Friday, January 07, 2005
What is the job description of a composer? What do they do all day?
The job description of a composer is likely to be whatever a composer says it is, to misquote John Cage. The main challenge is to stay alive, healthy, and in a frame of mind that makes it possible to compose, and then to actually write music, make sure it is copied, rehearsed properly and performed/reviewed/recorded/broadcast/possibly published or somehow made available. And to arrange some provision for the care of your music once you die, since like children, the music continues.
As to what composers do all day, I can only answer for myself. Some days I write music all day and all night. Some days I walk 7 miles and collapse and a read a book until its time to cook dinner. Some days I teach a little or do some other work. Sometimes I send email (or do mailings) all day to let people know about a performance or a broadcast or a recording, or I call performers to arrange performances or recordings.
posted by Beth Anderson
1:09 PM
Thursday, January 06, 2005
Reflections on Writing for Children's Chorus
I was going to wait and refer to this little article, but I have decided to go ahead and add it to the mix. It does segue from the question concerning musical explanations. The essay will find its way soon to www.ecspublishing.com and a new section they have on the Composer's Craft.
Reflections on Writing for Children’s Chorus
Gil Rose, the director of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, wanted me to write a piece for his group, but asked me to seek out additional funding for the commission. In the spring of 2000 I asked Mark Churchill, the Dean of the Division of Preparatory and Continuing Education at New England Conservatory, if he would be interested in a joint commission with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Mark Churchill said that he was interested, and added that he wanted it to be a piece for the NEC Children’s Chorus.
I was suddenly filled with contrary emotions: happy for the commission, but now it was going to be for a work for children’s chorus and orchestra! Writing for orchestra I felt comfortable with and excited about, of course. I had no slight esthetic inclination to write piece for children’s chorus.
These negative emotions were quickly swept aside as soon as I started reading William Blake’s poems Songs of Innocence and Experience. (My wife, the musicologist Andrea Olmstead, had a copy of the poetry.) From the first page of the “Introduction” to the Songs of Innocence, musical ideas were flooding my consciousness in a way that let me know I had the right text.
In the summer of 1967, when I first began consciously composing, I used to put poetry up on the piano’s music stand, improvise suitable harmonies, and all the while sing the words with the first melody that came to mind. Now, thirty-three years later, I decided to try the compositional tact that I had not tried since the time of the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
I photocopied about fourteen or fifteen poems that really interested me and took them to a studio at the conservatory. For the next two or three hours I repeatedly played and sang through most of the poems from the Songs of Innocence. On the next two evenings I did the same thing with the poetry of the Songs of Experience. I never wrote anything down in musical notation during these evenings. The reason was that I made a conscious decision that if I was going to write something for children it had to be both easy to sing and memorable. If I could not remember the music, then a chorus of children and their audience would not remember it either.
Between 1979 and 1981 I had spent two years writing a work for soprano and violin soloists and orchestra based on Wallace Stevens’s poem The Idea of Order at Key West. To have “written” this new piece over the course of three evenings seemed preposterous. It was similar to those stories of Handel writing the Messiah in three weeks. When I spoken about this setting of the Songs of Innocence and Experience I usually prefer to say that it was improvised rather than composed. In other words, this work was no more (or less) written down than anything by Irving Berlin or Paul McCartney.
I mention this to composers who will certainly recognize the difference between “constructing” a piece rather than “improvising” one. Although this may seem like a subtle distinction, it was quite liberating to be “writing” in this new way. It was also quite risky. After all, what if I forgot the music that I had just been singing and playing?
After living with this music for about a month, I decided to make a version of the piece for soprano voice and piano. This was a separate concert piece called “Ten Poems of William Blake.” This version was essentially the piano part, recalled from memory, and the vocal line as I originally sang it (written an octave higher, of course). “Ten Poems of William Blake” and the Songs of Innocence and Experience are published by Ione Press, a Division of ECS Publishing.
At the end of that summer I came back to the work to orchestrate it. The orchestration took a solid month working five and six hours a day. (This resembled my usual composing work habits.) Nevertheless, nothing had been changed: These were the same melodies and harmonies I “improvised” in May.
Sometimes students and friends ask how I write pieces. Although there are general processes that remain constant from piece to piece, no two works are ever quite the same in conception or in execution. Writing the Songs of Innocence and Experience put me in touch with my roots as a composer, and, I believe, helps to account for this particular work’s uniqueness.
Asked to speak about the piece in a pre-concert talk at the premiere of Songs of Innocence and Experience in January 2001, I recalled the summer of 1967 and the preoccupation we all seemed to have with The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper. Like many composers of my generation I knew this album’s introduction starts in G and modulates to E for the second song, “A Little Help from My Friends.” I couldn’t help but smile when Gil Rose began the rehearsal of Songs of Innocence and Experience, and I heard for the first time my own “Introduction” starting in G and the second song, “The Lamb,” modulate to E. After many years, this work for Children’s Chorus – originally so intimidating–had brought me full circle back to the music of my own youth.
posted by Larry Thomas Bell
10:33 PM
Does Music Need an Explanation?
Do composers, or other creative artists, for that matter, have an obligation to "explain" their work? David Salvage raises that issue in his post about Harrison Birtwistle and his inability, or unwillingness, to help a listener understand his work. Lawrence Dillon's Job Description of a composer seems to imply--perhaps I'm reading this into it--that while being able to articulate what you are doing is a bonus music speaks for itself if the composer is skillful enough. Some contemporary composers--I'm thinking of Thomas Ades and Oliver Knussen in particular--rarely lecture or talk about their work with anyone outside a small fraternity of composers and musicians. This has earned them a reputation, with the press at least, for being "difficult" and elitist. What is the right balance and how do those of you who face this problem deal with it?
posted by Jerry Bowles
7:17 PM
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Reviews
Yes, Larry, Ross's blog is as good as it gets. He covers a huge range of fascinating topics. It will be interesting to see if Jerry's idea of a Composers Forum can accomplish something equally worthwhile. Let's hope for the best.
I like your idea of providing score snippets with reviews. Obviously, the big hurdle is transferring from the medium of time to the medium of space: a photograph can represent a painting in its entirety (not replacing the direct experience of course, but you know what I mean) or a valid perspective on an architectural work, but a few measures of a printed score can't really do justice to most music. Good news: with internet reviews, critics can post soundfiles of works in their entirety, or at least sizable chunks. The only problem: getting permission to use the file, which, as far as I know, is not an issue with a photograph of a work of art in a magazine or newspaper.
For anyone who is interested in checking out a blog that focuses specifically on new music, I recommend Kyle Gann's Postclassic -- I disagree with a fair share of Kyle's opinions about music, but I have tons of respect for the passion and devotion he brings to the music he loves. His internet radio station alone is an amazing source for stuff you won't hear anywhere else.
Any other recommendations?
posted by Lawrence Dillon
11:56 AM
Monday, January 03, 2005
A music critic worth reading?
Let me begin by thanking Jerry Bowles for asking me to contribute to this blog. The only blog that I have read consistently is by Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker magazine: www.therestisnoise.com. I recommend it to readers interested in a variety of musical topics treated with seriousness and fun.
As it happens, The New Yorker arrived today, and I was delighted to read Ross's review of "The Wedding" by William Bolcom. I would like to think that my delight had nothing to do with the fact that I have met the author and agree with him most of the time. Nevertheless, I must admit that my encounters with music critics have usually left me with a sense I was dealing with beings from another world.
On the other hand, Alex Ross seems to be from a recognizable culture. No need for me to ask him my usual impertinent music-critic question, which goes somewhat as follows: "Why don't you include an incipit of the music (or a few measures of the score) in your reviews?" One would not think of writing about architecture or poetry without showing a picture of the structure or quoting a few lines. My question is percieved as, at best, irrelevant to the general (non-musical) reader and, at worst, elitist.
I am not interested in this space in starting a thread about music criticism. It occurred to me today, however, that Alex Ross's writing is so vivid and draws upon so many cultivated references that we don't miss music examples. Perhaps this truly is a music critic worth reading for his own sake. (posted by Larry Thomas Bell)
posted by Larry Thomas Bell
9:52 PM
Sunday, January 02, 2005
Writing about music
First of all, thanks, Jerry, for inviting all of us to take part in this forum -- or perhaps I should just speak for myself, and not for my colleagues. In any case, the opportunity to engage in meaningful conversation is certainly appreciated.
As you say, "for composers... talking or writing about music must be like translating ideas from one language to another," and inevitably some or much is lost in translation. We are probably all too familiar with the comment attributed to Laurie Anderson: "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."
I am reminded of a story Scott Lindroth tells: he composed a piece for the Philadelphia Orchestra called "Clash and Glitter." It was reviewed favorably, with the critic focusing on the loud, sparkling bursts of percussion. He then retitled the piece "January Music" for a subsequent performance -- and was complimented on writing "such wintery music."
So composers are understandably hesitant to verbalize their artistic intentions, since a few words can color the listening process irretrievably. One last attribution, this a quote from Mendelssohn: "People often complain that music is too ambiguous, that what they should think when they hear it is so unclear, whereas everyone understands words. With me, it is exactly the opposite, and not only with regard to an entire speech but also with individual words. These too seem to me so ambiguous, so vague, so easily misunderstood in comparison to genuine music, which fills the soul with a thousand things better than words."
posted by Lawrence Dillon
11:40 AM
What We Talk About When We Talk About Music
This is a blog where contemporary composers can talk about music, the musical life or anything else that strikes their fancy. My limited role, as blogmeister, is to try to ask occasional questions that stimulate thought or further discussion. I come to this role from the perspective of a layman who is a passionate listener but whose musical talent is limited to fairly unconvincing four-chord blues rifts on the guitar. In short, I am--more or less--the kind of enthusiastic, but musicially semi-literate, listener who buys CDs and attends new music concerts.
What kind of questions interest me? Well, what is it that makes modern music "modern?" And since music is intrinsically abstract, how do composers go about providing a written or verbal context for listeners. Creators of music, like everyone else, are generally obliged to do a little marketing of their wares. What is the proper vocabulary or style for conveying thoughts about music? Some composers focus on form and shape and structure; others take a more literary approach. Listeners often turn to titles for clues about what they are supposed to be hearing but, of course, we all know--as Wallace Stevens put it--that "the pears are not seen as the observor wills."
For composers, it seems to me, talking or writing about music must be like translating ideas from one language to another. That translation, I suspect, will make for some informative and entertaining reading. And, of course, readers are invited to participate, too, by leaving comments, suggestions and questions in the comment boxes.
posted by Jerry Bowles
7:46 AM
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