On Formal Virtues

However a composer works, he takes care that every element he introduces in a piece remain an organic continuation of what is already there; it is employed with an aim of finishing the whole of a composition. Therefore, writing a composition is always a high-precision job, and has to do with what is referred to as musical exactness; this therm conveys our innate ability to differ between different levels of musically making sense - precision, “righteousness”, “naturality” of a musical development (or of vertical superposition).

Between these endless levels of “righteousness” we differ the three extremes - “wrong”, when we feel that composer disrupts the flow of music, makes a mistake; then “not wrong” – when we don’t feel a mistake but neither “it has to be there” feeling; and finally “right” – a composer seemingly did the only possible, the single right decision. These are subjective experiences and we will just accept them as such. Improvisations are usually aiming to sound “not wrong”, which is difficult enough to achieve while making music on the spot and without going towards free repetition (although the word is Beethoven, for example, was able to improvise on his concerts pieces that were structured enough to be considered for compositions, and he could repeat them afterwards without changing a note). A good example of righteousness are Bach's pieces; who would know where this feeling of inevitability of development comes from? Is it conciseness, density? The feeling of righteousness certainly is in direct relationship with a degree of organic unity of a piece. When horizontal progressions of music are concerned, organic unity creates an impression that a piece constantly grows in one meaning that it makes; as it progresses, it doesn’t continue to go somewhere else and become something else, but to become even more what it already is; like a tree that by growing becomes even more a tree, and not becoming something else; as it progresses, it reveals more and more of what it is. Following such development is an ever growing ecstasy, beauty turning itself into an even greater beauty, to reach it’s inevitable end, and form a circle with the beginning so that a piece is than looked back as a succession of moves that all together form one single thought, a single arch, the idea, the feeling of a piece.

Not all of the great composers were masters of righteousness, logical developments. Some acknowledged this, like for example Schuman:

What I am, that is not clear to myself neither. I can never logically continue the story that I, maybe, started well.

Complexity And Unpredictability

If a composer satisfies with most simple forms, organic unity is still within reach; however, composers and music lovers delight most in those product that are the most complex and most unusual. Often, this want for musical complexity is seen as tied with musical education and some serious listening experience. But want for epic and complex is natural.

There are aspects to musical complexity. One is evolvedness – the number of used sound elements; the other one is density – the average measure in which each of the elements contributes to the whole. If a piece features many basic elements, we say the piece is elaborate, evolved; for a piece in which every element adds a lot to the whole, we say is dense. With virtuoso pieces for example, despite all the notes and the superficial complexity, we perceive their’s construction as simple, not engaging us emotionally nor engaging our mind. For that time, main melodic lines of say some pieces from Bach can often be made out of few notes, but when put together they are emotionally profound and intellectually awesome.

Obviously, the more complex a piece is, the more evolved it is, the harder it is to achieve organic unity, the orderliness of the whole. Especially rare are the pieces both dense (harmonically rich) and more developed (melodically/rhythmically rich). More often a piece is highly evolved, but not very dense, and vice-versa. This is why we generally differ these two different sorts of complexity. Harmonic (“vertically oriented”) music is much more dense than rhythm&melody (horizontal) driven music; an effective chord progressions that utilizes, say, ten chords holds much more relationships than a melody consisted of thirty notes. Rhythm&melody driven music is from the other side usually more evolved than harmonic-driven.

Again to say, complexity is basically a subjective experience. Experience of complexity appears when we perceive musical piece as logical and natural and emotionally powerful, yet whose form we can’t clearly grasp, or at least can’t easily memorize and repeat. Obviously, even the most complex music is doomed to one day stop inducing this experience of complexity.

Every complex music can be perceived to be using an architectural approach: it starts with simple ideas and then develops toward the more complex ones. It is especially important with every step to preserve unity. Among contemporary musicians, Jean Michel Jarre did a great job in this direction. His pieces are always in this mold: an interesting starting phrase that is then developed with natural logic, becoming more and more complex, in tune with total progression. At that, his music often continues to build up after seemingly reaching dead-end, progression breaking level of expectation of a listener, making a sort of delight like an alchemist turning common iron into gold.

What we like about a piece apart from complexity, is it’s unusualness. Again, unusualness has two facets to it – originality, and unpredictability of development. Originality refers to piece conveying an idea, in form or in meaning, much different than ideas already seen in existing pieces. But this still must not make it’s developments unpredictable. While every good music creates in us a vague feeling of where it should go next – or how would we know if it is right when it happens? – that next move should not be easy for us to find ourselves. The most unpredictable pieces often continue to develop when we already thought a composer has chosen a wrong path, or has nothing left to do. Sometimes a pieces starts as predictable (and thus boring) to then suddenly in some point, when it already seems it will come down to nothing, continue developing in unpredictable direction which then gives new sense to a whole (ex. John Williams Schindler’s List main theme, Jean Michel Jarre Souvenir Of China).

And similarly as complexity, unusualness is subjective and wears of as we memorize the piece. Whats more, it is not only subjective but also relative - as the time goes by, what was once original becomes common place; this is why older music tends to lose part of it’s effect in the ears of listeners of future generations – it sounds more predictable to them than it did to it’s original audience. Still, it loses nothing of it’s quality in the terms of organic unity and complexity.

There is a direct link between density and unpredictability, and between originality and elaboration; the more dense a piece is, the less easy for a listener is to guess the next move, and the more evolved a piece is, the more it has chances to be different than already existing pieces. A piece that conveys highly particular, original idea, by necessity has to be evolved; and a piece that greatly surprises us by conveying anything at all necessarily has to be highly dense.

Thus it is ability to create unpredictable, yet complex compositions that is an essential power of a composer. Organic unity, and then complexity and unusualness, are what composing is about most generally speaking. The result, is intensive emotion. As Nietzsche said: “only the excess of strength is a proof of strength”.