Showing posts with label Ross. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ross. Show all posts

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Blog Index — Organized by Topic (®Jun/2014)


Below is an index of most blogs posted thus far. I omitted entries that seemed less interesting or relevant, such as reminders of deadlines, concert congratulations, order of class presentation, etc.

These are loosely organized by topic to facilitate browsing; clicking on any blog title will take you to that blog post. You may find some that give you ideas about composition techniques, or that contain useful things to think about when composing, including suggestions for what to try when you are stuck.

→ Originality and Art ←
→ Playing With Expectations ←
→ Form in Post-Tonal Music ←
→ Argh! I'm Stuck! ←
Strike While the Iron is Hot! (see section on "writer's block")
→ Atonality – What's in a Name? ←
→ Winning and Losing; Judging and Being Judged ←
→ Audience Response to Contemporary Classical Music ←
→ On Composition (Miscellaneous Topics) ←
→ Composition Issues (10-part series) ←
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.

2.1. Study the music of others.
2.2. Compose as much as you can.
2.3. Invite criticism from others.

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.




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.

8.1. 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!


→ Thematic Growth, and other Technical Considerations ←
→ Nuts and Bolts; Score Details, etc. ←
→ Composition Projects ←
Posted by Clark Ross at 3:47 PM 0 comments
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Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Polystylism

(From Wikipedia; accessed 2012-02-12):
 Polystylism is the use of multiple styles or techniques in literature, art, film, or, especially, music, and is a postmodern characteristic.

Some prominent contemporary polystylist composers include Peter Maxwell Davies, Michael Colgrass, Lera Auerbach, Sofia Gubaidulina, George Rochberg, Alfred Schnittke, Django Bates, Alexander Zhurbin, Lev Zhurbin and John Zorn. However, Gubaidulina, among others, has rejected the term as not applicable to her work. Polystylist composers from earlier in the twentieth century include Charles Ives and Eric Satie. Among literary figures, James Joyce has been referred to as a polystylist. Though perhaps not the original source of the term, the first important essay on the subject is Alfred Schnittke's essay "Polystylistic Tendencies in Modern Music (1971)". The composers cited by Schnittke as those who make use of polystylism are Alban Berg, Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, Edison Denisov, Hans Werner Henze, Mauricio Kagel, Jan Klusák, György Ligeti, Carl Orff, Arvo Pärt, Krzysztof Penderecki, Henri Pousseur, Rodion Shchedrin, Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Slonimsky, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Igor Stravinsky, Boris Tishchenko, Anton Webern, and Bernd Alois Zimmermann. 
I don't find this definition very helpful.  Is polystylism applied to the use of multiple styles within the same piece — this is how I understand the term — or the use of multiple styles in different works?  If it is the latter, than I think the term is so widely applicable that it becomes meaningless; it would be difficult to name any composers whose style did not change during the course of their creative lives.

Composers have often written in different styles for different occasions; one style for church music, another for chamber music, and perhaps even another for "showy" pieces like concerti, or for theatrical works.  Bach's music has been described as a "fusion of national styles" (Manred Bukofzer, Music in the Baroque Era, 1947), referring to his melding of the styles of the two dominant musical cultures of his time, Italy and France, with inherited German practices to create his own unique musical style.

In the early baroque period Monteverdi and other composers wrote in two distinct styles, referred to as prima practica (the older, polyphonic style of Palestrina) and seconda practica (the more modern homophonic and monodic styles, the use of basso continuo and freer dissonance treatment), also called stile antico and stile moderno.  Even late-baroque composers like Bach (in the B minor Mass) and Handel sometimes wrote in the antico style, as did Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (in the Missa Solemnis).

Schnittke's list isn't much help either; if Boulez, Webern, and Pärt are polystylists, are there any composers who aren't?
Here's what I think is interesting about the concept of polystylism for composers of our time:  There is a huge range of musical practices (styles, genres, techniques) coexisting in the world today.  The inspiring part is that, as a composer, you can draw from any of these if you wish, AND you can even find ways to make multiple genres coexist within a composition, if that appeals to you.

This is a (limited) list of "non-popular" music genres, from Wikipedia:
  • Art music: classical music and opera.
  • Music written for the score of a play, stage musical, operetta, zarzuela, film or similar: Filmi, incidental music, video game music, music hall songs and showtunes. 
  • Ballroom music: tango, pasodoble, cha cha cha and others. 
  • Religious music: gospel, Gregorian chant, spirituals, hymns and the like. 
  • Military music, marches, national anthems and related compositions. 
  • Regional and national musics with no significant commercial impact abroad, except when a version of an international genre: Traditional music, folk, oral traditions, sea shanties, work songs, nursery rhymes, Arabesque, Chalga, Enka, Flamenco, indigenous music and Mor lam sing.
As for popular music genres, there are so many that understanding or even listing them all is probably impossible, with lots of overlap between some genres, and disagreement about the definition for many.  Nevertheless, somewhat trusty old Wikipedia has a list of popular music genres that you can check out here, if you wish, broken down into the following main categories:
  • African 
  • Avant-Garde 
  • Blues 
  • Comedy music 
  • Country 
  • Easy listening 
  • Electronic 
  • Modern folk 
  • Hip Hop & Rap 
  • Jazz 
  • Latin American 
  • Pop 
  • R & B 
  • Rock 
  • Ska 
  • Other
Borrowing elements of the popular (or even unpopular) music of one's time has been part of compositional practice at least since the middle ages, so you wouldn't exactly be blazing new trails if you chose to do this today.  What I believe is different nowadays, however, is that we are aware of many more genres of music than was ever the case previously, thanks to communications technology such as radio, television, and especially the Internet.

Many young composers studying in universities are experiencing something akin to the prima practica and seconda practica of the early baroque period, wherein they write (or listen to) music in any of the many popular genres for bands they might be in, or write songs for solo performance, or charts for jazz performance, and then switch to another mode of composing for their contemporary classical music composition courses.

THIS HAS GOT TO STOP, PEOPLE!!!

Just kidding.  I think it is wonderful that multiple musical practices coexist (variety is the spice of life, and all that), but the point of this blog is that it is also fine and natural to explore ways of combining multiple practices in the contemporary classical music you write.  And vice-versa too, if you can figure out a way to make that work.

There have been many classical composers who were influenced by jazz — here is a limited sampling of some of them — but the influence has gone the other way as well, with jazz artists such as Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington and Herbie Hancock all having cited the influence of classical music on their own practices.  Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain has jazzy versions of Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez, and de Falla's El Amor Brujo.

Just for fun, have a look at Wikipedia's list of popular music genres some time, and see if there are any there that you could reference in some way in your next composition.  How about a little African highlife mixed with modes of limited transposition?  Or lo-fi, or psydeco, or elevator music, or video game music, or Eurodance, or downtempo, or or new jack swing, or …

Well, you get the picture.  There are a lot of musical genres out there, and if you find any of them musically interesting, consider incorporating aspects of these genres into your compositions if you wish.

Postscript — My response to some great comments:

Nice to see that this has engendered a discussion!

Joe (AKA "soup") writes about the importance of internal consistency in a composition, and while that is a fine principle (it seemed to work pretty well for Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, and possibly composers whose last names did not begin with B as well), I'm not sure that polystylism necessarily works in opposition to internal consistency.

After all, as I referenced above, Bach blended different national styles within compositions; the fourth keyboard Partita begins with a very French "Ouverture," followed by a German Allemande, a Courante that is a French dance, but this one seems to be a French/German/English hybrid, an Aria that sounds Italianate to me, a Sarabande, a dance said to have originated in Spain, although this one doesn't sound very Spanish to me, a Menuet, which is dance of French origin (although once again, I'm not sure how French this one sounds; it could be Italian or German), and a Gigue, a dance originally from England, but, when spelled this way, is French.

Is there "internal consistency" within this Partita? I would say yes, definitely, but perhaps the consistency operates on a deeper level (harmonic language, the consistent technique of Bach's musical language), whereas the stylistic differences perhaps operate more on a surface level.

Joe also mentions risks; composition involves risks, but they are of relatively minor consequence. Every composer fails a lot. If you try something and it doesn't work as expected, you just try it again, and keep at it until you are satisfied, after which you move on to the next challenge. 


I don't know that polystylism increases the risk that a composition will be lacking in internal consistency very much; I think that composers for whom internal consistency is a priority will find a way to incorporate it into their music, whether they write polystylistic music or not.  Put another way, "internal consitency" refers to a lot more than style, although it can refer to style as well, of course.

If you like the idea of polystylism AND you also like the idea of internal consistency, you can find a way to combine the two.

For those who haven't already heard it, here's a link to "Dream Dance," a piece some have called the finest piano composition since Greek antiquity (admitedly, the people calling it this are my kids, and I told them to say that if asked). It touches on different styles as it bops along (Gershwin, Glass, Bach, Haydn, Scott Joplin, and even some Clark Ross in there somewhere), and I *think* it has internal consistency!

In response to Richard Ford's comment, thanks for sharing your thoughts!  It's always a thrill when someone I don't know leaves a comment.  You raise an important point: Just how important is "internal consistency" anyway?  I suspect every composer would have their own take on this, but the point is that we should at least ask the question from time to time; we don't have to follow centuries of classical music tradition if we don't think that tradition speaks to us or our audiences. 

Thanks to all commentators so far, and further comments always welcome!
Posted by Clark Ross at 1:49 PM 22 comments
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Thursday, November 11, 2010

The Ross (née Heisenberg) Uncertainty Principle, and Other Musical Dichotomies

Most readers of this blog are, I am sure, well acquainted with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, the gist of which is that there are certain pairs of physical properties in quantum mechanics (e.g., position and momentum) where the more precisely one is measured, the less precisely the other can be measured, represented as follows:


As every musician knows, the uncertainty principle can be applied to Fourier transforms of complex waveforms:


Now, you may be saying, "Not so fast, cowboy!  I am not at all acquainted with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (nor, I suspect, are most most readers of this blog!), and all of these mathematical formulae are making my head spin!  Besides, what does any of this have to do with musical composition?"

I will respond by admitting that  (i) I am not actually a cowboy, and (ii) my opening statements are mischievous attempts to be provocative (or vice versa; I'm not really sure).  I realize that Heisenberg and complex mathematical equations are not common areas of study for most musicians, but, whether you understand them or not, those equations certainly catch the eye, do they not? ;)  In any event, please do not worry; there will only be one further mathematical equation in this blog, but I will explain it with disturbing clarity, or concise obfuscation, depending on my mood at the time.  Or not…



One of the most important dichotomies to be found in most classical music is certainty versus uncertainty; today's blog is about the value of uncertainty, in a very general sense, within musical compositions.

Here are some examples of how this can work:

Certainty
Uncertainty
Theme; a recognizable melodic idea.
Development; use of familiar motives in unfamiliar contexts; transformation of motives in order to create new material.  Some aspects of the material may be recognizable, but the listener may be unsure as to where it is going.
Transition; the beginning of a transition often sounds like a continuation or repetition of previous thematic material, but it soon becomes apparent that something different is going on, as  modulation takes place, and the material is taken in a different direction, creating uncertainty.
Key/Modality/Pitch Center; a section is in a particular key, or modality, or, if non-tonal, it may be centered on a particular pitch class.
What key are we in?  Development sections, transitions and retransitions, cadenzas, and even some coda sections (notably Beethoven's) all move between key areas, creating harmonic instability.  Even tonicizations within more stable key areas can create some harmonic uncertainty.  
Form; I recognize this form! I therefore have a pretty good sense of what is likely to happen next. If the form includes a recapitulation (and most do), then I have a very good sense of what to expect for the last section of the piece.
Form? Um... What's going on here? I don't recognize the form.  Or, I thought I recognized the form, but the composer has thrown in unexpected elements (such as a coda that is longer than the development, or an unusually long transition, or a cadenza thrown into a piano sonata (as in Mozart's K.333, III), or a new theme in the development section).  Is it sonata form, or rondo, or sonata rondo, or sui generis, etc.?

My musical "uncertainty principle" is this: It is at least as important to have sections that give rise to a sense of uncertainty in a composition as it is to have sections of certainty. 


Fortunately, this can be represented by the following equation, which makes composing extraordinarily easy (if you're a physicist); x = quantity of uncertainty (measured in photon energy), p = mass of uncertainty (e.g., any Mass movement, such as kyrie, gloria, credo, etc.), and the h-bar is, of course, Planck's constant (I'm guessing this is a reference to Planck's faithful canine companion, Helmut):


Why?  The excitement of a roller-coaster ride — not an emotional one, an actual one! — is probably related to both the ascents and descents; going up the big hill that tends to be right at the start creates a sense of Heisenbergian uncertainty (some might call it "dread"), as you wonder what lies in store for you once you reach the top (Is this thing safe?  Why did I think this would be fun? Do I have a legal will?), and going down creates a sense of certainty (I am going to die! I know it for sure! Whee!), mixed with uncertainty (how much longer? Why is it so dark in here? Will I toss my cookies?).  People who love these rides, I would guess, love both the uncertainty and the certainty of the experience, but especially the former.  At least I do...

But a musical composition isn't a roller-coaster ride, is it?

Well, perhaps not, but I was making a rather loose analogy.  A musical composition can be compared to a journey, and, if this analogy makes sense to you, then it is a wonderful example of the old saying that what matters most in life is the journey, not the destination. How much fun would life be if you knew exactly what was going to happen at every stage?  How enjoyable would a musical composition be if you knew beforehand exactly what would happen at every stage?


→ Uncertainty; don't leave home without it!

What about compositions that are memorized?  They are enjoyable, even when I know exactly what will happen next!  Good point!  But I think what may be taking place here is that even when you know exactly what notes are going to be played before they are actually played, I am not sure that you know exactly what your emotional response to those notes will be, so here again, I suspect that part of the attraction to the composition may be based on uncertainty.  This too is analogous to a roller-coaster ride; even if you've been on it numerous times, you might respond slightly differently to it each ride.

I encourage you to look for opportunities within your compositions to try this idea out.


This topic is an offshoot of the predictability/unpredictability dichotomy that I have mentioned in class and written about in past blogs. Predictability within a musical composition, like routines in life, can be comforting and reassuring at times, but too much can quickly bore the listener; a great composition seems to have a perfect balance of the two.

Below are links to two blog entries relating to this one, FYI:

• Two musical dichotomies: Familiar vs. Unfamiliar, and Expected vs. Unexpected
• More musical dichotomies




Questions:

1. Besides those already discussed, to what other musical parameters can this certainty/uncertainty dichotomy be applied?

2. What are some of the ways in which it can be applied to the composition on which you are currently working?

3. Is this a useful way to think about music?

4. What are some other dichotomies to be found in music?

5. Can the certainty/uncertainty dichotomy be applied to other genres of music, such as popular, jazz, folk, or world?
Posted by Clark Ross at 11:48 AM 20 comments
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Tuesday, February 16, 2010

"Funky Flute Groove Experience"

[N.B. This blog entry is about 1.5 years old, from THURSDAY, AUGUST 07, 2008.  The reason I re-posted it here is that the site that hosted my original composition blog was shut down, and this was the only post from my original comp blog that had not already migrated over to this one.]

This morning [AUGUST 07, 2008] I finished editing the guitar track to my most recent composition, Funky Flute Groove Experience. which I will refer to by its abbreviation (FFGE) for the rest of this post.

The above link will take you to the programme note and recording of this piece, but a brief background is that I wrote it for Christine Gangelhoff (flutist) and electronics, to be performed at the most recent Newfoundland Sound Symposium (July, 2008). Christine and I had asked a local DJ/turntablist (DJ Russtafari) to be involved in this too, but we learned a few weeks before the performance that he had moved to Korea, and, incredibly, was not planning to commute back to St. John's for the performance! What was up with that?

Another part of the original plan was to have me play guitar on the piece, but, as the performance date got nearer, I started getting cold feet because (a) I don't perform much, (b) I am not confident in my abilities as a guitarist, and (c) I was spending all my time composing the piece and had no time to learn a guitar part.

Or so I thought…

Christine, who had been expecting to perform FFGE as part of a trio (with DJ Russ and myself) called "Urban Sound Collective," was now facing the prospect of playing solely with the electronic accompaniment, and was a tad disappointed. Kind of hard to call yourself a collective when there's only one performer, I guess...

I therefore decided, in a moment of compassion/rashness, to follow through with my original plan and create a guitar part for the piece (which was otherwise about 95% finished, but had zero notes for guitar), and to (eek!) perform it too. I second-guessed that decision a few times (which I guess means I third-, fourth-, and fifth-guessed it), but the good news is that it worked out very well; I am happy with the part I ended up writing, and I wasn't nervous at all while playing it, probably because it was largely improvised, and memorized. 

 And, as it turned out, we were able to find another DJ/turntablist in Deb Sinha, who was here for a performance during the Newfoundland Sound Symposium. Mr. Sinha very graciously agreed to step in at the last minute and did a fine job. And so Urban Sound Collective was a trio after all, and all went well! Or, if "well" is overstating matters, then at least nobody was injured during the performance, and safety is our number 1 concern! Just kidding; my number 1 concern was to make sure the performance went well, and it did.

I guess the fact that I took a risk and didn't have it blow up in my face emboldened me to try recording the guitar part myself. I had never edited digital audio before (hard to believe, I know, in this day and age!) and so was apprehensive about the process; the fact that I was using a 10-year-old Mac G4 that crashes about twice a day did not inspire confidence. It took a couple of hours to get everything set up — I was temporarily stymied because I don't have a microphone preamp (necessary to boost the signal strength from 'mic level' to 'line level'). The microphone (used to pick up the guitar amplifier) had been connected directly to the digital audio processor (MOTU 2408MkII) but I couldn't figure out how to boost the signal (as I said, I was a complete novice at this!), so I routed it through my mixer and applied gain to the signal there. It took a ridiculous amount of time (the more time it took, the less inspired I felt), but once things were set up properly the process of recording was very straightforward.

I ended up spending hours recording and editing the guitar track — you can move individual notes a few milliseconds (or a lot of milliseconds) forwards or backwards until they are exactly where you want them, but it's a painstaking (and simultaneously amazing) process. I took several runs at the guitar solo (in the last two choruses of the minor blues that occurs around the middle) and the rhythm, quite frankly, is still a bit loose, but I eventually left it as is because it didn't feel too out of character for the piece.

Here is a recording:

DreamDance Picture

Postscript: I submitted this to MacJams.com, where it has received comments from members of that on-line community. Click here if you would like to read them. 

Post-postscript: MacJams.com went belly up, so reading comments by the MacJams community on this piece is no longer an option. People really liked it, which was gratifying.
Posted by Clark Ross at 6:27 AM 1 comments
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