Creative Music Composition

The Young Composer's Voice

Margaret Lucy Wilkins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136092183
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music Theory & Appreciation

Creative Music Composition is designed to be an introductory textbook for music students. "Creative composition"-composing in your own style, rather than in the style of a composer of the past-is embraced by music educators not only for composition students, but for beginning performers and music educators, and is often offered to all music students and non-music majors who wish to enhance their musical creativity. With 25 years of experience teaching fledgling composers, the author tackles the key ingredients that make for successful composition, including: stimulus to the musical imagination; discussion of a variety of current musical languages; analysis of many examples from contemporary scores; technical exercises; suggestions as to how to start a composition; structures; and examinations of works from particular genres. Wilkins covers several musical languages, from folk and popular to serialism; analyses various rhythmic forms; suggests approaches for composing for a variety of instruments, from traditional to electronic ones, as well as for the human voice; addresses the nuts and bolts of score preparation; and offers career advice. For all composition students-and for music students in general- Creative Music Composition offers a clear and concise introduction that will enable them to reach their personal goals.

1

YOUNG COMPOSERS AND A CREATIVE ENVIRONMENT

Discovering that you can compose music is very exciting and can lead to a lifetime of creative fulfillment. You will embark on a journey of exploration to find your own composing voice, and, on the way, you will encounter stimulating ideas and techniques that have fascinated other composers. Helping you to develop as a composer is the object of this book. A postgraduate has likened the process of discovering your own voice to that of sculpting: the voice is hidden inside the block of marble, and the task is to chip away until the sculpture, or the voice, is revealed. The Italian sculptor, Antonio Canova (1757–1822), famous for his beautiful The Three Graces (marble, 1814–1817), offered the following advice to his students: “Study Nature, consult the works of the great masters of Antiquity, and, after careful comparisons, arrive at your own original style.”¹

It’s common nowadays for young musicians to have some experience of composing during their school education. In England, the music education system provides for creative experience in both primary and secondary schools. Thus, in the United Kingdom, students who choose to study music in further or higher education (college, conservatory, or university) will have already started on the road of discovery. The ability to have musical ideas and to imagine sounds, and the desire to create new music, have been awakened. For some, this becomes a lifelong passion; for others, the spirit of inquiry, musical exploration, and discovery is a life-enhancing experience. Free composition can be studied as a specialty subject, or may be taken as a component of a music degree, together with performance, musicology, electroacoustic music, and music theory.

The experience of composing can provide insights into the other fields of musical activity. Performers who have composed can better understand, for example, the limits of musical notation. Their own performance can benefit by assimilating the often improvisatory nature of a work, which otherwise appears to be a fixed entity on a printed page. The ability to make an imaginative leap into the mind of other composers (because of the experience of having composed) can produce a stunning performance. All the same, the idea of undertaking free composition (that is, composing in your own style, rather than in the style of a composer of the past) can be daunting. Rest assured that almost every musician is capable of composing, to a greater or lesser extent, given the opportunity of doing so.

The object of including free composition in a music course on equal terms with the other areas of musical study is not necessarily to produce bona fide composers (although this has happened many times), but to produce educated musicians. Trough composition, you are able to give expression to your own ideas, and to learn about the musical issues of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This in turn enhances your understanding of all music and produces more thoughtful performances and historical insights. Examples of musicians who are, or were, both composers and performers are overwhelmingly numerous: Claudio Monteverdi, Barbara Strozzi, Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Clara Schumann, Amy Beach, Cécile Chaminade, Claude Debussy, Gustav Mahler, Rebecca Clarke, Serge Rachmaninov, Paul Hindemith, Otto Klemperer, Pablo Casals, Pierre Boulez, André Previn, and Leonard Bernstein, to mention just a few.

Pianist Murray Perahia expressed that he felt that composition is the center of musical activity, and that performing needs a basis in composition. Music teachers need composing experience in order to be able to lead their pupils, at both primary and secondary school levels. The tasks of the aspiring composer are actually to compose, to undertake the “search,” to be true to one’s own integrity, and to learn about the work of other composers. Composing should not be a navel-gazing activity (that is, concentrating exclusively on your own work), but should embrace knowledge and appreciation of other composers’ ideas. The latter can often spark creative ideas that can be modified and utilized in your own work.

Professional Opportunities

In modern society, all composers are freelance: there are no salaried positions for composers, unlike during the Classical era when male musicians were hired as Kappelmeisters by the Christian Church, or as court composers by the aristocracy; this was how J. S. Bach, Mozart, and Haydn, for example, were employed. In the twenty-first century, composers can earn an income by writing for film, television, and other media, or by writing to commission for the concert hall (or other performance venues), or by publishing recordings of their music, or by publishing music for educational use, for example. Apart from working in the pop industry, it is rare for composers to be able to earn their entire incomes from composing activities alone, and many choose to have a multiplicity of income-generating employment.

Finding the Right Teaching/Learning Environment

It is important to find the right teaching/learning environment that will encourage and support composing activity. Try to find a course that includes as many of these ingredients as possible:

• Experienced composition instructors (preferably a choice)
• Opportunities to hear your compositions (in organized workshops, for example)
• A fellowship of composers (including undergraduate, postgraduate, and mature staff composers)
• Access to scores and recordings of new music, as well as to opportunities to attend live concerts and musical events

It is an advantage to be surrounded by contemporaries at different stages of creative development. Belonging to a group of understanding and supportive colleagues, who can offer advice and encouragement, is much better than trying to develop in isolation.

Workshops

The importance of learning through doing, and through hearing the results of your efforts, cannot be overstressed. Workshops, in which your pieces can be tried out, are fundamental to the learning experience of composers. They are the crucible in which composers learn if their ideas can prove to be practical. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of composing is to judge the effectiveness of the structure and whether it appears to be convincing. Although some computing music software programs allow the composer to hear a work-in-progress, the artificial sounds are not the same as those obtained from real acoustic instruments. The advantage of a good computer music program is that you can test the rhythmic flow and structural effectiveness of your work in real time, ahead of a rehearsal or performance situation. The disadvantage is that the electronic sounds are artificial because, unlike acoustic instruments, they are lacking in harmonic resonance and timbral beauty. As there is no human element involved in the performance of electronically produced sounds, composers can acquire a false impression of what is really possible when human musicians perform the music. In addition, composers need to build their “inner ear” from the real sounds of the instruments rather than artificial ones.

A variety of performance situations can be arranged, ranging from workshops provided by students through to professional performers who are hired especially for composers’ workshops. Student groups can involve small ensembles, graded through to the college orchestra, brass band, and symphonic wind orchestra. For composers developing outside formal education, there are other opportunities for accessing resources and workshops. National music centers exist in many countries. For example, the British Music Information Centre in London and the Scottish Music Centre in Glasgow house scores and recordings of most national composers. Opportunities for composers’ workshops are offered each season by the Society for the Promotion of New Music (SPNM) in England, or the national branches of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) in many other countries.

The use of a choir in workshop situations has proved more problematic than the use of instrumental ensembles. This is because student and amateur singers need much more time to learn new works than competent instrumentalists, who are capable of sight-reading music very quickly. Unfortunately, this can lead to a situation in which young composers tend not to have the same learning experience in writing for voices as they have in writing for instruments. Composing for voices needs special care, because the singers have to pitch their notes, not only horizontally (melodically), but vertically (harmonically) in relation to the other singers. Of course the need to pre-hear the notes is not exclusive to singers, because instrumentalists also need this ability. A solution to this practical problem might be to write a work for a local choir or church choir.

Composers who are learning need performers who are sympathetic and able to offer constructive criticism. Feedback from performing musicians can also indicate what is rewarding to play. Composers are understandably nervous about the first hearing of a new work, especially if the piece contains an element of experimentation. In fact, composers may use the workshop to try out experimental ideas, so that encouraging and helpful comments will assist the young composer’s development.

Stylistic versus Free Composition

In some institutions, there is a debate surrounding the issue of the teaching/learning of stylistic or free composition. This stems from a widespread twentieth-century practice of teaching the tonal musical language via the completion of exercises that imitate the styles of various “old masters.” This educational model was appropriate at the time — that is, before non-tonal musical styles had been developed. Now, the teaching/learning of stylistic composition could be regarded as a branch of musicology, useful for learning the mechanisms of the tonal musical language. It should not be regarded as a substitute for, or an alternative to, guided experience of free composition, particularly for those intending to be specialist composers. Having said this, competence in composing stylistic music could be a useful accomplishment for composers intending to write incidental music for period plays or films.

The term “free composition” implies creative work that is not stylistically based within historical eras. In practice, it has come to mean composing within a twentieth- and twenty-first century Western European style, open to individual interpretation.

The Teaching Offered

Ideally, a program of teaching/learning that offers a combination of composers’ classes, workshops, and individual tuition is the most desirable. “Studies in Composition” classes can impart much stimulating information, provide opportunities for analysis, and provoke æsthetic discussion among the group as a whole. They enable composers (who tend to work otherwise as solitary figures) to meet as a group for the exchange of ideas, under the direction of a mature composition tutor.

Regular individual instruction should be given by experienced composers in order to discuss the work-in-progress of each student. Matters of viable musical ideas, how to develop them, and the practicalities of notating them can be guided on an individual basis.

Listening to New Music

The best way of learning about new music — the sound of it, the ideas, the philosophies— is to take every opportunity to listen to it. By attending concerts and by visiting festivals of contemporary music, you experience the excitement that goes with hearing new music. Radio programs, occasional television programs, and recordings can all be experienced without leaving home. Specialist sites on the Internet are another means by which new music recordings may be purchased.

Artists have always developed by learning from their predecessors. The ideas of the previous generations might be used directly, or developed in a new way, or rejected, but ignorance of them is not to be commended.

2

CONCEPTS OF THE IMAGINATION

Getting Started

When you first started to compose, you probably had little idea of what you were trying to create. It was sufcient just to find some sounds. Then came the task of how to notate them. As you develop, you may become aware that you want to have more control over what you are creating.

In the past, classical structures dictated the form and character of the work. Nowadays, it is more usual for composers to determine a concept, or basic idea, around which to build their work. From a strong concept will flow much information about the essential parameters of musical composition. The concept might determine the overall structure, for example, or the tempo, or the mood and character of the musical ideas.

It is likely that the concept will fall into one of two categories: programmatic or abstract. Programmatic music takes its inspiration from an extra-musical idea. A popular source of inspiration might be found in a phenomenon of nature, for example. Vivaldi’s violin concerto The Four Seasons (c.1730), Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, Pastoral (1808), and Debussy’s Voiles, Des Pas sur la Neige, La Cathédrale Engloutie and La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin (from Douze Préludes Book 1 for solo piano, 1910) are all examples of programmatic ideas represented in musical terms. Abstract concepts concern purely technical musical ideas. They might embrace, for example, the idea of a piece that gradually increases in speed throughout, or a movement that slowly progresses from the lowest pitches to the highest. Such a work would require mastery of technique and imaginative use of the musical forces involved. Górecki’s Symphony No. 3, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (1976), uses a folk-like melody in canon throughout Movement I, which winds its way from low double basses to high strings and back again. Igor Stravinsky, in his Symphony of Psalms (1930), wrote chorale-like parts for the chorus and included a fugal Movement II, in a tribute to Bach. Similarly, Béla Bartók composed a fugue for Movement I of his Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936).

Stimuli to the Imagination

Ideas that spark the imagination can be found in a variety of contexts, including pictorial, scientific, literary, mathematical, architectural, spiritual, historical, and so on. Here are some texts that might fire your imagination. They are taken from descriptions of particular works by the composers themselves, or from reviewers’ comments.

… there is the extraordinary haunting and intoxicating magic of its sound. There is often startling imagery, with its undercurrents of association, and frequent allusion to things animate and inanimate, or to other music.¹

Rhythm is organised linearly and is easy to hear: things get steadily faster or slower, durations steadily ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• KEY TO TERMINOLOGY
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER 1 YOUNG COMPOSERS AND A CREATIVE ENVIRONMENT
• CHAPTER 2 CONCEPTS OF THE IMAGINATION: GETTING STARTED
• CHAPTER 3 STRUCTURES: TRADITIONAL/INVENTED
• CHAPTER 4 MUSICAL LANGUAGES: MULTIPLICITY OF STYLES
• CHAPTER 5 TECHNICAL EXERCISES
• CHAPTER 6 EXPLORING INSTRUMENTS
• CHAPTER 7 COMPOSING FOR TRADITIONAL ENSEMBLES
• CHAPTER 8 COMPOSING FOR VOICES
• CHAPTER 9 COMPOSING FOR A MONODIC INSTRUMENT
• CHAPTER 10 MOVING AHEAD
• NOTES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX