 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Markus Wenninger
Date: 2003-11-04 07:17
Is anyone of You as well a composer as he/she is a performer? If so, what music are You composing, with what kind of methods? Am I mistaken that there are not too many "into contemporary music" here?
Markus
- Thank You very much for this "Theo Loevendie"-hint along the line posted somewhere else! I am always grateful for advice like this one, ...as long as finding contemporary scores remains such a longwinded task...
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2003-11-04 07:48
I'm a composition major, and am having my first "real" piece premiered in a couple weeks at a Composers' Guild concert at my university. It's a solo clarinet piece (which I discovered is quite difficult to write -- no chords to back anything up), that borders on the edges of tonality. It uses a good bit of extended technique in the slow movement, though nothing too out of the ordinary (mostly flutters, pitch bends, color trills, etc).
I like some contemporary music, but it depends entirely on the piece. Lots of it is very atonal, which I don't have an ear for (yet?). I'm really getting to like the music of George Crumb, and am hoping to draw some inspiration from there.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: donald
Date: 2003-11-04 08:27
i have won several prizes/competitions for composition- including 2nd place in the Asia Pacific Music Festival competition in 1992. I have had pieces played in NZ, USA and Europe (including at Clarinetfest/Oklahoma symposium). In addition to "contemporary music" i play and write various types of rock/alternative music and have recorded in NZ and USA, though this has been really just on hobby level for the last 6 or so years. I do pub gigs here at my local here in Auckland every so often playing my own songs. In the last years i have only averaged about 3 compositions a year (for "classical" stuff i mean) which bugs me somewhat.
at Clarinetfest 2003 i opened my performance with a piece for two clarinets and piano (thanks to Emily Wasson for helping out here- she's a great player!). The audience didn't seem to love it particuarly, but they didn't walk out either (though people left after the 2nd piece i played- an awful thing that was commissioned by the NZ arts council for clarinetfest, and i had to play it even though i didn't like it).If any one out there was at this performance let me know what you thought (even if you hated it, it's important to know)
donald
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2003-11-04 13:24
Frequently on "bass-clarinet@yahoogroups.com" new compositions [for B C's etc] are "offered", and discussed by early composers and players. These, I believe, are available via the webmaster, Kim Davenport. Perhaps composer/publisher cooperation [as here] would be advantageous to all. While I oersonally am quite "traditional" [and old], I feel that modern compositions deserve to [must?] be fairly heard. Just thots, Don
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Author: diz
Date: 2003-11-04 20:40
I compose (mostly for clarinet ensemble), I get performed overseas (not in Australia), my style is distincly mine (according to the ensemble who will remain nameless) which is comforting. If I had to describe it I would say it's a combination of polytonal-minimalism and dovetailing (I hesitate to use the term contrapuntal here because that's not my style at all).
I also get regular commissions from Rockdale Opera (Australia's oldest running opera company - they are semi-professional: pay everyone but the chorus) and their brief is usually take a score (example Rigoletto) and reorchestrate for a small orchestra (2121 222 1 Str). It's enjoyable work, and requires a good knowledge of the blending ability of instruments.
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Author: Markus Wenninger
Date: 2003-11-05 07:19
I will have a look there at these "yahoo-groups", it sounds interesting. / Please correct me if I am wrong, but as composers most of us seem to follow the wake of their academical career; I envy You those abilities like, e.g. reorchestration. Those cultural techniques quite literally ease one´s way with larger formats. On the other hand, it deems me strange to think e.g of strings having a ability "to blend" or "to back up" - as if those were conceptions from before the Schönberg-watershed. I don´t think the distinction tonal-atonal makes any sense any more nowadays, there literally are no more inside-outside-form-differentiations possible apart from the individual composition. Though this fact makes a concise answer to the question of form incredibly more complex and dependent on the interieur of the composer. The most fascinatin developement music underwent today for me is that the idee fixe of homogenous intonation, the reign of the welltempered piano seems to come to an end - so for example we wooodwinds are focused on, different registers with distinctedly differend timbres and intonations, the question of colour being the central one. I personally owe very much to John Cage´s and Anthony Braxton´s (do NOT tell me he´s jazz...) compositional methods and techniques, and Schönberg of course ( I am still fascinated by rows and such, even when no one in Europe does this any more, after the serial dogma...).
So then,
Markus
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Author: Mark Pinner
Date: 2003-11-05 22:26
Diz
When are you writing me a bassoon concerto? Or was that just the beer talking?
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Author: Rachel
Date: 2003-11-06 00:56
I've been composing for about 9 years now. My music is mostly chamber music, piano music, or concertos, although I do write non-soloistic orchestral music and just started my 3rd symphony yesterday. My music is mostly tonal, but I will write atonal music if I think it will express what I want it to. A lot of my atonal music sounds sort of tonal because I tend to use harmonies based on 3rds and 5ths. I use both metrical and non metrical rhythm, but for the most part I do use a time signature. A lot of my music uses frequent time changes. And I've just forgotten what else I was going to say... I suppose I will remember as soon as I get off the computer
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Author: Markus Wenninger
Date: 2003-11-06 06:14
Thank You very much for all Your contributions so far, I appreciate this really. To add another perspective: Do you think contemporary technique just an extension of the conception and history of our instrument, or do You judge it an essential element in nothing less than a revolution in respect to the very groundings of music itself? As one can guess easily, I follow the latter opinion - and this is a crucial distinction, whether let´s say the use of multiphonics is just a more or less exotic enlargening of what is possible to play on the clarinet, or whether it is rather a phenomenon which alters the very nature of what it means to play this instrument. I think this can also be shown in the contemporary difficulties and different solutions of what it means to compose for the clarinet today - one can detect that in the often tiresome changes nowadays composers use to notate.
Markus
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Author: theclarinetist
Date: 2003-11-06 08:15
I have composed several pieces for winds and/or piano. My largest piece to date is a 20 min. bass clarinet sonata that I wrote for my clarinet teacher. I've been writing since 7th grade, so I have a ton of short little pieces that I wrote when I was little. They're cute and actually pretty good, but nothing substantial. I'm currently working on a Bb clarinet sonata. I'm pretty happy writing for winds, wind ensembles, and piano. I don't really have any desire to branch out into larger ensembles or brass/strings. If I had more time to study other instruments (particularly strings), I would definitely write for them, however I'm so busy with school and work that I mostly compose just for fun, so it's not a huge necessity that I branch out.
I personally don't characterize my compositions into one category. Some passages are tonal, others aren't. I usually don't think about and just write whatever I want (from a harmonic standpoint, I mean).
I like all kinds of music, including modern. My favorite is mid-late 20th Cent. French like Milhaud and Francaix (probably not as modern as you're thinking).
DON HITE
theclarinetist@yahoo.com
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Author: ginny
Date: 2003-11-06 15:11
My son (15) composes and won an honorable mention in a local competition.
He may be contemplating composition as a major in college, but I fear he will have the same reaction as my niece did when she majored in composition. A dislike of being forced to write 'new' music. The atonal stuff is now what 75 years old and never really caught the public ear. My niece switched to physical anthro, after getting her artistic freedom chopped by the teaching staff. She was pretty disgusted.
So composers, are their any composition programs where the students are not pressured to compose exclusively atonal/"new" music?
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2003-11-06 17:00
In my program, we are absolutely not pressured to write exclusively atonal music. Sure, it is encouraged, but mainly because composing in all genres is encouraged to expand your horizons as a composer. My composition teacher last week had us listen to some George Crumb, who in the 70s was big on the idea that new, bizarre music didn't have to follow the serial 12-tone conventions or other accepted "modern" techniques, and could sound incredibly new and cool regardless (not to mention look beautiful on the page).
I think there is some pressure to write "new" music because there's still much to be done. To write a symphony in the style of Beethoven, Shostakovich, or Kodaly is a great skill, and quite valuable, but it's also been done many many times already.
Anyways, back to the program... my comp teacher has made it clear to me that I should not feel obligated or compelled to write in any certain style, and should write what I feel inspired to. However, the fact that it is composition SCHOOL means that it's a place to stretch yourself, and try something new. The impression I've gotten in my program is that we're not forced to write with the atonal stuff that you say is getting old (I agree in some regards), but it is extremely valuable to try. More than anything, I suppose we as composers are after a new and unique sound. Atonality is just one more tool for the toolbox... and since there is very little exposure to it outside of composition classes, it gets a bit more attention there to make up for lost time.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: diz
Date: 2003-11-06 20:14
Mark ... a bassoon concerto - yeah, perhaps. Small orchestra to accompany it. (1121 2 str) ... what's it worth?
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Author: Markus Wenninger
Date: 2003-11-07 15:58
It takes me quite aback, I must admit, seeing with what kinds of retro-isms this "new thing getting old by now" - New Music confronted still, exactly, because it has scratched together a tradition by now, since Schönberg and Strawinsky. Sometimes I just fail to believe it - what kind of argument, for music´s sake, is this "most who hear this stuff don´t like it" supposed to be? If music, and works of any art in general, are not to be just fancies, one digs it, the other doesn´t, if all this rehearsing, craft, passion, nerve-wrecking putting together blunt material to from something decidedly greater than just an selfish-thinking-I-am-an-artist-outpour is meant to mean something a bit deeper and more differentiated than "Yeah, I like this one, and that - no.": It n e v e r ever is of any importance of what "people" say about a work of art, art itself is utterly independent of whether it "catches any ear" or not. But the psyche, the vanity of the guys playing, is not. That´s the subtle but decisive difference. The musical world is more than vast enough so that everybody will find his/her own niche there, but it tells by far more about the stuffiness and immobility of musical education, if young people (who in fact I experienced as the ones with the least difficulties in listening to New Music, because their ears, their imagination is not impedded and amputated by the conservatisms tradition is rather weathily adorned with) don`t "like" New Music", than about the inherent qualities of nowadays musical practice. Musical history itself would not move an inch, whatsoever genre we talk about, if composers as well as players, and last but not least small but steady audiences wouldn´t think progressiveness, creativity and a self-critical mind weigh a bit more than whether one like´s this stuff or not. New Music is not a style.
Markus
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Author: Joel Clifton
Date: 2003-11-08 16:03
I love composing, but unfortunately all I know about composition and orchestration is what I learned by listening to LOTS of classical music, often studying the score while listening to it, and reading books. I have not yet taken any classes in it. I absolutely love the symphony orchestra, and that's all I've written for. Anything smaller, I think, would not do the music justice. I write in the style of the late-romantic composers, such as Brahms, Rimski-Korsakov, etc. I've already written a symphony, which took about three years, but I wrote it early on and it needs to be re-written.
I've also been working on a stand-alone piece for a few years now, and while it certainly needs improvement (mostly improvement in form), I'm very proud of it. It could probably be described as a tone poem, but I'm really not sure what catagory to put it in. I'd share it, but it's not copyrighted yet and I'm afraid of it being stolen or something. Speaking of which, does anyone know if that can happen? Could someone steal music and take the credit for it?
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"You have to play just right to make dissonant music sound wrong in the right way"
Post Edited (2003-11-08 16:08)
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2003-11-08 18:52
Whenever you create something, you have a natural, legal copyright for it. It is yours. However, your word alone doesn't exactly hold a lot of weight in court, so it would behoove you to register it with the copyright office.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2003-11-08 18:59
EEBaum wrote:
> Whenever you create something, you have a natural, legal
> copyright for it.
Depends on the country. True in the US, other countries vary in their requirements for a copyright.
Also, the meaning of "create" gets argued in court all the time ...
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Author: Markus Wenninger
Date: 2003-11-08 19:41
well,if You can do a symphonic form in the style of late romanticism, Joel, spare Yourself the classes - and why not switch over to the contemporary...although the large format is not very often used today. Which is a pity, I admit; how come You find an orchestral piece the sole format for a musical work of art? The large format so far scares me, I feel unable to come up to it - I think most who start out as instrumentalists who time after time begin to write music themselves, find it easier to write for a rather limited overall ambitus etc. And who needs all those quadrupled strings all doing the same thing? but to think of them trailing along with the freed winds,is tempting - I would lover to write something on a larger scale like this, clouds of sound drifting, molto instabile, timings and dynamics very loose, but so far i am only able to realize this in a format of 8 to 10 instrumentalists. And one doesn´t get an e'''' in Brahms,no sir, only in New Music.
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Author: theclarinetist
Date: 2003-11-09 06:45
Joel Clifton,
If you are capable of studying music without classes, why bother with the middle man. If you take comp classes, you'll just be paying someone to make you study music. Just listen with a critical ear (as I'm sure you do). Writing music is about expression, not about rules (I sound corny, but it's true). And besides, music/compositional theory is mostly just secondary elaboration anyway. The pioneers of music composition didn't have a text book with all the rules in it. They wrote, and later we looked at what they did, identified trends, and call them rules (often, in my opinion, to the detriment of our creative thinking).
If you are happy with your style of writing, then you shouldn't feel bad about having not taken lessons (although a second opinion is always helpful). As a composition teacher of mine once said "A piece of music is the best textbook".
DON HITE
theclarinetist@yahoo.com
PS - A lot of wonderful, innovative works weren't immediately accepted when they first went public. Being thought a musical heretic might be a good sign for some people, actually.
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Author: diz
Date: 2003-11-09 23:40
A harmony teacher once pointed out to me: if you don't learn the rules first you'll never know if you've broken them (Bernard Oram - Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London). Professor Oram always had a deliciously "English" way of putting you down but not making you feel bad about it.
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Author: Markus Wenninger
Date: 2003-11-10 08:10
diz-
- the point is, what set of rules?
There just isn´t a codex per se, but an accepting of certain authorities. An act utterly un-musical. There a physical conditions if something is to be music and not noise, but nowadays even the possibility of following rules for music as such cannot be given without introducing decisionism of the crudest kind. If anything can be tuaght, then that You make music from the very opening of the bag on You carry the clarinet in, and You don´t stop making music when the composition is ended. It literally does not stop, it is just very quiet for periods of time. This is not at all stating that there are no rules whatsoever - but those rules are nothing but that which is justified by the actual sound (and n o t the other way round). You get the rules after You played the music, they are nothing but conditions post arte factum (like Cage has it, sometimes one has to listen and concentrate for quite a long time to detect the beauty in the noise of traffic outside).
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Author: Rachel
Date: 2003-11-11 00:34
I learnt to compose by listening to music, and one thing that really fascinates me is how many 'conventions' I have picked up just by doing that.
I spent a year at university last year, and quite a few times my theory lecturer would mention some device that I'd been using for years, and I would think, "Wow, you mean there's actually a NAME for that?!"
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