Well Simon,

Your response predictably is NOT illuminating

That response may not have been illuminating very widely, John - I agree - but nonetheless I assume its point was taken.

I don't think its point - inasmuch as there actually was one - has any relevance to the title of this thread. I don't think, too, that your previous posting had (except by way of quoting a passage from one of mine).

If you have something to contribute that you feel does answer the question asked, why not say what it is? Otherwise I can only repeat what I have just said to you on the other thread...

Baz

I understand Richard how the form becomes part of the "material". But what I was interested to know was how far (in, say, your own work) the material itself influences the form. It's easy to see how this happens in earlier, more "conventional" music, but it's not always that easy for listeners of new contemporary works to perceive this particular relationship first hand (if, indeed, it is part of the composer's plan at all any longer).


What you have exemplified above - the piece for Clarinet and Piano - you describe in terms not that dissimilar to what might be said of a solo Baroque concerto: the soloist stands apart musically from the tutti; they play in opposition some of the time, then together at other points; there are moments when the themes introduced at the beginning become fragmented, and shifted between groups; the movement will be split into a number of discernible units defined by "tutti" and "solo" passagework (something like your "scenes"); at the end of the movement the orchestra will build up to an unfulfilled cadence, leading to an extended passage for the solo instrument ("cadenza").

The question is this: in a Baroque concerto, it becomes simple to see how the musical material feeds into the overall form (through, say, repetition, development and extension). How is this (if at all) reciprocated in contemporary musical examples?


I suspect that for many listeners there is a problem in much contemporary music in identifying anything that is by nature in any way "inevitable". At the same time, since (for these listeners) nearly all they hear (with a full expectation of so hearing) is completely (and paradoxically) UNexpected, they do - so to speak - actually expect the unexpected! There is therefore a confusion in perceiving a formal coherence (of any type!) since perceptible symmetry hinges psychologically upon moments of "recall" and "revision" wherein something that has previously been heard is heard again. The delight in experiencing this with older music by good composers is that although the re-hearing is inevitable and fully recognized, it is nonetheless re-heard in a totally UNexpected way.

If, as you say at the beginning, there are as many structural goals for composers as there are pieces, this asks a very fundamental question (and one that composers must be striving to answer themselves all the time): what is it that has to be achieved, and what is the starting point in achieving it?

This is the question I am interested in, but only from the point of view of a composer's overall agenda (i.e. not with regard to each individual piece).

Baz

Many thanks. I won't be all that far away geographically but a long way away electronically!

Best,

Alistair

Ignoring as irrelevant - and also because I didn't understand it  - the most recent post by Herr Wessell, the question asked earlier: "what is it that has to be achieved?" is, in my opinion, important in the context of these discussions.

It hasn't yet received much of an answer from any of the contemporary composers in our midst, but, if anyone is seriously interested, it, or questions so similar as to be sensibly relevant, have been considered over the centuries by many of the great composers. Some have even commented in their own letters. Good biographies and/or collected writings have the details of such considerations and comment - and I suspect there will also be relevant material on the web.

Briefly, the general thrust, at least of all those that I have studied, is that the aim of the composer is to write works of a sort that those who hear them will enjoy. The joy and success of the composer is linked, as might naturally be expected, to the joy and pleasure of those for whom he writes.

Now, this might seem rather obvious - after all, why would Bach write a cantata that nobody could play or sing and/or that nobody enjoyed listening to? Quite. He wouldn't - and he didn't. Neither did any of the composers, revered today, whose music so many of us love so much.

But things have changed. One composer - sorry I've forgotten the name - once said words to the effect that if half his audience didn't walk out of his concerts he had failed. He wrote to shock, to move to unhappiness and to lack of pleasure, to disharmonize. Now, I expect that very few contemporary composers would go that far, but nonetheless there seems to be a view within most of the contemporary composers who have eschewed tonality and melody - whether deliberately or simply because they can't write it anyway (it's difficult to tell) - at least according to their writings and comments, that they write to please themselves, as opposed to pleasing others. (This has parallels with several philosophical ideas, which those who have read philosophy will no doubt recognise - but perhaps better not to go there at the moment as it leads down some murky tunnels).

This self-contenting is often seen as some kind of "liberation" - and historical situations where composers were beholden to aristocrats of state or church - or both - are analysed and commented upon with horror, as if in contrast. But, however restrictive life was for some - and one considers Mozart's treatment at the hands of the Archbishop of Salzburg with some rancour, even now - it is a mistake to equate servant status at whatever level with any directly proportional general lack of compositional freedom and then to draw comparisons with the ideas of freedom that we have today.

That total freedom is either possible or even desirable has exercised many great minds and is beyond the scope of this discussion. Narrowing the field somewhat, whether any good, or great, music, can be written by anyone who feels that any constraints on him as an artist are not acceptable and who doesn't care whether anyone likes his/her work or not is not beyond the scope - though it's not a question that I expect can be answered sensibly without some thought - probably more than most, myself included, have time to give to it.

But I would, myself, think it unfortunate - and probably feel a bit cheated too - if I went to a concert, heard a work and then found out that the composer wrote it for his own pleasure and satisfaction and wasn't really interested whether I liked it or not. I expect I wouldn't be alone in these feelings. So I hope that it isn't generally the case.

I'm off away tomorrow so best wishes to all for the coming week.

S-S!

I should like to see some of the evidence referred to by SS in connection with what "the great composers" say about what they were trying to do. I don't think the facts really support his contention (Beethoven: "Do you think I worry about your wretched fiddle when the spirit is upon me?" is one counterexample that springs to mind), but, however that might be, the truth is that different people do "enjoy" radically different things, and at the risk of gross oversimplification I would say that the most honest and fruitful way for a creative musician to act is to make the music that he/she would themselves most like to hear, in the hope that this will find some resonance in at least some of those who hear it.

Correct on all counts. In fact, the last thing that you write here is something that Elliott Carter has stated in almost the exact same words.

Best,

Alistair