What is the hardest style to compose in. AND WHY!

What is the hardest style to compose in. AND WHY!

Not Instrumentation,

Style: as in Classical, Jazz, Modern, post-modern, Contemporary, baroque, etc.

I have trouble writing in truly formal classical style, as in Haydn and Mozartish, for the following reasons:

1. The form is sometimes too rigid to break
   
2. Having to rely solely on the common practice chord structures which don't leave much room for utter abandon
   
3. I don't like labelling my music as, say for example, "Concerto for Violin in B minor". I like flashy, cool names.
4. I'm too much of a romantic ;)
   

There probably other reasons, but whenever I start composing a piece of music in a truly classical style, I get bored and go crazy. For example, if I am doing a cadence for a classical piano tune, I add blues notes for kicks. I'd be kicked in the balls by Mozart if I were to show him something like that.

With bach chorales, I remember when I had to do that for my harmony exam, I was soooooo tempted to turn some of those chords into major seventh chords, or minor seventh chords, or use some really romantic sounding applied harmonies. In the classical school, which is principle absolute music, aside from a few operas here and there and other similar things, mathematics is key.

I also find it hard to write atonal music. To me, I find atonal music, particularly Schonberg's twelve tone system, to be too unnatural and mathematically inclined. I suck at math. I know, it's wierd, usually the stereotype is that composers are good at math. I fail at math and sciences. I see music more as poetry, and that's what I love about it. I don't see any connection between mathematical frequencies and formulas when it comes to music. To me, this brutal dissection of music goes against the very essence of art. Sure, it's a novelty, but I will never be caught dead writing atonal twelve-tone wierdo stuff unless I was being marked on it at university, and even then I'd be an donkey and make a joke out of it. Kind of like that song by Bernstein, I forget what it was, where he uses the twelve-tone method to represent boredom.

My easiest style, personally, is neoromantic, I guess. To many, this is the hardest, but for me, that's just the way I see things. To me, melodies just come, like ideas, just shooting out of my head. For the exams I had to do where you write a melody, they teach such a brutal formal structure in writing a melody, which I find to be total bullshit. To me, when I'm sad, I hum a blues, when I'm happy, I'm just bursting with crazy musical ideas. A melody doesn't have to last four bars, nor end in a V-I cadence. There are just so many possibilities. I also love experimenting with really awesome sounding chords which makes romanticism so cool. Also, I just love life so much, even the crappy parts, that it just gives me so much material to write about. Whether it be about girls, school, my dogs, good times, bad times, sad times, or whatever, there's just so much material to sit down at the piano, lament, and then write on Sibelius or something.

In fact, because I love jazz so much, and the driving rhythms, my favorite style is when you mesh jazz and romanticism, kind of like Copland or, best of all, my all time fav, Gershwin. In fact, critics who were against Gershwin called his music, "One catchy melody haphazardly connected to another." That's basically the way I work, too. Oh well, I think it sounds good :D

AHA! EUREKA! I've found out what I am! I am a...POST-MODERN CLASSICIST!

I have trouble writing in truly formal classical style, as in Haydn and Mozartish, for the following reasons:

1. The form is sometimes too rigid to break
   
2. Having to rely solely on the common practice chord structures which don't leave much room for utter abandon
   
3. I don't like labelling my music as, say for example, "Concerto for Violin in B minor". I like flashy, cool names.
4. I'm too much of a romantic ;)
   

There probably other reasons, but whenever I start composing a piece of music in a truly classical style, I get bored and go crazy. For example, if I am doing a cadence for a classical piano tune, I add blues notes for kicks. I'd be kicked in the balls by Mozart if I were to show him something like that.

With bach chorales, I remember when I had to do that for my harmony exam, I was soooooo tempted to turn some of those chords into major seventh chords, or minor seventh chords, or use some really romantic sounding applied harmonies. In the classical school, which is principle absolute music, aside from a few operas here and there and other similar things, mathematics is key.

I also find it hard to write atonal music. To me, I find atonal music, particularly Schonberg's twelve tone system, to be too unnatural and mathematically inclined. I suck at math. I know, it's wierd, usually the stereotype is that composers are good at math. I fail at math and sciences. I see music more as poetry, and that's what I love about it. I don't see any connection between mathematical frequencies and formulas when it comes to music. To me, this brutal dissection of music goes against the very essence of art. Sure, it's a novelty, but I will never be caught dead writing atonal twelve-tone wierdo stuff unless I was being marked on it at university, and even then I'd be an donkey and make a joke out of it. Kind of like that song by Bernstein, I forget what it was, where he uses the twelve-tone method to represent boredom.

My easiest style, personally, is neoromantic, I guess. To many, this is the hardest, but for me, that's just the way I see things. To me, melodies just come, like ideas, just shooting out of my head. For the exams I had to do where you write a melody, they teach such a brutal formal structure in writing a melody, which I find to be total bullshit. To me, when I'm sad, I hum a blues, when I'm happy, I'm just bursting with crazy musical ideas. A melody doesn't have to last four bars, nor end in a V-I cadence. There are just so many possibilities. I also love experimenting with really awesome sounding chords which makes romanticism so cool. Also, I just love life so much, even the crappy parts, that it just gives me so much material to write about. Whether it be about girls, school, my dogs, good times, bad times, sad times, or whatever, there's just so much material to sit down at the piano, lament, and then write on Sibelius or something.

In fact, because I love jazz so much, and the driving rhythms, my favorite style is when you mesh jazz and romanticism, kind of like Copland or, best of all, my all time fav, Gershwin. In fact, critics who were against Gershwin called his music, "One catchy melody haphazardly connected to another." That's basically the way I work, too. Oh well, I think it sounds good :D

AHA! EUREKA! I've found out what I am! I am a...POST-MODERN CLASSICIST! [/b]

Hmm, I'll have to check out your music then :D

You ideals sound very appealing to me.

To the question of this thread, id say classical or baroque.

For me, it would be atonal or any of that 12 tone stuff. I don't understand it enough to write in it at all.

I mean I don't understand the reasons behind it, not the actual technique of writing in the style.

The hardest style to write in, in my opinion, is middle Romantic, in the Brahmsian vein. Strict Classical follows fairly logically from form; late Romantic becomes so expansive that it becomes, by that virtue, very much free from constraints. The real challenge in composing Romantic music, to me, lies in sounding free yet coherent and tightly focused. It's not about experimenting with interesting chords - the unusual chords need to be there because they are carefully selected as the most appropriate for the moment.

Well then you have to really see how specific the question is.

If the question is, which is the hardest style to compose in well, then you could maybe say mid romantic.

If its just compose in at all, classical and baroque are harder because of their strict (-ish in the case of classical) forms.

Without much knowledge of theory, one could compose a simple piano piece, and if it indeed sounded so, it could be romantic, but to write a classical piano piece, much knowledge of form, key etc are required.

But to compose something great in a romantic style may be harder, because there is not neccesarily any 'formula' to follow.

Not to say there is for classical, but its more structured in general.

Writing in Classical and Baroque styles/idioms is extremely difficult because it requires a great deal of self-discipline. I don't think it comes naturally to most people.

Probably the most difficult of all would be strict Renaissance. The rules and stylistic constraints there are even more rigid than in Classical and Baroque.

Monkeysinfezzes and I are complete opposites - the more rules there are to follow, the more confined I am by form and style constraints, the more I thrive. Given free rein to do whatever I want, I feel lost.

Works of Richard Strauss to Scriabin. (Orchestral)

Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe would be a very tedious process.

The toughest really depends on the composer.

Ah, man, but your music sounds unbelievably awesome. I wish I had more self-discipline. It really sucks, particularly when it comes to marks, but I'll continue my studies.

Thanks! But do what it's in your heart! That's the only honest way to be an artist of any kind. It just so happens that I like to be tied up and shackled when I'm doing my art...

...that didn't come out right...but you get the picture... no not that picture...

I find that even though it's my idiom, contemporary atonal music is the most difficult for me. This is because the boundaries of musical expression have been pushed to the limits, and there's a whole world of expression out there. When working in an idiom where literally, anything goes, it's the hardest thing in the world to make a cohesive piece.

"I asked her [the second grade teacher] what made her students such [artistic] geniuses. She replied, 'I just know when to take their paintings away.'" ~John Guare, "Six Degrees of Separation"

This is the fundamental problem presented to composers of all styles, but most of all to contemporary atonal composers. When do you stop? Where do you draw the line so you don't saturate your music with meaningless gestures? In Baroque, Classical, and early Romantic music, the limits are in place already. In late Romantic and Contemporary music, limits must be set by the composer for himself - a feat that is by no means easy. The only thing that makes contemporary music more difficult than late Romantic music is that Contemporary music uses so many more extended techniques, each of which must be set up so it doesn't seem out of place.

Where does your flute flutter tongue? Why? And why there? Does it do so anywhere else? Why do you have only two measures of quarter-tones in a 50 measure piece? Every gesture must be thought out to an extreme seen never before, and only approached in Lieder and other musical practices that make heavy use of text-painting.