Composers and Academia

The stories posted on the Olist about composition study at music schools, especially Amy Scurria’s, inspired me to share my thoughts on the subject.

I have been retired from the academic world for thirteen years, yet I still attend College Music Society and Society of Composers conferences and occasionally have my music selected for performance. My style is very different from the majority of the compositions heard on these programs as I am a tonalist and adhere to the principles espoused in John Winsor’s excellent book, “Breaking the Sound Barrier: An Argument for Mainstream Literary Music.” In this book, Mainstream Literary Music is defined as music that builds upon the traditions of music established prior to 1950 and is music that has dramatic shape similar to its literary counterparts.

Most of the music heard on these programs emphasizes timbre and dissonance. It goes on for long periods of time with little or no dramatic shape. The audiences for these programs are other academic composers, usually only the ones that are also having their music performed. Also, the selection of the music to be performed on these programs is done by academic composers as well. I am often surprised that my music gets selected, as it does not fit into what is considered “the norm.” This type of academic backscratching seems very far removed from the non-academic concert environment where the audiences are more varied.

I heard a presentation about jazz trombonists at the Eastern Trombone Workshop almost 25 years ago that described jazz trombonists as falling into one of three categories; innovators, preservers, and refiners. Innovators are those that create something new. Preservers are those that recreate and an older style. Refiners are those that combine the old and the new into an artistic expression. These categories also translate well for describing composers.

Innovators are definitely needed in order for our art to move forward, but just because something is new doesn’t automatically mean it is good. It takes refiners to take the new ideas and to use them in an artistic manner that serves the art of music. I keep hoping that at these concerts I would hear a change from the academic style of composing that has been prevalent since the 1950s as the change has definitely permeated the non-academic concert world. But I have yet to see it take hold in academia. These styles that emphasize dissonance and timbre are no longer new and have served their experimental purpose. It is time for the academic world to get caught up with the rest of the concert scene.

It is difficult for a composition teacher to not impose his or her style on their students, but allowing a student to find their own voice is absolutely essential. One way to do this is to have students study the style of composers different from themselves. After taking a poetry class where we analyzed a poem and them wrote one using the things we gleaned from the analysis, I decided to try the approach with my composition student. I have blogged about the results on my composinginsights blog and here is a direct link http://www.composinginsights.blogspot.com/2013/02/learning-from-other-composers.html

You can see and hear Josh’s composition and his analysis of Stravinsky. We repeated this activity with Copland, Bartok and Ives and the growth in Josh’s musical vocabulary was amazing.

No student should go through what Amy and others have experienced. It is time for academic composers to break from the need to be motivated by peer pressure and to be more motivated by what is good for the art of music before the ivory tower of academia crumbles into ruins.

Elements Movement IV

I have finished the last movement of Elements and I am pleased with the results. This movement represents the Earth element whose main characteristic is stability. To represent stability musically, I used a lot of ostinatos during the movement. While this movement contains a lot of repetition, if one listens carefully, one becomes aware that the repetitions are constantly being varied.

The slow seven measure introduction presents some of the main motives used in this movement. It is ethereal, almost like the formation of the Earth itself. The most obvious ostinato is the one that appears in the baritone saxophone at measure 8. This two measure pattern repeats 7 times with some subtle variations before the tenor saxophone takes it over at measure 22. The soprano saxophone presents another ostinato at measure 10. Notice that its repeat does not line up with the 3/4 meter. It is answered by a third ostinato in the tenor sax and later in canon with alto sax 2.

At measure 13, a rising motive that is harmonized in 4ths and has its origins in the introduction, becomes the first melodic material that is not an ostinato. At measure 22, the movement becomes more lyrical with less use of the ostinato figures. Measures 34-44 provides relief from the ostinatos and is more lyrical with richer harmony and the use of imitation. The ostinato ideas then return and build to the Presto climax.

I am now using flip pdf technology for the musical examples that go along with my posts. It uses Flash Player that most browsers come with. You will be hearing an mp3 of sampled sounds playing the music and you will see the score at the same time. You will need to turn the pages by clicking on the arrows at the appropriate time. To see and hear what I have discussed, go to http://www.cooppress.net/elements_blog.html.

As always, your comments are appreciated.

Dr. B

Elements Movement III

I have completed the third movement of "Elements," a piece designed to musically portray the essential nature of the Classical Greek elements, fire, water, air and earth and their astrological implications.

If there is one word that describes the chief characteristic of the air element it is changeable, therefore this movement is filled with contrast. Some of the contrasts I use are, texture, dynamics, articulation, meter, tonality, and orchestration.

The movement begins quietly with primarily a monophonic texture with some instrumentation changes as a way of adding variety. At measure 10, the texture changes to homophonic and there is a lot of contrast of dynamics and metrical feel with the use of the 6/8 3/4 hemiola.

Measure 11 introduces an interesting harmonic technique that I use frequently in this movement. I call it common tone harmony where one note remains constant as the chords change around it. In this measure, the Bb concert remains constant. Sometimes it is the root of the chord and other times the 3rd, 5th or 7th. The chords themselves could be major, minor, augmented or diminished, depending upon my choice of harmonic direction. I even use the common tone as a member of a chord built in 4ths. This gives the harmony a lot of flexibility and works well in a movement where changeability is a characteristic as the chords don't fall into any one key.

The basic melodic ideas go through a series of transformations as the piece progresses and contrasting elements are incorporated throughout. The biggest rhythmic change is from triple to duple meter at measure 52 where there is a contrast in articulation as well. Measure 87 brings the listener back to triple meter and the movement ends with hemiola contrast and dynamic contrast.

I am now using flip pdf technology for the musical examples that go along with my posts. It uses Flash Player that most browsers come with. You will be hearing an mp3 of sampled sounds playing the music and you will see the score at the same time. You will need to turn the pages by clicking on the arrows at the appropriate time. To see and hear what I have discussed, go to http://www.cooppress.net/elements_blog.html.

As always, your comments are appreciated.

Elements Movement II

I have completed the second movement of "Elements," a piece designed to musically portray the essential nature of the Classical Greek elements, fire, water, air and earth and their astrological implications.

The water element's chief characteristic is sensitivity, therefore I chose a slow tempo and wrote a movement that is lyrical and harmonically rich. This movement is in an ABA' form. The B section uses some tone painting where the undulating 16th notes are designed to represent the flow of water.

From a compositional viewpoint, I feel that the things that make this movement work well are the subtleties. Phrases are interchanged between instruments so in order to create continuity, I often overlap the phrases. When the A section returns, try to note the differences from the first A section. Since this section comes at the end, it needed some slight variation from its opening statement. The meter changes throughout add an element of subtle irregularity so that the lines are not predictable. The ending has a delayed cadence that once again adds a subtlety that hopefully delights the ear.

I am now using flip pdf technology for the musical examples that go along with my posts. It uses Flash Player that most browsers come with. You will be hearing an mp3 of sampled sounds playing the music and you will see the score at the same time. You will need to turn the pages by clicking on the arrows at the appropriate time. To see and hear what I have discussed, go to http://www.cooppress.net/elements_blog.html.

As always, your comments are appreciated.

Dr. B

Elements for Saxophone Quartet Movement I

I am back writing about my compositions after a hiatus of almost a year. I have been commissioned by the h2 Saxophone Quartet and we decided to have me write a quartet that would be playable by good high school, college, and weekend warrior quartets. The piece I am creating is called "Elements" and is designed to musically portray the essential nature of the Classical Greek elements,
fire, water, air and earth and their astrological implications.

The first movement is Fire whose essential nature is strong and controlling. The music contains a lot of forceful sections, primarily in a homophonic style. In order to contrast these sections, quieter polyphonic sections are used that build into the more forceful sections. The technique of counterpoint in music is one that demands great control, thus fitting subject matter.

The harmonic style is a mixture of quartal harmony and triadic harmony. The music wanders freely between keys therefore creating harmonic interest. There is much rhythmic interest through the use of syncopation and hemiola.

I am now using flip pdf technology for the musical examples that go along with my posts. It uses Flash Player that most browsers come with. You will be hearing an mp3 of sampled sounds playing the music and you will see the score at the same time. You will need to turn the pages by clicking on the arrows at the appropriate time. To see and hear what I have discussed, go to http://www.cooppress.net/elements_blog.html.

As always, your comments are appreciated.

Dr. B

Composition Competitions

I thought that I would say a few words about composition competitions as I have entered several over the past few months and have met with some success and have been disappointed with others. I hope that my viewpoints will be useful to other composers.

The two major resources I use to find out about competitions are the American Composers Forum http://composersforum.org/ and the Society of Composers http://www.societyofcomposers.org/. Both are membership organizations and the benefits are well worth the membership fee.

The next step is to be selective regarding which competitions you enter. Entering competitions can get expensive, as some have entrance fees and many require mailing multiple copies of scores. More and more competitions are going to online submission which saves duplicating and postage costs and I applaud this direction. It is bad enough that one sometimes needs to pay an entrance fee and many composers refuse to enter these contests because they say "why should I be supporting the prize money?" People running the competitions justify the fee by saying "it pays the costs of the judges and the administration of the contest." It is a personal choice as to whether you decide to enter competitions with fees. If I feel that my composition and the competition are a match, I will usually enter the competition even if it has a fee.

To determine if your composition and the competition are a match, see if you can find a list previous winners of the competition and try to locate their music. Google searching makes this fairly easy to do and it will give you a good idea of what the sponsors are looking for.

If you enter a competition, do not expect to receive feedback. I wish that feedback would be provided, especially if it is an annual competition that you have entered several times and not been successful. I recently experienced a non-placement in a competition that I felt sure that I would place. I did all the research and felt that my entry was very strong. However, it was not successful and the only thing I can determine is that judges found things more to their liking. One needs to realize that there are many fine composers entering the competitions and the judges will have their own personal preferences.

But if one is to further one's compositional career, one needs too realize that entering competitions are part of the process. It is easy to get discourage when one does not meet with success, but as the advertisement for the lottery says, "You can't win if you don't play." Just be selective, do your research, enter quality material, and do not take it too personally if you don't meet with success. If you keep doing it long enough, you will have success. Out of the dozen or so competitions I have recently entered, I have had success with two.

I hope that my experiences with competitions will help other composers navigate the maze of competitions. I wish all of you much success.

Dr. B

Learning from Other Composers

Throughout music history, composers have always studied the works of other composers that came before them.  It is a great learning tool for further enhancing one's own style.

During the fall, I took a class in Poetry from Ann Metlay through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute of Yavapai College. Ann gave us an assignment where she developed a questionnaire on how to analyze a poem that we liked and then take what we liked to create a poem of our own. I found this assignment very helpful and decided that it would work very well to help composers learn from other composers. Ann gave gave me permission to translate her questions for music composition.

I recently had an opportunity to try this assignment with my composition student Joshua Torok-Bachar. Josh has been studying with me for about three years and is a very talented eighteen year old composer. This semester, I am having him analyze a work by Stravinsky, a work by Copland, and a work by Bartok. He has completed the analysis of the Devil's Dance from Histoire Du Soldat of Stravinsky and then wrote is own composition, The Flight of the Wulzak based on what he learned. I was extremely pleased with the results and thought I would share them here (with Josh's permission). First is his analysis of the Stravinsky along with the questions he had to answer, followed by a youtube of a performance of the Devil's Dance.

Composition Analysis - Stravinsky Histoire du Soldat

1. What attracts me to the composition?
The frenetic energy. On a composition level, the harmonies seem to lie just on the borderline of unrecognizable, but stay enough within conventional harmony that I, as a listener, have a hard time labeling this piece as avant-garde or atonal. Most of the interest comes from the interplay of the rhythms and motivic material. Stravinsky expertly weaves these two musical components in ways that are unexpected and exciting, but still within ‘reason’ to keep the listener’s attention.  The contrasting mini-sections of the piece area good example of the way Stravinsky switches between his motivic ideas extremely quickly and abruptly, at points. However, he does usually include some sort of echo of the previous section early on in a new section to tie them together. 

2. What sections are most attractive?
The sections with the most note space between instruments. These sections also seem to hold much of the contrapuntal melodic lines and are extremely exciting and invigorating! The contrasting quiet sections are also very effective.

3. Tone and message of the music and how is that conveyed.
Frenzied and with a feeling of insanity, but with a good dose of humor. Stravinsky uses the humorous side of the music (conveyed with scattering of emphasized comical intervals, like seconds in a random place, by staying mostly in a major-sounding tonality, and through chromatic melodic runs over major tonalities) to avoid having the listener take the music too seriously. I believe he wanted the listener to feel as though all was lost but ‘you can’t help laughing about it.’ The ‘crazy’ nature of the music is conveyed through abrupt changes in thematic motives and abrupt/extreme register changes in instruments. The fast tempo of the music also adds to this frenzied feeling, along with the long strings of notes in motives, which gives a maniac, never-ending feel to the music.

4. Dominant harmonic language used.
Stravinsky combines the major and minor instances of the tone center/key (which changes often, but seems to resemble a combo of “G” major and minor with “A” major, along with chromatic notes). The tritone is quite prominent in one of the main themes and is often combined with notes that would form a diminished chord. Stravinsky also uses the natural and flat third of the tonal center “G” close together either together in harmony or very close in melodic sequences. This brings out the natural dissonance of a minor chord, accentuating the minor second dissonance of the overtone series.

5. Analyze the form of each movement or section.
The form as I perceive it: A, B, B’, A’, B’’, Fine
A opens with the characteristic accented 8ths and 16th patterns. The piece transitions quickly into B which introduces the quieter chromatic melody section. B also includes a quick interjection of the 16th motive of A. B continues with the staccato/legato chromatic melody and lets evolve before slipping into B’. B’ transforms the B motives and adds harmony. Harmony and melody line are both played by the violin. The section is much softer as well. A’ brings back a sparser version of A and expands the running 16th lines somewhat. A’ then crescendos into a neat transition to B’’, which is soft and uses transformed material from B and B’. B’’ is followed by the finale.

6. Instrumentation and how it contributes.
Piano, violin, clarinet.
-The piano plays a multitude of roles in this piece; melodic, supportive, rhythmic, and as a powerful ‘hit’ behind notes/chords that are heavily accented.
-The violin is often playing double stops and its single lines are often complimentary or contrapuntal to the clarinet’s. It also has some rhythmic functions. The violin really shines in the quiet sections where Stravinsky uses the naturally expressive and coloristic quality of strings to enhance the alternate color and contrast of the soft sections.
-The clarinet is the poignant, sarcastic, and insistent voice of the piece. Disregarding other instruments, it soars through extreme register changes at fortissimo. It does also play a supportive role, but most often its lines are the melodic lead in the ensemble.

7. Rhythmic devices used.
The most common devices I see used in the piece are fragmentation and combinations of rhythmic motives. Stravinsky also uses a technique in which he will place a part (usually syncopated) of a rhythmic motive in the context of a different meter. For example, in a 4/4 measure, 2 16ths, 8th tied to 8th, 8th tied to 8th, 8th. Stravinsky takes 3 quarters of this sequence and places in (8th to 8th, 8 to 8th, 8th) and places it in a 5/8 measure. The result is quarter note, quarter note, 8th.  At the top of page 3 Stravinsky also uses what could be considered a diminution of half of the main opening rhythmic motive.

8. Any extra-musical ideas used?
Well, the story behind this movement is that the soldier steals the violin from the devil and begins to play music that the devil MUST dance to. The movement seems to reflect the torment and teasing that the soldier inflicts on the devil. For example, the movement starts out very fast and insistent. It slows at some points, but never for long, and it always comes back with more force than ever. I think this symbolizes the soldier teasing the devil, making the devil think that he is going to stop playing, but then keeps on. The end also seems like both a release and the end of the devil’s energy. However, the music ends with a bang showing that the soldier ends the music with the upper hand.

9. What specific compositional devices are utilized?
It is quite difficult to keep track of everything going on in this piece! I see a lot of theme fragmentation and transposition. Stravinsky enjoys blending this with contrapuntal techniques to form a hail storm of music, so to speak. For example, the two major motives (accented 8ths ostinato, and arpeggiated 16ths followed by syncopated 8ths) are transposed and juxtaposed in contrapuntal styles. Stravinsky also likes to play with the roles of each instrument through these motives. In one instant the clarinet is playing the rolling 16th line up the scale, but then falls quickly to the background accented 8ths as the piano picks up the 16th sequence. In the quieter 8th note melody passages it would be reasonable to consider the sequences a melodic expansion of the accented 8th note ostinato.

10. Additional comments.
I think one of the most fascinating aspects of this work is its ability to seem both completely out of control and completely planned out at the same time. This seems to bepresent in much of Stravinsky’s music. He uses such a brilliant blend of harmonies, rhythms, and motivic development, while being ultra-conscious of how close he is getting to the edge of atonality. This ambiguity -- between tonal and non-tonal, standard rhythms and rhythmic surprises and oddities – is what keeps Stravinsky’s work fresh and utterly fascinating throughout.


Here is Josh's composition that uses flip pdf technology http://www.cooppress.net/flight_of_the_wulzak/flight_of_the_wulzak.html. You will be hearing an mp3 of sampled sounds playing the music and you will see the score at the same time. It uses Flash Player that most browsers come with and I have a mobile version that uses an embedded mp3 file. You will need to turn the pages by clicking on the arrows at the appropriate time.

If you would like to hear more of Josh's music, his web site is http://joshuabachar.com/.

As always, your comments are appreciated.

Dr. B