Exploring Music with No Melody, part 2

In part one, we compared a ridiculous number (20) of definitions of the word, melody, and came up with our own, functional-but-flawed definition (a sequence of notes), eventually arriving at the question at the core of these music with no melody blog posts:

 Does good music require a strong, singable “tune” in the foreground? 

In part two, we conclude this discussion and examine a variety of works in which a foreground melody is not a primary organizing principle. There is a description of a composition project relating to this topic for my students at the end.

Discussion of the above question:

"In the foreground," means that the "tune" is front and centre, the musical aspect that most prominently gives the composition its identity. When we think of Yesterday (the Beatles song), Jingle Bells, Mendelssohn's Wedding March, Star Wars (main theme), or Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, we may think of many facets of these pieces (instrumentation, rhythms, our emotional responses to them, etc.), but it is likely that the aspect of these compositions that first pops into our head is the tune.

However, there are, perhaps surprisingly, numerous compositions whose most prominent and memorable aspect is probably not the “tune," and yet we consider them to be "good." Or even great!

Here are some of them; the first two have audio clips beneath the music examples, the remaining ones are all videos, some with scrolling scores:

J. S. Bach, Prelude 1, WTC I, BWV 846

If audio player not visible, click here to listen

L. van Beethoven, Symphony 7, II: Alegretto (pno. reduction)

Schoenberg — Farben (#3 of Five Pieces for Orchestra, also called "Summer Morning by a Lake: Chord Colours"; 1908)

A. Webern, Variations for Piano, op. 27, II

Glenn Gould's performance of the Webern is above; if you haven't heard it, I strongly recommend having a listen (and watch the hand crossings in the second movement, which starts at 1:31). It's very short, as is the case in all Webern music.


Next is another short one, Ligeti, Etudes for Piano, Book 1, No 2:




Howard Bashaw, Prelude no. 5; watch the pianist's hands:




Next is Messiaen, Petites esquisses d'oiseaux:




And after Messiaen, it makes sense to listen to some Toru Takemitsu music. This is Riverrun:



Morton Feldman, Piano And String Quartet (it's an hour and 20 minutes long, so get comfortable!):




Philip Glass's music very much belongs in this discussion; this is Glassworks:

These are just some of many compositions that don't have a melody, or "tune," as most people understand those words, as a prominent, foreground feature. There's also an entire genre of music in which this is also the case, which is called Spectralism, music that uses sound spectra or tone colour as a fundamental organizing principle. I wrote a blog about spectral music music a few years ago; click here if you wish to learn more about it. That post also has more music videos by other composers to check out.

In spectralism, as well as in all the above examples, composers found ways of drawing our attention to musical aspects other than melody. These aspects included continuous motion broken chords (Bach, Ligeti), repetitive arpeggios (Feldman), a focus on musical colour and/or sound masses (Schoenberg, Messiaen, Takemitsu, spectralism, Feldman), pointillism (Webern), arpeggios with interjected bird call emulations (Messiaen), fast, angular writing with repeated motives (Bashaw), static minimalism (Schoenberg, Feldman),  and pulsed minimalism with oscillating figures (Glass).

Composition project:  Write three short pieces for piano and one other instrument, in which melody is not a predominant feature. Each piece should approach this challenge in a different way. You can borrow techniques from any of the pieces cited above, or cited in my Spectralism blog, or from any other pieces, or you can come up with your own original solutions to this challenge. The harmonic language cannot be traditional tonality, but this does not exclude the use of traditional sonorities.

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UPDATE (2019): Here are more examples, suggested by, and with huge thanks to,  Robert Humber:

Rautavaara: Symphony No. 7, "Angel of Light"

Another piece by György Ligeti; this one's a modern classic: Lux Aeterna

Check out Symphony No. 1 (1951) by Henri Dutilleux; melodic fragments abound, but they don't really coalesce into what most of us would call a tune:




And here's another Robert Humber suggestion: Chukrum, by Giacinto Scelsi:

And finally, Child, by David Lang, part I: My Very Empty Mouth:

If you have any other suggestions of works that belong to this category, please share them via the "comments" section below!

Exploring Music with No Melody, part 1

Does good music require a melody? Does the melody have to be something memorable that we can sing or whistle after having heard it? And what exactly do we mean by “melody?”

Let’s take these questions one at a time, but in reverse order:

1. What is melody?

Compare these definitions of melody:

Oxford Dictionaries:

1. A sequence of single notes that is musically satisfying; a tune.
2. The aspect of musical composition concerned with the arrangement of single notes to form a satisfying sequence.
3. The principal part in harmonized music

Dictionary.com:

4. Musical sounds in agreeable succession or arrangement.
   
5. The succession of single tones in musical compositions, as distinguished from harmony and rhythm.
6. The principal part in a harmonic composition; the air.
7. A rhythmical succession of single tones producing a distinct musical phrase or idea.

Merriam-Webster.com:

8. A pleasing series of musical notes that form the main part of a song or piece of music.
9. A song or tune
10. A sweet or agreeable succession or arrangement of sounds; tunefulness.
11. A rhythmic succession of single tones organized as an aesthetic whole.

More from Dictionary.com:
12. A pleasing succession or arrangement of sounds.
13. A rhythmically organized sequence of single tones so related to one another as to make up a particular phrase or idea.
14. Structure with respect to the arrangement of single notes in succession.
15. The leading part or the air in a composition with accompaniment.
16. A succession of notes forming a distinctive sequence; tune.
17. The horizontally represented aspect of the structure of a piece of music.
18. The perception of pleasant arrangements of musical notes.
19. A rhythmical succession of musical tones organized as a distinct phrase or sequence of phrases.
20. Musically satisfying sequences of notes collectively

Well, the range of definitions is impressive! The closest thing to a common denominator in these definitions is that melody is a sequence (or succession, or series) of notes (tones, sounds). [The word sequence in these definitions simply means succession, not a musical sequence.]

I find it both surprising and odd that so many definitions include words like satisfying, agreeable, pleasant, and pleasing; it seems problematic to attach an emotional response to the definition of melody. 

If a melody is musically dissatisfying to someone, does that mean it's not a melody? Melody can be described in many ways — satisfying or dissatisfying, good or bad, aimless or purposeful, pointillistic or linear, chaotic or predictable, sparse or dense — without changing the fact that it is still a melody. One person's "bad" or "dissatisfying" melody may be another's "good" or "satisfying melody, but in either case, it's a melody. Subjective terms do not belong in the definition. 

My feeling is that a sequence of notes is a somewhat functional, albeit imperfect, definition of melody, because it allows debate on the relative merits or satisfaction-level of melodies without invalidating a melody or entire composition just because we don’t find it pleasant or satisfying. 

The problem, unfortunately, is that this definition — a sequence of notes — doesn't really tell us very much; is any sequence of notes a melody? This is debatable of course, but I suspect most people would say, for example, that a succession of pitches randomly selected from the 88 notes of a piano, with random durations, spaces in between, and dynamics, is not the kind of musical line we associate with the word melody. But perhaps for some people it is.

2. Does a melody have to be memorable?

Again, a problem with this question is that “memorable” is a subjective term; what I find memorable, you might not, and vice versa. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, is memorable. The melody to Scriabin, Prelude, op. 74 no. 2  (below), although very beautiful, perhaps less so (this is very short – only slightly longer than a minute – so, if you don't know this lovely miniature, please have a listen):

There are types of music, such as pop or musical theatre, in which it is particularly important that the melody be memorable.  More generally, it seems likely that most compositions that we enjoy have memorable melodies, but, at least in classical music, the entire piece is not likely to be equally memorable.

Symphonic development sections, for example, don’t need to be memorable; they just need to take the listener for a ride (sometime a wild one) to places where fragments of melodies sound familiar, but are used in unfamiliar contexts and often unstable harmonies.  Most people probably find it challenging to leave a symphonic performance humming the development section, but we don't hold that against a great symphony. For music geeks like me, classical development sections can be enthralling to hear and study, even if more memorable (and more complete) melodies come in the exposition (first section).   

3. Does good music require a melody, memorable or otherwise? 

Well, here we have to backtrack a little; if the question is, does good music require a "sequence of notes," then it seems that the answer is usually yes: Good music typically has notes, and they are typically in a sequence of some sort.  (Well thanks, Captain Obvious, you may be thinking…)

But even here there are exceptions, such as John Cage’s 4’ 33” (Spoiler alert: It has no notes), and non-pitched electronic music, particularly musique concrète. 

So let’s revise this question, because doing so will get us closer to the objectives of the composition project at the end of part 2 of these Exploring Music with No Melody blogs:

3®. Does good music require a strong, singable “tune” in the foreground? 

— See part 2 for the continuation of this discussion, with lots of music videos.

Even Great Composers Can Write Flops

In an earlier blog that touched on the issue of fear of failure, I wrote that "all great composers have had bad reviews, been harshly received by members of the public and/or their family, and many have been told been told their music is unplayable. In spite of this, they went on to greatness."

For today's blog, I decided to research the topic of compositional "flops," a term I define below.

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Stephen Sondheim is, by any measure, one of the all-time great composers and lyricists of musical theatre, and yet Anyone Can Whistle (1964) closed after only 9 performances, and Merrily We Roll Along (1981), had only 16-performances.

Have you heard of Galt MacDermott? He was Canadian (1928-2018), and the composer of the wildly-successful, period-defining musical, Hair (1967), which produced three number-one singles in 1969: "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In," "Good Morning Starshine," and the title song "Hair." Another successful Broadway production of his was Two Gentlemen  of Verona (1971), which won the Tony award for best musical that year. He also did the music for Via Galactica (1973), which closed after seven performances.

The history of musical theatre includes many flops by otherwise successful composers, a sampling of which include the following:

• Rodgers and Hammerstein — creators of many of the most successful Broadway musicals, such as Oklahoma!, Carousel, The Sound of Music, The King and I, and South Pacific — created Pipe Dream (1955), described as "a flop and a financial disaster" by Wikipedia, and others. It closed after 246 performances — which may seem like a pretty good run, except it was "the shortest run of any Rodgers and Hammerstein musical and their only show to lose money and not go on tour."
• Breakfast at Tiffany's (1966), by Bob Merrill and Edward Albee (both extremely successful), closed after only four previews, despite a cast that included Mary Tyler Moore (The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show), Richard Chamberlain (Dr. Kildare, Shōgun, The Music Lovers (he played Tchaikovsky), King Solomon's Mines, The Bourne Identity), and Sally Kellerman (M*A*S*H, The Player).
• The Rocky Horror Show (1975) closed after only 45 performances on Broadway (although it did well in London and other venues). The film adaptation (The Rocky Horror Picture Show) did poorly when it opened, but went on to become a cult classic.

A reversal of this last example is Disney's Newsies, a 1992 film described by the L. A. Times as "one of the year's biggest flops." The music was by Alan Menken, composer of some fairly successful (!) film musicals, such as Tangled, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin,  The Little Mermaid, Pocahontas, and many, many others. Menken won an Academy Award for Aladdin the same year (1992) as he won a Razzie for "worst song of the year" for Newsies. Ouch! When the movie was reworked into a Broadway musical twenty years later, with songs from the original movie as well as new numbers, all by Menken, it became a smash hit.

Beethoven is possibly the best-known classical composer that ever lived; surely he must not have written any flops! And yet, he worked on his Violin Concerto in C when he was a young man, and either never finished it, or did finish it, but it was never performed.

This brings up an important point: What exactly is a flop? If a composer fails to finish a work, does that make it a flop?  

I think of a flop as a completed work that was received badly by the public and/or critics, and, as a consequence, did not fare well, at least initially.

Let us set aside the Violin Concerto in C, and consider Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D, which he did finish. Unfortunately, it got off to a bad start; according to Wikipedia, "the premiere was not a success, and the concerto was little performed in the following decades." Beethoven died thinking his Violin Concerto had been unsuccessful. It was revived seventeen years after his death in a performance by a 12-year old violinist, conducted by Felix Mendelssohn, and went on to become a staple of the classical music repertoire.

Fidelio (1805), Beethoven's only opera, was also the largest work he had composed at the time. It suffered several delays during composition, one of which arose from objections raised by the Austrian censor, and finally premiered in November 1805 to houses that were nearly empty because of the French occupation of the city. Wikipedia tells us that, "in addition to being a financial failure, this version of Fidelio was also a critical failure, and Beethoven began revising it." The next revision (1806) was also unsuccessful, but the last one, in 1814, was finally well received.

The Paris version of Wagner's Tannhäuser (1861; original Dresden version completed in 1845) was an expensive flop, closing after three performances, this after 164 rehearsals. The performances were belligerently disrupted by members of a claque called The Jockey Club, which had unsuccessfully tried to extort Wagner into paying them off to prevent these disruptions. They were also displeased that it had a ballet in the first act, because they held the strong conviction that ballets in operas should only be in the second act, which allowed them to arrive late for shows and still catch the ballet, for them the highlight of any opera.

There are many more examples of compositions that did not fare well, at least initially, by highly-regarded composers, but there are also countless examples of people working in other fields who experienced failure in their lives, and yet managed to overcome it.

• Vincent Van Gogh created 860 paintings, but only one was sold during his lifetime.
• Emily Dickinson published fewer than a dozen of her 1,800 poems during her lifetime.
• Dr. Seuss’ first children’s book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, was refused by "at least 20" publishers.

And then there are people who used failure to spur them onto success in other fields:

• Vera Wang competed at the 1968 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, but failed to make the US Olympic team; she then switched careers and entered the fashion industry.
• Steve Jobs was the cofounder, chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc. He was dismissed by Apple in 1985 following an unsuccessful power struggle with its board of directors; you can probably imagine how gutted he felt by this experience. He then went on to found a new computer company, NeXT, which made better computers than those being produced by Apple. NeXT was moderately successful, but caught the attention of Apple, and in 1996 Apple bought the NeXTSTEP platform and used it as the basis of its highly-successful OS X. This led to Jobs coming back to Apple as an advisor, and in 1998 he was once again given control of the company, bringing Apple back from near-bankruptcy to become the world's most valuable publicly-traded company in 2011.
• And that is not all; after being fired by Apple, Jobs acquired Pixar for $10 million in 1986 and became its CEO. Pixar went on to produce some of the most commercially and critically successful animated films ever made, such as Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, and Wall-E. In 2006 Jobs sold Pixar to Disney for $7.6 billion.

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The point of all these stories is that almost everyone experiences failure on some level at various points in their lives, including highly-successful people. Setbacks are a normal part of life, and especially of the creative process; try to learn from them, and push past them, but never let them define you.

Form in Post-Tonal Music (Questionnaire answers: #3)

Question 3 from my "Form in Post-Tonal Music (1)" post is this:

3.  Should post-tonal music avoid forms associated with tonal music? Do you feel obligated to use "new" forms, as opposed to old forms such as sonata and rondo?

Ah! Now we finally get to a discussion of form specific to post-tonal music!

The background for this question is that Pierre Boulez, in his infamous "Schoenberg is Dead" polemic, criticized Schoenberg for, amongst other things, using old forms with new musical language.  This is sometimes expressed as the "foolishness" of pouring new wine into old wineskins.

In a remarkably thoughtful comment on the questions asked in my "Form in Post-Tonal Music (1)" post, Warren, a composition student at U. Wisconsin-Milwaukee, writes:

Contemporary composers may do whatever they like in regards to prefered forms, though I have to reference Boulez (it feels terrible to reference a terribly mean, spiteful person) when he talks about using forms that aren't tied up with the common practice period. Boulez has a very good point in that the drive of a Sonata or a Rondo is very key-centric, and once you're operating outside of the world of keys, the connection becomes a bit tenuous. Sure, you can compose a sonata or a rondo that utilizes differing sets or theories for each distant key you would encounter, but what made the common practice period forms work was the socialization of functional harmony. We can use old forms for new harmonic structures, but they become much harder to hear outside of a long context like the common practice.

These are all excellent points, and here is an edited version of my reply:

With regards to Boulez and his views on the use of old forms in new music, here are some of my thoughts:

1. I understand the perception of intellectual inconsistency in using new organizing principals for pitch, rhythm, articulations, and dynamics, but then not using new organizational principals for form. Basically, if you're going to use a radical new approach to the choice of pitch, rhythm, dynamics, and articulations, why not go all the way and use a radical new approach to texture, phrases (if indeed you have any), and form?


2. And yet, Boulez has written three piano sonatas, a Sonatine for flute/piano, and a sonata for two pianos. Admittedly, these mostly were written before he turned 30 (although he continued tinkering with his third piano sonata until he was 38, and it is still "unfinished"), but at the very least this suggests that, early on, he was interested in playing with (or reacting to) old forms with new-ish, serialist language. Paul Griffiths writes that the second sonata has "strong intimations of sonata form in the first movement, and of fugue in the finale." Boulez, on the other hand, has said he was trying to "destroy" sonata form in this piece. If so, calling it a sonata and structuring the first movement in a way that is related to sonata form seems a curious way to do this.


3. Can older forms can work with newer musical language? Schoenberg, Bartok, Ligeti, and many other post-tonal composers seem to have thought so, and I see no reason to deny this possibility. The counter-argument to point 1 above is that a composition is not a purely-intellectual exercise; you can argue that it is inconsistent to adopt older forms for compositions employing newer techniques of pitch organization, and that argument can seem reasonable from a purely logical perspective, but if some composers produce powerful and successful compositions while using older forms, then this "logical" inconsistency is moot.


4. Sonata form expositions feature a contrast between the "home" key and a (usually) "closely-related" key, followed by the instability resulting from touching on more distantly related keys in the development. Obviously, if writing post-tonal music with no sense of pitch centre, adopting this aspect of the sonata principle is not feasible. This principle can be applied to post-tonal music that is in any sense pitch-centric, however; instead of home and contrasting keys, one can create home and contrasting pitch centres.


5. In addition to a contrast in key, there is often a contrast in character (i.e., mood) between the first and second theme groups in sonata form as well; the opening theme is often attention-grabbing and dramatic, while the second theme group often begins in a more lyrical character. If looking for ways to make sonata form work in post-tonal music, this contrast in mood is an aspect that could be adopted.


6. Sonata form also employs thematic fragmentation and other aspects of development, as well as sections of greater and lesser harmonic and affective tension; all of these aspects can be at play in non-tonal music as well.

Bringing the discussion back to my own answer to this question, it is probably clear by now that I don't believe post-tonal music "should" avoid older forms, and even if I did hold this belief for my own music, I don't believe in being prescriptive about matters like these. Just because I believe something, doesn't mean others "should" believe it as well.

Do I use old forms? Not exactly… I am not sure I have ever composed something that I knew to be in classical sonata form, for instance.¹ I have, however, used principles from this form frequently in writing music. These include presentation of themes with differing characters, moving the pitch centre around, exploring the continuum between stability and instability, using fragmentation and other forms of development, false recapitulations, playing with codas, and, in the largest sense, using A-B-A forms. An example of a piece of mine that does all these things, and is kind of like sonata form is Dream Dance; click the link to check it out if you wish!

It seems likely that Boulez — or at least the young, militant Boulez that wrote his controversial article referenced above — would consider any hint of an older form in modern music to be embracing the false trappings of the past, but I think that most artists are, willingly or unwillingly, part of various artistic traditions which we can choose to embrace or reject, and not narcissistic iconoclasts, rejecting everything that came before us. Even Boulez, in purportedly rejecting Schoenberg's aesthetic, was embracing Webern's.

So, basically, I don't believe in "should" statements when it comes to aesthetics. If you believe it makes sense to reject the use of older forms in your music, then do this! If you believe otherwise, then go ahead and use older forms in your compositions! Either way, what really matters is your degree of satisfaction with the finished product, not what others think you should or should not do.

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¹ One possible exception would be the two pieces I wrote for Kristina Szutor's "Après Scarlatti" CD, Domenico 1° and Domenico 2°. In these I deliberately based the structures on Scarlatti's keyboard sonatas, which are related in structure to later sonata form (the kind used by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven), but with many differences.

Form in Post-Tonal Music (Questionnaire answers: #2)

Question 2 from my "Form in Post-Tonal Music (1)" post is this:

2.  Most compositions from the 18th- and 19th-centuries use a small number of existing forms (binary, ternary, rondo, sonata, variations). Does this mean that originality, when it comes to form, is not important?

I touched on this in my answer to question 1, but briefly, the use of the same forms by both good and less-good composers might suggest that a composer's originality in the way s/he uses large-scale form is not hugely important to the overall quality of a composition.

One of the reasons theorists and composers delight in studying Beethoven's music and regard it so highly, however, is that he took existing forms and modified them in significant ways.

A specific example of this is his conversion of the coda in sonata form from a simple, short, tonality-affirming and concluding section, to a lengthy, second development section (as in Piano Sonata No. 21 ("Waldstein"), op. 53, I, Symphony No. 3 ("Eroica"), I, or Symphony No. 8, I.  In addition, he expanded the development section itself to a point where it was sometimes longer than the entire exposition (c.f., Symphony No. 3 ("Eroica"), and more generally, he wrote significantly-longer symphonies than his predecessors.

Here is a link to a graph that shows this; If accurate, it is a striking visual representation of the difference in proportions between Beethoven's sonata form in the Eroica symphony, and Mozart's in any of his three final symphonies.

Haydn's contribution to the development of sonata form was huge, to the extent that when we describe a "model" sonata form, we are describing the form he established, albeit probably influenced by C. P. E. Bach; just as Haydn is sometimes called the "father of the string quartet," and "father of the symphony," he could also be called the "father of sonata form."

The great composers were not complacent about form. Not every work they composed broke new formal ground, but, over the entirety of their careers, they often did break new ground in terms of large-scale form.

Not every work by great composers showed originality in large-scale forms, but many did, and we recognize these contributions today by performing and recording these centuries-old works, and by studying them in musical form classes.

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To summarize, here is my four-part answer to the question above:

1. For the most part, large-scale forms used by composers are not particularly original, if by original we mean “created directly and personally by a particular artist; not a copy or imitation,” or “not dependent on other people's ideas; inventive and unusual,” two dictionary definitions of the word.


2. When we speak of originality as applied to form, we usually refer to relatively minor changes within existing forms. Some changes, within this context, were startling and unprecedented, as was the case when Beethoven expanded the coda section of sonata form, but most were more subtle than this. 


3. Originality of form, in this subtle context, is definitely important; the ways in which some composers effected changes to existing forms is one of the reasons we tend to regard them so highly; Haydn and Beethoven contributed enormously to the development and evolution of sonata form. However, (a) they did not attempt to reinvent the form every time they used it, and (b) their changes to large-scale forms were gradual, occurring over the span of their careers, and were mostly "tweaks" of existing practices.   


4. Not every composition needs to be unique and unprecedented in terms of large-scale form. We wouldn't write very many compositions if it were otherwise!  Even great composers used a limited number of large-scale forms. They did not attempt to "reinvent the wheel" every time they wrote a work. Nor, I would argue, should we in our compositions. 

Before leaving this question, I will just repeat something from my previous post on this topic:

"Form" exists on multiple levels simultaneously in a composition, from the very small scale, such as the intervalic content in a motive, the way in which a theme is constructed, motivic breakdown, the functions of each phrase segment, thematic structure such as period, sentence, phrase group, "auto-generative," fortspinnung, etc., to increasingly larger scales such as the structure of sections, movements, and entire multi-movement works."

To me, a  core value in great music is the simultaneous existence of all these levels of formal organization; this is more important than the originality of the form.

"Composers Who Couldn't Finish What They Started"

Wow.  It's been a long time, but here goes:  An attempt to resume regular blogging.

I was motivated to write something after reading a blog post entitled: "Top 5 Composers Who Couldn't Finish What They Started."

Having started, but not finished, several blog entries over the past 8+ months, I thought I could certainly relate to this topic, but it turned out to be not quite as advertised.

The blog's title is probably deliberately provocative — being unable to finish what one started is usually a criticism, but the fact that this was presented as a "top 5" list suggested to me the possibility that it might be about composers who were so spectacularly bad at finishing what they started that they became famous for it, or it was possibly about some "top" composers (whatever that means) that struggled with completing works at times.

I doubted it would be the former — how could composers have achieved greatness if they were chronic procrastinators? — and hoped it would be the latter, because compositional struggles are a familiar experience to me, and I find it reassuring to read that even great composers can experience them.

But it was neither.

Instead it was one of those "top [any number] lists" that are rampant on the Internet these days, usually consisting of a numbered slideshow of pics with pithy descriptions/explanations for each. Some are clever, some are amusing, some are contentious, but this one was simply annoying.

The first thing you see in the blog entry is a graphic with these words: "UNFINISHED SYMPHONIES — Schubert, Bruckner, Mahler, Elgar"

Okay, that's four names… Four is pretty close to five, but didn't the blog title promise five?  And those guys finished LOTS of works… Why is the anonymous blogger claiming they "couldn't finish what they started?"

Moving on, here is the text accompanying the first slide:

This week on Exploring Music we've discovered quite a few famous composers who left great works incomplete. Click on to discover our top 5 composers who didn't get the chance to finish what they started.

Whoah! Didn't get the chance? What the heck does that mean? Bullies stole their pens and manuscript paper? They were abducted by composer-hating street gangs and forcibly prevented from completing compositions? The U.S. military played deafening rock music outside their compounds 24/7, thus making composition extremely difficult? Zombies ate their brains?

Sadly, the topic turned out to be considerably less dramatic, of course; it lists five "top" composers who died before completing a particular composition. For what it's worth, I doubt there was ever a composer who didn't leave behind at least some unfinished work — sometimes, in the course of composing a work, we abandon huge chunks of music, perhaps because we decide it's not good enough, or it doesn't go in the direction we (or the commissioner) wished — but, by the logic of the blog post, this would apparently make us all "composers who couldn't finish what they started."

Beethoven, incidentally, is not on the list even though he is thought to have been working on a tenth symphony when he died.  And I like to think of him as a "top" composer.  An enterprising musicologist (Barry Cooper) has even gone so far as to "complete" (i.e., compose) Beethoven's Symphony No. 10 based on Beethoven's sketches, although it cannot be proven that these various sketches were actually intended for his 10th symphony, or, if some were, that Beethoven wouldn't have rejected them, because frankly, Cooper's "completed" work sounds pretty lame (there are recorded versions of this on YouTube, if you would like to judge for yourself).  But I digress…

Did you know that about 150 of Mozart's surviving works are incomplete (roughly a quarter of his total count of surviving works)? And yet, Mozart is also not on the list, even though he was working on his Requiem Mass in D minor (K. 626) at the time of his death (some portions had been completed, but others were fragments or sketches). He too was a "top" composer, according to many (but not Glenn Gould, Maria Callas, or Frederick Delius… Read more about his detractors in this entertaining blog post, if interested!).

There were probably many composers (perhaps most?) who died while composing something, and this may or may not be interesting — in the case of Mozart it has engendered considerable mythology (aided greatly by the play and movie, Amadeus) — but it seems a pretty silly exercise to select the "top 5" composers for whom this applied.

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Okay, here we go… In case you're wondering, the blog post lists the following composers' unfinished works:

     5. Mahler / Symphony No. 10 (the accompanying text cites Schoenberg, but misspells his name);
     4. Sibelius / Symphony No. 8;
     3. Elgar / Symphony No. 3;
     2. Bruckner / Symphony No. 9; and
     1. Schubert. No specific symphony of Schubert's is cited, but here is the entire accompanying text:

Schubert composed not one, but three unfinished symphonies. Perhaps because of his battle with syphilis and his diminishing sanity, Schubert is the most famous composer of incomplete symphonies!

La!  Let's just dance merrily on Schubert's grave while dismissing him as a syphilitic crazy man!

For what it's worth, syphilis has been proposed as the most likely cause of Schubert's death, while mercury poisoning (a common treatment for syphilis at the time) has also been suggested, but, to the best of my knowledge, we do not know the actual cause of his tragic and untimely demise (age 31); his death certificate indicates typhoid fever as the cause.

The reference to Schubert's "diminishing sanity" seems a cheap shot; there are reports of the composer drifting in and out of lucidity in his final days, as illness overtook him, but it seems flippant to characterize this as "diminishing sanity." From multiple accounts, the final stages of his illness came relatively swiftly. A friend, Josef von Spaun, wrote:

"I found him ill in bed although his condition did not seem to me at all serious. He corrected my copy in bed and was glad to see me and said, 'there is really nothing the matter with me, I'm so exhausted I feel as if I were going to fall through the bed'. He was cared for most affectionately by a charming thirteen-year-old sister whom he praised very highly to me. I left him without any anxiety at all and it came as a thunderbolt when, a few days later, I heard of his death."

More to the point, Schubert wrote his 8^th symphony in B minor, the "unfinished," six years before his death and wrote many other works in the intervening years, so it seems unlikely that "diminishing sanity" or "his battles with syphilis" were the causes of there being only two completed movements to this magnificent work.

Some have suggested that his 8^th symphony is complete as is, a two-movement symphony, but this seems unlikely to me. He had composed most of a third movement (scherzo and trio) in short score, although very little had been orchestrated; since no previous symphony had ever finished with a scherzo movement, it seems likely that his original plan was to add a fourth and final movement, typical of classical symphonies. My best guess as to why it was never finished is that, after completing what are arguably the best two symphonic movements he would ever write, he realized that the scherzo paled by comparison, and so he set it aside while other compositional work overtook him. Possibly he intended to finish it one day, but we may never know this for sure.

Further muddying the waters is the fact that Schubert gave the manuscript to his friend, Anselm Hüttenbrenner, in his capacity as representative to the Graz Musical Society, for whom the work was written. "However, Hüttenbrenner did not show the score to the society at that time, nor did he reveal the existence of the manuscript after Schubert died in 1828, but kept it a secret for another 37 years. In 1865, when he [Hüttenbrenner] was 76 (three years before his death), Hüttenbrenner finally showed it to the conductor Johann von Herbeck, who conducted the extant two movements on 17 December 1865" (this quote from Wikipedia article, "Unfinished Symphony").

Some friend!

But enough ranting about someone else's blog post! I'm actually glad I read it, because it spurred me to write my first blog entry in eight and a half months, and I am hopeful that a more regular blogging habit will ensue.

I may write about procrastination one day, since I am rather good at it, but not just yet…

Playing With Expectations (Part Three)

My previous blog on this topic (part two) just scratched the surface in exploring ways in which Beethoven plays with listener expectations in his Piano Sonata No. 21 ("Waldstein;" op. 53). If examining this aspect of the "Waldstein" interests you, I recommend listening to the rest of the first movement several times if possible (video of this with scrolling score embedded at the end of today's blog entry), trying to identify places in which something unexpected occurs.

However, if you have the entire movement memorized, perhaps nothing would come as a surprise; you would presumably be expecting everything that occurs!

Or would you?

I discuss the "Waldstein" sonata every year when I teach musical form, and every time I hear it I am delighted/excited/amazed, and yes, even surprised, when we reach the recapitulation. Without getting too specific,¹ Beethoven does some absolutely outrageous things during the recapitulation, and even though I know what's coming, it doesn't temper my visceral reaction of surprise when they happen.

Why is that?

It could be because I am slow of mind, incapable of remembering what's coming next. I won't deny that my brain is occasionally slower than I wish it were, but I think there may be another explanation for this, and it is related to dropping a heavy object on my toe last summer.

Here's what happened: I was helping one of my kids assemble an office chair in his room, and an extremely heavy part (the pneumatic gas cylinder – the central metal post upon which the chair rests) dropped onto my foot. I vividly remember that the pain was about as extreme as anything I had ever felt, but I don't remember the pain itself. Put another way, I remember that something really painful happened, and I remember the cause, but I cannot recreate the visceral quality of the experience itself, unless I were to drop something heavy on my toe again. I do not plan on doing this, although life being what it is, I'm sure something similar will occur at some point in the future… :(

Here's another analogy, this time involving no pain: There are some roller-coasters that I have ridden so many times that I know in advance what to expect, and yet they thrill me every time.

Remembering an emotional response is not the same as experiencing it.  When I hear the first movement of the "Waldstein" sonata, I know what is coming next. I also know that in previous hearings I was astonished at various points in the piece by the ways in which Beethoven plays with our expectations, but this knowledge does not prevent my experiencing a similar level of astonishment — I can't believe he just did that! AGAIN! — every time I hear this composition.

This strikes me as one measure of a work's greatness; it can astonish, surprise, delight, or otherwise move you every time you hear it, even if you know what is coming next.

For composers, this is extremely valuable information! If we find ways to engage our listeners and play with their expectations, there's a chance our music will continue to have a similar effect on people for a very long time to come.

If you'd like to listen to the entire first movement of the "Waldstein" sonata, here's a video with scrolling score:

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^{1. I often ask students to identify the various unexpected/surprising things that occur during the recapitulation of this sonata, which is why I am not being more specific here. I don't want to give too much away, because I would like students to discover these wonderful moments for themselves.↩}

Playing With Expectations (Part Two)

Here's a link to my previous post, Playing With Expectations (Part One), in case you missed it.  It's very short, and sets up today's blog entry.

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Rewriting Beethoven might strike some as sacrilegious, inconceivable, or merely foolish, but this is what I will do in today's entry in order to explore how Beethoven plays with our expectations, or, put another way, the issue of predictability vs. unpredictability. How will my re-write sound? You can judge for yourself (there are audio clips), but here's a hint that may shock you (or not): Not as good as Beethoven's version! 

But what makes Beethoven's version better? In exploring the reasons for this, we may better understand an essential component in great compositions, and use this understanding to improve our own creative work.

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Beethoven's Piano Sonata no. 21, op. 53, "Waldstein" is one of his greatest works. This is how the first movement begins:

Have a listen:

There are two basic ideas: The repeated chords, labelled a, and the short "tag" to these chords, labelled b; the b motive is varied and repeated two octaves higher.

Do you see or hear anything unexpected so far?

I know it is difficult to know what to expect when we first hear a piece, but I think most people bring at least some expectations to their listening experiences, and upon hearing just a few bars of a composition, more expectations are formed. If, for example, you have listened carefully to several classical piano sonatas, you probably have some expectations before hearing a sonata for the first time, such as:

• You would expect that a work with the clever title of "Piano Sonata" would be (i) written for piano and (ii) a sonata. Beethoven does not let us down here; sure enough, it is for piano, and it is a sonata! How predictable! ;)
• You could reasonably expect the conventions of 18th- and 19th-century harmony and voice-leading would be followed (since they are based on the practices of composers of that period, of which Beethoven was one), and sure enough, they are, albeit with some unexpected harmonic choices along the way (more on this below).
• Experienced listeners, especially those who have studied musical form, might also expect that the first movement of a sonata be in "sonata" form because that is usually the case (and is the reason this musical form got its name; it is also called "first movement form"), and once again, this proves to be the case here. As with the previous point, however, Beethoven makes some creative and unexpected choices within this form.

However, this four-bar opening already does some unexpected things, such as:

• Most piano sonatas begin with a melody in the right hand, and an accompaniment figure in the left hand, or, alternatively, with a short, attention-grabbing passage in octaves, as occurs in several sonatas by Mozart (K. 284, K. 309, K. 457, K. 570, K. 576). This sonata does neither; it opens with the repetition of a single chord for the better part of two bars (the chord changes on the last beat of bar 2), and the repetitive eighth notes continue unabatedly in the left hand until bar 11 (which you can see below). Beethoven's opening is highly unconventional in this regard.
• You also might expect the right hand notes to be in the treble clef, because that is generally where they are found at the start of a piano sonata, but once again we find that Beethoven does not do this in the first three bars, placing the right hand in an unusually-low register.  This changes in the fourth bar, where another surprising event occurs:
• The melody in bar 4 begins two-and-a-half octaves above the previous melody note in bar 3.  This extreme register shift is very unusual in classical piano music, and especially so just a few bars into the start of a composition.
• You also might expect the key (C major) to be established unambiguously at the beginning, because this is what most compositions do; it is considered good compositional etiquette.:) Here again, Beethoven plays with this expectation: The chord that is repeated so frequently over the first two bars is indeed a C major chord, but the next one (at the end of bar 2) has an F sharp in it, which is not a member of a C scale. The F sharp is part of a D7 chord, which "tonicizes" the G chords in bars 3-4.  If you do not have a background in music theory, all this means is that when we hear a G chord preceded by a D7, the G chord can sound like it is the "home" key, not C.  This is not all that unusual, but it isn't a very common way to open a composition either.  
• The "what key are we actually in?" confusion continues over the next bars as well, because Beethoven avoids a dominant-tonic (G7 to C) chord progression, and this is the progression needed to establish a key. We finally get a G7 to C progression in bar 12, but Beethoven throws in another wrinkle by making it G7 to C minor.  The attentive listener probably knows at this point that the music in C, but is it C major or C minor?

In short, Beethoven is messing with our minds.

Beethoven's continuation of the above has more expected and unexpected elements, but to help illustrate the point of this blog (and for fun), I made up a continuation that you probably will find less satisfying than Beethoven's; the questions, if you agree with this, are where does it begin to sound weaker, and what is the cause?  

Have a listen to the above (Warning: Beethoven connoisseurs  may become apoplectic):

At what point does it begin to sound less convincing?

• Some might say bar 5, which is where it begins to differ from Beethoven's version. However, I don't think it sounds "wrong," or unconvincing there, probably because Beethoven does something almost identical to this in bar 18, and it sounds fine when he does it!  
• My rationale behind writing the second line of music above was simple: In most compositions, the opening musical idea (i.e., theme, motive) is repeated, either exactly or varied in some way. Bars 5-8 above are a repetition of the first four bars, but transposed up a step (sequence).  So far so good.
• In bars 9-10, I cut the first 4-bar idea in half, and this is sequenced up another step.  The tail end of the b' motive is inverted just to add a touch of the unexpected. 
• Bars 11-12 continue this pattern; they constitute another sequence (up by one step) of the previous two bars, and once again the tail end of the b' motive is varied slightly.

So… Where's the problem, and what is the cause?

• To my ears, bar 9 is when things begin to sound unconvincing; perhaps this is because at that point, it becomes a bit too predictable.  Bars 5-8 are a sequential repetition of the opening four bars. Hearing this, the part of my brain that recognizes patterns immediately begins to wonder if another sequential repetition will occur in bar 9, and when it does, I find it disappointing because that is exactly what I expected. Cutting the four-bar idea into two bars mitigates the predictability problem somewhat, but not enough to justify the continuation of the sequence in bars 9-10, at least for me. And doing this one more time in 11-12 just exacerbates the problem.  At this point, if I were in the audience, the composer would have lost me; I would be so unimpressed with the music that I would be unlikely to continue listening in a positive frame of mind.
• The unusual harmonic progression — specifically the use of a B minor chord in bar 10, surrounded by F chords on either side — doesn't sound all that good either.

What about the last line of music above? Let's trash that now!

• Bars 13-17 sound fine to me; not brilliant, just fine. I don't think we need to "trash" this line. The ascending, stepwise pattern in the bass continues using only the a part of the theme. Delaying the b portion until bar 16 seems to work, probably because because my brain is expecting it to arrive earlier, based on previous patterns. Delaying an expected event can heighten the listener's anticipation, and can be an effective way to play with expectations. But it must be done artfully; too much delay, and our interest in hearing the expected event may wane; too little, and we have not had an opportunity to build any anticipation, kind of like that old song, "How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away?"
• This works its way back to the beginning of a varied return of the opening theme in the last bar above.

Let's look at and listen to what Beethoven actually wrote:

Recording of the above:

What makes Beethoven's version work better? 

• Nothing!
• Just kidding… Well, in LVB's version, the first four bars are given a sequential repetition in bars 5-8, but down a step, not up.  This may not seem like much of a difference, but the significance is that the listener is not expecting bar 5 to begin in Bb and then tonicize F. Why? Because this is a very unusual thing to do at the beginning of a composition in C major!  So, once again, we have something expected (a sequential repetition), along with something unexpected (the move to Bb and the tonicization of F).
• A second advantage of continuing in this way is that it allows the bass line (the lowest note) to descend chromatically from C down to G (C-B-Bb-A-Ab-G). This allows Beethoven to explore some interesting and unexpected harmonic colours on the way from the opening C chord to the G chord in bar 11.  
• My bass line has some patterns, but it also has a kind of meandering, aimless quality if you play it by itself; Beethoven's has a strong sense of building towards a goal, that being the arrival at the G chord in bar 13.
• Another point of harmonic interest is that LVB's version touches on C minor as it arrives at bar 13; this too is unexpected.  
• The continuation past bar 13, which is the beginning of the transition section, begins similarly to the opening bars, but this time there are three subtle but significant differences:

1. Instead of repeated 8th-note chords, we get oscillating 16th notes; this produces a more unsettled effect and ramps up the intensity.
2. The register is not the same as the opening; it is an octave higher.  Again, this produces a subtle but possibly unexpected colour change.
3. The second phrase, which was sequentially repeated down by step the first time, is sequentially repeated up a step in bar 18.  Again, not a huge difference, but perhaps not what the listener might be expecting at that point.

• We have only begun to scratch the surface here; many more surprises remain in this movement, including an unusually-long transition, modulating to E major for the secondary theme group (the expected key would have been G, and the expected mode of E in the key of C is E minor, not E major), modulating to Ab for the secondary theme group in the recapitulation, and the lengthy coda, which functions as a second development section.

As I wrote in my previous blog, doing unexpected things in your composition is not of itself particularly challenging, but great works seem to find an ideal balance between the expected and unexpected, and understanding this is one of the keys to growing from a "pretty good" composer to a very good one.

A good way to develop a feel for this ideal balance in the composition you are working on is to experiment – a little more predictable here, a little less-so there; then vice-versa – but just being aware of the value of playing with listener's expectations is a great way to start.

Musical Influences - 2

In my "Musical Influences - 1" blog a few days ago, I promised to "spill the beans" and reveal some of my musical influences. Alas, I fear I have spilled a ridiculous quantity of beans; my response is awfully long... In any event, here is an expanded version of the answer I gave to the music teacher in the Northwest Territories who asked me about this last week:

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Some of the composers whose music I most admire include Lassus, Palestrina, J.S. Bach, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Bartok, Ravel, Messiaen, and Lutoslawski, but I'm not sure how much any of them actually influenced my music in any fundamental way. But they, and many other musical creators in many genres, have all inspired me, without a doubt. I am inspired by the fact that so many people have written magnificent works of sound art whose appeal has transcended time and some cultural differences; it gives me something to aspire to. I am inspired by the raw emotional power of great music.

Great musical creators have an uncompromising refusal to be satisfied with anything less than the absolute best work they are capable of creating. I am both inspired and influenced by this.

Something I hadn't realized until I began thinking about the answer to this question is that the influence of various composers can be found in many of my compositions, although usually for just a few bars here and there. For example, I have written a few pieces that have allusions to Bach in sections, for no valid reason other than it seemed like a good idea at the time, such as:

• There are about 15 seconds of Bach-like music at 7:11 of Dream Dance for solo piano;
• There is a longer, Bach-like toccatta section at 3:58 of Steppin'Out, for piano, violin, and cello;
• The piano figure that forms the entire basis of Julia's Prelude is taken from Bach's prelude to the Bb fugue in the Well-Tempered Clavier (WTC), book 1, although I gave it a Schumann-like harmonic treatment;
• Variation 9 of McGillicuddy's Rant is also based on that figure (Bach, WTCI, Bb Prelude).

In none of these cases was I trying to fool listeners into thinking I was Bach; I was just drawing upon some aspects of his music as a source of stylistic inspiration, in much the same way that I draw upon jazz, the blues, funk, tango, etc., in other pieces; it's all stuff I like, so it finds its way into my music sometimes.

Before I became a classical musician, my aspiration was to become a professional jazz musician, so it is perhaps no surprise that jazz, and related forms like funk and blues, has been a major influence on me, and there are great jazz musicians I admire tremendously, such as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Oscar Peterson. Here are some of my jazz-influenced pieces:

• Funky Flute Groove Experience (2008; flute, electric guitar, electronics on CD)
• Jennifer's Tune (2005; piano, bass, optional drum kit)
• Urban Dance Music (#1 & 2: 2000, #3: 2003; alto saxophone, electronics on CD)
• Andrew Jacob's Ragtime Blues (2001; solo guitar)
• Night Music 2 (1993; no recording)
• Late-Night Music (1990; trumpet, bass, drum kit, piano)

Besides the above, I have written a few other works that show varying degrees of jazz influences, such as:

• Three Pieces for Violin and Piano (1997, ®2004).  The main theme in the first piece has a subtle reference (at least for me) to a blues-based pitch collection, even though this is a 12-tone composition, and the theme returns towards the end accompanied by a walking bass-line in the piano, which makes the bluesy feel more obvious. The third of these pieces, is more overtly-influenced by jazz, and really goes to town with a walking-bass idea, maintaining it for almost the entire piece. My apologies to all for this.
• The 4th variation of McGillicuddy's Rant (1980-2003) for solo guitar is titled "Bluesy." A weird aspect of this piece is that the second section isn't particularly bluesy; for some reason, it reminds me of music by "The Allan Parsons Project," even though I was never a particularly big fan of the theirs. That's pretty weird, if you ask me.
• Duck Soup (1994), for bass trombone and piano, makes use of some jazz-like material, but it is less overt than in most of the other compositions mentioned.
• Passage 3 for Orchestra (1992), also borrows from the jazz world in sections. For a while in the late 1980's and early 1990's it seemed that almost everything I was writing had a walking bass-line at some point, and when I realized this I was able to attend a 12-step, walking-bass recovery group that gave me the courage to put a stop to this insidious practice, at least for a few years. Alas, several relapses have occurred since then, but I'm working on this, taking it a day at a time.

Another specific influence on one piece in particular (Steppin'Out) was an ensemble called the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Steppin'Out also gets kind of crazy towards the end, in a Jimi Hendrix, shredding-type way, so there's another inspiration.

Cartoons (and a now-defunct video game called Toontown.com) have also been a source of inspiration... I wrote a piece called Toontown Follies a couple of years ago that was supposed to be a little bit like cartoon music, and my band piece, The Misty Mall of Avalon, has cartoonish moments, and a kind of TV-show feel to the main theme.

George Harrison died while I was composing I sleep and my soul awakens… for guitar and string quartet, and, coincidentally, around the same time I noticed that the my four-note opening motive was identical to the first four notes of George Harrison's “Within You, Without You,” the Indian-inspired composition on the Beatles' “Seargent Pepper’s … ” album. I have been a huge fan of the Beatles ever since I became aware of popular music — I went to Paul McCartney's concert in Halifax this past summer, and it ranks at the pinnacle of my life's musical experiences — and I had tremendous admiration for George as guitarist/composer and, perhaps even more, as a human being, so I decided to write a section of I sleep… that expanded on that four-note motive so as to make it a more evident connection to Within You… I think the connection is subtle enough that if you didn't know about it, you might miss it, but if you know the Harrison composition and are listening for it, the connection is obvious.

But this is not what I would call an example of influence; it was more a matter of inspiration, so much so that I ended up calling the longish, meditative final section of that work "Kirtan for George."

The influences of a wide variety of composers can be found briefly at various points in different compositions of mine, but I have been influenced in a more general sense by genres of music, such as jazz, rock, funk, cartoons, TV game shows, new age, minimalism, renaissance, modernism, and probably a whole lot more. I like many different kinds of music, and I guess that is reflected in the music I write.