As I mentioned a few posts back, I love Baroque sequences but tend to dislike them in any other genre and period. I've been reading the autobiography "Prokofiev by Prokofiev" and came upon this comment by the composer.

"At first glance it would appear that a sequence heightens the emotional effect and gives the motif a new coloration by repeating it on another pitch level. Many composers have been trapped by that. Actually, the effect yielded by sequences is cheaply bought and as something cheap, it should be avoided."

Well, there you go.

Prokofiev, Sergei, Appel, David H. ed. "Prokofiev by Prokofiev". Doubleday and Company, Inc., New York, 1997.

Why bother looking for concepts? I got my reasons.

To be in control, that is my goal. I once read Josquin Des Prez described as the "master of the notes", that he could get them to do whatever he wished. That is the kind of control I seek.

Bach was like that. I routinely analyze his music and inevitably discover how everything is so beautifully controlled. Bach's compositional strength was just awesome and it always leave me both dumbstruck and inspired.

So it is with the goal of achieving control over the materials and language of music that I seek out to define and name its core concepts.

So what is the use in naming these concepts? I read this beginner's design book by Robin Williams (she's a woman, this one) and she wrote that "once you can name something, you have power over it." This applies to music as well.

To define and name the core concepts of musical construction requires an understanding of them, and conversely, the concept's name itself leads to a deeper understanding. And with understanding comes control and, with work, mastery.

And that is the power in a name.

How important is it for composers to learn and understand a lot of music?

I wish I had written down where it was that I heard this story, because now I can't remember. It was a while ago. The story is a parable that applies to all creative people and here's my succint retelling of it.

There was an old farmer who had spent his life toiling the soil, just as his father had before him. He was largely uneducated but had a strange affection for mathematics, of all things.

Having never owned a mathematics textbook and, being far from any city, he never thought of buying one. Yet, he played with his numbers almost every night as a way to relax after a hard day of physical labour.

Over the years, boxes and boxes of papers accumulated, filled with increasingly complex equations. The farmer was now an old man and his sons urged him to bring these papers to the university and show them to the professor there.

So he did. He loaded the boxes unto his truck and drove for more than an hour to see this mathematician who was nice enough to take the time to see him. The old man left the papers there and returned home.

The weeks passed and then , finally the mathematician called. He was astounded! He said the old farmer was a mathematical genius; he had reinvented calculus all on his own!

This is a very sad story. The old man was a genius but because he never bothered to learn what had already been done, he wasted his genius recreating what already existed. And now it was too late to do anything of value.

So yeah, it is very, very important to learn, analyze and assimilate a lot of music.

The working process is one of the hardest things to master for a composer, but it is crucial to assuring a strong creative flow. Here I discuss the judging of an idea.

I can't tell you how many notebooks I have filled writing about my process, and I fear all those trees died for nothing since the solutions were pretty simple. But ask any mathematician, simple and elegant solutions are not easy to reach.

Finding an idea is, of course, the first part of the process, but I'll talk about that later. I was composing this morning, going through a bunch of motives and phrases, having to decide which one I wanted to use.

Scenario
How many times as this happened to you. You find this idea and you think "Great! This rocks!" and start composing it out right away, only to find that your enthusiasm soon dims. A few days later you play through the piece and realize that, in fact, it didn't rock at all.

This has happened to me a lot and I have come up with a simple and elegant solution.

I come up with a bunch of ideas and put them aside. The next day I come back to my ideas and select the ones that strike me as being good. This way I remove my initial sometimes misguided enthusiasm for my ideas.

A little trade secret: I often record promising ideas so I can just listen to them instead of reading them. This allows me to more adequately judge the impact of the ideas free of analysis, which I inevitably do while reading music.

Here are some of the criteria I have for selecting my ideas.

1. Do I like listening to it? Does it have impact?
Why did I get into music in the first place? I can tell you that it wasn't because I fell in love with that clever tone row by so-and-so, or that great I-Ching tossing idea by the other guy or that silly music cross-word by Sir Queen.

There are those moments as listeners that have drawn us so powerfully that we said "I want to do that!". The music had a forceful impact! I want my music to have that kind of impact on me first and foremost. Thus, the idea needs to have impact to begin with.

2. Is it different in some way or am I just playing it safe?
If something was easy to write and sounds pretty good, I am immediately wary of it since it might mean I am rehashing old ideas, mine or someone elses.

That doesn't mean I ignore ideas that sound like others I have had, just those that sound like other people's ideas!

3. Is it smart?
What does it mean, smart? Man, that's a whole other entry right there. It means different, clever, well constructed... let's just say that if an idea is overly simple I might keep it if the impact level is very high, but that might not be enough to save it from the discarded pile!

4. Does it have development potential?
You know what I mean. An idea might be good but you can't for the life of you think of what to do with it! Where does it go next?! Not a clue. Then it goes into the "good ideas" folder. Maybe later I'll know.

These main selection criteria help me feel confident that I have a good idea and then I can completely commit myself to developing that idea into a fully realized piece of music.

The history of music is the story of tonality, which came to fruition in the Baroque period with the advent of the even tempered scale. Tonality, or the idea of a pitch center is found in all musical cultures, so why did modern composers discard it?

First, let's define the concept of tonality this way: a perceivable departure point and destination.

From this definition it should be clear that tonality does not need a diatonic or tertian musical language to be manifested. A pitch center (tonality) can be created in a variety of ways divorced from the constraints of a specific language.

The use of the words "departure" and "destination" is important, stating that the music starts at a specific point and is then directed towards a goal. Simple. The opposite of aimless! And that ties in neatly to the idea from the previous post that our mind seek structure and actually require it in some form in order to find things beautiful.*

No goal = lack of purpose = aimless = pointless.

Does a center need to be the same for a whole piece? (Think Schenker). No. A center can shift from phrase to phrase, as long as the feeling of moving towards a goal is kept.

What about pitch hirearchy? I think this is a slightly artificial and arbitrary concept, but one that is based in an audible reality, e.g.: the leading-tone pull towards the tonic, that's an audible reality. But if we use a different language, modal or freely chromatic, then the only rule that applies is that of voice-leading. (Which again brings to mind Gestalt theory.)

Does that mean music should always have a center? If done with purpose, then okay, knock yourself out. Have a ball.

(By the way, the fact that I support tonality as a cor tenet of music composition doesn't mean I am a fan of the Neo-Romantic or minimalist movements.)

So our initial question: why did modern composers discard tonality? Could it be that it was just easier to ignore this central tenet than look for ways to build upon it? Could it be that composers lacked information? Did they have people writing about music cognition and psychology in the early twentieth century? I'll have to check it out.

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* A shape, colour or a sound can be beautiful on its own and doesn't require additional structure to be experienced as beautiful. But as soon as more than one are combined, the mind looks for structure. (Gestalt Theory.)

Beautiful is used in the sense of an aesthetic experience. Superficial ugliness can and often does result in a strong aesthetic experience and is thus "beautiful".

In an effort to fully understand musical structure and composition, I strive to whittle it down to its essential concepts. Here I briefly consider melody.

I had a composer friend tell me once, with no uncertain pride, that she had never written a melody in her life. Having done post-graduate studies in composition I understand where she's coming from but I also am convinced that it is wrong. Melody is a core concept of music and to ignore this is a suicidal path that most contemporary composers are on.

I believe that only a weak creative mind attempts to reach for something new by ignoring the essential tenets of his art. Music has used melody since time immemorial, so instead of saying "I don't do melody," a composer should strive to understand and use the concept of melody.

So what is the core concept of melody? Melody is a logical succession of pitches.

Yeah. Truthes are always simple and if a core compositional concept doesn't hold to be true then it was not a concept to begin with!

A logical succession of pitches incidicates that the pitches are understood by the listener as belonging together (without the need for scholarly analysis.) This is a psychological need for the listener - the aesthetic experience requires a logical, perceivable order! Everyone should know that Gestalt theory is true explanation of how our brains work, and to ignore the way our brains work is, well, stupidity.

Logical succession is traditionally created in various ways: motives, motivic development, repetition, formal sections etc. But this important tenet can be followed in a myriad of other ways, perhaps only limited by the imagination of the composer. Melodies can mean much, much, much more than a hummable folk tune!

Is a Charlie Parker solo a melody? Hell yes!

Yet, this crucial tenet is often ignored in favour of obscure, indecipherable pitch structures and processes that completely ignore how music is perceived. You don't need a freakin' course in music cognition or psychology to know that if you can't hear it, it's not there!

Perhaps the most important question a composer can ask himself. But is there an answer?

I've been playing through Tchaikovsky's Seasons this morning, thinking about the quality of his ideas and what good ideas are. It is my main preoccupation these days.

I have been looking at some great melodies and thoroughly analyzing them: Gabriel Fauré's Pavane, Bach's Air on the G String, Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and more. I've come to a few very, very general (but actually quite helpful) conclusions about great melodies.

Great melodies feel natural, as if they always existed. Nothing seems forced or "compositional" about them. They do this by...

Using a variety of rhythms
If a melody has, for example, only quarter notes and half notes and is always in direct concordance with the meter, the result is usually stiff and lacking in variety. The variety of rhythms doesn't need to be large, just enough to make the music flow with a feeling of spontaneity.

Avoiding direct repetition or sequencing.
This is tough, because I love Bach sequences, but not Beethoven's sequences or Tchaikovsky's for that matter. What makes them different? I think it could be that Bach's music is contrapuntal/imitative at the core, so sequences fall neatly into his language. They feel natural and give great satisfaction to the listener.

But Tchaikovsky is a melodic composer and his sequences often feel like he is "going through the motion" as he leads us to a new section or a return of the melody. In his Seasons I find that he uses the sequential device in his weaker pieces like Carnaval while there are none in his famous Barcarolle.

In the hit parade of great melodies I have looked at and listened to, none incorporate an overt sequence, not even the Bach Air.

To be continued...

In a world already filled with musical masterpieces, is there a need for new music?

I remember reading a comment by a well known popular musican that the world did not need one more album. How distraught I was at the thought that what I loved the most was essentially futile. That it had all been said before and that my efforts added nothing. Depressing.

Since then I have learned two things; 1) popular musicians don't know anything about music so don't listen to them, and 2) there is always a need for new music.

Point - People have an insatiable hunger for new aesthetic experiences.
If you need confirmation that this is true, just look at the constant flow of films and new albums to see that people are always looking for something new. Or look at your own listening habits.

But... there is more than enough music written already to satisfy many lifetimes of hungry listening!
It has been said that the classics are still relevant because they are new for the person who reads them. This is of course true and classics will always be relevant to some degree, but the question regards the need for new music.

The contemporary listener looks for contemporary aesthetics.
Bach is the best composer of all time, but were a composer to write in a Baroque style and idiom he would be laughed at. New music* is always needed that follows or even determines constantly evolving aesthetics.

And that's all there is to it. We need need music because we constantly crave new aesthetic experiences and these need to be in a relevant, contemporary idiom. It's that simple, and Truths are always simple.

* Of course, this implies that the music created is actually new at some level, unlike popular music which constantly rehashes the same material over and over and over. I am referring to contemporary classical music.

Creative people tend to suffer from self-doubt, some more than others. Here's my little story on the subject.

It is 3 AM. Insomnia strikes again. My chest aches with a profound angst as I am consumed with the thought "Why do I write music?" These little black dots seem so pointless. Futile. I should have been a farmer.

Yet the next morning I wake up groggy but happy to get back to my manuscript paper and composition is the only thing that matters, thoughts of dirt and manure being the furthest from my mind.

So why is music so important to me when it seems to serve no real purpose? Ravel called music a "divertissement de luxe" a "useless occupation", which doesn't help my sleeplesness at all. However, I did receive some help understanding my need for music from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, speaking through his famous sleuth, Sherlock Holmes:

"Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from flowers."

It is clear that the rose was a metaphor for "divertissements de luxe" such as detective stories and, of course, music. I remember reading this and feeling in my bones that this was the Truth.

So now, when I wake at 3 AM, I'll push away my doubts with thoughts of beautiful useless flowers and get right back to sleep.