How modern composers work?

Well... to be honest I have no clue how composers of contemporary music work. Back in the days Mozart used to devise a theme or two then build up from that, employing harmony and counterpoint and voice-leading etc. to make it all sound pretty. Later on the rules were relaxed a bit, but there was a steady framework according to which most composers did their job. All of them had the goal to make a good composition, be it pretty like Don Giovanni or ugly like Beethoven's Great Fugue.

Now most composers don't really employ traditional harmony and counterpoint anymore. So how does it work? They surely don't cram a few random notes here and there and call it "Atonal piece for bassoon, organ and marimba" (There probably are some decent pieces for that group out there). There is of course serialism, but what do you do with your tone row? Since anything is okay, how do you know what to do? It doesn't have to sound good by old standards, so every possible combination of notes would work. If you're a minimalist, you take a phrase, change it a little and then again, slowly. Of course these are broad terms so I'm generalising a lot.

Also, how do atonal or really modern fugues work? Some of the ones I've heard don't seem to pay attention to dissonances and their resolutions which are one of the main driving forces of any form of counterpoint. Just having a few voices and let them imitate a theme at some interval doesn't make it a fugue, so what else is there?

Finally, what does the term 20th century harmony mean? Because to be fair, most people who haven't good extremely good ears can't tell the difference between Gb7+11b9 chord and a Bdim7-9+13 chord. I know there are other chord systems than triadic ones, but I don't know how these work. Anyone out there to enlighten me?

I'm not bashing contemporary music here, I'm just wondering about these things as I find it hard to find artistic merit in a piece which is just random notes to me. Please help me understand that a bit better. I personally wouldn't be able to compose a very freestyle composition seeing that I'm a bit lost as to what to do and what not to do even in a strict piece like a fugue after the exposition.

Quite seriously, we work exactly the same way as Mozart and the other 'great' composers you cite. The only difference is that the limits of the materials we can work with are much wider. If you take a listen to some of my own compositions you might regard the music as strange and atonal but actually I often tell people, quite truthfully, that my music is basically employing the same techniques as Brahms.

I am assuming from the tone of your question that you are more interested in the motivations of contemporary composers than actually being able to write in such styles yourself. A comprehensive answer would probably require study equivalent to a music degree in order to survey every development in techniques of composition. However, I can summarise some basic answers.

Firstly, you should dissuade yourself of the idea that composers in Mozart's era and before wrote only pretty tunes which were liked by everybody. Mozart, more so Haydn, and especially Bach, often employed some ferociously complicated and profound techniques which are still widely used and marvelled at today. Note that I make the distinction between compositional technique and surface style: one is the inner workings of the music whilst the other concerns the most readily apparent features to the listener (melody, tonality, texture). The former is greatly more transferable than the latter, so I could write a 'passacaglia in the style of Bach' that on the surface sounded absolutely nothing like Bach but faithfully followed the techniques found in his music. Many of Mozart and Haydn's major compositions were considered 'romantic', advanced, eccentric and even dissonant by their contemporaries. Yet because they were essentially drawing on and modyfying the music they had heard from the past, their contemporaries and we today can see the logic of their music. Thus it has been for much music since, including that of today. It's also worth considering the question: is an increase in dissonance a progression or a regression? Is the tonal music of the 18th century actually more advanced than a serial composition because it represents argueably a greater refinement of materials?

The idea that 'tonal', ie triadic-based, music represents what is 'good' is mostly due to the social and cultural paradigms you and I are surrounded by. If you were living in rural Hungary in 1850 you would consider to be 'normal' a very different scalic system and instrumental timbres than that of an urbane Austrian aristocrat at the same time. Similarly, modern West African popular music is very difficult for Europeans to dance to, as the rhythmic stresses are completely alien to the European cultural norms. One man's meat etc. The folk music that most people in Mozart's time sung (and which influenced him and Haydn) was nothing like the refined, stylised court music of the aristocracy. Bear in mind that for the vast majority of cultures, rhythm rather than melody is the more important paramenter in music - if it is considered 'music' at all, for often singing and playing is so interconnected to religion or other activities that it is not considered a seperate idea.

Secondly, the idea that contemporary composers all write random notes. True, there are some schools of composition that advocate using chance methods to write, but by and large most composers write what is aesthetically effective, logical and, as often as not, emotionally appealing to their audience. The methods of development that produced masterpieces in the ninteenth century still do so today. Every possible combination of notes will not neccesarily work and each pitch must be carefully considered within the work - one doesn't just throw blobs onto the manuscript even if one wishes to create a very dense or dissonant sound. Again the sound of notes or other features is more to do with the surface style than the scheme of the whole composition. A composer such as Iannis Xenakis will use huge clusters of notes throughout a piece (listen to his Metastasis series) but because the music contains an overall sense of progression and careful use of variation, the piece works very effectively when moving through the time period it takes to perform.

A tone row can be subjected to an almost infinite range of developments through logical re-arrangement of the pitches. Added to this the possibilities for instrumental colour and rhythm and the composer actually has great freedom. If you write a nice tune and then have to base an entire movement around it, surely that's equally limiting - and you have to adhere to common-practice tonality all the way through.

The question about atonal fugues is a good one. One the one hand any tonal scheme that rejects the tonic-dominant heirachy of the common-practice era cannot adhere to the rules of classical counterpoint. On the other, fugue is a texture, not a particular scheme of tonality, or the order of entries or some other codified idea, and thus there is no actual restriction on the surface style of the composition. Besides, if such-and-such a passage in a piece by Hindemith is titled a 'fugue' but isn't tonal, then what is it? Who wrote the 'rules' of fugue anyway?

'20th century harmony' is a broad term for many post-tonal, serial or extended tonal languages. It can simply mean systems using extended chords such as those you cite - mainstream jazz is a good example of this as the conventional tonality is expanded but still present. Or it can mean systems that do not use the tonic-dominant heirachy, whether due to chromticism or the equality of all the pitches, or even microtonal pitches not present in the common-practice vocabulary.

Modern composers usually work in a similar way. They have an ispiration or an idea (it doesn't need to be a theme, a melody or something like that) which is developed to a piece. The difference is probably that the aesthetical ideal has changed. Plus, atonal composers work for themselves and for other artists, while people like Mozart addressed their music to a wider audience. They expressed their feelings in a very traditional and direct way, while atonal music uses rather subtle, abstract methods.

Just my two cents...

Plus, atonal composers work for themselves and for other artists, while people like Mozart addressed their music to a wider audience.

That's not correct; the opposite would be more accurate. Mozart wrote the majority of his music for the private enjoyment of patrons, and only towards the end of his life did he take a very big risk and try to live solely off compositions for the public (operas for the most part). Haydn spent most of his life as a servant at the court of Prince Nikolaus of Eszterhazy and was not allowed to write anything which would be performed outside the palace first. Modern composers, however, have to have some kind of public-spirited clause to get commissions from arts funds, or else make their music commercial enough for it to sell to the public.

They expressed their feelings in a very traditional and direct way, while atonal music uses rather subtle, abstract methods.

Again a rather specious argument. As I said before, Mozart was considered modern, even advanced, to most audiences of his time. In addition Mozart's music contains many subtleties that are not readily apparent without careful study. The overture to Haydn's The Creation certainly doesn't sound traditional and direct (in fact it could have been written 200 years later), whilst on the other side something like Schoenberg's Five PIeces for Orchestra is anything but subtle and uses very clear, almost mathematically logical methods. The underlying technical principles are the same in all music, it is simply the surface style and other essentially superficial factors that change.

Composers today are not bound to a tag they are free. Some have serial influences, some focus on rhythm with stravinskian influences, others purely comercial - but in the case of classical 20\21st century many different techniques are employed, and with bespoke combination of instruments.

Serialism has strict rules but many composers today like John Mcleod, take serialistic aspects - like a tone row of a certain number of notes, not always 12 tone, with frequent use of transposition ect but you have to listen to these pieces to truly appreciate them and look through scores to understand them due to the fact that there not easily defined by a catchy tune. Boulez is another composer who loves his serialism

Most composers are heavily influenced by stravinsky - rite of spring / petroushka due to his use of poly-tonality = combining triads e.g in petroushka he uses a C & D chord together in the strings and in the rite of spring he used an E7th and Eb7 on top of each other in the cellos - stravinsky also uses changes in metre changing each bar from 2/8 - 3/4 - 2/4 - 6/8 ect. Composers like Thomas Ades use very complex rhythms and sit for hours trying to work them out - listen to any Ades piece my favourites are America: a prophecy & Asyla - III - ecstacio.

However, if you analyse these pieces you will understand them, which i cant stress enough as Ades's pieces are Atonal yet the chords aren't random if you analyse them - they make perfect sense.

other composers like Mark Anthony-Turnage have heavy influences from jazz, yet still that Stravinskian rhythmic patterns and tonality - for example Scherzoid, sounds nothing like serialism.

There is a lot of music being composed today which like pop music can be followed, and its your own preference if you like it or not! - its not all lumped in and sounds the same

Scriabin's piano sonatas are from the late 1800 - early 1900 (died in 1911) and his works change the texture and rhythm - like later schoenberg and webern - instead of harmony and melody. but he kept a tonal basis except for his later atonal sonatas.

Debussy as well, people often forget, the use of the whole tone scale and pentatonic scale. Debussy and ravel portray images and scenes very well but if you look at the music, the harmony is rather abstract.

Bartok - who took folk tunes - he was font of parallelism, like debussy. - where a chord shifts by exact semi-tone / tone difference.

Commercial modern compositions arent so fantastic - listen to ANY John williams theme tune and they all go I - V in the first bar of the melody. I say this as they are purely commercial - im not criticising as they are great compositions but can't be grouped with classical. On the other hand many horror films are influenced by stravinksy and his rite of spring.

Other composers dont want any definition and compose to 'Portray' something - a picture / smell / feeling. And people forget that your portraying it through another sense which is sound. They cant hear a structure or they look at the score and see no relevance - this is because the only way to notate music is in a tonal way, even if what your writing is atonal.

If you want to get into modern music it may take a while to get to grips. Minimalism i have left out but many composers have influeced from the use of cells - and use this to develop their rhythms

Music Listen to: (<< = important)

Bartok - Music for strings percussion and celesta - I is an atonal fugue. & parallelism in II + III<<

Debussy - Bells between the leaves / fireworks (literally fireworks on the piano) <<

Ravel - String quartet in F + water games

Scriabin - Black mass sonata - atonal

Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring <<

Webern - Quartets - serialism << defines his sections by changing the texture and dynamics

Tippett - Double concerto for strings - uses pentatonic scale

Berio - sequenza's (These are avant garde and i personaly dont like them - this is random music with no structure or relation!)

Ades - Asyla, I - II - III + IV (III is the easiest to follow, he portrays club music through his orchestra) / Tevot / America: A prohecy <<

Turnage - Scherzoid

hope this helps

I mean, semantics, true.

But important semantics.

I think the point is more that the concept of modernity is largely a post-WWI concept, whereas we've moved significantly past that in terms of development, assuming you buy the whole "one giant history" concept, which is itself pretty bunk.

well I like to take a strainer and two cups of flour to sift, then add a stick of butter, some cherry filling and then the whole score to Parsifal and cook it at 200 degrees for 30 minutes and then I throw everything onto a white linolelum floor where I deduce the differential equations for spillage patterns and apply it to the first, seventh and eighteenth notes of the choruses of every Allman Brothers song written to generate new music.