Composrs' problems

I was thinking for some time about the problems faced by aspiring serious instrumental composers in todays society :

1. Listeners won't listen : their preference is the stuff that everybody else is listening, and that is being increasingly determined by the media and the aggressive publicity of the big labels.

2. Theory lessons are really backdated, and even wrong in approach. For example - standard text books will tell you about all the dozens of rules of cadence and part writing, but they will never utter a word about why each of the rules actually formed or why certain things are forbidden.

3. Orchestras won't play anything new. They just don't care for new music and new compositions.

1. This is a problem (so I understand) with concert promoters - unfamiliar names on the programme. But it's reasonable to expect that if people attend concerts they are prepared to give the programme a listen - hasn't always worked that way - Stravinsky's Le Sacre....and I think there's still an opera house in Italy where the throwing of rotten fruit is permitted.

2. True, because theory/theories were developed to suit particular eras. What's good for classics won't be easily adaptable to jazz, pop music or the avant garde. The systems can be "bent" to fit other genres but never satisfactorily like, you could fit the classical nomenclature/definitions to Debussy but like trying to cut the grass with a stick, it's bloomin' hard work.

You can certainly find out why most of the rules around the renaissance or classical era came into being. Few things are forbidden (except for exams) but they were considered distasteful or contradicted the form (such as parallel octaves).

3. They will - though far less now than, say, 20 years ago. It's an expensive business. It's a question of finding a decent local orchestra - and composing work that isn't going to consume masses of rehearsal time. My local-est orchestra is always looking for things to bolster out a programme that's usually based on Beethoven or Mozart or Haydn!

Composers who play an orchestral instrument to some degree can usually find or form an ensemble if they try hard enough. They can also learn much about instrumentation from studying scores, even the examples given in text books. Every little 'elps, as they say in Tesco's.

Here's another one:

4. Learning to turn rejection into renewed effort.

;)

Huh...the theory lessons I had were rather well explained to me. Obviously, a lot depends on the teachers and institution at which you study. I always learned that theory, while you had to view it as "rules" for your exams, was overall meant to be more like "guidelines." And understanding things like the harmonic overtone series and such helped explain just WHY certain things sounded better in the Western ear than other things...as well as, of course, convention and practice of the time, as montpellier stated. My only major complaint in theory lessons was having to sightsing using solfege syllables--they are meant to be a crutch for people who aren't as good at internalizing intervals, but when you can sing the intervals just fine but have to strain yourself to remember the proper syllable in time for each new note, then the help becomes a hinderance. It just ties into one of (if not THE) major flaws in American education: It assumes that everyone learns in the exact same way, when we really don't.

I was not complaining about the absolute basics like avoiding parallel perfect intervals or false relation or crossing of voices - such rules can be easily understood, and so can be broken when context demands. There are a lot of other rules that actually are broken by the classical masters too. R.A. Morris's book "Foundation...harmony and ctrpt." says in page 53 "many examiners will object to any consecutive fifths caused by the use of accented unessential discords, but at any rate Bach had no objection to them" and he cites an example from Bach. I often found my compositions, where I broke rules wherever my music demanded, praised wholeheartedly by seasoned composers and teachers when they listened to them. Even their experienced ear could not detect the "illegal" cadences and progressions. Why then are these dubious rules, which cannot be detected by trained ears, still taught everywhere ? After all, music is about listening and not about watching the score!

Actually , there are very good psychological and acoustic reasons for some of the rules, as explained by various researchers worldwide. I have in my HDD a great article about this - really great. Tell me if you need that one.