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09/26/26
Ever notice how much of what is written about music isn’t really about the music? There’s a lot about what the music is supposed to mean, a lot about the inspiration, about the life of the composer/songwriter… all you could want about the extra-musical factors, but not so much about the music itself. Even concert-hall program notes aren’t so much talking about the music as writing a guidebook (you’ll hear this happen, then this happen, then this happen…). And academic writing tends to be about structural or harmonic analysis — technically “about the music” but not really about what makes it more effective or appealing than other music; and you rarely if ever see analyses of music that is just so-so, for comparison.
This was in my mind recently as I was thinking about how I should be talking about my music to other people, particularly people whose favorite music is different from my favorite music. That thought slowly turned around in my head into how I would like other people to talk to me about why I should listen to their favorite music, especially when it is different from mine. It wouldn’t be all that extra-musical or academic stuff. What could they tell me about the music that would make me want to listen, to be ready to appreciate it for reasons I hadn’t really noticed before?
What unites their favorite music and my favorite music and makes it all — uh-oh — good music?
Oh crap, is this another one of those articles where someone is trying to define “good music”?
Well, maybe… but at least I have the good sense to understand that different people have different tastes and will value different aspects of art; and yet while that’s OK, I don’t have to agree with them. But having thought this over, I can put my finger on six things that distinguish music that enriches my life from music I can do without. So at the risk of appearing opinionated and judgmental (which may still be socially frowned upon but I’m old enough now that I don’t care), here are:
SIX ATTRIBUTES OF GOOD MUSIC THAT ARE IMPORTANT TO ME
The moment-to-moment flow of basic musical elements conveys a coherent, compelling progression of musical thought.
This means basic songwriting skills, at a minimum. An author ought to be able to write a coherent paragraph, and a composer should be able to put together 32 bars that say something. Most anybody who understands music and has a sincere desire to try can accomplish this. Really good music goes well above this threshold, and true mastery of the moment-to-moment can be magical. But someone who can’t manage it, doesn’t want to try, or is going in some totally different direction (like claiming that noise is music), is unlikely to produce anything I’ll appreciate.
There are broader-scale variations in musical tension that add significant meaning.
This is basically musical “storytelling”, but I don’t want to use that term because the “story” may be a purely musical one. In a lot of Classical era music, symmetry and form are the meaning. The point is that something worthwhile needs to happen beyond the 32-bar level. It might be really subtle in the arc of a three-minute song or hugely complex in an hour-long symphony; but there needs to be meaning beyond the notes, beyond the moment-to-moment, that can’t exist without the entirety of the work. Otherwise, why take the time to listen?
The basic musical elements employed are at an engaging level of sophistication going well beyond the elementary.
Sorry, but repeating I - VI - IV - V over and over doesn’t do a lot for me, and Pachelbel’s Canon in D is not the greatest piece ever written. Two-chord garage bands are welcome to shut the garage door and stay there.
The medium is used with respect and care; every note has a purpose.
This encompasses a lot of virtues and vices. The music at least ought to meet the Amadeus standard: “There are just as many notes…as are required. Neither more nor less.” All of the players’ efforts should be tangibly contributing to the work, not being squandered. Special techniques (e.g., multiphonics, complex meters) should be essential to the expression, not just empty gimmicks. And improvised solos should be true to the style and intent of the song/chart, not simply any old crazy noise the soloist feels like making.
The scale and proportions of the work are well matched to the ideas being expressed.
This is partly about making good decisions about subject matter and ensemble, but also about writing the right music, and the right amount of music, for what is being expressed. I get skeptical when I hear a composer say, “The music just poured out of me!” Great, but did they check whether what poured out was any good, and have the sense to turn off the spigot when they had enough? Mark Twain wrote about the pain of having to “murder his darlings” when he realized that what had just poured out of him was wrong for the situation. I’d like composers to be as circumspect.
The work combines the unexpected with the familiar to make a statement that is distinctive, original, and comprehensible.
I don’t want music that’s good enough to sell, I want music that’s good enough to be good. If it sounds just like dozens or hundreds of others of the same genre, I’m not interested. Even music that’s centuries old can speak in a voice that was — and still is — distinctive in the context of its time. New music should be distinctive in our own time, in its own way, but not by merely being unintelligible. Anybody can make a sound that’s never been made before. It takes an artist to unite sound with meaning in ways that have never been heard before.
I don’t need every piece of music to be all things. There are any number of symphonic works, jazz charts, and classic rock tunes that I like that don’t tick all six of these boxes. But I think it’s true that the music that I value the most ticks most of them, and the music that I value the least… doesn’t.
04/24/22
I was feeling a little down the other day, so I listened to “The Rite of Spring”, which I hadn’t done in a while. “Rite” is high on my personal list of all-time favorites. Every bar is staggeringly original. There’s nothing else like it, before or after. But as much as I love each of the episodes in the piece, I realized that there is one that really stands out. Somehow it just gives me a sense of joy every time I hear it.
It’s that one bar of 11/4, just before the “Glorification of the Chosen” scene. You know the one: “Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham!” Eleven times. OK, I know this is not exactly a joyful moment in the ballet, but that’s not the point. Taken on its own this bar is utterly inexplicable, but in context it’s brilliant. The first quarter-note is a definitive moment of arrival; the eleventh is an unstoppable moment of departure. In between, nine pounding heartbeats of anticipation.
This is also an amazingly liberating moment, compositionally. Four timpani and bass drum fortissimo, and all of the strings down-bowing but subordinate at mere forte. It’s an incredible gesture of defiance of tradition, the act of a headstrong young man. Stravinsky was in his late twenties, and his teacher Rimsky-Korsakoff had died a few years earlier. (I don’t imagine that NRK would have put up with this kind of nonsense had he still been alive.)
And look at what Stravinsky is telling the orchestra with that time signature: No, it’s not 4 plus 4 plus 3, it’s not 4 plus 3 plus 4, it’s not 3 plus 3 plus 3 plus 2 — it’s eleven. Just eleven. Who got taught at conservatory then (or even now?) to play eleven notes in a row in exactly the same way? Who knew how to conduct a bar of 11/4?
It’s as if all of your sophisticated musical education is held in abeyance for those eleven beats. It’s both prime and primal. Nothing matters, save for the ability to create a sound and beat in time with others. It’s a singularly primitive moment — and exactly what Stravinsky was trying to convey.
07/25/21
In the last 20 or so years, it's become possible for any composer with a computer to put together a computer-generated audio rendition of their music, regardless of whether they are competent performers on the instruments they've written for. If you're a composer who used to do it the traditional way but converted to using Finale, Sibelius, or more advanced tools, I hardly need to tell you what a monumental change this is. For the first time ever, it's possible to hear one's orchestration in advance, to try out different solutions, and to change one's mind — all before any other musician sees a single note. And it's possible, with work, to put together a computer-generated performance that's good enough for others to hear. Good enough to be an adequate demonstration of what the piece should sound like, or even, with more effort (and money), a legitimate performance of the piece.
Is that enough? I mean, now that it's possible to have orchestral music without an orchestra, is that a goal to strive for? After all, most film and video game composers do virtually all of their work in digital studios, and produce not just passable recordings, but the definitive recordings of their music, which become soundtracks. On this website I've put up two examples of what I would call adequate computer performances of my large-ensemble works. With a little luck, more people may hear my music through these recordings than ever heard a live performance; so I have to treat them seriously. I even have a recording of a live performance of one of those pieces that I won't put up on the site because of a single (but catastrophically ill-timed) wrong note. Computers don't ever play wrong notes, mis-count rhythms, or have poor intonation. With a few hundred more dollars and a few hundred more hours, I could indulge my perfectionist tendencies and create the ideal artificial performances.
And yet, that's not what I want to do.
An artificial performance is still artificial. A sampled note is a note devoid of context, devoid of shape, devoid of emotion; and a phrase assembled from sampled notes can't convey the same depth of expression that a human-performed phrase can. Moreover, even though I might be able to write an effective line for, say, violin, I'm not a violinist, so I will never understand exactly where a natural portamento will happen, where a natural hesitation will occur, or where the sound of the bow will come through. Not well enough to reproduce those effects on a computer, unless I learn to play the instrument at a high level myself. Sure, I can buy a keyboard with pressure-sensitive keys and practice until I'm fluent on the pitch wheel; and maybe soon we'll have AI-based "human playback" algorithms drawing from massive, multi-dimensional, contextual sample libraries. Or, I can find a real violinist.
Personally, I'd much rather interact with human musicians than instruct a robot, which is basically what one is doing with Finale — it's a machine with a limited instruction set which it interprets according to internal rules that are hidden from the user. Human musicians understand adverbs while robots don't. I can ask a human ensemble to play a phrase "gently" or "aggressively" and they'll immediately grasp what I'm asking for; the Finale robot doesn't have those words in its vocabulary, so to get the same effect I'd have to painstakingly micromanage every single note.
There's a universe of difference between an artificial performance on a computer and a real performance by human musicians. Humans are spontaneous, they listen, they interact and communicate in subtle ways that they themselves don't even fully understand. Human performances (good ones, anyway) are exciting and unpredictable. This is why people are are willing to buy tickets to live performances of music that they already know by heart from recordings. The thrill of eighty musicians coming together to create a unique realization of a musical work conceived by a single human mind is what makes large-ensemble music fantastic and amazing.
So I'll gladly take a human performance that is technically imperfect but exciting over a robotic one that is technically flawless but equally soulless. Computers are OK for demos, but real, living music comes from real, living people.
But please, people, if you don't mind... play the right notes, huh?