The Fredösphere

Via Sequenza21, Kenneth Woods has tips for composers working with performers:

2- Don’t bring antagonism towards anyone else’s music into gatherings that include anyone but you.
In any “us vs. them” match up, whether it is “new vs. old,” “tonal vs. atonal,” “US vs. Europe,” academic vs. self supporting, you, the composer, lose. More importantly, it creates unbelievable resentment among everyone whose support you need. You may hate Beethoven or Schoenberg in the privacy of your own home, but no matter what you hate, someone in the orchestra or the audience loves it, and if you convince them that you don’t listen to music with open ears, they won’t feel they owe you the same courtesy. More to the point, you may hate Mozart or Ligetti now, but someone in the building knows how much you could learn from them, and you’ll only embarrass yourself by criticizing their music.

By the way, have I mentioned lately how much I adore the music of Mozart?  He's my favorite composer.  And Ligetti.  Definitely Ligetti.

Plus, I love synaesthetes.  Just can't get enough of the little dearies.

Seriously, the tips are valuable and entertaining.  The one piece of advice that seems to be controversial has to do with the use of Italian expression markings.  The argument is, when Czech or Korean musicians sit down to play my music, the lingua franca will save them time.  I should be so lucky to be in a position to waste the time of Czech or Korean musicians.

One commenter reminds you (not me, I already knew) that choirs are not the same as orchestras:

Just some observations from the choir side - choirs are finicky beings, they don’t read well or learn fast (unless they are professional - and even then - the most avant-guard music does not come quickly). Avoid false-relations within a part, and don’t expect singers to be able to sing every interval - stick to one accidental when ever possible, (don’t write an augmented 5th when a minor 6th will do fine) Know the choir you are working for, and write for their ability and make-up. I’ll never forget the year the my chamber choir commissioned a work from a student composer, as a way of supporting the composition program by way of commission “scholarship”. The composer and I met and I explained that our 24 voice choir had only 3 tenors, so divisi should be limited in all parts, and avoided completely in the tenor if possible. We didn't care about the language, but would prefer some kind of suitable “themed” poetry, and it could have atonal elements, but should be listenable for our audience base, so some tonality would be good once in a while. Plus, we only have four rehearsals to learn it, so keep 8-10 minutes would probably be a good length. He came back six months later with a 30 minute work for 32 part choir (up to six divisi within each part) with graphic notation and nonsensical text. Needless to say, we couldn't perform it, and paid for nothing.

...and worth every penny!  Reminds of the time as a graduate student, I was asked, as a favor, to sing in an ad hoc men's vocal quartet.  I found out late in the game that the organizer paid for an "arrangement" by a student "composer" none of us knew, even though the organizer knew I had composing experience myself.  The music was a textbook case of what not to do:  no coherent base line, just dense chords following the melody up and down, centered around the C an octave below middle C.  In other words, a dense, growly, thoughtless mess.  It was completely unusable, so in our brief rehearsal time, I and the other singers rearranged and simplified on the fly, doing what we had to do to avoid disaster.  It still makes me mad.

Labels: Composer, Synaesthetes