Why I am Not a Composer...

[Mark G. Simon]

Is 1885 considered late for Faure?

I wouldn't think so. But the Fauré chamber music that gets performed all the time consists only of the First Violin Sonata and First Piano Quartet. Anything written after that is somehow "too cold".

Yeah, that Piano Trio is incredible. In his late works he has this way of stretching tonality in an unusual and completely personal way, kind of like an image pressed into Silly Putty.
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[Cato]

I do not know Faure's chamber works, mainly because the genre does not appeal to my ears...but I will explore the ones you mentioned.  It is interesting that he possibly found a balance which I could not see for myself.

His music for Pelleas et Melisande, however, does exhibit some of that at least.  In my classes I used to contrast his music for the play with that of Sibelius, and then contrast their stage music with Schoenberg's massive explication.

Students usually selected Faure's music over Sibelius, although the latter's music is also not overheated much, especially compared to the atomically emotional explosions in Schoenberg's tone-poem.

I have been asked how many works I composed during my activity: I have lost count!   

In a non-quarter-tone style, there were several piano works and symphonies for organ, along with a kind of tone-poem/overture called The Trumpeter of Krakow.  Toward the end, i.e, before I had made a decision to cease forever, I had become interested in revitalizing tonality through a 9-tone scale, and treating the 3 "outside" tones as a kind of antithetical, contrapuntal scale, which would then invade and replace 3 tones of the scale as a kind of modulation to change the nature of the scale, rotating by 3's and so on.  Also, I had the idea of dividing the 9-tone scale into two contrapuntal groups of 4- and 5-tone scales, which one could handle almost dodecaphonically (actually nonecaphonically).  Several fun chamber works came out in this style, one for violin and piano, which was performed dreadfully by an amateur group in Germany. 
(Only one rehearsal and more broken promises and phony excuses than I hear on an average day from my 7th Graders.)

Quarter-tone works included the first two acts of an opera based on Thomas Mann's novel Doctor Faustus, where the composer Adrian Leverkuehn was not a pseudo-Schoenberg, but a microtonalist.

There were also two Tuba Concerti, a Trombone Concerto, a religious cantata for forest animals called in German Baumdom which used the highly theological languages of Latin and German for texts chanted by chipmunks, squirrels, birds, and assorted carnivores.

The vocal style was therefore quite unusual, and not just because of the 19-tone scales!   

[karlhenning]

Carnivores would quite naturally speak German 

[Cato]

Carnivores would quite naturally speak German 

The Prozac seems to be working these days, however, so not to worry!   0:)

[bwv 1080]

As far as quarter tones go, Ferneyhough writes the most successful music with them IMO

[johnQpublic]

Dust off those scores Cato & send them to:

http://bostonmicrotonalsociety.org/Pages/OpeningFrameset.html

[Cato]

Dust off those scores Cato & send them to:

http://bostonmicrotonalsociety.org/Pages/OpeningFrameset.html

Karl, note the meeting in 10 days at St. Paul's/Tremont!

Thanks for the invitation, but I am not tempted to reconsider my decision to remain a non-composer!

[karlhenning]

Karl, note the meeting in 10 days at St. Paul's/Tremont!

!!!

[karlhenning]

Another fine insight from Luke's backlog which I think of undimmed interest.

to return from discussion of Glazunov to the subject of Cato's post  .... I have no time to write a detailed reply now, but I can relate to so much of what he is saying, especially that seemingly-paradoxical line which states:

'In my case I turned away from the desire to compose because - oddly, when I finally succeeded in having a few things performed - I knew I did not want people to hear my music!'

On its own that line looks like an open goal for those amongst us (especially, those who used to be amongst us) who want to believe that contemporary music doesn't care about the listener. But it's not as simple as it sounds, of course. I think what Cato is saying here is that music, when written with love and care, comes from a very deep place indeed, is dwelt on, pondered over with all the composer's attention and ability. In a very real sense it becomes an extension of the composer himself, and also in many cases a reflection of his own traits and tendencies. Releasing it to the world - to listeners who with one moment's listen (or less) can dismiss it, who are under no obligation to pay the attention to it that the composer's own efforts perhaps deserve - can be like putting the most vulnerable areas of yourself, as a person, up for criticism. Even listening to your own works esp. as sight-read through sketchily by others (which I suppose, on the above analogy roughly = the first impression you make on someone) can sometimes be as disconcerting and uncomfortable as listening to a recording of your own voice.

Personally I have concentrated very much on this aspect of composing, as I have discussed on my own thread - the music as true to the composer, as an extension of him. I've come to the conclusion that if somebody dislikes my music, music which I have spent a long time and much thought making as true to me as I can (or letting it be as true to me as it can be, free of external irrelevancies), then though it may well be equivalent to them saying they dislike an aspect of me myself, it is only so to the degree that I can't change my own personality even if I want to. IOW, if the music rings true, no one can really argue with it!

(Thankfully, though, I haven't had to put that to the test, as, by and large, my music has gone down fairly well so far  )

[Dr. Dread]

I would have made a swell composer. Too late now...

[DavidRoss]

I would have made a swell composer. Too late now...

Me, too.  Guess the world will just have to suffer the loss.  Blame the "Sexual Revolution" of the sixties (even though that was tame compared to what's normal these days), for we might have been composers if it hadn't be so easy to get girls without going to all that trouble.

[Dr. Dread]

Me, too.  Guess the world will just have to suffer the loss.  Blame the "Sexual Revolution" of the sixties (even though that was tame compared to what's normal these days), for we might have been composers if it hadn't be so easy to get girls without going to all that trouble.

My stuff would have creamed Elgar's...

[karlhenning]

I've always had the utmost confidence in your vibrational fields, Dave.

[Dr. Dread]

I've always had the utmost confidence in your vibrational fields, Dave.

My vibrations are to be reckoned with.

[karlhenning]

Shattered

[snyprrr]

The more I hang around here, the more I want to write an epic CD length SQ, naturally for the Kronos on Nonesuch, that becomes the next crossover hit. I've already sold out.

...but it would be a meaningful work of...(sounds of something crashing down a flight of stairs)

[Cato]

Another fine insight from Luke's backlog which I think of undimmed interest.

Luke Ottevanger wrote:

"...but I can relate to so much of what (Cato) is saying, especially that seemingly-paradoxical line which states:

'In my case I turned away from the desire to compose because - oddly, when I finally succeeded in having a few things performed - I knew I did not want people to hear my music!'

On its own that line looks like an open goal for those amongst us (especially, those who used to be amongst us) who want to believe that contemporary music doesn't care about the listener. But it's not as simple as it sounds, of course. I think what Cato is saying here is that music, when written with love and care, comes from a very deep place indeed, is dwelt on, pondered over with all the composer's attention and ability. In a very real sense it becomes an extension of the composer himself, and also in many cases a reflection of his own traits and tendencies. Releasing it to the world - to listeners who with one moment's listen (or less) can dismiss it, who are under no obligation to pay the attention to it that the composer's own efforts perhaps deserve - can be like putting the most vulnerable areas of yourself, as a person, up for criticism. Even listening to your own works esp. as sight-read through sketchily by others (which I suppose, on the above analogy roughly = the first impression you make on someone) can sometimes be as disconcerting and uncomfortable as listening to a recording of your own voice."

Music as psychology is an old game, and not an invalid one.  It is seen as an underground tunnel not only to the more mysterious areas of the human mind and soul, but as a key to Soul itself: it may seem odd, but there is case to be made that when the composer presents his music, he is in a similar position of standing exposed before Divinity:

                        "Quidquid latet apparebit
                         Nil inultum remanebit."

Every creation of art, no matter how tiny, from the weaving of a potholder to the weaving of polyphony, can be seen as an echo of the original spark which created the Universe, for whatever reason the Universe may exist.  Even the atheists, I would think, would see art at least as a parallel to the creative forces of the physical world.

How psychologically naked did Tchaikovsky and Mahler feel after their Sixth Symphonies were performed?  Alma Mahler reports that her husband was in a highly agitated state after conducting the premiere.

For my own case, the mask of the composer turned out not to be thick enough: I needed more layers to hide behind.  It is not a matter of using another name to publish works behind.  It was the contradiction that I was creating artworks which I myself did not really hear comfortably in reality: what then was the purpose?   

[greg]

Well, I sure am glad that both Mahler and Tchaikovsky did write their 6ths... talk about one of the greatest gifts you can give to the world!

[Brian]

Me, too.  Guess the world will just have to suffer the loss.  Blame the "Sexual Revolution" of the sixties (even though that was tame compared to what's normal these days), for we might have been composers if it hadn't be so easy to get girls without going to all that trouble.

My vibrations are to be reckoned with.

Hey, it's never too late. I'm still trying to learn how to use all that computer score writing software to see if I can write some sheet music down. I currently come up with ideas in my head and repeat them ad infinitum to commit them into memory, and then if I don't forget them, I start coming up with everything else to go around them until a rough mental draft emerges. This system really does not work very well and it takes years to get anything done on a piece. If it's too rough trying to use Finale/Sibelius/Super Mario Paint Composer   and nobody can teach me, I will go the way of Dave and David, and the world will lose, by my count, a full violin concerto, a slow movement for cello and orchestra, five caprices for solo violin, two waltzes for the piano, a very fragmentary symphony, and a string quartet in the jazz idiom (slow movement: tango/blues variations on Schubert's "Ave Maria"   ).

[karlhenning]

I think the world could use some more of those (fragmentary symphonies, especially)