Month: September 2020

the elements of music

Recently, listening to some music by a beginning composer, got me thinking about all of the elements of music – and the importance for any aspiring composer to gain mastery of all of those elements and incorporate them into their work. The basic building blocks, so to speak, of music include pitch, rhythm, melody, harmony, tonality, texture, dynamics, timbre and form. Ignoring for the moment that different people may have slightly different lists, my purpose here is simply to convey the idea that music is a language made up of different elements – and the employment of those in combination is the art of composition.

Although it is no doubt a matter of taste, music compositions that are missing any of these basic building blocks leave me cold. As examples, while I intellectually understand what led to the attempt by so many to write music that avoids tonality, the push and pull of notes around tonal centers, whether long term or fleeting, for me is one of the critical elements that allows music to effect listeners emotionally. It is certainly not the only element that does so, but it is of such great importance, that it is not surprising to me that so called “atonal” music never captured a wider audience. Similarly, music that consists primarily of shifting harmonies but without melody, feel to me like empty music – and when I hear it, in my own imagination, I always find myself filling in the missing elements. That is the case for me with the majority of so called “minimalist” music. I can’t listen for more than a minute before I find myself desperately waiting for a melody to give it shape and direction. While it is apparent that music intended for quiet meditation has greatly influenced many composers over the past several decades, and listening to such compositions serves that purpose well, I rarely have the least desire to listen to it as music for music’s sake. The greatest pleasure for me, when listening to a new composition, is intently following the trail of the composer’s musical thought, mentally walking down a road with twists and turns, seeing interesting sights along the way as the music reveals its story and ultimate destination.

That sense of “going somewhere” in music is the essence of form – and by form, I do not mean to infer the use of the word as a description of classical forms – but any form that the composer creates to allow the music to tell its story. The greatest challenge, at least for me when composing, is making decisions about when to state something, when to counter that statement, whether to transition to something else – or to do so abruptly, when to repeat, when to contrast, and when to end. And, to do any of those things requires the manipulation of everything else – melody, counterpoint, textures, timbres, harmony, rhythm, and so on. Without the interplay of all of that, to create a musical “being” that seems to have its own personality and life, filled with thoughts, may have on the surface the apparent nature of music – but lacks the essence of what it is in music that makes it so effectively speak to our hearts.

Writing music in dark times…

For musicians, the phrase “fiddling while Rome burns” must come frequently to mind during dark times. But is making music really trivial or irresponsible, as the phrase indicates, in the midst of suffering? It is perhaps self-centered of me to think not, but to the contrary, I believe the arts – and especially music – takes on an even greater importance when the world seems like it is crashing around us. During 2020, so many things are so dreadfully wrong: the coronavirus pandemic, the dangerous sickness that has soaked into the bones of half of the American electorate, the replacement of certainty in knowledge and facts with fantasy and conspiracy theories, the relentless poison of racism in American society, humanity’s steady march towards environmental catastrophe. And yes, when I write that list, the image of Nero and his fiddle do come to mind. Am I irresponsible for spending so much time composing new music in the midst of all this?

Then, I remind myself of the delight and surprise I felt upon first discovering that an exquisite musical gem by Poulanc, his Trois Mouvements Perpetuel, was composed in 1918, while he was in military service and the flu epidemic was raging. There is nothing in the music to suggest the trauma of the world events swirling around him as he wrote it. It is entirely free of grief or anxiety. As terrible as those events were at the time, I realized he understood something profound. The music would last. The terrors of the time would not. Rather than be swayed by events, he kept the longer game in mind, and remained true to his purpose, creating beauty that would be appreciated by so many people, down through the ages, for whom the “news” of his day would be at best, a distant memory, if remembered at all. While there are many actions I can and do take in response to today’s world, I keep Poulanc’s musical reminder in the forefront of my thoughts and keep to my purpose, writing music that is as beautiful as I have the power in me to create.

Coronavirus days…

Despite coronavirus, I’m very thankful that my musical life, inner and outer, is moving along unimpeded. Since March, I have composed many new (and in some instances, impractically ambitious) works, signed with PARMA to produce a new album in collaboration with the great violist Brett Deubner and pianist Thomas Steigerwald, am in the midst of recording various other pieces for multiple violas with Brett playing all parts (a particularly coronavirus type of activity), had a wonderful collaboration with Suzanne Gilchrest writing a brief flute solo for her which she recorded at home. Several of my new works which are the result of my reflections about the pandemic have either been performed or programmed – my new work “1918” will premiere in May 2022 with Sinfonia Toronto, and my songs for voice and cello “An Incalculable Loss” will be video recorded by Camerata Philadelphia (the first song, “Missing Voices,” to a poem by Richard Leach, was already given a virtual performance back in June). Next week, the Umbria Ensemble will premiere my setting of Guillaume de Machaut’s “le lay de plour” and a new album of string quartets will be released in October.

As I said, very thankful for all of this. Now, to come up with what I’ll be writing next!

Umbria Ensemble

Thrilled to learn that the Umbria Ensemble, led by cellist Maria Cecelia Berioli, will be premiering my settings of Guillaume de Machaut’s “Le Lay de Plour” at a concert in Switzerland this coming Saturday, September 12th.