Talk:Musical composition

message: The article states that "music of the Middle East employs compositions that are rigidly based on a specific mode (such as the dorian, phrygian, mixolydian, and locrian scales)". The statement is rather confusing and should have a citation. While much Levantine music is modal, much is not. Further, as understood and used today the modes mentioned are derived from the Western European major scale (aka the Ionian mode) and to my knowledge are not known as such to the Middle Eastern music cultures.
Generally, this article is not very good. The topic is broad and needs a specialist's attention.
98.30.32.237 (talk) 11:46, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: modes in music of the Middle East

message: This page is redirected from compositional techniques, but has just a small section about it. Maybe we can make a new article for Compositional tecniques since it is a substantially broad subject, or at least expand the existing section.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by E-sub-n (talk • contribs) 00:17, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Compositional techniques 

message: :Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this subsection with *Support or *Oppose, then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.
* Support. Clearly the primary topic for me. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:40, 18 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  Sorry, I don't get it. I'm not talking about roots. Composer tells us: "A composer (Latin compōnō; literally "one who puts together") is a musician who is an author of music in any form ..." - which tells me that what they write - not anything "put together" but "music in any form" - has no need to be specifically named "musical compositions", - simply "compositions" should suffice. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:31, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  The reasoning is bogus: Wikipedia articles are officially unreliable in these matters. Someone wise at some time limited themselves to two comments in certain discussion threads: since neither you nor I have English as our mother tongue this may be a good idea here – I'd be happy to leave language-specific sensibilities of whether or not "composition" would usually be understood as something musical to a broader range of editors, most of them hopefully with sensibilities instructed by having used English all of their life, without feeling the need to endlessly discuss with whoever happens to disagree. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:52, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: The word "composition" is highly ambiguous as a native speaker. For most of us, we might first think of a composition notebook, which is just a bunch of paper bound together. We talk about the composition of things as a way of talking about what they are made of. ("The composition of this rock is …") However, "composer" is not ambiguous at all. "Composer" can only be "a person who composes music". Red Slash 21:43, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: No, List of compositions by Franz Schubert lists around twice as many works by the composer as List of songs by Franz Schubert. Even I know that not all compositions by a composer are necessarily songs. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:32, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Survey

message: I've added several paragraphs of introductory material to the section on copyright and legal concerns. I tried to keep the focus on copyright as it applies to compositions in particular.  I also chose my words carefully in an effort to be precise and accurate. For example, I tried to make it clear that copyright does not grant, as was previously implied, total control over a composition...rather, it only grants a certain, limited set of rights, which composers often assign to publishers. This will become more important if the section is expanded to cover topics like fair use and de minimis, especially in regard to musical quotation and sampling.
The new content is all uncited, but all of it should be fairly easy to verify in the many how-to guides out there for aspiring musicians; I would start with This Business of Music. Anyway, if you see anything blatantly wrong, please just fix it. Thanks. —mjb (talk) 08:00, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyright info expanded 

message: The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
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Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 02:47, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion 

message: Something that seems missing from the article is the intent giving rise to a composition, that it is to be communicated to a performer or performers for its reproduction.  As noted in the article, the medium of such communication might be oral (teaching the composition by singing it), instructions written in a spoken language, an algorithmic sequence in a computer computer program, or western or other form of musical notation.
An analogy might be a recipe. The instructions in for a dish to be eaten might be written or demonstrated, e.g. on TV or radio or by a friend or relative at your side, or communicated on a telephone call. But a recipe is not taking random items out of a pantry and mixing them together, because it lacks the intention of creating a reproducible instruction; even aside from any culinary value or lack thereof.
I come to this conclusion by considering the many thousands of jazz improvisations. For instance, the tenor saxophonist Ben Webster performed a solo on Cotton Tail without intending it to be reproduced, and he himself reproduced it with slight variations many times. Is it a composition?  I wouldn't think so, because of his intention.  Similarly for the improvisation that you hear in a performance venue that isn't intended for another to reproduce. The definition of a musical composition should be narrow enough to exclude such improvisations.
Even when improvisations are recorded and transcribed, as in the Charlie Parker Omnibook, the intention of the creating musician is what makes a composition; the captured improvisation is a transcription, not a composition. Quoting Eric Dolphy's well-known maxim, which only seems contradicted in an age of mechanical reproduction: "When you hear music, after it's over, it's gone in the air. You can never capture it again." Larry Koenigsberg (talk) 19:28, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Composition as [[recipe]]