If you were a composer...how would your music sound?

[Benji]

I think it'll be interesting to compare the results of 'what we know x likes' vs 'what x thinks their music would sound like'.

For example, the composers I listen to most seem to be Vaughan Williams, Sibelius, Prokofiev and Copland. And yet when I dream i'm hearing my own music, as I sometimes do, and when I improvise on the piano (really, really awfully) it is all rather dark, angular and angsty, confused, even avante garde in the Polish vein. So, I imagine my music would end up sounding like Schnittke meets Lutoslawski and Penderecki back when he was a bad boy!

Do you think that it's odd that what I enjoy listening to is a far cry from what I would enjoy creating, or do you feel the same way? The way I make sense of it is that by reasoning (despite the saying) that you wouldn't normally fight fire with fire, you'd use water, right? Perhaps I enjoy the relative peace of my go-to-for listening composers because it quietens the angsty parts of me that sympathise with those composers who I perhaps share a mindset? 

[mahler10th]

I was thinking similarly last week.  Now, we already know how our GMG resident composers sound, but for those of us bereft of the same acuity in music, we can only figure out for ourselves the kind of music we would be writing if only we could be bothered to learn how.  Well, I can say with some degree of certainty I'd be chasing Atterbergs tail - classical melodies and vivid evocations always bring listeners back...

[drogulus]

      It's a really good question. If I composed it probably wouldn't sound like anything I've played. The difficulty with coming up with a credible answer is that learning to compose would have so much influence over how the music would sound that merely imagining beforehand doesn't seem like it would tell much. What would I want to do once I knew how? After I stopped imitating, what then?

[Sergeant Rock]

In my wild and troubled youth I composed a few pieces for piano. They either sound like middle period Wagner (i.e., Lohengrin) or Rachmaninoff.

Sarge

[vandermolen]

Mine would sound 'crash, bang, wallop', with odd, spaced far apart, lyrical moments - a reflection of my life

[Cato]

You might know that I used to compose musical works 30 to 40 years ago, with absolutely no acclaim!    0:)

My quarter-tone music - obviously - sounded unusual: I tended toward 19-tone scales, but did once compose a 24-tone serial opera based on Thomas Mann's novel Doktor Faustus.  For full orchestra!       That meant the work needed the future creation of quarter-tone oboes, English horns, bass flutes, etc., since I had placed no limits on the practicality of my imaginings!   

I do have a tape of a few works in the 19-tone scale style: a student nearly 30 years ago programmed a primitive synthesizer to play it.  Imagine Bach/Wyschnegradsky becoming WyschneBachsky.  Unfortunately the synthesizer sounds like a vacuum cleaner from Mars.   0:)   

For my "normal" works, I usually liked 9-tone scales and a rather idiosyncratic polyphony developed under the influence of Alexander Tcherepnin's Interpoint and the Modus lascivus ideas of Tibor Serly.

Climaxes tended to have nonuple counterpoint!   

[CD]

Cato, I want your life.

[Cato]

Cato, I want your life.

Well, it has been a curiosity so far! 

[jochanaan]

...That meant the work needed the future creation of quarter-tone oboes, English horns, bass flutes, etc., since I had placed no limits on the practicality of my imaginings!   

It's entirely possible to do quarter-tones on modern oboes and English horns.  Indeed, sometimes it's hard not to!

I've done a few pieces; one twelve-tone piece from my college days, a brief orchestral piece done for my orchestration class, and some songs and jazz tunes.  My pieces tend to use extreme dynamics and tempos; no mfs or Moderato tempos for me! Otherwise, there's not a lot of similarity in style...

[mahler10th]

Mine would sound 'crash, bang, wallop', with odd, spaced far apart, lyrical moments - a reflection of my life

I had a good laugh at that.

[Cato]

It's entirely possible to do quarter-tones on modern oboes and English horns.  Indeed, sometimes it's hard not to!

In fact chords are possible, complete with microtones, with certain techniques: but the music I created needed more flexibility beyond those special methods.

NO regrets!   0:)

[MN Dave]

GALUMF-GALUMF-aroooooooooooooo-tum-tum-tum-DIGGEDYsploosh-mrrrmrrrmrrmrr-squeeeeeeeeee-ZONK-tik-tik-tik-tik...freeeeeeeeeee-blorp...

And so on.

[mahler10th]

GALUMF-GALUMF-aroooooooooooooo-tum-tum-tum-DIGGEDYsploosh-mrrrmrrrmrrmrr-squeeeeeeeeee-ZONK-tik-tik-tik-tik...freeeeeeeeeee-blorp...

And so on.

So Dave...you like Lutoslawski then?    

[some guy]

Lutosławski? Pretty sure that was Karkowski he was doing there.

[MN Dave]

No, sorry, fellers. That's a mn dave original. 

[Spotswood]

Given the number of fine composers on this site, taking part in a parlor game like this seems to me impertinent. I envy people like Karl, who actually can write music and develop a sound of their own.

And yet,  I considered this question long before Benji started this thread. (Interesting how a lot of us entertain the same ideas. Fantasies don't seem to vary much.) And, for all my admiration for modernists like Ives and Carter, I thought years ago that any music I might compose would sound a lot like Vaughan Williams --- very pastoral, very modal, very Cotswold-on-the-Greenish, with a lot of passage work for solo oboe. Fortunately, Vaughn Williams has already done all that, so I don't have to.

[Franco]

GALUMF-GALUMF-aroooooooooooooo-tum-tum-tum-DIGGEDYsploosh-mrrrmrrrmrrmrr-squeeeeeeeeee-ZONK-tik-tik-tik-tik...freeeeeeeeeee-blorp...

And so on.

Sounds a lot like Zyklus