Leaderboard

This has been asked before, but still useful to hear thoughts. I recognise many things that others have related here. I can, when neccessary, force myself to come up with ideas. Some of these will be formulae for generating ideas that I have devised. Sometimes I will think about an existing work and try and recompose it in the style of myself so that it becomes a different development altogether. But where there is sufficient time, I like to begin just by thinking about the sound of the ensemble or instruments involved and devise a gesture accordingly. If I wish to write a piano work, what sound or features would I like to include in the piece? Does this provide an opening or should it come later? Can I think of other ideas that will work with the first to create a series of 'hit points' that define the structure of the piece? Now go to the piano to try them out and then notate on Sibelius. Again the works of others can be a stimulation, to adopt a gesture or timbre from, but the majority of features do end up being original. Once a few ideas are in place a better idea of how to connect them needs to be thought about and so the piece takes shape. The playback button on Sib/Finale has been highly contraversial but one thing it will always provide is a rendition of the structure of a piece. A lot of time is spent refining the proportions of a work, whether more or less music needs to be added to any particular place to improve the direction and balance of the music. I hope to recommence formal studies next year and one thing I am keen to test whether I should adjust my process to produce stronger works. At present i sometimes feel as if I concentrate too much on creating quality ideas but am not judicious enough to deploy them as well as I might. In particuar, I find it very difficult to set aside good ideas for the sake of the work's coherance, and often move things around that I should just remove. I think I have got better at this from a few years back and can spin out fewer ideas for longer in a more convincing way, but still would like to improve further.

Time for non made-up quotes? "Respectable people do not make love or write music as a career". Borodin "... in the end you find out how good Brahms is and how bad you are". Elliott Carter "Writing tonal music now, you are not writing into the 19th Century". G. Bryars "Never be ashamed to write a melody that people remembers". B. Bacharach And... "No one gives a @#%$ about a Bluejay. Let's have some beers instead". George Steinbrenner

Quote: 'It may be that an artist has to believe in something, even in nonsense, in order to stimulate the mysterious process of creation. The listener does not have to share his beliefs. One does not have to be a Christian to understand and enjoy Bach, an Italian nationalist to appreciate Verdi, a Theosophist to like Scriabin, a Soviet-style communist to admire Shostakovitch. In 1856 Wagner told the King of Saxony that his [aggressively anti-Semitic] writings were a sort of poison he had to get out of his system.' ('Richard Wagner', Watson, pg 317.) Comment: Watson knew this to be a controversial statement, and I would guess it still is for some people. Though whenever I listen to music, everything besides it seems like some kind of add-on or embellishment, the meaning of which is overpowered and made largely immaterial. So I'm inclined to agree with Watson, even when a Beckmesser comes on stage or shows up in a song, that ideology shouldn't be read into music and that music should be judged on its own terms. Quote: 'Indeed, anything the Viennese wished to remain unchanged, which was most everything, was labeled as "tradition" in order to shelter it from the winds of change. This prompted Mahler's dictum "Tradition ist bloss Schlamperei [Tradition is only sloppiness]".' ('Mahler', Gartenberg, pgs 74-75.) (Toscanini: 'Tradition was "the last bad performance".' Ibid.) Comment: The only reason I wrote this down in my workbook at all was to be able to nicely castigate a few musical reactionaries who, maybe offhandedly, insisted that 'true' music ended, say, in 1890 or whatever date. Arrgh! Very annoying thing to hear. And I usually only hear it from people who haven't really studied music or who have only been studying a short time and just listen casually - so no animosity here, I don't think - who, one person when asked if they knew any twentieth century composers, responded with The Beatles and Paramore (a twenty-first century band who started in 2004). Anyway...I sigh at the musically deficient. Quote: 'After all, we have no right to require that an artist's whole gift should consist of masterpieces. We do not judge Wordsworth by his stories of the nursery, or Shelley by his two attempts at burlesque; we take the "Ode" and the "Sonnets", "Prometheus" and "Adonais", and let the failures go. In like manner we can discard some of Schumann's compositions... but when we have done so there will still be left a legacy that will enrich Music to the end of the world. It matters little whether his monument be large or small; in either case it is imperishable.' ('Studies in Modern Music', Hadow, quoted from Schauffler's 'Florestan', pg 395.) Comment: A fair statement, I think. Though not judging a composer by the number of failures, I think we tend to judge by the number of successes - which can be pretty devastating for a number of composers. Quote: 'Man, help thyself!' ('Beethoven', Schauffler.) Comment: Mhm.