X-Envelope-To: EMUSIC-L@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
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Newsgroups: bit.listserv.emusic-l
Date:         Mon, 21 Dec 1992 18:33:00 GMT+0100
From:         CGRA%BTMA74@SE.ALCBEL.BE
Subject:      Re: PHIL COMP
Comments: To: EMUSIC-L@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU

"Bob" writes,

>...  Most music I've listened to only
>has 2 or 3 main melodic elements form which the piece is created.  Anymore than
>this gets confusing for me the composer and listeners.

"Most music I've listened to" could apply to rather a lot of music or very
little, it's kinda hard to tell.

You can write a whole piece using a single theme, and really strain the user's
concentration.  Or you can write highly episodic music which brims over with
themes, and make virtually no demands on the listener (think of an overture for
an operetta, especially G&S).  Integrating four or five themes to make a true
whole is admittedly difficult - it takes a Bach to do it and make it sound like
music, and a Mozart to make it sound easy.

>...music elemenets dictates that they be refined and polished so they can
>support an entire piece of music.  The best analogy is the minot third form
>Beethoven's 5th symphony thse 4 notes provide the basis for the whole first
>theme.

I make it a major third the first time (G-Eb), followed by a minor one (F-D).

>       All the other parts you mention harmony, counterpoint, timbre play an
>important part in any music.  I don't think you have to compose music based on
>the performance meduim, electronic or accoustic.  There are certain advantages
>that synthesizers provide that can't be denied.  The wealth of timbres
>available
>to composers is infinite,  the control a composer has using synthesizers gives
>me the the same thing Mozart had, a resident orchestra at my command to perform
>my music the way I wish it performed.

No, that was Haydn. (And a lot of later composer-conductors, of course).

>        Sorry to jump up on the soap box, but as classically trained composer,

Sorry to seem to carp, but I don't like to see inaccuracies going uncorrected.
In particular, Haydn and Mozart represent two different models of the role of
the composer (or any creator) in society, so it is a pity to confuse them.
Haydn had a steady job, with a substantial administrative element, which gave
him (almost) limitless creative freedom.  Mozart was constitutionally unsuited
to regular employment, and found his freedom elsewhere.  Nowadays Haydn would
be working in a university and Mozart would be freelancing.  (Yes I know Haydn
went freelancing at an age when most of us would be retired.  So do professors.)

>I appreciate the new and exciting timbres available today yet I have yet to
>find a substitue for good planning and pen-and-paper composing.  I've tried
>several times to just sit at the sequencer and "compose" but, for me it just
>doesn't work.

Composers have always covered a broad spectrum from pure pen-and-paper men to
keyboard explorers.  Most use a mixture - an idea forms itself in the "mind's
ear", is maybe jotted straight down on paper or worked out on a keyboard
instrument, and then goes through a series of iterations between paper and
piano as the idea is elaborated.  Personally I find the piano is of limited
use, as its rather special timbre gives a very poor indication of how some-
thing will sound if sung by a choir or played by six french horns (say).
_Good_ orchestral synth sounds could help here.

Of course if you are Mozart you compose a complete symphony in your head and
then dump it on paper in streamer mode, writing faster than the copyists can
handle.  Sickening little prat.

Merry Christmas,

Chris
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