Timbre And Musical Storytelling

Arrangement closely corresponds with musical storytelling; the same melodic/harmonic idea can transport totally different meaning if arranged and played differently. With music as language, with music as storytelling, arrangement becomes far more essential part of composing than in music seen as a technical discipline. Electronic music technology for reproducing and synthesizing sound created for the first time direct, intimately spiritual connection between a composer and a listener, and so boosted the power of music to emotionally connect with a listener. Music became able to communicate more intimate and subtle, yet broader emotion; to be a completely personal statement of one man, or a whole world.

Great part of limitation in expression in classical music comes from shortcomings in orchestration – it is insufficiently precise and sophisticated. That always the same sounding of symphonic orchestra is partially hiding the message, the spirit of a particular composer, the diversity of atmospheres. For example, while Mozart symphonies have great number of melodically interesting ideas, they are all similarly “packed”. This hides their’s true nature. The fitting arrangements so packs a melody, that it’s idea becomes expressed in it’s entirety, so it sounds more unique, more precise, more detailed, so it is instantly caught by ear and clearly separated from all other musical ideas, and becomes instantly unforgettable, and the world of musical compositions becomes much more diverse. Arrangement is a part of the idea of a composition; it on some way makes clear, fixates on the right place the basic musical idea contained in the melody.

This is especially so for impressionistic music, which was always orchestral in nature. It’s expression is heavily dependent on textures - timbral and other micro-structure related polyphonies. This can be seen from impressionistic oriented classical composers, such as Gustav Mahler, Mussorgsky or Rimsky-Korsakov. These orchestrations are sometimes so dense sound-wise, that listener can not pay attention on singular instruments and all instruments become part of a uniform body of sound. Many of impressionistic oriented composers had particular interest in instrumentation and orchestration. Rimsky-Korsakov almost specialized in this, and used to say that he much more liked to orchestrate than to compose.

But however composers were imaginative and ambitious, limitations of acoustic orchestra prevented their’s impressionistic ideas to completely come out. Even if some impressionistic classical scores are very evocative and sound clearly stated and expressive, it is usually not the case, the meaning being rough and blurred.

Traditional orchestras, generally speaking, weren’t powerful enough to make music into a true spiritual language, that can indeed make technical matters only a tool and not an aim in itself. Lacking complete control over it's material – the sound, music had to be written down only through approximate symbolic notation. Electronic instruments bring the possibility to boost the ability of music to mean something; to truly become the language in sound.

Electronic sound allows precise control of the aura of the piece. In classical music, when there was no electronic instruments and thus no possibilities to control the texture more precisely, there was a problem that the atmosphere was often only vaguely and thinly painted and can take it’s time to come upon listener. For example, I listened to “Romeo and Juliet” overture by Berlioz maybe 20 times (while writing some of these lines) before the whole idea, aura of that music completely came over me. Beethoven was switching fast between moods to give out an aura in the first movement of 9-th symphony; he will create the oceanic impression by changing and linking themes and emotions. But an unprepared listener is unable to get the aura immediately and follow the piece; the previous memory of the whole piece is needed to feel, understand the aura of the piece. You have to emotionally tie for all the contents in order to truly comprehend anything from it. And even then, it’s not quite it. Usually one needs a lot of listening and unnatural effort to feel what composer really tries to tell, where he goes atmospherically.

All of this is eliminated using electronic textures. Music becomes more expressive and listening to music becomes more natural, especially with the more ambitious, symphonic music. This orchestral, textural approach makes large-scale music very transparent, easy to understand.

The texture and orchestration is instrumental in expressing the aura and can instantly make it clear. For example, when I started listening JM Jarre’s record Chronologie, I immediately felt from it’s introductory melody-less texture that it will be a less deep, more superficial record than his previous ones, and also that will have to do with electric guitar and gothica. Melodies, chords etc. that followed were true to this feeling, even electric guitar actually entered in one moment.