The Potentially-Hubristic Folly of Planning

"Creativity is very messy," writes Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman in a Scientific American article entitled, The Messy Minds of Creative People (December 24, 2014).

Well, yeah…

The process that leads to the completion of a composition, or indeed anything you create, is, at least in my experience, rarely linear.

• There are ideas that don't go anywhere.
• There are ideas that go somewhere, but not where you want them to go.
• There are sometimes too many ideas.
• There are sometimes no ideas, or at least none that seem to be any good.
• Finding regular, uninterrupted blocks of time in which to compose can be challenging. Kind of like searching for the Holy Grail, or finding matches for all those single socks that modern dryers produce.
• When you finally find a block of time in which to compose, the creative well sometimes appears to have run dry. This can lead to…
• Frustration. And in such large quantities!
• Every now and then, however, something goes right, which is sweet indeed! However…
• We may come to believe that what we considered brilliant, or at least pretty darn good, is neither, and in fact may very possibly be complete garbage. To be clear, it is unlikely to be garbage, complete or otherwise, but the brain sometimes turns on a person. If that should happen to you, smack the brain smartly (but figuratively) with a rolled up newspaper and tell it that a non-brilliant idea is not necessarily garbage. Here's a little inequation to help remember this:
• Non-Brilliant Idea ≠ Garbage
• There can be positive feedback from others, encouraging you to keep doing what you're doing. So you do, but it may turn out to be bad advice if you don't like the direction your piece is taking.
• There can be conflicting suggestions from others, such as:
• The piano writing is unidiomatic, vs. Nah, the piano writing is fine… A good pianist should have no trouble with it.
• A single motive that permeates every bar of the entire piece? That is PURE GENIUS, my friend! vs. That pervasive motive is fine for a while, but you get pretty sick of it after about the twentieth time you hear it, and by about page five it makes me want to jump off a building! Seriously, dial it back a notch or six; less is more.
• That middle section makes no sense to me, vs. That middle section is my favourite part!
• There can be a little voice in the back of your head suggesting that you really have no idea what you're doing, so why keep doing it?
• There can be self-flagellation. Figuratively, ideally. Otherwise, it would just be weird.
• There can be happy, joyous times. Oh, what a splendid idea this is! This peppy little minuet will surely get the powdered-wig set dancing! La!
• There can be self-shaming: Oh, why did I ever think that a peppy minuet was a splendid idea? Hipster kids nowadays are mostly into the bourée, while emo kids are all about sarabandes, at least when they're not listening to the Pavane pour une infante défunte… I feel so ashamed!
• On good days, there can be the briefly-held and hubristically-based belief that the composition process is really quite straightforward, as long as you focus on executing the plan.
• There can be a growing sense that your plan isn't working, accompanied by a feeling of increasing dread.
• There can be creative paralysis upon realizing that not only does the plan not work, your entire piece is basically dead in the water, gone belly up, defunct, bankrupt, demised, passed on, is no more, has ceased to be, expired, gone to meet its maker, a stiff, bereft of life, resting in peace, pushing up daisies, its metabolic processes are now history, it's off the twig, kicked the bucket, shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain, and joined the bleedin' choir invisible; basically, what you've got is the compositional equivalent of an EX-PARROT!! [adapted from Monty Python, Dead Parrot Sketch]
• There can be complaints and seemingly-unrealistic demands from performers of your music.
• Upon completion of a composition, there can be a sense of accomplishment so profound that, incredibly, you decide to put yourself through this messy process again and begin a new project. 

All of which brings us to the idea of a plan. Here is a cautionary tale based on a true story of someone I taught some years ago, but with abundant and egregious liberties taken:

Chapter One

Once upon a time, there was a student named Sammy (not her/his real name; if you are a student named Sammy, this is not about you. Sorry).

Now Sammy had always composed fairly intuitively, and, while it had often been a frustrating process, it had worked out reasonably well, and s/he was making slow, steady progress.

One day, Sammy got a notion that it would be a good idea to work out a plan for her/his next piece.

Most composers start with a plan, some of which can be really detailed. Insanely detailed! Milton Babbitt, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Pierre Boulez: I'm looking at you, dudes!

A detailed plan could provide many benefits — it could smooth the composition process, since you would always know where to go next within the piece; without a plan, we often struggle when we finish a section because we're not sure where it should go from there. Lots of times Sammy had started pieces intending to take them in a particular direction, only to have the piece go in a different direction! Compositions, like cats, often do not go where we want them to go. A plan would definitely help put Sammy in control of her/his composition, and not the other way around!

Not only that, but a plan would likely result in a work that was well designed, consistent, and organic. No more of this ten-different-ideas-within-the-same-piece nonsense!

A plan could be the key to taking her/his music to the next level.

Chapter Two

And so Sammy began work on the plan. S/he used set theory to work out a pitch system that produced beautiful, non-tonal sonorities. Actually, it took a few attempts before Sammy was satisfied with this, but the eventual result was most satisfying indeed! When Sammy played arpeggios from this pitch-organization system for her/his composition class, they were impressed! Sammy's composition teacher was impressed, and immediately thought of cool and wonderful things that could be done with Sammy's system.

Chapter Three

 Sammy worked out related pitch worlds for different sections of the piece. Sammy also worked on the structure of the piece, eventually (again, after several unsatisfactory attempts) arriving at a series of overlapping arch shapes that were a thing of beauty. Approximate durations were assigned to each section, and as well to each subsection. The vertical axis represented intensity, which rose and fell in a series of cascading waves, eventually reaching a climax at the golden mean (61.8% of the way through the structure).

Chapter Four

There may have been more additions/deletions/modifications to the plan after that. Sammy's composition teacher does not remember.

Chapter Five

But Sammy's composition teacher does remember feeling increasingly uneasy as the weeks rolled by and no significant work on the actual composition was presented to the class. Semesters are about twelve weeks long in Canada, the land where Sammy and Sammy's composition teacher both live, and with about half the semester gone, all Sammy had to show the class each week were further tweaks to the plan. To be fair, however, Sammy had sketched out bits of several sections as well. This in no way reflected any malingering, dallying, dawdling, or dilatoriness on Sammy's part; constructing a detailed plan takes a lot of work, and Sammy's teacher understood this, having read about it in a book once.

Chapter Six

Sammy was beginning to feel the crunch, what with the semester half gone and all, and decided to take the leap. The first section took longer than expected, because Sammy wasn't satisfied with the results s/he was getting. The first section! And already it was starting to feel like herding cats! Why must cats and compositions be so willful? Sammy wondered.

That's the age-old question, mused Sammy's composition teacher.

Chapter Seven

Well, friends, I gotta tell ya, Sammy was (and probably still is) a diligent and eager beaver. Literally. No, not literally… the other one… figuratively? Yeah, that's it. But you already know this, because a good portion of chapter five was devoted to Sammy's general lack of dillydallying.

And so Sammy, ever keen, put her/his back into it and herded those figurative cats! Which is to say, s/he completed the first section, and was satisfied with it. As were all those who heard it, and they praised Sammy.

From on high.

The semester was now about two-thirds complete.

"Hmm," thought the composition teacher, nervously. 

Chapter Eight

The process continued as previously, which is to say that it was considerably less smooth than anticipated! Aspects of the original plan — which was quite lovely! — were modified, or even scrapped. The existential angst that Sammy had hoped to avoid was not avoided, and, what's more, it now grew from "I'm not sure where to take my piece in the next section," to "There are aspects to my plan that don't work, and I am stressed – desperately – over this!"

And indeed, Sammy was in a very dark place. Her/his composition teacher, having been in very dark places on occasions too numerous to enumerate, felt very bad for Sammy. Offers of help were made.

Chapter Nine

And so, for Sammy, it came to pass that time marched inexorably on, as is its wont despite our best efforts to the contrary, and small compositional triumphs were mixed with periodic setbacks and occasional blows to the psychic solar plexus, which means that some setbacks were worse than others.

Sammy stuck with it, however, and eventually pulled the rabbit out of the hat, which is to say s/he finished the piece, more or less, by the end of semester.

"More or less" in this case means that Sammy was not fully satisfied with the finished product, as its completion involved numerous compromises along the way — sections that didn't quite turn out as hoped, but with no time to make them "tickety-boo" (this means "just so," in case you were unaware) because it was necessary to move on to the subsequent section in order to finish by the deadline.

The Moral of This Story

Were the challenges faced along the way the product of a faulty plan, or are such challenges simply inherent to the creative process?

Undoubtedly you, as a perceptive reader, already know the composition teacher's view on this, because the title of today's blog kind of gives it away. 

That, plus opening this blog with, "creativity is messy…" and then following that opening with a list of examples that illustrate ways in which creativity can be messy .

However, the composition teacher hastens to clarify his position by saying that while the creative process can indeed be messy much of the time, even for so-called geniuses, this doesn't obviate the potential benefits of a well-constructed plan. Should Sammy write more plan-based compositions, it seems likely that Sammy's ability to craft functional plans, with built-in contingencies for when things get messy, will improve, and will help her/him improve as a composer.

One key to making plans that work is to understand that most plans have to be changed once the actual work of composition is underway. They are more a guide than a strict road map, usually.

That said, however, it is probable that for any substantial creative project, things will get messy along the way, with or without a plan, and part of being a composer involves learning to accept this, deal with the inevitable difficulties as they arise, and push past them.

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry 

(Robert Burns, the Bard of Ayrshire: "To a Mouse," 1785).

Portrait of Robert Burns by Alexander Nasmyth, Scottish National Portrait Gallery

Form in Post-Tonal Music (Questionnaire answers: #4, 5, & 6)

Question 4 from my "Form in Post-Tonal Music (1)" post is this:

4.  On a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high), how important is form in your compositional process? (Be clear on what you mean by "form.")

This is pretty similar to question 1, the main difference being that this question allows for a more subjective answer than the first question. Because of this, I'll keep my answer short, starting with what I mean by "form:"

Form: Structure. The way in which a composition is organized, from a large-scale, bird's eye view (e.g., sonata form, or ABA, or rondo) to every subdivision beneath that, all the way down to motivic relationships, thematic structures, sections within a transition or development section, texture… anything at all in a musical composition that is organized, which is to say, everything.

So, no surprise here, but, taking this holistic, organic meaning of form, then on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd rank it about a 20 in my compositional process. Or, if that number is unavailable, then perhaps a 10…

---

That was so short that I'll try answering questions 5 and 6 from my "Form in Post-Tonal Music (1)" post, which are:

5.  Is it better to work out a form before composing a work, or do you prefer to create the form as you go? 

6.  Are you actively engaged in thinking about the form of your music as you write it?

Let me draw an analogy to something about which I know nothing (!), which is the way that a building gets constructed. I understand (from reading about this in Wikipedia) that it goes something like this:

1.    It starts with a a design team, which includes surveyors, civil engineers, cost engineers (or quantity surveyors), mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, structural engineers, fire protection engineers, planning consultants, architectural consultants, and archaeological consultants;


2.    They make drawings and set specifications for the building's design. They probably make lots of changes to these along the way, because so many people are involved;


3.    I would guess that the plans need to encompass every aspect of the building, from the overall design, to floor plans, plumbing, electrical, heating, cooling, elevators, stairs, etc.;


4.    Probably some excavation takes place;


5.    Probably they lay a foundation;


6.    Probably they construct a frame using steel girders (or whatever one uses these days);


7.    And so on, and so on, until all of the other things necessary to make a finished building are added, including exterior, interior, plumbing, electrical, windows, doors, inner walls, carpeting, and probably a whole bunch of stuff I know nothing about, but it's all part of making the building safe, functional, comfortable, and nice-looking, inside and out.

The compositional equivalent to this would perhaps be:

1.    Create a plan, live with it and tweak it for a long time until (a) it contains as much information about the composition as is possible in a plan, and (b) you are happy with it.  The plan can include any aspect of your composition, such as large-scale and smaller-scale form, harmonic language, rhythmic aspects, dramatic aspects (sections can be characterized by their mood (i.e., the mood you hope to elicit in listeners), such as lyrical, aggressive, chaotic, sad, exuberant, confusing, etc.);


2.    If you were an architect, you would probably run your plan by a whole bunch of engineers and other people, as described above. Since you are a composer, there is no need for this — the consequences of a bad plan in composition are considerably less dire than the consequences of a bad plan in the construction of a building (!) — but it wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea to ask a few people you trust for feedback, especially if you are fairly new at this.


3.    Following your plan, start by composing smaller sections, combining and expanding them until they become larger sections. Tweak as necessary. Remove sections that no amount of tweaking can help; they may come in handy later, but if not, have them take a time-out by concealing them in your piano bench, or, if you lack a piano bench with a handy lid, garden shed. If you don't have a garden shed or a piano bench with a handy lid, then place these sections neatly in bottom of your cat carrier, and pray that your cat doesn't mind;


4.    Add any bits necessary to connect the sections, and then tweak some more;


5.    Put the finishing touches on the work, making sure all dynamics, articulations, bowings, wind instrument slurs, pedal markings, etc., make musical sense.  [You should have been putting these in as you composed each section, by the way!]


6.    Write programme notes using the most enigmatic language possible (if struggling with this, consider using computer-generated programme notes from this handy site: CCCBSG);


7.    Design a cover page using a cool font — If you haven't thought of a title yet, now would be an excellent time to do so;


8.    Write a three-volume edition of performer instructions in single-digit font sizes;


9.    Print and bind multiple copies of the score;


10.    Prepare parts, make sure page turns are in good places, proofread them, print them, and tape them together;


11.    Get people to workshop it, if possible, and then make any changes necessitated by this, and then reprint score and parts, and try to get people to play it again;


12.   Think of something profound to say about your composition at the première. If this is impossible, as is always the case with me, say something witty instead. Try to avoid saying, "… and I hope you like it!" at the end of your speech; this will be seen as a sign of weakness on your part by some.  Instead, say, "and I hope the experience of hearing this magnificent work does not render you senseless, doomed to spend the rest of your days unable to function on any level but the most basic. I really do, because, and I mean this with all of the sincerity of a washed-up Las Vegas entertainer, I ABSOLUTELY ADORE ALL OF THE FINE PEOPLE IN… [insert name of town or village you believe yourself to be in here, taking care to pronounce it correctly]!!!" This is how you make a name for yourself.

[Possibly I got carried away there; I will attempt to rein myself in now.]

Starting with a well-formed plan is a fine way to go about composing. Of the composers I have talked to or heard from on this topic, the great majority have indicated to me that they approach their craft in this way. I highly recommend it!

I do not start with a plan, however, so you may wish to take this advice with a grain of salt. ;)  I start with a general idea of how long I want the piece to be (but this can change radically once I get further into the composing process), the instrumentation, the type of piece I want to write (atonal and pointillistic, expressive and moving, light-hearted, virtuosic, accessible to young performers, etc.). I also keep the deadline for that composition in my thoughts; basically, I need to know whether I can compose at a leisurely pace, or if I need to become manic about it and write as quickly as possible.  I virtually never have any idea about the overall form of a piece before I start writing it, so my answer to question 5 is that I like to make it up as I go.

[My "make it up as I go" method, explained:  I start with a small idea, and work at expanding it. I try to figure out where it "wants" to go. If it seems like it wants to go in a direction I don't like, then an argument ensues. When the dust has settled, I continue expanding it, but at various points I begin to wonder where the heck this particular composition is going, and so I analyze, in every sense of the word that I know, what I have composed thus far.  In the course of doing this, I usually get ideas of possible large-scale structures that might be feasible for that composition. As I move forward, I revisit large-scale structure possibilities frequently, essentially asking, "is this working?" frequently. If the answer is no, I attempt to fix things before moving on.]

This works for me, but many (probably most) successful composers prefer to start by drawing up a fairly-detailed plan, and, frankly, their approach makes more sense to me, at least intellectually. I guess I like relying on intuition, while visiting the rational part of my brain periodically (which is where analysis and planning come in), but basically, all composers need to figure out an approach that works best for them.

My answer to question 6, then, is yes, I am very much engaged in thinking about form during the composition process (that's part of "making it up as you go"), albeit at some points more than others.

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.

---

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.

---

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.

Form in Post-Tonal Music (Questionnaire answers: #1)

Inspired by a presentation by Jocelyn Morlock at this year's Newfound Music Festival, I asked several questions about musical form in my previous blog post, in part to engender a dialogue on the topic — I am genuinely interested in learning how other composers think of this — and in part to get my students to think about it. Musical form is a topic of interest to all composers.

Because of my propensity towards long-windedness, I have decided to answer the questions posed in my previous post in separate blog entries.  Here is the first question:

1. On a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high), how important is form in musical composition, and why?

It's tempting to enthusiastically jump up and shout "10," with at least three exclamation marks (of critical importance, ladies and gentlemen!!!), and then wait for the applause to die down, but, when both great and not-great composers used the same forms, such as sonata, and rondo, is this justified?

Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven all used sonata form extensively.  So did virtually all European composers, good or bad, from about 1770 to 1900, including Fernando Sor.

Fernando who, you may ask? If you are not a guitarist, you have probably never heard of him, and for good reason: Sor was a competent composer of mainly guitar music, who lived from 1778 to 1839. 

His life overlapped with Beethoven's (b. 1770) and Schubert's (b. 1797), but, to use a baseball analogy (because spring training has now started!) if Beethoven and Schubert were major-league all-stars and first-ballot Hall-of-Famers, Sor was a useful guy to have on the team, ready to contribute if any of the A-listers became injured or needed days off, but who probably spent a lot of time on the bench. If you don't follow baseball and have no idea what I'm talking about, my point is that history has been kind (deservedly) to Beethoven and Schubert, but not so kind (deservedly?) to Sor.

He was reputed to be an excellent guitarist, however…

I mention Sor because, as a guitarist, I played some of his music during my youth. It is well-written for the guitar, and it has pleasing moments, but it never came close to moving me as profoundly as the music of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Charlie Parker, The Beatles, and many others. 

Here's an excellent performance of Sor's Sonata in C, op. 22, first movement. In my playing days, I practically — nay, definitively owned this piece! Yeah! (By this I mean that I purchased a copy.) I also performed it, although of course I did not play it very well… Have a listen, and see what you think:

An excellent performance, is it not? (I fail to understand the decision to repeat the exposition, however; once through strikes me as plenty!) But as a composition, I am not sure that any theorists or musicologists would suggest that it is at the level of the three classical-period "greats," Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. I certainly don't.

Why is that, you might ask? Well, I will suggest that the weakness is not the large-scale form, which does all the things a good sonata form composition is supposed to do. To wit:

• It opens with a declamatory, attention-grabbing, first theme, and
• follows it with another tonic-area theme. 
• The transition modulates to the dominant, as is the norm, and 
• even has a clever, unexpected tonicization of the chromatic mediant (Eb) along the way. 
• This tonicization of Eb sets up a dominant pedal point on D, but it hints at the dominant minor (Gm), not the major minor (G); this (hinting at the dominant minor) is fairly common in Mozart and Beethoven, but nevertheless a clever thing to do.
• The second theme-group includes several themes, each of which is pleasant enough, and it concludes with a codetta. All good!
• The development is skillfully handled, and is neither too short, not too long, finishing with a dominant pedal point in the home key, as most developments do. 
• The recapitulation is also handled competently, but has no surprises (which isn't inherently problematic; Haydn/Mozart/Beethoven wrote many recapitulations that held no real surprises).

In short, Fernando Sor clearly knew what he was doing when it came to form. Despite this, history has relegated him to minor position in relation to the "great" composers.  

This suggests to me that there must have been more to the greatness of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven than their handling of form, and that [DISCLAIMER: PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU ARE SEATED BEFORE CONTINUING TO READ] form is perhaps not the most important aspect of a musical composition!

However (he added, back-pedaling quickly!), one of the reasons we love to study Beethoven is that he did things with standard forms that were often unexpected, or even unprecedented (c.f. "Waldstein" Sonata, op. 53, I)!  

One of the best ways to evaluate composers as "musical architects" (a term sometimes used in reference to a composer's structural design (i.e., form) in a composition) is to compare the following sectioins of their sonata-form compositions: 

•   Transitions in the exposition and in the recapitulation; 
•   Development sections; 
•   Codas; and
•   Any other aspects of form that are unexpected.

Haydn deserves huge credit for the development of classical sonata form (influenced in part by C. P. E. Bach), and both Mozart and especially Beethoven often did some surprising things in the sections listed above. I would love to teach an upper-level course on just Beethoven's codas, or, more generally, classical transition sections; these offer an abundance of fascinating procedures, which reinforces the point that form is indeed important.

However, not all sonatas by the classical "greats" are examples of ground-breaking musical architecture; the first movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata no. 1 (op. 2, no. 1), for example, is not remarkable or unusual in terms of its form, and yet it is a highly-regarded composition for other reasons (motivic unity ranking high among them). That said, I if op. 2, no. 1 represented the pinnacle of Beethoven's artistic achievement, I doubt he would be considered one of history's greatest composers.

And so, after this long-winded preamble, my answer to the question on the importance of musical form is that form is certainly important, but so are a lot of other aspects of musical composition, some of which are arguably even more important, such as motivic unity and organic growth, the play between expected and unexpected elements, and the music's ability to powerfully move listeners. It may be in this last category that Beethoven distinguished himself the most, and if you compare Sor's op. 22 sonata to, say, the transition from the third movement to the final movement, and the entire final movement itself, of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, there is no comparison; listening to Sor's music is a pleasant experience, but listening to Beethoven's is mind-blowing, at least some of the time.

Given this, as well as the fact that (a) lesser composers generally used the same forms (e.g., binary, ternary, sonata, rondo) as great composers in a given historical period, and (b) great composers sometimes wrote excellent music whose form was not particularly remarkable, I guess I would have to say that large-scale form gets about a 7 or 8 in terms of compositional importance on my scale of 1-10.  

Ah, but why am I only discussing large-scale form, you may ask? Because to be fair, it is important to note that "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. If the question is, how important is form in every sense of the word, meaning on every level, then my answer is easy: it's a 10.

It is essential to think about form on multiple levels as we compose; if we leave it to an afterthought, our music will likely suffer for it. And by "suffer" I mean that our compositions can sound confused, disorganized, inorganic, etc.

You don't necessarily have to adopt an existing form, or even know what form you are using in the early stages of writing. At many points during the composition process, however, it is good to step back from the the small-scale focus on notes, motives, lines, contour, harmonies, textures, etc., in order to assess what is going on in terms of structure, and work out what the overall form is, or will be. 

I virtually never plan the form of a piece before I start writing; I begin, see where it takes me, add or take away bits, see if I like it, and continue until a section of the music is written. While doing this, my mind is simultaneously trying to make sense of my musical ideas, through analysis, trying to get a sense for how they are structured, and how the structures can make better sense.  When I feel I have a pretty good understanding of the materials with which I am working, I begin working out a tentative overall form for the composition, but this usually changes as I continue the piece.

Many times, when I am not 100% satisfied with a piece I am writing, it is because the form just does not  work for me, and so I play around with the form until the piece makes more sense. Sometimes, in "playing around" with form, I realize that some sections are too long, too short, or even unnecessary, and I wasn't fully aware of this until I did a structural analysis.

On the other hand, some composers, like to begin with an exact, well-planned form, and that obviously can work well too.   

My advice would be to try it both ways (pre-planned form, vs. figuring it out as you go) and see which works best for you. I would also suggest, if you go this route, to try both approaches several times before deciding if one works better. 

Answers to the remaining questions in my previous blog to follow; hopefully they will be shorter!

How Important is Originality in Art?

I think many people would suggest that originality is an essential ingredient in art. As an example, an excellent copy of the Mona Lisa, virtually indistinguishable from the original, might be valued at a few hundred (or a few thousand) dollars, whereas if the actual Mona Lisa is as close to priceless as is possible for a painting. Two identical works of art; one original and iconic, the other a reproduction, but the first is much more highly-valued than the second by virtue of its originality.

This looks like the Mona Lisa; the actual painting, however, is in the Louvre behind bullet-proof glass.

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

Two of the 19 paintings from Monet's "The Houses of Parliament" series. All are the same size, and from the same perspective, but show changes in lighting and hue at different times of day, and in different weather conditions.

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

"The Thinker," Rodin. At least 20 casts were made of this sculpture.

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

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

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

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

Composers in the "common-practice" period made widespread use of a limited selection of musical forms, chief among them sonata form, as well as rondo, binary, ternary, and theme and variations. When we study sonata form, we marvel at the many nuanced differences we find in different compositions, even though the big picture form is the same. Other common elements include the use of Alberti bass accompaniment figures (although it had numerous variants), an extremely-limited selection of cadence types (virtually every composition from that period ended with an 'authentic' (V-I) cadence), common phrase lengths (especially 4-bar phrases) and phrase-structures (although numerous exceptions can be found), and writing for commonly-found ensembles such as the string quartet.

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

---

¹ Although there are numerous attributions of this quote to Stravinsky all over the web, I have not come across any that cite a source for it. It seems entirely possible that he said this, but I would like to find out if he actually said or wrote this… If anyone has a citation for this quote, please let me know. Of course, it might also be a sentiment that hacks the world over like to attribute to a famous composer in order to justify theft of intellectual property.^↩

Originality — Does it have any role in art?

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

MPHO: "Box N Locks"

Martha and the Muffins: "Echo Beach"

Someone posted the first of the above videos in a forum thread on MacJams.com, a now-defunct site where musicians gave each other feedback on their musical creations, and the title of the thread was "Lazy Songwriting."

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

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

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

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



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

… In case you were not willing to listen all the way to the end of the previous video, the gist is that it plays excerpts of 65 pop songs that all use the same four-chord progression: I-V-vi-IV (in the key of C, this would be C-G-Am-F, usually repeated frequently). The list is hardly exhaustive; there are many more songs that could be added to that list.

There are numerous other oft-used chord progressions in songs too, like I-vi-IV-V (e.g., C Am F G), and the ever-popular I-IV-V (e.g., C F G), or I-IV-V-IV (C F G F), or I-V-IV (C G F), I-iii-IV C Em F), etc.

When I was a jazz guitar student, my teacher gave me a chord progression to learn for improvisation practice called "Rhythm Changes." After a few weeks, it occurred to me to ask about the origin of the name, and he told me that the chord progression came from the 1930 Gershwin song,  I Got Rhythm, but it has been used in hundreds other songs as well. The Wikipedia article on this progression calls it "ubiquitous" in jazz music, and adds that by writing a new melody over its chord changes, thereby creating a composition of a type known as a contrafact, a jazz musician could claim copyright to the new melody rather than acknowledge Gershwin's inspiration and pay royalties to his estate.  [Read more about it here if you like.]

Tunes and lyrics can be copyrighted, but chord progressions can't.  If a songwriter's objective is to write a "hit," it would be virtually impossible to write a chord progression in which large portions have not previously been used in various other songs, and copyright law reflects this. Thus, when it comes to chord progressions, originality does not play a very large role in many musical genres (pop, blues, folk, jazz).

There are, of course, exceptions; I don't think the chord progression in John Coltrane's "Giant Steps" had been used before the 1960 release of the album of the same name, but many have used this chord progression for other songs since then, to the extent that jazz musicians refer to it as Coltrane changes. If you aspire to be a jazz musician, you pretty much have to learn to play and improvise over this in every key (and at a break-neck tempo!).

---

The title of this post — "Originality - Does it have any role in art?" — is mostly tongue-in-cheek; I suspect that most would consider it to play an essential role in art, but, as I have suggested elsewhere (see my next blog entry), its importance may be overrated. 

If I were a pop musician and, in the course of writing a song, discovered that my chord progression was one that someone else had used, it would seem foolish (or at least impractical) to conclude that I ought not to continue writing that song because of its lack of originality. I suspect that the odds would be extremely slim that most songwriters could ever come up with a truly original chord progression while remaining rooted in the functional tonality used by virtually all pop songs.

If you concern yourself too much with the challenge of creating a truly-original chord progression in pop music, you might find it very difficult to finish a song. On the other hand, if everything you wrote sounded very much like the music of others, you might have a hard time carving out a niche for yourself that distinguished you from others. But would this would stand in the way of establishing a successful career in pop music? I doubt it.

I would argue that originality has an essential role in art, but it can be an impediment to the creative flow for an artist to become overly concerned with it (as I have written in another blog), and so perhaps the most practical approach would be to focus primarily on writing the music you want to hear, but with at least some awareness of the need to make that music personal, thereby distinguishing it from the music of others.

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

---

I listened to a YouTube video several months ago of a Beatles rehearsal of "I'm So Tired," a John Lennon song, from the "white" (i.e., untitled, except for the group name) album, where Paul was singing the tune in a goofy kind of way, but what struck me most about it was that the chord progression that McCartney played in the first line of the song was I-vi-IV-V — a ubiquitous progression in 1950's "Doo-Wop" music — whereas in the album version (sung by John), the second chord is VII (yup, a major chord built on the leading tone). A small thing, perhaps, but the use of the VII chord is highly-unconventional, and gives the song a significantly-different feel:


One of the things that makes Beatles songs so musically compelling for me is the occasional use of unexpected chords, while not going so far beyond expected conventions as to alienate listeners.

Here is the album version, where the second chord in verses is (usually) a major VII:

---

DIGRESSION ALERT!  Incidentally, "Sexy Sadie," another Lennon song from the "white" album, also starts with a I (G) and moves to major VII (F#) for the second chord, but the third chord is iii (thus it's G - F# - Bm), which makes the second chord a V of iii:

G - F# - Bm - C - D     Sexy Sadie, what have you done? You've made a fool of everyone,
G - F# - C -D               You've made a fool of everyone,
G - F# - F -D                Sexy Sadie, what have you done? 

There is nothing particularly unusual about a secondary dominant (V of iii), but in the second line above, the VII (F#) chord is not a secondary dominant: G - F# - C -D; following a major VII with a IV is quite unusual (extremely so in classical music!). 

Continuing, the third line above begins with: G - F# - F - D, which is another unusual progression (particularly the first three chords of I - VII - bVII - V). 

The chord progression in each line is similar, but varied slightly and unexpectely each time, and it avoids the ubiquitous Doo-Wop progression that could have been used.

---

To conclude, borrowing is integral to many musical traditions, perhaps all of them. One manifestation is the re-use of chord progressions as discussed above, or in a standard 12-bar blues progression and its many variants. In jazz, playing standards — albeit in your own, somewhat original way — is a common practice. This is also true of folk music.

And the practice is not confined to borrowing chord progressions; other examples include:

• Melodies; despite the fact that they can be copyrighted, melodic phrases, fragments, and ornaments are frequently re-used.  
• I understand that in rap and hip-hop music it is common to borrow (i.e., appropriate) "beats" and entire sampled sections of other songs. 
• Along similar lines, a very popular YouTube video is on the "Amen Break," a drum fill used in countless R and B and rock songs. 
• Classical music uses a relatively small selection of cadence formulas, as well as numerous other commonly-used progressions, accompaniment patterns, devices (such as sequences), and textures.

Of course originality matters — I become annoyed when I hear something that sounds like a blatant rip-off of something else —but a little bit can go a long way, and obsessing over it can be a creativity-killer. So don't!  ;)

---

BONUS COVERAGE! Here are two more videos:

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

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


Commentary from Wikipedia:

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

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

---

POSTSCRIPT:

There is a long tradition of borrowing in art. 

While borrowing musical material is often associated with hip-hop music, the practice has gone on for centuries according to this article: From J.C. Bach to Hip Hop: Musical Borrowing, Copyright and Cultural Context, by Olufunmilayo B. Arewa. 

There is an article in the New Grove Dictionary of Music called "Borrowing." There is also an article in Grove on "Collage," (this is a link to a Wikipedia article on the topic), a technique found in some contemporary classical works in the 1960's, which can also be found in earlier and subsequent periods. Other musical genres associated with musical borrowing include "Plunderphonics," "Musique Concrète," "Sampling," and "Mashups." 

Then there are quotes such as these:

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal (attributed to Stravinsky)

Good artists copy, great artists steal (attributed to Picasso)

Each of these clever aphorisms appears to be a theft of the other, and I highly doubt that Picasso or Stravinsky were the first to make these comments.

For what it's worth, there is much misattribution on Internet sites that collect quotations.

On Musical Detail (3)

I just finished going through a submitted score for this second project, and, in the interest of saving you all some time and potential grief, I'll share with you some of the detail issues that came up. You may be feeling as though you understand all that needs to be understood about musical detail ("I get it! My score must be really detailed!"), but your score may be suggesting otherwise. In no particular order, here are some of the issues that came up in the score I just saw:

• Tempo indication (i.e., metronome marking, and/or tempo adjective like Moderato) and starting mood descriptor (e.g., "intense") should only be at the top of the first system (i.e., violin) in the score, and sometimes above the piano as well since piano usually reads from the score.


• This applies to the score, but when generating parts each part gets its own tempo indication.


• In orchestra scores, each instrument family gets its own tempo marking; the top woodwind instrument, top brass instrument, top percussion staff, and violin I all have tempo indications.


• Tempo indications should be left-aligned with the metre indication; the start of the tempo indication should align with the metre.


• It is good practice to indicate how much or an accell. or rit. you want by writing a target tempo.


• If accell. and rit. move to a new tempo that is only slightly different from the previous tempo, use the "poco" modifier, eg, poco accell. or poco rit.


• When the rit. or accell. is over, write "a tempo" to continue at the new tempo indicated by the target tempo referenced above.


• If you want to return to the starting tempo, write tempo 1° (tempo primo).


• If you change tempo, indicate the change using the same format used at the beginning of your score. In most cases, that will mean having a metronome marking ("quarter = 92") as well as a mood descriptor (e.g., "playful"). If the new tempo does not coincide with a metre indication, left-align the tempo indication with the start of the bar (as opposed to left-aligning it with the metre, which you do at the start of the composition).


• A new tempo should not start in the middle of a bar; it must be at the start of a bar. If, for example, you want a tempo change to occur on beat 3 of a 4/4 bar, make it into a 2/4 bar so that the tempo change can occur on the downbeat of the next bar.


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


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


• Hairpins should have a destination dynamic, like "f" if crescendo, or "pp" if diminuendo; don't write a hairpin with no indication as to how loud or soft you want to be at the end of the hairpin. They also need a starting dynamic, but it isn't necessary to write a starting dynamic if it is clear from the previous measures what the dynamic should be.


• Hairpin lengths should be reasonable, taking into account the amount of dynamic change over the span of the hairpin. For example, an increase of one dynamic level, such as p to mp, is very small, so the corresponding hairpin should be very short. If the dynamic change is larger, such as p to f, the corresponding hairpin can be longer. But even with a p to f hairpin, the length should be reasonable. It is obviously difficult to exactly how long a hairpin can reasonably be, but I have seen hairpins spanning 8 or more bars with very little dynamic change, and this is definitely unreasonable!


• If you want to write longer, more gradual crescendi and diminuendi, I recommend orchestrating the dynamic change. For example, if you want a long cresc. start with a very thin texture and a pp dynamic, then gradually add instruments and expand the register to include increasingly higher and lower notes, and this by itself will create an effective cresc. even if the dynamic remains at pp for the added instruments. Increasing the dynamic beyond pp in this fuller texture will result in a more dynamic crescendo. 


• Don't attach dynamics to rests (!).


• Make sure there are no improperly-grouped rests or beams. Groupings usually follow the basic beat structure of the metre and its subdivisions,


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


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


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


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


• Be picky in your page layout. If using multiple systems per page (which applies to everybody), make sure the systems are far enough apart so that dynamics, articulations, slurs, etc. in the bottom line of one system do not collide with anything in the top line of the next system. There is sometimes slightly more space between the piano part and the instruments above it, again to facilitate reading from the score for the pianist.


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


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


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

On Musical Detail (2)

Someone asked what I thought was a very fair question following my "On Musical Detail (1)" blog, and, rather than edit the original blog to clarify this point (it may already be the longest of all my blogs thus far!), I thought I'd answer it here.

The question:

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

Here is my response:

Let's start with the following assumptions:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Musical Detail (1)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you "finish" your composition without spending sufficient time to fix score detail issues, such as missing or inconsistent dynamics, articulations, bowing and breath slurs, etc., sub-optimal or inconsistent enharmonic spellings, ideas notated in an overly-complex way (see the end of today's post for an example), or other problems such as out-of-range notes, long runs of notes for a wind instrument that leave no room for the performer to breathe, string double stops that are unplayable, trombone glissandi that are impossible, etc., then…

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

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

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

In the workshop, issues that kept coming up and slowing down the rehearsal, which was painfully embarrassing at times for the student composers, included:

• Missing, unclear, or inconsistent dynamics;


• Missing, unclear, or inconsistent articulations;


• Missing rehearsal letters in some parts;


• Use of English words (i.e., smoothly) as opposed to more standard, Italian terms (legato), which was an issue because the ensemble is predominantly francophone;


• The impracticality of including a page full of performance notes at the start of the score, partly because not all musicians read English, but mostly because we were told that the conductor and musicians are unlikely to actually read these instructions! "If it relates to the music," we were told, "then put it in the music!"


• The use of a key signature in a transposed part of atonal music. Notation programmes sometimes insert a key signature into transposed parts, even if you don't want key signatures in parts! If the music is atonal and there is no key signature in the score, there should be none in the parts; if your notation programme has inserted one you need to remove it. Also, a key signature is relatively rare in contemporary music, and, because of that, it was completely overlooked by one of the performers).


• Questions on breathing, bowing, phrasing, and pedalling (although there was no piano in the ensemble, there were nevertheless pedalling issues; percussion instruments included a high-hat, vibraphone, and timpani, and there was a question as to how to pedal all three when this particular percussionist had only two feet, and elected to use one on which to stand!).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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













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