"If you can name it, don't use it" (1)

Whenever someone leaves a comment on any of my blog posts, no matter how old the original post, I receive an E-mail notifying me of this. This was how I found out that Jessica Blenis had recently left a comment on a post written almost six years ago called "Why Atonal/Post-Tonal Music?"

Jessica graduated from Memorial University a few years ago with degrees in music composition/theory and music education, and is currently working on her Master's degree at the University of Calgary.  It was great to hear from her again!  This was actually her second comment on this post, the first coming during the first weeks of her first composition course here in 2008, and so I was interested to see how her perspective might have changed during the interim.

Her recent comment is very thoughtful and well-written, as was typical of Jessica while she was a student here, and I urge you to read it.  In it, she mentions that someone (a teacher?) once told her, with regards to specific compositional techniques, "if you can name it, you can't use it," and she wonders what other composers think of this advice.

To explain further, I gather that this advice means that any compositional technique or style (or device?) that has a name, such as serialism, spectralism, polystylism, impressionism, expressionism, minimalism, aleatoricism, etc., can not be used, and I would guess (although Jessica does not say this) that this restriction came from a teacher (not me); if so, there was likely a pedagogical reason behind it.

One problem in responding to this advice is that it is not clear as to what is meant by "it;" harmony, counterpoint, notes, textures, and instruments can all be named, but are they forbidden?  Probably not, I would guess, but perhaps Jessica can enlighten us on this.

Another problem is not knowing the context in which the advice was given. Was it intended as a stricture, as in, "Composers should never use a technique or style that can be named!", or was it a simply a challenge to be more original?

In any event, it is interesting and provocative advice, and, like, Jessica, I wonder what others think of this. Please leave comments below, and thanks! I will wait a while before posting my thoughts.

A Sampling of Ideas and Techniques for Composing

SCALES:

1. Modes of limited transposition (Messiaen’s term), 
2. Non-Messiaenic modes of limited transposition (e.g., modes that repeat every 2 or 3 8ves)
3. Non-Western scales (e.g., pelog, slendra (Indonesia),  Hejaz scale (middle east, and flamenco; AKA Phrygian dominant scale, Jewish scale), Indian scales, etc.)
4. Octatonic scale (A.K.A. “diminished scale”)
5. Pentatonic scales (i.e., anhemitonic (e.g., CDEGA), hemitonic (e.g., EFGBC), hirajoshi (e.g., ABCEF), etc.
6. Whole-Tone scale
7. Any other made-up, or synthetic, scale

RHYTHM and METER

1. Added-Value Rhythms
2. Additive Rhythms
3. Cross Rhythm
4. Eastern European (asymmetrical; 2+2+3, 2+2+2+3, 3+2+2+3, etc.), West African, and other world rhythms
5. Free (“timeless”, no sense of pulse)
6. Isorhythms
7. Jazz (?)
8. Mixed meters ( 3/4 | 5/8 | 2/4 | 7/16 |, etc.)
9. Motor rhythms (continuous motion)
10. Non-retrogradable
11. Nonretrogradable Rhythm
12. Polymeters
13. Polyrhythms
14. Polytempo
15. Rhythms or phrase lengths based on Fibonacci (or other) Numerical Series.
16. Tempo fluctuations (i.e., sudden/gradual tempo changes, metric modulation)

MUSICAL CHARACTER, IDIOMS/GENRES

1. Various programmatic moods, such as aggressive, pretty, wistful, playful, demented, nervous, sad (various kinds), numb (catatonic), angry, fearful, etc.
2. New jazz, third stream
3. Fusions; combining popular music genres (rock/electropop/trance/hippety-hop, etc.) with various post-tonal art-music devices
4. Minimalism (repetitive (trance-inducing); sparse and static (trance-inducing))
5. New simplicity
6. Borrowing/adopting elements of music from other cultures: Japan, Eastern Europe, India, etc.
7. Expressive (romantic) versus Non-expressive (mechanistic)

TECHNIQUES

1. Any systematic (or non-systematic) approach to harmony not rooted in tonality
2. Clusters
3. Extended and non-tonal tertian harmony (e.g., Scriabin’s “mystic” chord)
4. Extended instrumental and vocal techniques (multiphonics, prepared piano, etc.)
5. Graphic notation
6. Hindemith’s approach to harmony (from The Craft of Musical Composition)
7. Indeterminacy, aleatorism, controlled aleatorism
8. Klangfarbenmelodie, texture-based organization
9. Microtones
10. Mixed media
11. Modulation
12. Motivic unity; set theory (post-tonal); using a limited number of specific intervals
13. Music without melody
14. Nihilism, Antimusic, Decategorization, Biomusic, (what the heck do these terms mean?)
15. Non-Tertian harmony (secundal, quartal, quintal)
16. Planing
17. Pointillism
18. Polyrhythms
19. Polystylism
20. Polytonality, polymodality
21. Quotation
22. Saturation (Ligeti, industrial music)
23. Serialism (“total;” creating series of dynamics, articulations, registers, timbres)
24. Serialism (pitch)
25. Spectral music
26. Any combination of the above