On Composing as a Technical Exercise

Probably nothing was discussed more among musicians in XX century, and maybe ever, than if there are rules of how to compose. Closer to the beginning of XX century, there was enthusiasm for composing as playing an abstract game; later came the other extreme -- agnostic composers who tended to sniff at all rules.

Even the most doctrinaire theoreticians in this moment admit that they can’t explain what makes a basic motive effective. What theory of composing proceeds to teach (German based especially), is composing seen as a mixture of finding these divine ideas & bits, and than developing them through a game of written rules. This architectural idea was also a leading thought in abstract atonal music on the beginning of the XX century – initial motive, a “cell”, was developed afterwards in a logical way.

But the problem here is, that this idea of development, seen as applying the same, canonic way of developing of rather different ideas, is the usual source of unnatural, illogical developments found in classical music. In order to be beautiful a piece must generate from itself, and not from something outside of it, such as an abstract concept. There is much examples in classical music of how these canonic forms and dully developments are spoiling the actual melodic ideas that they embed. Often composers were compelled to leave the frames they have chosen as theirs starting overall frame, feeling that it is strangling the idea. Beethoven had to stretch sonata form for his famous 1^st movement of 5^th symphony, but still this movement probably would sound best outside of sonata form. Another example is symphonic work of Alexander Scriabin, for which Aaron Copland observed it is a real pity that one such a new musical language is cushioned in completely unfitting sonata form, and called that “one of the most unusual mistakes in the history of music”.

XX century brought another format - two-sides recorded music. Recording artist had to think of ways to fill A and B sides with some sort of wholes, often putting so called album-fillers instead of true musical ideas. This is essentially no different than what usually happens in classical music when dealing with various canonic frames (ex. four-movement, Haydn symphony), although classical cannons are musically motivated, unlike the mentioned XX century recording frame.

Anyway during XX century far to much emphasis was being put on canonic frames. JM Jarre’s Magnetic Fields 1 opening could be analyzed as A-B-A form, which is the pop music format, but this tells very little about the piece. What happens inside of that frame is different and much more complex than what pop composers usually do, and this piece actually owns very little to this overall frame.

Standpoint that music can be composed purely consciously reached its high peak through the concept of “objective music”. All composing is done according to certain strict rules, so composing is turned into a pure abstract game. But isn’t this great in a way? It is a tucked-away world of music, which we play like it is a sport - and people like sports, not only because of being separated from life, but also because it’s easy to think about different players and teams and compare them. People have this need to compare, which creates clear models and values; so objective music is a try to make art into a sport.

But if Kant was alive, he would know what to say on this ‘objective music’ logic:

Rules are necessary for art, but these rules can not be established arbitrarily – they must be natural.

Objective music movement never considered this question -- whether the rules that it champions are natural. But, look at the wonder, objective composers here start to introduce some subtle finesses, bordering with philosophical sophisms, to affirm theirs musical beliefs. The main one is that we have to reverse the logic – to get used to some abstract rules and thus make them become natural. This is based on belief that what we feel as natural today is similarly a result of adjusting ourselves to some things sometimes in the past. So we have to trust that the true meaning and emotions are there, waiting for us once when we pass this initiation and agree to consciously work on changing ourselves in order to become able to receive more new music, modern music. After we pass this initiation – after whole musically interested humanity passes it -- there will be no difference between “objective“ and “subjective” music anymore. This kind of musicians also often knew to say that they make music for “future generations of listeners”. But not only time did not prove this, but this immediately sounds very suspicious -- the talk is essentially about evolution, but every evolution has to be in accordance with what is evolved. It has to flow from the structure of what is evolved, or else we are talking about deformation. With XX century “atonal” music we felt more that our nature is twisted and violently changed than evolved from what we already are. We didn’t feel like music was becoming more music, but less.

Rules thus have to be in accordance with our sense of music. Can this sense ever be replaced by strictly formal logic? One may doubt that purely rational system, however set, can equate intrinsic musical logic, which can only be considered in music. By trying to make music into a completely rational system, objective music might be throwing away innate musical logic, that has nothing to do with any other kind of reasoning. Many composers think that musical logic comes before any other science; that musical logic is older than mathematical logic. How much, then, can any rational system stand true to the innate musical laws? Some of the serial (the end point of “atonal”) music was considered for most complex and most strictly organized music ever, yet it sounded chaotic, to a point where missing a note would not cause the audience to notice.

This cult of theoretically knowing music made it look as musical basics are a great trouble for themselves. But basics of music are actually simple; understanding of the essence and making music is hard. As said by Schopenhauer:

A composer discovers the deepest essence of the world and that deepest wisdom he tells in the language that his mind does not understand.

Even when simple, we are amazed at how a composer found a melody. We usually think that particularly emphasized creative intuition is needed for composing. Musical composition is not a fruit of reasoning, of acquired knowledge and conscious workings of a cold mind – as it isn’t the fruit of pure instinct neither, the inborn patterns for action and reaction; it is not planned like architecture or science, nor improvised. It is intuitive; intuition is on a plain above both reason and instinct; it has what makes reason worthy, as well as what reason lacks and makes instinct worthy. Laws that can convert this creative intuition into formal theories have until now vainly been searched for.

Actually an objective composer hardly can be called a composer. Unlike a true composer, who is an explorer of the divine, following owns intuition, objective composer starts from scratch and follows given rules. A composer is like a constructor in empty space, who drags there his theories to build music. While “subjective” composer deals with universal and secret laws of nature, “objective” composer deals with public humanly set laws. This can be seen in analogy between objective music and computer programing, and subjective composing and physics engineering:

Engineer inevitably collides with real world. His creativity is limited by laws that govern that world; he can only do what is within the laws that exists there… When some device that an engineer devised doesn’t work, he can’t always know or by thinking conclude if he is in front of entrance to success where only his mistakes preclude him from opening the door, or he is on a path without exit. Then he must call on to others, his teachers, colleagues, books, to tell him, or at least show him on a formula that will force the unyielding servant (nature) to take him out.

Programmer is, from the other side, a creator of the world where he himself is law-maker… worlds of almost unlimited complexity can be created in the form of programs for computers.” Joseph Weizenbaum, Computer Power And Human Reason

There is much precise musical theory of composing. Yet it is common knowledge that sometimes these theoretically set trajectories diverge from our innate feel of path of beauty and logic, and we are ultimately unable to explain why a melody is good and another wrong.

Total Film: “You've composed hundreds of hours' worth of film music: where do you get the ideas?”

John Williams: “I don't know how to answer that - I really don't want to make it sound like it's easy. I work very hard and it's not possible for a composer to answer the question: how do I create a melody? The littlest things that may seem so simple, maybe even obvious, are sometimes the hardest thing to do. When you get something that's so right, you think, "Ah! It has always been there, it's just that now it's right." But if you go back to three drafts before that, before you changed the B-flat to a B-natural, you realize how off it was and how you were still searching for something.

Writing a tune is like sculpting. You get four or five notes, you take one out, and move one around, and you do a bit more and eventually, as the sculptor says, "In that rock there is a statue, we have to go find it".

There's a story that says it all. Paul Hindemith, the brilliant German composer, was offered the chair at Yale University as the Professor of Composition. He turned it down. Then they offered him the chair of Professor of Music Theory, which he took. So they asked him why, and he said, "I can teach music theory. But only God teaches composition."

When real music comes to me - the music of the spheres, the music that surpasseth understanding - that has nothing to do with me, 'cause I'm just the channel. The only joy for me is for it to be given to me, and to transcribe it like a medium...those moments are what I live for." John Lennon

Indeed whenever we hear good music, there is always a feeling that the piece is as much discovered as constructed. We often feel that all the good music is already there somewhere, written, like an ocean of pieces that are waiting to be discovered. A composer is an explorer who only finds what is already there, waiting for a divinely inspired man to find.

Gustav Mahler: “Creative activity and the genesis of a work are mystical from start to finish, since one acts unconsciously, as if prompted from outside, and then one can hardly conceive how the result has come into being. In fact I often feel like the blind hen who finds a grain of corn. From “Mahler: His Life, Work, & World”

One can doubt that purely rational way of making music will ever be found. Composing is all about finding special combinations that we perceive as precious. Every good piece is based on certain noble, special asymmetries that give it its beauty and special character; and since all rational theories belong to a world of symmetry, they are probably inherently unable to produce or explain art. We can ultimately only classify existing pieces by the criteria of mutual symmetries found in them. From the angle of formal theories, all the compositions, including the greatest, would come out as basically arbitrary.

All music is arbitrary, but it must not sound that way! Igor Stravinsky

The musical eye with which we see music (that is, hear music) is not like our visual eye, nor like the abstract eye of our mind, nor like any other, and no one until now was able to devise the system that could enable us to substitute our musical sense, musical eye, with our visual eye and/or mind. Thanks to this intuitive musical eye we know that one melody is logical while other is not. This also goes for complexity, and unpredictability – it is solely musical eye that can differ an original idea from ordinary, a complex development from basic. Often less complex, and less strange to the eye, can be more complex and more strange to our “musical eye”.

We still didn’t create the words to mark those godly traits the could satisfactory present the universality and perfectness of our intuition. Ralf Waldo Emerson

After dully producing a quartet in sonata form, an exercise expected from every composer, and after receiving critical acclaim for it, Beethoven commented: “That is not creation”. Still, rules and canonic forms are not useless. Most of those rules are a reflection of certain natural laws (let’s forget on XX century musical theories for a time). Only a few things in music are so compelling, as a natural use of a certain formal rule by a composer, creating a feeling of triumph of musical science. For example, pop songs are usually in A-B-A, chorus-verse form. However, finding the natural chorus vic-a-verse the verse is no small art. When one hears such a natural chorus as the one found in Jean Michel Jarre’s Magnetic Fields 1 opening, that seems the only possible one after the verse part, the experience is soothing.