"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…

Bob Ross, Empowering the Masses, and Fear of Failure

I recently watched a PBS documentary on Bob Ross (no relation), who gained fame as the creator and host of The Joy of Painting, a television program that ran for 12 years on PBS stations in the United States.  On the show, Ross would teach viewers how to create an oil painting from start to finish in just half an hour by following seemingly easy, step-by-step instructions. The blank canvas with which he started would be gradually transformed into an impressive landscape painting by the end, rather like a cooking show that starts with a few ingredients and a stove and ends with a gourmet dish or meal.

According to the documentary, Bob Ross felt that one of his missions in life was to convince ordinary people that they could paint pictures skillfully, even if they had no background in art. He wanted to help people who considered themselves to be untalented and/or lacking in artistic skills to discover that they too could create art by following his (apparently) simple steps.

That is a powerful and beautiful message!

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Mystery, Complexity, and Drudgery

It seems to me that composers and other creative artists often make the creative process sound far more mysterious or complicated than it really is.  The reality, at least from my perspective, is that developing into an accomplished and mature artist takes years of drudgery.

People who wish to become concert pianists or violinists understand that the process involves years of practicing scales, studies, and progressively more challenging compositions, as well as constantly trying to improve their sound, listening to other artists, studying music theory, history, and ear-training, all the while receiving frequent feedback from teachers and others.  Becoming a skilled composer is no different; you do all these things, plus spend thousands of hours composing music, until you reach a point where you kind of feel like you know what you are doing, although I admit that I never totally know what I'm doing.

When you reach this point, others might tell you, gee, I wish I had that kind of talent, when what they should be saying is, gee, I wish I had spent ten thousand hours developing my skills as a composer!

[Here's a link to another blog I wrote on this topic, in case it interests you: Talent? Skill? What's the difference?]

It can seem as though composers (and other artists) sometimes play up the mysteriousness or complexity of the creative process by offering explanations that are shrouded in mystery, or  seemingly designed to obfuscate. Here are silly examples of both:

Shrouded in Mystery:  This composition came to me fully-formed in a dream, and all I did was write it down when I woke up!

Designed to Obfuscate:  The prime form of [0 2 3] is, as even the simplest child knows, [0 1 3].  This aptly illustrates that, on a Babbittion plane, "major" and "minor" (I herewith mimic dormant terminology with both prudence and shocking insight) trichords are indistinguishable from one another, at least aurally (visually, the difference is notoriously striking!). I manipulated both of these sets employing a cunning derivation of neo-Riemannian theory that I authored while researching North-Indian proto-tablational reductions of integer-centric, sub-sonic impulses in the steppes of central Asia on prestigious Fulbright, Guggenheim, and Getty Grants, employing retrogrades, inversions, graduate students, and, of course, post-modernist regression, with the following results: [0130230203010333333333327(!)7], and so on (I refrain from revealing too many of my secrets here in the interests of protecting my intellectual property; all too often in the past others have marauded my ideas and created works that generated untold millions for their music. I speak here of Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Justin Bieber, among others). It was thus that I genetically engineered my latest chef-d'œuvre, "Mary Had a Little Lamb."  It is contradistinctive from "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," Baa Baa Black Sheep," and "A B C D" in non-trivial ways that defy explanation (I refer readers capable of understanding über-high-level theoretical constructs to Edward Cone's seminal publication, "Beyond Analysis," which MUST be followed immediately by a close reading of David Lewin's "Beyond the Beyond," although it is unlikely that people who love music will be capable of understanding either article or this erudite explanation for that matter).

I made up both examples above, but if the second amused you, I highly recommend a visit to The Contemporary Classical Composer's Bullshit Generator, a clever Perl Script by composer Dominic Irving, that, as its name suggests, generates reams of random rubbish masquerading as composer's program notes.

But I digress… Bob Ross empowered ordinary people to create art by demystifying the process of artistic creation, and explaining his process in a way that made ordinary people feel that they too could paint. This was a noble and tremendous accomplishment.

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But can anyone compose music?

I believe the answer to this is yes, at least for anyone that is physically capable of doing so. GarageBand, an Apple software application for Mac OS X and iOS, allows users with no musical background to to create music or podcasts.  You don't need much musical knowledge to use music sequencing and notation software either; all you need is a computer, the knowledge of how to use these programs, and the ability to distinguish the musical bits you like from those you don't.  Naturally, as with painting, the more you do it, the more your skills improve.

This is great news for people who love music but did not have instruction in musical instruments as they grew up.  It's also great news for people who did have musical instruction in an instrument, but not in composition. A lot of classical musicians are trained with little or no instruction in composition, but, should they (or anyone else) ever wish to try their hand at composing, there are ways to do this in privacy, in a risk-free environment.

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Fear of Failure

A recurring theme of Bob Ross's television shows, according to the documentary, was don't fear failure, and this seems good advice for anything else in life as well, but particularly so for music.

Fear of failure can hold us back from achieving our goals. Some awareness of the potential pitfalls associated with any endeavour seems wise — we all know what can happen if you cross a road without looking — but what can go wrong if you compose music?

This calls for a list!

Things that could go wrong if you write music:

1. It might not be good.
2. It might cause a riot when it is premiered.
3. The audience might boo lustily, or shout, "For SHAME!" during the premiere.
4. It might result in your becoming the biggest laughing stock in the history of the human race.
5. It might get bad reviews.
6. The musicians might tell you that the music is unplayable.  
7. The musicians might not play the right notes. Or they might play the right notes, but at the wrong times. Or they might totally disregard dynamics, articulations, and slurs.
8. The musicians, accustomed as they are to playing music by dead people, might resent having to perform music of some upstart composer with the unmitigated gall of being alive.  
9. The musicians might say, "You didn't really want that F sharp in bar 41, did you?" Or worse.
10. Your parents/friends/pets might not like it.
11. You may be branded a formalist, and be called before the Union of Soviet Composers to explain yourself.
12. You might get hit by a bus on the way to the premiere.

Yes; all of the unfortunate events in the above list could happen to composers, but some are not very likely (numbers 2, 3, 4, 5 [because concerts don't get reviewed much these days, and many reviews don't express particularly strong approval or disapproval], 11, and 12), and others are just things you deal with as they arise.

Perhaps the most likely of the above possibilities is the first: It might not be as good as you'd like it to be, at least in the early stages of your development as a composer.

But so what?  If our composition isn't as good as we would wish it to be, then we try again, and keep trying again until we can eventually write music we feel good about.  Sure, the premiere of  Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring caused a riot, but (a) music premieres generally don't, and (b) if your premiere causes a riot, count your blessings (while taking cover), because, as the old show business saying goes, there's no such thing as bad publicity.

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; they went on to achieve greatness in spite of this. If technical issues in your music are causing problems for performers, look closely at them to see if there is a compromise that serves your goals as the composer and makes the music more "user-friendly" for the performers. It's all "stuff" that you can deal with, and, to quote a book I have never read, "Don't sweat the small stuff."

It can sting when your music does not turn out as you had hoped, but, generally, if you work at developing your craft for long enough, you will write music you can feel proud of, and that is the only factor within your control. If you believe in your music, others are likely to believe in it as well.

Compare the things in the above list that actually have some likelihood of going wrong to the things that can go wrong for air traffic controllers, surgeons, or police officers; if they make mistakes, people can die. If we make mistakes, we feel disappointed or even frustrated, but no one dies.  

"Failure" is all relative. If a composer goofs and writes notes that are out of range for a particular instrument, we fix it, and, in the great scheme of things, nothing particularly bad has happened. If a composer tries some crazy new thing that does not end up working very well, the composer may feel unhappy or even embarrassed at the premiere, but there's an good chance that someone will come up to the composer afterwards and say something like, "Dude, that was my favourite part of the whole piece! I really loved that section!"

A composer can (and, I believe must) take chances and try new things, and if they don't work out satisfactorily, we either attempt a fix (go back and keep trying things until we arrive at a solution that satisfies us), or chalk it up to experience and move on to the next piece somewhat wiser, assuming we have understood why it didn't work.

Fear of failure can be paralyzing for an artist; I believe, having experienced it, that it is the primary cause of "writer's block." Try to embrace the risks inherent in writing every new composition, with the knowledge that:

1. Risks are an essential part of the process;
2. If risks "fail" — if something you try does not succeed — the consequences are usually minimal;
3. There is a solution for every compositional problem;
4. The more you solve compositional problems, the more you learn;
5. The solutions to compositional problems can end up being among the strongest sections of a composition; and
6. There is a saying that you learn more from failure than you do from success.   I don't know how true this is — I think there is much to be learned from both, frankly, and here's a link to a Scientific American article that challenges this saying — but I do believe that challenges (a nicer word than "failures," don't you think?) provide opportunities to both (i) learn and grow as artists, and (ii) improve our compositions, so, looking at it this way, they are not to be feared, but embraced!

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And so, to summarize a ridiculously long blog post…

I am not suggesting we embrace failure, despite any appearance to the contrary in my last point above! ;)  I am suggesting that fear of failure can hold a person back from accomplishing goals, and every composition brings challenges that, if negotiated skillfully, can result in some very fine music!

To return to the point of the first section of this blog, the creative process is sometimes described in mysterious language or perplexing techno-babble/jargon, and this can serve as a kind of barrier between practitioners (e.g., composers, artists) and those interested in developing skills as composers and artists (e.g., students, amateurs).  Like the old joke about how to get to Carnegie Hall (answer: Practice), becoming a good composer is not very mysterious at all: You just practice, a lot, try to get lots of feedback along the way, and aim to make every piece as good as you can make it at that time. And yes, anyone can be an artist!

Inspiration, Perspiration, and Perspicacity

Joshua White, who in his most recent blog says he has written more music in this past week than he did in the previous four, asks:

• Does it take inspiration to make music that I will be personally satisfied with?
• If so, is there any way to seek this inspiration or come up with an inspiring idea?
• Would it be better to steer clear of inspiring ideas and become better at working with ok ideas to make them good technically?

These are great questions, and bring to mind Thomas Edison's famous adage about inspiration versus perspiration:

"Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration."

What exactly is inspiration? Here is part of what the current Wikipedia article has to say about it:

Inspiration refers to an unconscious burst of creativity in a literary, musical, or other artistic endeavour. Literally, the word means "breathed upon," and it has its origins in both Hellenism and Hebraism. Homer and Hesiod believed that inspiration derived from Gods such as the oracle of Delphi. Similarly, in the Ancient Norse religions, inspiration derives from the Gods. Inspiration is also a divine matter in Hebrew poetics. In the Book of Amos the prophet speaks of being overwhelmed by God's voice and compelled to speak. In Christianity, inspiration is a gift of the Holy Spirit.

It seems that inspiration is often seen as something of a mystery. How do we get great ideas? Where do they come from? How do we create the circumstances under which inspiration can arise?

My take on this is that the feeling of being inspired is a wonderful thing, but it is fruitless to wait for 'inspired moments' in order to create something good. In essence, I agree with Edison on the relationship between inspiration and perspiration in the creative process.

Here's another question:

What does it mean if something comes easily to you?
(a) You are inspired; or
(b) You are working within your comfort zone, not really trying anything you haven't done before.

I can only answer for myself, and say that lots of times for me that answer is (b).

Something I have said in class is that it helps to think of composition like a job. If you were a film music composer, and a director said, "we need x minutes of music for a chase scene, y minutes for a love scene, and z minutes for a scene where the protagonist is verging on madness... Oh, and we need all that in 24 hours!", you would probably get busy and write all that music as quickly as possible, knowing that if you failed to do so, or if the music wasn't very good, the director would find someone else to do the job.

In other words, you would work extremely hard (perspiration), and not sit around waiting/hoping for inspiration to magically appear. Deadlines often provide all the inspiration you need.

I find it helps to think of ALL composition projects that way. Some will end up being more personal than others — they will have more of you in them — but it is often easier to finish a composition if you think of it as a job that needs to be done, as opposed to, say, thinking of it as an opportunity to reveal your inner psyche through music.

And, by the way, all things you create will have at least some of your DNA in them, whether you are aiming to do this or not.

Perspicacity — defined by the Compact Oxford Dictionary as "having a ready insight into and understanding of things" — is part of the equation in this way: If you understand the potential of the musical materials with you are dealing, you are far more likely to compose something good than if such were not the case.

Understanding the potential of musical materials that you create, and knowing what to do with these ideas, are all part of the craft of musical composition. It is safe to say that no matter how inspired you are, you are not likely to compose something really good until you have a mastery of this craft. And again, the only way to gain such mastery is to work very hard at it.

I have written about ways in which this can be done in other blogs, most notably the entire nine-part series on Composition Issues that were the very first posts to this blog. I will paste the links to this series at the bottom of today's entry.

I will leave you for today with a provocative statement:

Good composers are good by virtue of the fact that they work hard; mediocre composers are not as good because they do not work as hard. If a composition is not considered to be very good, it probably indicates more about the composer's laziness than it does about talent or inspiration.

Okay, have at it! What do you think?

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→ Composition Issues (9-part series) ←

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

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

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

4. The Pros and Cons of Development

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

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

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

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

9. Taking your inspiration from wherever you find it

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