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I watched 2 lectures, the first and the last (the latter speeded up to x1.25) but could have missed much on eclecticism – and stopped when he started on Mahler. Interesting and informative from a renowned master. But I wasn’t convinced about his dichotomy existing into the time of his lecture let alone beyond. Ok, it’s a viewpoint thing. Yes, there was a crisis and there was a split. Culturally in continental Europe there were a few splits around then – in art, in literature, architecture – must have been a right turmoil - the craving to break established boundaries. Schoenberg’s basic ideas were expanded into the 1950s with total serialism, and there were aleatoric processes and electronic techniques. But by the late 60s all but electronics had started to fade out. A German journal, Die Reihe (the row or series) dealt with musical developments between 1955 and 1965 when it seemed past its sell-by. So in 1973, the year of Bernstein’s lectures, the distinction between atonal, serial and tonal music were still fairly distinct in the ears of musicologists but to UK composers they were already blurred. Composers here tried them out then mostly dropped them or blended them with other approaches. Very few achieved “pure” atonality. I think Tippet was the only one. People like Searle and Birtwistle did some serial work and Lutyens blended her brand of serial with chromatic tonality. Bernstein goes into some detail about “the split” although I think it was Schoenberg who split off really. Stravinsky went on doing what he did with The Rite, then realising he’d never beat that returned to classicism. Most others outside Europe went on in their separate ways. Interesting that Bernstein notes how Schoenberg never lost the pull of tonality giving the reason as the continued use of the same 12 notes used by tonal composers. He also confessed that Schoenberg had to revert to established musical semantics to do it. Quoting from Bernstein’s 5th lecture, he says after the ‘crisis’, composers “Write out of the same need for newer and greater semantic richness, they are all, whether tonal or nontonal, motivated by the same drive: the power of expressivity (agreed), the drive to expand music’s metaphorical speech (disagree).” That suggests that composers’ drives are to expand music’s metaphorical speech. But it could be vice versa: the drive could be to prioritise self-expression and to heck with metaphorical speech. Like, let’s not worry about rules, syntax and who’s done what. Just do it and if moments of tonality or serial emerge, so what? Pulling just the right sound out of the air or what-have-you, overrides anything else, perhaps altering the entire course of a composition. (Sadly, a luxury not allowed college students while they learn procedures.) As for eclectism, I think there’s a big difference between composers who choose to write in various established styles drawn from their styles kitbag; and those who compose and innately draw on what, to an outside observer, happen to be different styles, but of which the composer is not fully aware. In the latter case, eclecticism doesn’t strictly apply for me. I felt, overall, that Bernstein over-analyses. I'm unsure that's a good thing. The more you pull individual creations to pieces, the more exceptions you find.

Actually not! I always think I am a mother creating a baby when composing, but it's more involuntary than your compositional method since I quite rely on inspirations. You cannot control how your baby look like before giving birth to the baby, which for me is the realization of the idea and write it down. After that I can polish it, extend it etc.

Well, a couple of things come to mind when I hear these. For one, I feel like you don't have enough material "mapped out". For instance, do you know all of the themes you'll be using? Or the chord progression? With a lot of the multi-instrumental music I write, I generally have an idea of where I want to go because I know I'm trying to go from say an A theme to a B theme. Then the fun part is discovering how you'll get there. It also helps to figure out a rough idea of what form you're going for too. Even if it's some kind of improvisational fantasy type thing, knowing your main sections will help you. The piano helps me as well. Even though I'm a guitarist, playing piano and tinkering with ideas on it is vital to my process, as I'm at least able to play block chords with a melody to get a sense of the mold I'm shaping the music from. As far as your music is concerned, I'm surprised you got stuck. The first movement was flowing nicely, and when the strings and percussion came in you played your main theme, but then it sort of trailed off. I'd continue to develop that theme, using all the basic techniques (expansion, compression, yada yada). Really toy around with the material of your theme before thinking of new ideas. That's one of the hard parts of writing for orchestra; if you don't know how to really milk your material and squeeze every last ounce out of it, it's easy to get lost in playing around with orchestral color, just tossing the same ideas to other instruments and calling it a day. The second piece was a bit harder for me to grasp, as it seemed like it belongs in the middle of your piece somewhere. If I were you, I would focus on the first one, really make a note of the material you're trying to develop, work out some chords that sound good to you as possibly a harmonic theme, and go from there. You could even continue writing this out as a piano reduction, and once you're ready, you get to have loads of fun orchestrating it. One of my favorite things on YC is to hear an incomplete work become polished and finished. I'm excited to hear how you develop this piece, keep us all updated with your progress!

Hi @Omicronrg9, Not too many questions at all, they're helping a lot. Yes, I intend to write a single movement work. Besides what you've named, I don't see any thematic connection between my two sketches, at least, so I could turn the second part into a contrasting section, some respite from the tension if I thin out the texture and simplify the harmonies. Something to go in the troughs of the graph, perhaps. Thank you for listening and for your input! 🙂

Yes, I encourage to take a look to those "old" techniques. My YT channel is an auxiliary tool, in fact. I upload the scores and the music but the explanations are in my blog. Unfortunately, the blog is very big now and impossible to translate everything into English. I'm working on a new project. It is about rhetoric figures in music. They were so importante in the baroque era and later. I am writing short examples examples for these figures to make my own catalog. I am thinking how to publish it (in the same blog perhaps).

Hey everyone! It's been a really long time since I don't post my music here. I thought I'd might share something I've finished quite recently. It's a string octet which hasn't been performed yet, but that hopefully will be later this year. I won't say much about it, besides that it is divided in three movements with a Fast-Slow-Fast general scheme. All feedback is encouraged, and I thank you for listening in advance !