Stylistic Considerations

What, if any, consideration does one give to their own style of composition? Most, if not all, of us on this site should be familiar with the more modern styles available to a composer in this century - yet, we see day in and day out on here works that could easily fit into earlier epochs of classical music (my own works included).

From my standpoint, I compose whatever I wish. Whether it sounds modern or classical in nature, to me, doesn't matter. What matters is that I compose. I've posted works on here that explored the merging of modern technique within classical idioms and other works that merely were written to be written. What attention should I give whether it sounds modern?

Overall: write what you want. Music is about expression blah blah blah.

My opinion: Three things matter in music. The most important is repetition, followed by timbre, then harmonic ingenuity. Read Attali for the case against repetition, listen to computer music for the case against "standard" timbres, listen to jazz and art-rock for the case against only triads and 7th chords.

Well, what is 'style' anyway? Is is just the surface 'sound' of our music, the inner structural levels, the foundation musical material, or a combination of these in different proportions? One does not simply select a style to compose in the way one chooses a piece of cake, as if a musical style is precisely prescribed and unchanging. Any individual style or school is a synthesis of many different influences, which is what provides the rich individuality of having many different voices in one medium. You cannot choose to be, say, a prototypical minimalist because there is no such thing; there are instead many variants of minimalism, some of which may appear so peripheral as to cross over into another labelled 'style'. In other words, even if you make a determined effort to sound exactly like Mozart, you cannot because a) you are not Mozart and are unable to enter his inner thought processes and b) two hundred years of musical change have passed since his death which will be impossible for you to ignore even if you try to. What might 'sound' classical, like a pastiche of Mozart, might actually turn out to be incredibly modern because you use a particular form or a compositional technique that never occurred to Mozart. Nobody is going to mistake Pulchinella for genuine eighteenth-century music because it has several aspects that mark it out as Stravinsky, yet it is still in Pergolesi's (or whoever really wrote those pieces) 'style'.

The primary considerations one should give to cultivating a personal style, if one is making a conscious effort to do so, are:

1. To write in a style which is most effective for expressing the musical idea

2. To avoid mere pastiche of another composer(s)

3. Do not write in emulation of a particular school of composition just to feel comfortable or because you are encouraged to do so by another.

What, if any, consideration does one give to their own style of composition?

I suppose the simple answer, you give whatever consideration to it that you wish... isn't enough?

What do you really want to know?

What attention should I give whether it sounds modern?

Okay, here I go.

[Rant]

What consideration should you give to 'modern sound' or sound that more often appears in music of the 20th Century?

We have had these threads before. There's no real correct answer here, either. It ultimately comes down to what you want to create and what you want to do with what you create (i.e. Do you have something in mind for performing or creating the work, and if so, what considerations should you be mindful of?).

I really don't know what the purpose of this thread is... in some way I get the impression you're reacting to my reply to your latest submission to the Orchestra and Large Ensemble forum. In that case, you indicated you were writing for a contest. If you're writing for a contest, it's good to know what kind of music has won in the past just 'to take into consideration' some of the idioms that appear to appeal to judges.

It's not that this sort of thing should impact whether you write in a Classical or 12-tone Serial style. You're not 'chained down' to any particular idiom. You can write whatever you want. You'll have better success, in theory, if you know what particular style/idiom/genre if you're writing for, say, a music contest or a festival of 'new music' and so forth.

It sucks that there are still 'taste-barriers' to overcome in some of these circumstances, but you're free to avoid those circumstances or just flat out ignore them and submit anyway. I doubt much would come from it, you'll pay postage and associated costs for score prep, and if the contest judges think a Classical-esque work is competitive (don't know any contest judges who have said as much, unfortunately) then it could be worth it. I doubt that piece will win a contest if judges are looking for more 'contemporary' techniques and so forth, but anything's possible.

If you honestly listened to a winning composition of a contest or festival that sounds at all Classical like your piece does, jump all over it. Send scores every year until you win. But a new music festival, unless there are some extenuating circumstances, generally won't judge your work as highly as more contemporary works. That's just the breaks of having a music system that indoctrinates students rather than educates them... and generally 'tries' to instill Postmodernist idealism while never compensating for the totality that exists among these 'authorities' of music composition.

Composition contests are a joke. I wouldn't let that affect what inspires me to write. If I have an idea that drives me to create music using a 'contemporary' idiom, of course I'll do it, but not to impress some academic who thinks 20th Century music is the only relevant music we should strive to create... who judges by taste because s/he refuses to accept Classicism as just as much an acceptable form of music today as it was in the 18th Century.

[/Rant]

I suppose the simple answer, you give whatever consideration to it that you wish... isn't enough?

What do you really want to know?

Okay, here I go.

Yes and no. What you said just got me thinking, if the purpose of composition is to create music wouldn't it make more sense to just compose whatever you wished? And for competitions and submissions, wouldn't it make more sense to judge the work or critique the work based on its constituents and NOT on whether the sound of the work fits the sound of other works in that epoch?

Sorry, but competitions are for horses.

Yes and no. What you said just got me thinking, if the purpose of composition is to create music wouldn't it make more sense to just compose whatever you wished?

Yep.

And for competitions and submissions, wouldn't it make more sense to judge the work or critique the work based on its constituents and NOT on whether the sound of the work fits the sound of other works in that epoch?

Of course it would, but that's not what judges of these works concern themselves with, unfortunately. That's why I think the institution of academic music education is severely crippled by professional educators who 'indoctrinate' more than 'educate' students. I'm not saying it happens in all cases, but where it DOES happen is what concerns me the most.

Take a school like Julliard, which is up there in the 'Ivy League' schools of music. Suppose you were to submit this score to their composition faculty for consideration to enter at the Doctoral level in music composition. Chances are (I'm not saying 'for sure', just giving you the likelihood here based on, well, let's just call it 'a hunch') you're going to be denied acceptance to the program. Why?

Because this work is not 'contemporary' in the way faculty at these institutions consider what 'contemporary music' should be... and the cycle is really very simple. Students who 'conform' to what the faculty consider 'contemporary' are accepted to the program. They have their reasons, I'm sure they are very confident in their decisions, but it doesn't matter. The point is that these faculty members eventually leave. Who takes these positions?

Guess what. Not you. You didn't get that Doctorate because you wrote a Classical-esque piece. The guy/gal who got the Doctorate, the one who wrote what these faculty members consider to be 'contemporary' are the ones who fill these positions. The whole system, which boasts Postmodern subjectivism in performing, listening, and studying music, has degenerated from the top-down into a collective of Totalists, many of whom tend to conform to this idea that... "While it's okay to write anything you want, if you want a degree from us, you should study and write more 'contemporary' music." Ask them what 'contemporary' even means and you'll get answers like, "If you don't know what 'contemporary' means, we certainly don't want you..." and so on. It's all a crock, because if you actually could press for answers, you'd get nothing clear, concise, or even agreeable among them. The panel itself would break into discussion of whether John Cage is even 'contemporary' today...

The bottom line is, none of them even 'know' what 'contemporary' means because NO ONE can agree on what 'is' and 'is not' contemporary in music today. You'll get plenty of people, though, who will swear up and down until they're blue in the face that Mozart is NOT contemporary while Schoenberg is... you get the gist. It's all nonsense.

I don't approve of this. It's just the way it is... and there's really no way to stop it but to start a new school that caters to the interests of students instead of the agenda of faculty that ultimately judges you as a composer based on THEIR taste in music... not your skills as a composer. These are the people who are generally asked to judge your music... and I'm making completely broad, sweeping generalizations here that are bound to piss some people off. I'm certainly not claiming this is the way all schools work. I'm just pointing out the systemic issue that appears to be trickling down from the top of the ivory tower into judging panels. There are a great many 'bureaucratic' and 'social' issues that run heavily through all of this as well. It all boils down to people insisting that there is such a thing as 'contemporary music' when no such thing really exists at all. It's all just a bunch of words used by people who never stopped to think, "Hey, this makes no sense."

Styles are convenient "shortcuts" for the brain -- it's a highly imperfect categorization. What more important is individual ideas. Not serialism, but serialism of tones; not jazz, but what permutation of proto-jass?

Clearly, the philosophy of a school matters. Clearly, there is an "ivory tower." Clearly, it's not intended.

I think what "contemporary" might mean is just being smart about your music. Know your roots, and know them well. Make sure your roots grow. Appreciate and learn from what you don't like. etc etc etc.