going with the flow

Looking back at some assignments I did that were supposed to be written within the parameters of modality or tonality, one thing stood out. I was always in a rush to push the boundaries of the tonal framework. There are instances where it was obvious I was just dying to include a bII in a major key, or I just had to quickly modulate to bVII, or I thought it would be fancy to include some extra secondary dominants. And mostly it's not bad....just really obvious--especially as I listen to them because I know what that person was thinking. I hear those sections and they make sense, and they're "legal" moves, but it feels like the notes were just hovering over all the previous notes, waiting for an opportunity to leap in and add a little spice to the mixture.

I believe I was too eager to do something that would make the piece stand out, when in fact it just ended up making the section stand out. There's no subtlety. And I understand that at the time I was thinking, "I couldn't possibly write another ii-V-I. I haven't included a borrowed chord or altered dominant, that must be what's missing." And of course I was wrong. I think I was trying to "fix" a section, or make it "more interesting" without necessarily listening to the overarching scheme.

In fact, as listened to one piece I distinctly remember thinking to myself that I /had/ to include a particular progression. And it is so obvious. I hear it in other music too. Using "special" vocabulary really requires a lot of care. If I'm listening to a piece in common time that switches to 7/4 and I don't notice because it sounds so natural, then the composer has done his or her job. It really sounds so basic when I say it that way, but it's true. More and more I'm coming to see that organic composition is the key. You can throw pretty much whatever you want in a piece, and as long as it sounds like it belongs there, the end result will sound much more satisfying.

Accidents can happen

What was I thinking? That was over two years ago now, so I have no idea. And now that I'm composing again and going through old scores (and half scores and quarter scores, etc....), I'm finding all sorts of gems like that.

And don't get me wrong, I think this bar is marvelous. When I listened to it again, it fit perfectly. I just find it incredibly peculiar. The most interesting part for me is the ambiguity of notation. How many of those are supposed to be Eb? When I use Sibelius 7 now, if I were to write that top note, it would automatically give me a courtesy accidental (fourth wall broken!), as it would if I started a new bar with an E--provided I clicked the space for E without selecting sharp, natural or flat. However, when I wrote that in Sibelius 5, it obviously didn't do that.

It is entirely possible that I wrote it without realising. At the time that was composed I was working on two or three other pieces for quartet for composition class. I quickly dropped all of them but one, so I might have missed out on this little point. I knew I wouldn't be taking the piece any further, so I wasn't too concerned with details at this point; there were no dynamics, phrasing or articulation marks to be seen.

I think its nature being accidental makes the most sense. If I really had intended the high E to be natural, I would have notated it. But I still wonder if the next E is supposed to be Eb (which is how it is played back in Sibelius). I am neither keen on the picardy third nor the split third (neither of which really fit this position, but you get my drift), which makes me doubt that it was intentional.

And yet, it sounds really good. I both lament the fact that I don't think I would have thought of that and am grateful that I have moments of...convenient forethought? I'm actually discovering a lot of inspired moments in this piece. I've spent the last few days tempering my hastiness and reorganising my thoughts, which is making it much more coherent. Onwards!

Idea fixation

What happens to an idea after you’ve thought of it? Do they go anywhere? Do they get better over time if you think about them more? Do they disappear if you stop thinking about them? What if you write them down and forget about them? What does it mean when someone else has the same idea as you?

For various reasons I haven’t been very musically active for the past year and a half. Recently I recalled that I had started working on orchestrating a Sibelius sonatine almost two years ago but couldn’t remember where I had put it. Yesterday I found it and decided to pick up where I had left off. It was an odd experience. I recalled vividly many of the ideas that I had penned. I think this is a good thing because it shows a certain consistency; that is, there were still ideas I agreed with. It would have been frustrating to go back to ideas that I no longer thought were relevant or interesting. I studied this particular sonatine during my last year at MUN, and I still enjoy listening to it. I decided to arrange it for orchestra for two main reasons: 1) studying and playing it lent a certain insight that would have been missing if I hadn’t known it as intimately, and 2) I believed the piece had colours and ideas that could be exploited with an orchestra.

I’ve completed the first draft of the first movement, with minor revisions already to what I had written last year. But as I moved forward I ran into some interesting situations. Yesterday and today I came to the point in arranging where I was working with material that was now repeating in the piece. My dilemma was thus: do I go back and look at what I did for the similar section already and copy it? Is that considered “cheating?” I didn’t want two similar sounding parts being at odds with each other within the same piece, particularly when it is so short. I could try to remember what I had done, or come up with a different take on it. However, I would eventually be entering it into notation software and see what I had already written anyway. Would I lose integrity by “copying” my previous work? Would the music lose its integrity?

In the end I decided in favour of consistency. Even if I had continued on and devised contrasting material for similar sections, I would have seen in them side by side eventually, and most likely one of them would have had to leave. This situation aside, I will still run into consistency problems once I’ve laid all the parts out. After all, it is only a first draft, with two halves being written so far apart. When I started it, I would have had very specific ideas, and I was immersed in that music at the time. I think this is why some of the ideas stood out so strongly for me and I could still hear the sounds I had imagined. My main goal this time around was to get my brain thinking musically again. I found it surprisingly easy to get back into, in terms of productivity. There have been plenty of times when I have attempted to pick up where I left off a piece. Usually I cannot get myself into the mindset of composer; it’s as if I’ve been removed from the piece long enough that I’m just a listener now. I hear the ideas—some of them I like, some of them I know shouldn’t be there. But I’m at a loss for what to do. And sometimes I’ll return to the state I was in when I was last working; I’ll tweak what’s there and then stare at the notes for a while. I wonder what will happen with those ideas.