus is clearly not "all-time greatness," as in "equal in quality to the best music of Bach, Beethoven, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder, and The Beatles." Ms. McCabe's letter, quoted above, mentions Anthony Holborne (late renaissance British composer of music primarily for lute, 1545-1602), and Howlin' Wolf (much-acclaimed blues singer and guitarist, 1910-1976). A quick perusal of Edexcel's 2016 syllabus reveals names such as Courtney Pine (British jazz musician, b. 1964), La Familia Valera Miranda
(A family of musicians from the Oriente region of Cuba that play a mid-tempo form of ‘son’, a Cuban traditional musical style), as well as Vivaldi, Vaughan Williams, and Berlioz. The initial exclusion of works by all women from the Edexcell Syllabus sends a clear message that no women in the history of composition were as worthy of inclusion as any of the male musicians on the list, a position that is indefensible. Popular music artists are on the Edexcel list, but despite decades of great music by Kate Bush (subsequently included), Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Nina Simone, Taylor Swift, Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Memphis Minnie, Laura Nyro, and countless others, not one was initially included. Film music composers are another category, and here again no females were initially chosen (Rachel Portman was included following Ms. McCabe's successful petition), despite the successful careers in this field of Sofia Gubaidulina, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Lesley Barber, or any of the other names on Wikipedia's list of female film composers.
I'm not sufficiently familiar with Edexcel's history to know if they make a special effort to include British composers in their syllabus, but I noticed quite a few British musicians in the 2016 syllabus. If they do give British composers/musicians any kind of preferential status, which they have every right to do, why not make the effort to be inclusive of other groups within British society as well, such as women composers? Thanks to Ms. McCabe and a successful publicity campaign, the 2016 syllabus now does, albeit to a limited degree.
As I mentioned above, Ms. McCabe argued in favour of the representation of women composers on the Edexcel syllabus, “so that girls are freely able and inspired to become composers, to enrich the A-level syllabus and to ultimately ensure that women’s works are valued, as they should be.” This in itself is an interesting argument – I don't know if there are any studies that prove that exposure to music by members of a target population empower or encourage other members of that target population to pursue careers in music, but it certainly seems possible. And if it is possible, then it seems worth doing. But mostly it's worth doing based purely on artistic merit.
That's all for now, but please leave a comment if you agree or disagree with any of this. If there are women composers in any genre to which you would like to draw our attention, please do so, ideally with a link if possible.
Once again (I posted some recordings in my previous entry as well), here are a couple of recordings of music by Clara Schumann, with scrolling scores:
I recently came across a provocative article from 2015 in The Spectator, called "There's a good reason why there are no great women composers," by Damian Thompson, who is described in Wikipedia as an English journalist, editor and author with a Ph.D in the sociology of religion from the London School of Economics. He writes a monthly column about classical music for The Spectator.
Not familiar with The Spectator? Here is an excerpt from its description in Wikipedia, which I've abridged slightly, indicated by the ellipses (…):
"The Spectator is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828... Its editorial outlook is generally supportive of the Conservative Party, although regular contributors include some outside that fold... The magazine also contains arts pages on books, music, opera, and film and TV reviews."
If you align yourself ideologically as a liberal or progressive, you may be reluctant to pay much attention to a conservative journal, but I believe in making your own mind up about things on a case-by-case basis, and not simply based on the degree to which others are expressing views that align with your own – so let's examine what the article actually says.
For starters, the article's title is misleading; at no point does it propose "a good reason why there are no great women composers;" it does not explore that question at all. In many publications, an article's title is not written by the article's author – there are others whose job it is to write headlines – so perhaps the author is not to blame for the misleading, "click-bait style" title.
Here's what the author writes:
"Last week a 17-year-old girl forced the Edexcel exam board to change its A-level music syllabus to include the work of women composers. Jessy McCabe, a sixth former at Twyford Church of England High School in London, started a petition after studying gender inequality. Good for her, you might think. But is it good for A-level students?
"A delicate question lies at the heart of the subject of female composers, and it’s not ‘Why are they so criminally underrepresented in the classical canon?’ It’s ‘How good is their music compared with that of male composers?’"
Is this a legitimate question? It is, as the author acknowledges, a "delicate" one – simply asking the question might offend some – but is it fair game to ask questions such as this? Before answering, consider whether it is okay to ask other similar questions involving comparisons, such as the following:
How good is British music of the 18th and 19th centuries, compared with that of German and Austrian composers?
How good is French music of the 18th and 19th centuries, compared with that of German and Austrian composers?
How good is American music of the 18th and 19th centuries, compared with that of German and Austrian composers?
How good is Salieri's music, compared with Mozart's?
And so on…
We tend to assume that the canonical works of classical music history are the result of a Darwinian meritocracy – we perform and study Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, etc., because they represent the artistic pinnacle of human achievement within their periods in the art form that is classical music.
So, you might ask, why not ask questions such as those above?
I have no objection to any of these questions, but I wonder (a) where they get us, and (b) what the motivation is behind them?
Where do these questions get us?
Let's propose for the sake of argument that the answer to all of the above questions, is "less good." That is, Salieri's music is less good than Mozart's; American, British, and French music of the 18th and 19th centuries is less good than that of German and Austrian composers; and women composers of these periods composed music that did not rise to the level of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms, which I'll group as "A-List" composers.
So what?
Does that mean we jettison the music of "lesser" composers – Berlioz, Bizet, Borodin, Bruckner, Dvorak, Elgar, Grieg, Holst, Liszt, Mahler, Felix Mendelssohn, Rossini, Saint-Saëns, Schubert, Robert Schumann, Sibelius, Smetana, etc. – from the repertoire?
Well, of course not! Each of the "lesser" composers listed above wrote wonderful music that has moved generations of classical music lovers, and the musical landscape would be considerably poorer without their contributions.
But wait, you might shout! The "lesser" composers above were still excellent composers!
I agree! They were indeed excellent composers, whose only misfortune was failing to achieve the exalted artistic heights of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms.
So, let's make a list of composers whose level of artistic achievement does not come very close to the level of the "lesser" composers above; these are composers I have heard of, and in all cases, whose music I have actually heard, and I selected them from lists of classical composers found in Wikipedia (List of Classical-era composers).
For every name listed below, there were probably about 10 other names on the Wikipedia list I did not include because I was unfamiliar with them. These might be considered "C-List" composers because they are a level or two below the composers on my previous list (Liszt, Mendelssohn, Mahler, etc.), who themselves might be considered "B-List" composers, because they were a level (or so) below the all-time greats – Bach, Mozart, & Beethoven, at least in what I suspect is the opinion of many people, but I recognize that some would not agree with this assessment.
Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (1710–1784)
William Boyce (1711–1779)
Johann Ludwig Krebs (1713–1780)
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714–1788)
Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–1787)
Johann Wenzel Anton Stamitz (1717–1757)
Johann Philipp Kirnberger (1721–1783)
Antonio Soler (1729–1783)
Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach (1732–1795)
Jean-Jacques Beauvarlet Charpentier (1734–1794)
Johann Christian Bach (1735–1782)
Michael Arne (1740–1786)
Samuel Arnold (1740–1802)
Giovanni Paisiello (1740–1816)
Carl Stamitz (1745–1801)
Joseph Quesnel (1746–1809)
Domenico Cimarosa (1749–1801)
Johann Nikolaus Forkel (1749–1818)
Muzio Clementi (1752–1832)
Josef Reicha (1752–1795)
Vicente Martín y Soler (1754–1806)
Anton Stamitz (1754–1798 or 1809)
Luigi Cherubini (1760–1842)
Johann Ladislaus Dussek (1760–1812)
Ferdinando Carulli (1770–1841)
Anton Reicha (1770–1836)
Sophia Corri Dussek (1775–1847)
Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778–1837)
Fernando Sor (1778–1839)
Anton Diabelli (1781–1858)
Mauro Giuliani (1781–1829)
John Field (1782–1837)
Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840)
Louis Spohr (1784–1859)
Friedrich Kuhlau (1786–1832)
Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826)
Carl Czerny (1791–1857)
Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791–1864)
Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848)
Incidentally, those listed above all had active compositional careers, and they all wrote works that have been recorded and performed frequently by many performing artists. In the case of the guitar composers on the list (Carullil, Sor, Giuliani), I have played their music, and professional guitarists continue to play their music regularly.
They may not have reached the lofty heights of Brahms and Beethoven, but they nevertheless accomplished much in their compositional careers.
Making lists such as those above is a bit of a silly game, perhaps – if I have Brahms on my B-list, and you have him on your A-list, it doesn't matter much, does it? – but there are potentially interesting/instructive aspects of debating these questions, such as the following:
They might lead us to discover works with which we were previously unfamiliar, some of which we might enjoy hearing;
They might challenge us to reconsider composers whose music we had previously dismissed or not valued highly, with the potential benefit of discovering good music that we previously did not know, or not know well, or discovering that a piece we had previously dismissed is actually a pretty good composition;
They force us to examine the basis on which we evaluate music, and that seems like a beneficial exercise to consider, at least periodically. Why do I like what I do? Why do I think less of some pieces than others? Am I a musical snob? Am I truly open to new composers and new styles of music?
As composers, I believe the third aspect above is essential to improvement. If I can identify some of the attributes that make music great, then perhaps I can incorporate those aspects into my music.
I wrote a post about five years ago on Form in Post-Tonal Music (the first in a series of three on this topic) in which I mentioned the guitar Sonata in C, op. 22, by Fernando Sor, a piece I used to play. I regard it as a pleasant piece, but not up to the level of repertoire by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven that we study in my musical form class.
Having played and heard a fair amount of his music, I think of Sor as a C-list composer, someone who made a career from composing and performing his own music, someone who knew what he was doing in terms of composition, but ultimately, someone who did not manage to reach compositional greatness.
What was interesting to me was that while I am quite clear about my views on Sor's music, it was surprisingly difficult to come up for reasons to support my opinion. Anyone can have an opinion, but articulating the reasons behind that opinion in an intelligent and considered way can be very challenging.
Returning to The Spectator article cited above, the author asks the question: How good were women composers in comparison with their male counterparts? He then provides examples of works by several women composers – Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn, Amy Beach (1867–1944), Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944), Elizabeth Maconchy (1907–1994), and Thea Musgrave (born 1928) – to support his conclusion that – surprise! – women composers were not as good as their male counterparts, and therefore their music does not deserve inclusion in the list of composers to be studied by British A-level students.
To me, a more pertinent question is not whether women composers were capable of writing music that matched the quality of the greatest male composers, but whether the best women composers wrote any music that compared favourably with the music of any of the composers from the lists above.
Everyone can come to their own conclusion on this question, but if you were to suggest that Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn failed to match the artistic level of Paisiello, Stamitz, Carulli, et al, I would suggest otherwise, and yet the music of Paisiello, Stamitz, and Carulli, et al, continues to be performed and recorded without any extramusical justification (e.g., "we're performing music by composers based in Milan from 1750-1800 on tonight's programme!), whereas I suspect some people feel that the only reasons Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn get performed nowadays are (a) they shared the same last name as more famous composers, and (b) they were women, and if they were men we would have forgotten about their music long ago.
And I would suggest that while (a) might have some validity, (b) does not; had they been men, I don't think anyone would question why their music continues to be recorded and performed today, any more than people question why the music of many of the "C-List" composers above gets recorded and performed.
What is the motivation behind these questions?
So, in the case of the article from The Spectator mentioned at the outset of today's post, the motivation seems pretty clear: To discredit women composers. They were not, the author argues, as good as the great male composers, so we should therefore stop all this political correctness nonsense and not include their music on the Edexcel exam board A-level music syllabus.
And yes, this is my own summary of the Spectator article, but you should read it yourself to see if am being unfair or overly harsh.
This motivation, if I have represented it fairly, is not in itself bad – if I were motivated to write an article about why the first movement of Beethoven's Waldstein sonata is considerably more sophisticated than the first movement of his first published sonata, op. 2 no. 1, I would like to think that the motivation is fine, as long as I were able to support my conclusion with clear and unbiased evidence.
Where this kind of motivation is problematic, however, is that the writer is starting with a conclusion that is largely dismissive of an entire group of composers, and then hand-picking evidence to support the conclusion. This is the level of discourse you see on phone-in sports shows on radio or television ("I think Mike Trout [major-league baseball player, considered by many to be the best of his generation] SUCKS! I watched a game the other night where he make an error and struck out TWICE! Hell, I could have done that!"), or in bar discussions by drunken folk (I still remember one such discussion from many years ago between two people I knew, about whether dogs were better than cats, or vice-versa. At first it was mildly amusing, but it became very stupid very quickly, and the opponents almost came to blows).
Ideally, we'd all find a way to look at evidence objectively and then write and/or talk intelligently about what we learned from the experience, but, as a society, we appear to be far from any kind of ideal when it comes to discourse on anything, especially on controversial matters.
As so often happens in my blog posts, I have gone on much longer than planned… I was going to look at and listen to some of the works by women composers and see if the author of The Spectator article was being fair or not, but I will save that for another post.
In the mean time, here are a couple of recordings of music by Clara Schumann, with scrolling scores:
A third composer associated with this term is John Tavener, described in Wikipedia as follows:
"During his career he became one of the best known and popular composers of his generation, most particularly for The Protecting Veil, which as recorded by cellist Steven Isserlis became a bestselling album, and Song for Athene which was sung at the funeral of Princess Diana."
Here are recordings of the two mentioned pieces; have a listen, and share your thoughts in the "Comments" section below, if you wish.
Let me know if you have any suggestions of other favourite Tavener pieces to add to these recordings; I'll happily post more recordings if I get suggestions.
One of my favourite sports quotes comes from Josh Donaldson, formerly of the Toronto Blue Jays, who, following a frustrating loss on May 16, 2015, said:
"This isn't the "try" league, this is the "get it done" league. And you know, eventually they're gonna find people who are going to get it done."
These are unsettling words, especially to anyone who isn't getting "it" (their job) done, but Mr. Donaldson was, I believe, correct.
In major league baseball, or the highest-level of any profession, if you aren't "getting it done" – i.e., if you aren't doing your job at a satisfactory level – you will likely be demoted to the minor leagues (or equivalent thereof), or even out of a job entirely, irrespective of how hard you were trying.
The "try" league refers to people who are not getting it done, but claim to be trying very hard (and perhaps they do try very hard!). I obviously can't claim to know exactly what Donaldson meant by this quote, but I think that his point was that the amount of effort you put into doing your job, or accomplishing a task of any kind, is irrelevant if you aren't succeeding. The only thing that matters is results, at least at the highest level of sports (and probably other professions as well). Saying you are trying hard when you are not producing the results expected of you can sound like an excuse.
As it turned out, both Josh and the Blue Jays did indeed get it done that year – Mr. Donaldson, perhaps channelling his inner Yoda, won the American League Most Valuable Player award, and his team came first in the American League East Division for the first time in twenty-two years.
Today's post will explore the relevance of this idea to composition, and more specifically:
• Does the idea of "get it done, or we'll find someone else to get it done for you!" apply to the world of professionalism composition? • Does it apply to compositional training? • Does the effort we put into a task matter if we aren't getting it done?
The answer to the first question, is, in a word, yes. If you are a professional composer and not getting it done – i.e., not finishing compositions by deadlines, or perhaps not finishing them at all, or meeting a deadline but not producing the kind of piece you were commissioned to write, or the kind of music that the movie needs, in the case of a film composer, you will not last long in the profession.
It's not a completelyDraconian world out there – if you have built a good reputation by consistently delivering high-quality compositions on time for years, being a day or two late with a project will probably not derail your career. But if you are late multiple times, then much of the good reputation you spent years earning will likely erode, which will eventually lead to fewer opportunities, and eventually, no opportunities at all.
So, yes, professional composers do need to find a way to "get it done," no matter how challenging this may be, or what their personal struggles might be.
If you are in the process of developing your compositional skills, however, different rules apply, at least to some extent. You are basically in the "learning how to get it done" league, which is hopefully more forgiving, unless you find yourself in the kind of vicious and heartless music school depicted in Whiplash, the 2014 film about the relationship between an ambitious jazz drumming student and a sadistic and abusive instructor.
Luckily, most music instructors are nurturing and genuinely care about the musical development of their students, at least in my experience, although I have had a few notable exceptions as teachers along the way.
At our university, and at many others, students who are unable to accomplish tasks due to personal struggles of any kind can request accommodations to avoid academic penalties. Valid excuses do matter, and are taken into consideration. The same may be true in many other professional environments as well.
But, even in the training process for aspiring composers, there are aspects of the "get it done" league that apply, such as:
Finishing a composition.
Doing the above by a deadline.
Doing the above, and being satisfied that the composition is as good as you can make it in your current stage of development, and given your time constraints.
Doing the above, and making sure that all score details and other matters of score presentation are logical, musical, clear, and as unambiguous as possible; also, doing the same for parts.
Doing the above, and getting the score and parts to performers in plenty of time for them to learn it, assuming you want it to be performed in an upcoming concert.
Doing the above, plus doing whatever it takes to address any concerns the performers (or commissioner) have, including modifying sections of the score if necessary. This is something I plan on writing a post about in the near future, by the way.
At times I have taken an absurd amount of time – in some cases, weeks – working and reworking the ending of a composition. The objective is always the same – come up with an ending that works best for that particular piece – because I never want people to think, after hearing my composition, what the hell just happened there at the end? It was all going pretty well up to the last minute or so! Or, perhaps more importantly, I don't want to think such thoughts when I hear my own piece in a concert.
There is plenty of justification for taking the time necessary to "get it right," not just in the ending, but in every section of your composition (I guess, if you want to keep using sports slogans, we can call this the "get it right" league), but, most of the time, composers face the challenge of both finding a way to both get it done, andget it right by adeadline.
Sometimes, however, the "get it right" part may need to be slightly compromised in order to meet a deadline.
Put another way, we always want to get it right, but getting it right should never trump the objective of finishing by our deadline.
Why? There are many possible negative outcomes that may result if you "get it right" but miss your deadline, such as:
The performers may not play your piece. This may not seem very likely, especially if the performers are friends, but, not only can it happen, I have personally experienced this, and I know of others who have as well. And it can be devastating.
The performers may resent you, justifiably, for not giving them sufficient time to learn the piece well, which in turn can make them disinclined to ever play a piece of yours again.
Your reputation will probably take a hit, particularly if writing for professionals.
If it is a commission and you signed a contract to deliver the music by a certain date, you may not get paid (!).
Developing the habit of finishing by a deadline is, I would therefore suggest, essential for composers, even in the training stages of our development.
If you are experiencing angst because, in order to finish by a deadline, the ending or another section is not as good as you would like, I feel your pain, but perhaps you can take comfort in this thought:
You can make further changes to the composition after the first performance, but, if you miss your deadline, the piece may not get a first performance, at least not by the musicians originally scheduled to perform it.
If you can find/create an opportunity for a second performance (which itself can be a challenge), aim to make that version of the piece the one with which you are fully satisfied.
When faced with a deadline, try to channel your inner Josh Donaldson, your inner Yoda, or, if you prefer, your inner Queen Elsa from Frozen (!), and let it go. (Sorry ☺️; I will herewith stop the slogans and catch-phrases, I promise!).
If, in order to meet a deadline, you had to "let it go" before reaching a point of complete satisfaction with your composition, just remember that you can get it back after the premiere and revise it further, if you wish.
Incidentally, I have no idea who first used the term "let it go" in a song, but a long time before 2013's Frozen, in 1980, John Lennon wrote I just had to let it go in a song called Watching the Wheels. The concept itself goes back millennia, and is associated with Buddhism, among other faith/philosophical traditions.
Another Górecki piece (with scrolling score), quite different in character from the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. Here's the write-up of this piece posted at the publisher's website:
Three Pieces in the Old Style were written in 1963, in answer to a friendly accusation on the part of Tadeusz Ochlewski, then director of PWM Edition, who stated that Górecki's works were lacking in melody. Work on the new composition lasted from 28 November to 23 December 1963, and its premiere took place on 30 April 1964 in Warsaw.
This work was a sort of novelty - for here in the art of a young composer who had already openly declared himself as supporter of the avant-garde, there suddenly appeared three miniature pieces combined in one small cycle, characterized by a very strong reference to the style of Renaissance music. The composer himself mentioned years later that they had been an antidote for him, an attempt to go beyond the aesthetic of sonorism and post-serialism flourishing at the time.
Written for string orchestra, this little work encompasses three segments, maintained in different tempi and differing in character. The outer movements of the cycle, reminiscent of lively dances, surround the nostalgic second piece. About this piece, Tadeusz Zieliński wrote in 1975: The purposefully simple, but at the same time tasteful dosage of purely sonorist values of string sound, variation and contrast in its density and dynamics, lead us to the very essence of Góreckis individual style. These pieces represent a modest (as it were, simplified, adapted to the archaic theme), but effective and charming sample of this style and the typical aesthetic-technical issues of their creator.
A list of most of the blog entries posted so far, organized loosely by topic.
This is not completely comprehensive; entries relating to class business – reminders of deadlines, concert congratulations, order of class presentation, etc. – are not included.
Henryk Górecki (1933-2010) was another composer associated with this movement, and he wrote what is without any doubt the most popular classical composition of the past 50 years: Symphony No. 3, known as the "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" (1976; just one year prior to Pärt's Fratres).
How popular did it become? Consider this:
It became a "smash hit" in 1992 when it was released on the Elektra-Nonsuch label, featuring soprano soloist Dawn Upshaw and the London Sinfonietta, conducted by David Zinman; this recording has sold over a million copies to date;
This recording reached number 6 on the mainstream UK album charts (note: these are the pop music charts, not classical);
It reached number 1 on the US classical charts, and stayed there for 38 weeks;
It remained on the US classical charts for 138 weeks.
Wikipedia reports that "it probably counts as the best selling contemporary classical record of all time."
All of these achievements pertain to just one recording, but it has also been released on many other discs; it would not surprise me if the overall number – the one that includes ALL recordings sold of this work – is in the neighbourhood of 1.5 million, but this is just a wild guess on my part.
I don't know of any analysis that explains why this work became so popular, and I'm not sure that such an analysis is even possible. The reasons behind anything going viral to this degree are a combination of things you can analyze (e.g., "it's a beautiful work;" see more listed below), and momentum, like a snowball rolling down a hill becoming increasingly bigger, to the point where it can wipe out anything in its path.
But at least some of the reasons for its popularity may be:
The work really is very beautiful – the harmony is always tonal/modal, albeit with lots of "blurring" (sustained notes, layered on top of one another) – so listeners unfamiliar with classical music (and those that are) are not hearing anything that might come as a sonic shock to them;
It has a calm, soothing quality, for the most part – a quality associated with other works in the "Sacred Minimalism" style (including last week's example, "Fratres");
Being a type of minimalism, there is lots of repetition, but nowhere near to the degree you find in pulsed minimalist works by, say, Steven Reich, or in static minimalist works by Morton Feldman (although, there are elements of stasis in Górecki's piece as well);
The text is about things that anyone with any degree of empathy in their makeup can relate to; it consists of three laments, told from the perspective of a mother grieving dying (in the first movement) or dead (in the third movement) son, or, in the second movement, told from the perspective of an 18-year old girl imprisoned in a gestapo prison in 1944, and later killed. The text is below.
First Movement
My son, my chosen and beloved Share your wounds with your mother And because, dear son, I have always carried you in my heart, And always served you faithfully Speak to your mother, to make her happy, Although you are already leaving me, my cherished hope.
(Lamentation of the Holy Cross Monastery from the "Lysagóra Songs" collection. Second half of the 15th century)
Second Movement
No, Mother, do not weep, Most chaste Queen of Heaven Support me always. "Zdrowas Mario." (*)
(Prayer inscribed on wall 3 of cell no. 3 in the basement of "Palace," the Gestapo's headquarters in Zadopane; beneath is the signature of Helena Wanda Blazusiakówna, and the words "18 years old, imprisoned since 26 September 1944.")
(*) "Zdrowas Mario" (Ave Maria)—the opening of the Polish prayer to the Holy Mother
Third Movement
Where has he gone My dearest son? Perhaps during the uprising The cruel enemy killed him
Ah, you bad people In the name of God, the most Holy, Tell me, why did you kill My son?
Never again Will I have his support Even if I cry My old eyes out
Were my bitter tears to create another River Oder They would not restore to life My son
He lies in his grave and I know not where Though I keep asking people Everywhere
Perhaps the poor child Lies in a rough ditch and instead he could have been lying in his warm bed
Oh, sing for him God's little song-birds Since his mother Cannot find him
And you, God's little flowers May you blossom all around So that my son May sleep happily(Folk song in the dialect of the Opole region)
It is a very long piece –54 minutes – so be prepared; it gets off to a very slow and quiet start, so quiet that, if you are listening to this through your computer speakers, it is very difficult to hear anything for the first few minutes. For this reason, I have the video below cued to start shortly before the soprano enters, but obviously you should feel free to go back to the start of the piece and listen to the whole thing if you wish.
Its length, stasis, and repetitiveness have led some to wonder how many of the people who bought this disc actually listened to the whole thing, and, for those that did, how many listened to it more than once (this question is referenced in the Wikipedia article).
As always, share any thoughts you may have in the comments section below.
There's a pretty good chance you've heard Fratres (1977) by Arvo Pärt, because it's a hugely popular piece. There are many different versions of it, because it was written with no specific instrumentation. It has been described as a “mesmerising set of variations on a six-bar theme combining frantic activity and sublime stillness that encapsulates Pärt’s observation that ‘the instant and eternity are struggling within us.’” (Wikipedia)
Pärt considered this to be an example of a compositional style he called "Tintinnabuli" (which in Latin means "bells") described as follows by Wikipedia:
"This simple style was influenced by the composer's mystical experiences with chant music. Musically, Pärt's tintinnabular music is characterized by two types of voice, the first of which (dubbed the "tintinnabular voice") arpeggiates the tonic triad, and the second of which moves diatonically in stepwise motion. The works often have a slow and meditative tempo, and a minimalist approach to both notation and performance. Pärt's compositional approach has expanded somewhat in the years since 1970, but the overall effect remains largely the same."
Have a listen, and please share any reactions you may have in the comments section below:.
Pärt's music is considered by some be exemplify a post-1970 movement in composition called "Holy Minimalism," also known as "Mystic Minimalism," "Spiritual Minimalism," or "Sacred Minimalism." Here's how this is described in Wikipedia:
"With the growing popularity of minimalist music in the 1960s and 1970s, which often broke sharply with prevailing musical aesthetics of serialism and aleatoric music, many composers, building on the work of such minimalists as Terry Riley, Philip Glass and Steve Reich, began to work with more traditional notions of simple melody and harmony in a radically simplified framework. This transition was seen variously as an aspect of musical post-modernism or as neo-romanticism, that is a return to the lyricism of the nineteenth century.
"In the 1970s and continuing in the 1980s and 1990s, several composers, many of whom had previously worked in serial or experimental milieux, began working with similar aesthetic ideals[3] – radically simplified compositional materials, a strong foundation in tonality or modality, and the use of simple, repetitive melodies – but included with them an explicitly religious orientation. Many of these composers looked to Renaissance or medieval music for inspiration, or to the liturgical music of the Orthodox Churches, some of which employ only a cappella in their services. Examples include Arvo Pärt (an Estonian Orthodox), John Tavener (a British composer who converted to Greek Orthodoxy), Henryk Górecki (a Polish Catholic), Alan Hovhaness (the earliest mystic minimalist), Sofia Gubaidulina, Giya Kancheli, Hans Otte, Pēteris Vasks and Vladimír Godár.
"Despite being grouped together, the composers tend to dislike the term, and are by no means a "school" of close-knit associates. Their widely differing nationalities, religious backgrounds, and compositional inspirations make the term problematic, but it is nonetheless in widespread use, sometimes critically, among musicologists and music critics, primarily because of the lack of a better term."
Check out some of these composers' music, and share any suggestions you may have for pieces to listen to in the comments section below!
In the mean-time, here's another beautiful work by Pärt: Spiegel im Spiegel (1978). Here's the Wikipedia write-up for this piece:
"Spiegel im Spiegel in German literally can mean both "mirror in the mirror" as well as "mirrors in the mirror", referring to an infinity mirror, which produces an infinity of images reflected by parallel plane mirrors: the tonic triads are endlessly repeated with small variations as if reflected back and forth. The structure of melody is made by couple of phrases characterized by the alternation between ascending and descending movement with the fulcrum on the note A. This, with also the overturning of the final intervals between adjacent phrases (for example, ascending sixth in the question - descending sixth in the answer), contribute to give the impression of a figure reflecting on a mirror and walking back and towards it."
Welcome to my advanced composition students! I look forward to working with you this term.
At the end of this morning's class, I played an example of a short, character piece for piano and flute in which all chords were classifiable as "poly-harmonies," which means the superimposition of different tonal harmonies to produce a non-tonal (i.e., post-tonal) result.
Be aware that some chord superimpositions do not produce a non-tonal sonority, however. For example, if you superimpose an F chord over a G chord, the result is a G11 chord, not a new, post-tonal sonority. If you want to try writing a piece using poly-harmonies, make sure the resulting chord is not classifiable as an existing tonal harmony, and, more importantly, make sure that a chord that might possibly be classifiable as an existing harmony does not function or progress in the way that chord would in tonal music.
One of the most famous examples of poly-harmonies is the so-called "Petroushka Chord," in which F# major and C major triads are superimposed; this was the starting point of the piece played in this morning's class.
If this topic interests you, check out the three blog posts I wrote on Post-Tonal Harmony Ideas; each has audio examples and score examples to follow:
Finally, although this next link takes you to one of the posts I wrote on a different topic (ostinatos), it has examples of a related topic – bitonality – from The Rite of Spring: Ostinatos; making a lot from a little (2. Rite of Spring). This too may interest you.
If you read any of the above blog posts and find them interesting, please leave a comment in the "Post a comment" section below (you have to be signed-in to your Google account in order to post comments).
Posts
