From: dvf@kepler.unh.edu (David V Feldman)
Newsgroups: rec.music.compose
Subject: Re: Advances in composition
Date: 21 Dec 1992 08:29:19 GMT
Organization: University of New Hampshire  -  Durham, NH
NNTP-Posting-Host: kepler.unh.edu

(William Alves) writes:
"David V. Feldman writes:
"
"> In the opinions of readers of this group, what pieces of music
"> composed recently represent the most important theoretical 
"> developments in compositional technique.
"
"Well, I for one think that one important and relatively recent development
"is that many composers, such as myself, have stopped this grandiose view
"of music history (especially in the 20th century) as a series of "develop-
"ments" or "advancements" by way of "experiments" and "research." This
"vocabulary only makes sense if one agrees that there is a single goal
"that all composers can agree on. Alternatively, you can take the approach
"of some composers in the 20th century and simply dismiss anything that
"falls outside of your own myopic view of "tradition."
"
I know that arguing by way of analogies will always raise suspicions,
but while there is no "single goal" that all scientists can agree on,
there can be no reasonable objection to the vocabulary of "developments",
"advances", or even "experiments" and "research" in that discipline,
and I believe that these words can be applied to the arts with no
connotation of monism.  Basically time goes on, the corpus of music
grows, the matrix of previously existing musical ideas available to
a composer constantly grows richer.  Some of these ideas may play themselves
out in a single phrase or maybe a piece, but others will resonate across
many pieces, perhaps across the work of many composers and musicians,
perhaps even across the work of composers and musicians with widely
divergent goals.  (I have no workable object language for a composer's
goals, so I am not sure there is a single goal any single composer
can agree on, or if there was, how one would refer to it other than by
pointing to the music that instantiated it, but that is another story.)
Works of extraordinary resonance are aptly described as having theoretical
significance, since they have abstract qualities that ultimately find
diverse concrete expressions as they are reworked by others.


"Schoenberg's writing of his 12-tone method certainly did a lot to shape
"this attitude. His writings, which looked upon this method not just as
"a necessity for his personal artistic expression, but as a HISTORICAL
"necessity. Thus his invention was often talked about as a "discovery"
"as were many of the variations that his followers began to invent:
"combinatorial hexachords, cells, serialism, set theory, blah blah blah.
>"
It may well be the case that Schoenberg was guilty of a category error if
he spoke of "discovering" dodecaphonic composition, but this example
does not preclude the possibility of music discoveries.  In fact, Schoenberg's
"discovery" seems suspect, at least to me, because
	1) From the vantage point of the late twentieth century, it is perhaps
	unclear what distinguishes orthodox 12-tone composition from a multitude
	of equally plausible systems, and in particular
	2) it is not clear what musical problem is solved by the method of
	composition with 12-tones.
(This may not be entirely fair to Schoenberg who had no nontonal precedents
to depart from, and therefore was struggling to perpetuate certain
traditional musical values - that themselves no longer seem so sacred today -
without the crutch of tonality.  The realization that one could achieve
formal coherence without tonal orginization may well qualify as a 
discovery, though it is not clear to me that dodecaphony, rather than other
uncodified aspects of Schoenberg's practice, is central to this.)
Schoenberg's music or his propaganda may or may not make him various people's
favorite whipping boy, but he neither initiated the lively discourse between
musical practice and musical theory, nor did he bring it to a conclusion.

"If it works well for you, go for it. But changes in compositional techniques
"to me should be driven by the necessities of personal expression, and thus a
"historically changing process incidentally, not by design. 

Again, I lack an object language for "the necessities of personal expression"
that would usefully distinguish these from the products of expression.
The process of composition, for me, is too complex to admit the 
simplistic *a priori* hierarchization that you would mandate (at least for
yourself.)  Materials, ideas, taste, practical exigencies, accidents,
extramusical notions, experimentation, the input of others all these rebound
one against the other until music results.  I hear in your comment an
echo of the Romantic idealization of the creative process that would priorize 
emotion, as though composers preceded directly from mental states to sound 
images, with training, technique, thought, planning, design all at best
necessary evils.

David


Newsgroups: rec.music.compose