Sunday, February 9, 2020

Blog Index Organized by Topic – Feb 2020

This list includes most of my blog posts so far, organized loosely by topic.

Entries relating to class business – reminders of deadlines, concert congratulations, order of class presentation, etc. – are not included because they are likely boring to anyone who wasn't in the classes to which they were targeted.

The listed blogs below, however, are intended to be relevant to students of music composition or others interested in composition.
→ Exploring the Creative Process; Struggles and Solutions ←
Strike While the Iron is Hot! (includes section on "writer's block")
→ Planning ←
→ Playing With Expectations; Musical Dichotomies ←
→ Composition Techniques (General) ←
→ Composition Techniques Associated with Specific Composers ←
→ Form in Post-Tonal Music ←
→ Atonality; What's in a Name? ←
→ Winning and Losing; Judging and Being Judged; Reference Letter Do's and Don'ts ←
→ Audience Response to Contemporary Classical Music and Marketing ←
→ Composition Issues (10-part series that started this blog) ←
1.1. The quality of ideas may not matter very much in assessing compositions that emerge 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 is 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 / More is more
7.2. Always leave them wanting more / Give them what they want
7.3. Don't treat the listener like an idiot / There's a sucker born every minute
7.4. There can be too much of a good thing / If you have a good idea, then stick with it!
7.5. The George Costanza approach.
8.1. Three models for the role of a composer
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
→ Composition Projects ←
Posted by Clark Ross at 9:27 PM 0 comments

Saturday, February 1, 2020

Beyond Words – 2

My previous post began with several quotes by authors and poets suggesting that music has the capacity to express meaning beyond what is possible with words. Today I will delve a little further into this idea. But first, here are the quoted statements again:

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.”
― Victor Hugo

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
 ― Aldous Huxley

“Where words leave off, music begins.”
– Heinrich Heine

“Where words fail, music speaks.”
― Hans Christian Andersen (the actual quote is: “Where words fail, sounds can often speak”)

These quotes are poetic, which makes sense since the writers all wrote poetry, but are they valid?

The question of whether music expresses emotions or triggers them has been debated for centuries. Similarly, many have explored the effect music has on us. How do we react to music, and why do we react in the way we do? Plato wrote, “more than anything else, rhythm and harmony find their way into the inmost soul and take strongest hold upon it” (Republic, III, 40Id-e).

Indeed!

 On the one hand, there seems little doubt that many people respond emotionally to music. I sometimes find myself moved either to tears when listening to music, not because the music is "sad," but because it is beautiful. Music can trigger in me a myriad of other emotions as well, such as joy, a sense of calm, a sense of excitement that can lead to a desire to move, or even dance (don't worry; I do not do this in public), feelings of wonder, curiosity, religiosity, etc.

I have never really understood why I react in these ways, but I can say with certainty that I often feel profoundly moved by music; this was probably the main motivator that led me to become a composer./musician

On the other hand, some people argue that while music can trigger emotional responses, it doesn't actually communicate anything.

One such person was Igor Stravinsky, who, in An Autobiography (1935), wrote:

“For I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc. Expression has never been an inherent property of music. That is by no means the purpose of its existence. If, as is nearly always the case, music appears to express something, this is only an illusion and not a reality. It is simply an additional attribute which, by tacit and inveterate agreement, we have lent it, thrust upon it, as a label, a convention – in short, an aspect which, unconsciously or by force of habit, we have come to confuse with its essential being.”
I took an aesthetics course during my undergraduate studies (which were not in music; I began studying music after I had finished my first degree), and I remember learning about the nineteenth century music critic Eduard Hanslick, who argued that musical beauty “is self-contained and in no need of content from outside itself.” It “consists simply and solely of tones and their artistic combination” (Hanslick, On the Musically Beautiful, (8th ed., 1891)).

In How Music Grabs the Emotions (2014 article by Dr. Jenefer Robinson, Department of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati), the author writes:
“Hanslick was very concerned to establish that music has no “extra-musical” content, and that, in particular, it does not express or represent emotions. One of Hanslick’s contemporary devotees goes so far as to say that “it is not essential to music to possess emotion, arouse emotion, express emotion, or represent emotion. Music, in itself, has nothing to do with emotion” (Zangwill 2004: 29). In other words, music in itself is nothing but complex structures of tones, a bit like the moves in a game of chess.”
But despair not, those of you who may be wondering what childhood traumas motivated Hanslick, Stravinsky, and others, to churlishly suggest that music is incapable of expressing emotions! There are many scholarly articles in support of the opposite point of view as well, including Robinson (quoted above), PN Juslin, and Malcolm Budd (1989).

Zangwill's notion that music “has nothing to do with emotion” seems absurd to me. I don't know that I would go as far as suggesting that music has everything to do with emotion – music exists on multiple plains, one of which is intellectual (wherein we analyze music, and marvel at clever and  often unexpected things that great music-makers do/did), but for me at least, the main reason I want to explore the intellectual aspects of music is because it moves me, and I'd love to learn learn why and how this happens.

Do you have any thoughts on the question of whether music actually communicates emotion, or does it trigger emotion? Or do you agree with Zangwill that music has nothing to do with emotion?

I lean slightly more to the idea that music triggers emotions, rather than communicates them, but my view on this could change next week. Perhaps it can both trigger emotions and communicate them?

On a related point, we sometimes hear people proclaim that music is a universal language, but I disagree.

Language can be defined as "a form of communication," so, if music is a language, it is extraordinarily imprecise. Even if it does communicate emotions, which is debatable, it does so in an extremely nebulous way, and it is useless at communicating the multitude of specific things we expect language to do.

The "universal" part is also problematic, because we have moved to a point in history in which we acknowledge and embrace the validity and variety of all musical cultures in the world, with none having any superiority to any of the others. Only a cultural imperialist would suggest that the music of any single culture will "speak" to or be understood by all other cultures.

–––––––
Nick Zangwill, “Against Emotion: Hanslick was Right about Music” British Journal of Aesthetics 44 (2004). 29-43.
Posted by Clark Ross at 4:11 PM 26 comments

Saturday, January 4, 2020

Beyond Words – 1

Here are some quotes on the relationship between music and words:
“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.”
― Victor Hugo (1802-1885), in “William Shakespeare,” (essay; 1864)
“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
 ― Aldous Huxley, “The Rest is Silence,” in “Music at Night” (essay collection, 1931)
“Where words leave off, music begins.”
 ― Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) [attributed; I could find no source listed for this quote, so possibly it is not actually Heine’s. However, Heine had dozens of his songs set to music by great composers such as Schumann, Schubert, Mendelssohn, and others, so it seems likely that he would feel this way. It also happens to be very similar to the next quote.]
“Where words fail, music speaks.”
 ― Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875), in “What The Moon Saw” (from “What The Moon Saw: And Other Tales”). For what it's worth, the actual quote is: “Where words fail, sounds can often speak,” so music is not mentioned. However, this quote is taken from a passage that references a variety of sounds, such as “the wind (that) blew stormy and cold,” the crack of a whip, and galloping horses, as well as a “death-hymn,” and “glad notes of joy.” 
What are your thoughts on any of these quotes?
  • Does music express things that cannot be put into words? If so, try to explain your answer, using – yup – words!
  • Does music inhabit a realm that can go beyond, or is at least on a different plane, than words?
  • If you feel that music “speaks,” or inhabits a realm beyond words, might this apply to other sounds as well? Consider, in particular, sounds in nature such as a bird singing, a donkey braying or cattle lowing, the wind buffeting your house in a winter storm, a babbling brook, a waterfall, rain hitting a tin roof, etc.; do these “speak?” 
  • Can you think of any other sounds that “speak,” or communicate something that is difficult or impossible to express in words? If so, how to they do this?
  • Music often triggers emotions; to what degree is this due to something in the music that has a communicative function, versus the emotional state you happen to be in when you hear the music?
  • Some people use the term, "musical language;" is music a language? How?
I will chime in with my thoughts on this in my next post.
Posted by Clark Ross at 10:51 PM 38 comments

Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Harmonic Rhythm and Hypermeter

(This is a stub; my plan is write more on this topic soon,)

Harmonic Rhythm: The rate at which harmonies change.
Hypermeter: Meter on a larger scale, such as when bars are felt as beats.

In good or great compositions, most of us are unlikely to notice the harmonic rhythm and hypermeter,  unless it does something unexpected, or there is something wrong with it.

Here are some examples:
Posted by Clark Ross at 9:44 PM 1 comments

Monday, April 8, 2019

No Great Women Composers? (2)

This is part 2 of a series; I encourage you to read part 1 before reading this.

Here's the backstory:

In 2015, Jessy McCabe, 17, petitioned one of Britain’s biggest exam boards to include female composers in its A-level music syllabus.

Ms. McCabe found that Edexcel’s A-level Music Syllabus featured 63 male composers and no female ones. She also observed that on 8 March 2015, BBC Radio 3 managed to programme an entire day of music by female composers to honour International Women’s Day.

“Surely, if BBC Radio 3 can play music composed by women for a whole day," Ms. McCabe wrote, "Edexcel could select at least one to be part of the syllabus alongside the likes of Holborne, Haydn and Howlin’ Wolf?”

Edexel was initially unwilling to acquiesce to Ms. McCabe's challenge. Its head of music wrote: “Given that female composers were not prominent in the western classical tradition (or others for that matter), there would be very few female composers that could be included.”

After a Change.org petition subsequently launched by Ms. McCabe received 4,000 signatures, Edexcel apparently bowed to public pressure and changed their 2016 syllabus to include works by five women: Clara Schumann, Rachel Portman, Kate Bush, Anoushka Shankar and Kaija Saariaho.

You can read more about this story here:
The inclusion of female composers/songwriters in the 2016 syllabus was celebrated by some, and criticized by others. Among the critics was Damian Thompson, who, in a 2015 article in The Spectator (a conservative British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs, according to Wikipedia) entitled There’s a good reason why there are no great female composers, asked the question: How good is [women composers'] music compared with that of male composers? 

He discussed works by several women composers – Clara Schumann (1819–1896), Fanny Mendelssohn (1805–1847), Amy Beach (1867–1944), Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944), Elizabeth Maconchy (1907–1994), and Thea Musgrave (born 1928) – to support his conclusion that women composers were not as good as their male counterparts, and therefore their music did not merit inclusion in the list of composers to be studied by British A-level students.

The counter-argument proposed by Ms. McCabe was that the inclusion of women composers in the Edexcel A-Level syllabus was important, “so that girls are freely able and inspired to become composers, to enrich the A-level syllabus and to ultimately ensure that women’s works are valued, as they should be.”

Here are a few thoughts further to this episode, and Mr. Thompson's response to it:
  • As I pointed out in my previous post on this topic, the article's title, There's a good reason why there are no great female composers, is completely unrelated to the actual article. At no point does the author propose or discuss a reason, good or otherwise, why “there are no great female composers.” 
  • Further to the previous point, an unbiased and well-researched article exploring reasons for the extreme gender imbalance among composers of the common-practice period (roughly 1650-1900) would perhaps be enlightening to those that blithely assume that women and men competed on an equal playing field throughout history. They didn't, and, some argue, still don't, although the situation has improved significantly since the 1960's. Historically, the roles available to women were severely restricted, and, within this, the roles of women in any field within music were even more restricted. Yes, Clara Schumann managed to develop a career as a concert pianist, but women were barred from European orchestras; the Vienna Philharmonic did not accept a female member until 1997; The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra did not hire its first female musician until 1982 (violinist Madeleine Carruzzo). I would be curious to know how often these all-male orchestras performed works by women prior to 1900; if it occurred at all, I suspect it was extremely uncommon. 
  • Only one of the five women composers selected for criticism by Mr. Thompson was included in Edexcel's syllabus: Clara Schumann. He therefore spent the bulk of his article arguing against the inclusion of women composers whose music was not subsequently included in the revised syllabus, but perhaps Edexcel's syllabus was published after Thompson's article.
  • All works discussed in Mr. Thompson's article were selected by him. It seems possible that musicologists with expertise in the music of the named composers might have been able to find other, stronger works by these composers for discussion; when one's intention is to prove that music by women composers is not very good, it can hardly be a surprise when the examples chosen to illustrate this point do so rather well.
  • The threshold for inclusion in the Edexcell Syllabus is clearly not "all-time greatness," as in "equal in quality to the best music of Bach, Beethoven, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder, and The Beatles." Ms. McCabe's letter, quoted above, mentions Anthony Holborne (late renaissance British composer of music primarily for lute, 1545-1602), and Howlin' Wolf (much-acclaimed blues singer and guitarist, 1910-1976). A quick perusal of Edexcel's 2016 syllabus reveals names such as Courtney Pine (British jazz musician, b. 1964), La Familia Valera Miranda (A family of musicians from the Oriente region of Cuba that play a mid-tempo form of ‘son’, a Cuban traditional musical style), as well as Vivaldi, Vaughan Williams, and Berlioz. The initial exclusion of works by all women from the Edexcell Syllabus sends a clear message that no women in the history of composition were as worthy of inclusion as any of the male musicians on the list, a position that is indefensible. Popular music artists are on the Edexcel list, but despite decades of great music by Kate Bush (subsequently included), Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Nina Simone, Taylor Swift, Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Memphis Minnie, Laura Nyro, and countless others, not one was initially included. Film music composers are another category, and here again no females were initially chosen (Rachel Portman was included following Ms. McCabe's successful petition), despite the successful careers in this field of Sofia Gubaidulina, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Lesley Barber, or any of the other names on Wikipedia's list of female film composers.
  • I'm not sufficiently familiar with Edexcel's history to know if they make a special effort to include British composers in their syllabus, but I noticed quite a few British musicians in the 2016 syllabus. If they do give British composers/musicians any kind of preferential status, which they have every right to do, why not make the effort to be inclusive of other groups within British society as well, such as women composers? Thanks to Ms. McCabe and a successful publicity campaign, the 2016 syllabus now does, albeit to a limited degree.
  • As I mentioned above, Ms. McCabe argued in favour of the representation of women composers on the Edexcel syllabus, “so that girls are freely able and inspired to become composers, to enrich the A-level syllabus and to ultimately ensure that women’s works are valued, as they should be.” This in itself is an interesting argument – I don't know if there are any studies that prove that exposure to music by members of a target population empower or encourage other members of that target population to pursue careers in music, but it certainly seems possible. And if it is possible, then it seems worth doing. But mostly it's worth doing based purely on artistic merit.
That's all for now, but please leave a comment if you agree or disagree with any of this. If there are women composers in any genre to which you would like to draw our attention, please do so, ideally with a link if possible.

Once again (I posted some recordings in my previous entry as well), here are a couple of recordings of music by Clara Schumann, with scrolling scores:




Posted by Clark Ross at 4:32 PM 11 comments
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