My new piece - Symphonic Suite [WIP]

[Richard Barrett]

I listened by following the Youtube link, where I see that you were born in 1987. This makes you a 21st century composer I suppose; but what do you think is 21st century about this music?

[teamsaint]

Hi Alex

Thanks for sharing your music .
Anybody prepared to pursue composition in an academic envirionment has my respect.

I enjoyed both of the movements.

I have to say that the second had , for me , a rather American feel or sound.

[Beef Oven!]

I listened by following the Youtube link, where I see that you were born in 1987. This makes you a 21st century composer I suppose; but what do you think is 21st century about this music?

It didn't do Rachmaninov much harm.

[AlexMc]

a 'catchphrase' of the late James Winston Savile, often accompanied by a strange yodelling sound. I won't post a link.

Oh well, at least that's been cleared up!

I enjoyed your work. I am afraid that my limited critical powers are not going to help you but I read your intentions as asking for a music lovers' reactions, so albeit briefly I'll try. I thought the first piece a little over-orchestrated with too much going on, although it held me to the end; the second sparer and the more appealing of the two. Like many other music lovers I can't avoid hearing influences whether intended or not but taken as a whole I thought your work didn't sound like anyone else. Recently I've become attached to the sound of the human voice in symphonic music eg VW3Nielsen 3 and I wondered if it might be something you'd considered?
Many thanks for the chance to hear your pieces and the best of luck with your career.

Hi Gradus. This piece is technically more complicated than my normal style (which is primarily melodically driven with romantic-esque harmony) and was initially written for my course and therefore more 'academic', although the piece has become very personal. I do get what you're saying but hopefully with a real orchestra the piece will be more nuanced, and it will be a more obvious as to what I would like the audience to focus on primarily.
I haven't yet combined voice with symphonic writing but It's something I'd love to do (particularly after hearing Penderecki's 7th symphony) although I'd need a commission for that first most likely..!
Thanks!

Unlike two other posters I don't hear any stylistic connections with Schoenberg or his school, finding no contradictions in the Adorno sense in this music - more a continuation of the English pastoral tradition as extended in his own music by Anthony Payne expecially.

FWIW I think Alex should make the second movement of his symphonic suite the third and compose a contrasting scherzo-type middle movement in the more rhythmically and harmonically challenging manner of the chamber pieces illustrated on the first of the two clips.

Actually I wasn't aware of Anthony Payne until you mentioned him (just had a quick listen to one of his pieces on spotify - will remind myself to buy a CD) and I must say I really like his work so thanks for bringing him up.
I'm working on a third movement which is much more rhythmically complicated (plenty of time-signature changes and the like). I might have to shift the order of the movements around a bit.
Thanks a lot for your input!

Thanks Alex.
I'm not qualified to 'mark' your test piece, but I found it full bodied, if you like, with textures I liked. For example,like BBM I heard those brass sounds which I enjoyed in some 2VS pieces. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the sound in light of the 'Noteperformer' you mention. Sorry to be so brief and inexpert. In short, I liked your piece.

PS What is 'wrong' with "guys and gals"?

If you're interested, 'noteperformer' is a software that combines instrumental 'sampling' with synthesis in order to sound more realistic. It's not intended to replace real musicians of course!
I'm glad you liked the piece!

I enjoyed this, too, the inevitable shortcomings of the software notwithstanding. Like S_A, I don't especially hear much 2VS influence here and his idea of a contrasting second movement interspersed between the two to which you've provided links here could indeed be a good one. I hope that you can get it played by a real orchestra once it's completed. How many movements do you envisage altogether?

I'm thinking of four or five movements in total, but this is obviously a long term goal, and right now I'm just focused on finishing the third and then writing some different pieces, probably for small scale chamber ensembles.

Hi Alex

Thanks for sharing your music .
Anybody prepared to pursue composition in an academic envirionment has my respect.

I enjoyed both of the movements.

I have to say that the second had , for me , a rather American feel or sound.

Studying composition in an Academic environment was a real challenge. I won't go into too many details here, but although I received a great many positive things from my studies, I also experienced a few negative things, but that's another story!

It didn't do Rachmaninov much harm.

It certainly didn't. And Robert, whether or not my music is truly 21st century or not is not particularly important to me at this stage in my life. Maybe a few years down the line I'll think differently, but now it's not really an issue.
Anyway, I didn't want to start a discussion about the relevancy of particular styles of music, but just wanted to share something I'd written.
Thanks for your input though.

Oh and I forgot to thank BBM for your input. I wasn't really inspired by the 2nd viennese school, although I have recently been listening to music by a composer who was, and that's George Rochberg. If you get a chance to, listen to his 1st and 2nd symphonies.
Thanks for writing.

[kea]

It certainly didn't. And Robert, [I assume you meant Richard? I don't see a Robert...] whether or not my music is truly 21st century or not is not particularly important to me at this stage in my life.

I'm afraid I don't quite understand this attitude—if your composing comes out of your everyday experience/inspiration as opposed to being an academic exercise or retreat into escapism, how can it avoid reflecting the 21st century? If you're putting any thought into music of course, which I assume you must be, since you're pursuing a music degree and writing for orchestras. The point of questions like RB's are then to do a bit of self-analysis and try to figure out in what way the music relates to other things of its time; not only other 21st-century music but also art, literature, television, internet, etc. Don't think it has anything to do with particular 'styles' of music as such, since looking at any point in history in detail collapses any notion of stylistic uniformity.

[Beef Oven!]

I'm afraid I don't quite understand this attitude—if your composing comes out of your everyday experience/inspiration as opposed to being an academic exercise or retreat into escapism, how can it avoid reflecting the 21st century?

AlexMc said it's not particularly important to him whether or not his music is truly 21C. Surely that is easy to understand.

It's not an attitude, it's a statement.

I think it was only a couple of weeks ago or so, that some knob-head was banging on about how welcoming and friendly this forum is!

[kea]

AlexMc said it's not particularly important to him whether or not his music is truly 21C. Surely that is easy to understand.

But... one can't write any other kind of music, if one's worldview has actually been formed during the 21st century... perhaps there are some older composers writing "20th century music", but I don't think it's possible to write music from any other time period unless one is a time traveler.

What do you take "truly 21C" to mean in that case?

[ahinton]

But... one can't write any other kind of music, if one's worldview has actually been formed during the 21st century... perhaps there are some older composers writing "20th century music", but I don't think it's possible to write music from any other time period unless one is a time traveler.

What do you take "truly 21C" to mean in that case?

Is it really possible to determine that such and such a piece is or is not identifiably "21st century" - i.e. readily identifiable as such by the majority of its listeners? One of the problems that I believe has beset some people is an inability and/or unwillingness to recognise that the majority of new developments do not overthrow, or even undermine, musics of the past but enhance our musical experiences by expanding them; it's the same with other life experiences. That said, there are experimentalists and consolidators among composers and not all composers are trying to reflect the same things. Someone (I cannot now recall who) referred to Busoni as a composer who sought to relate future and past to the present; be that as it may or may not, his music isn't particularly easy to pigeon-hole in terms of the its time. Schönberg continued from time to time to write more tonally oreinted music some time after his earliest dodecaphonic serial works. Has Penderecki gone "backwards"? - did Rochberg do the same? So - I have to admit that I don't know what "truly 21st century" means in this context - but perhaps I'm just being dense (it wouldn't be the first time, after all...)

[Richard Barrett]

And Robert, whether or not my music is truly 21st century or not is not particularly important to me at this stage in my life.

(Who is this Robert?) I wasn't asking you whether you thought your music was "truly 21st century" but rather what you thought there might be about it that reflects the time in which you're writing it. As kea says it's not a matter of style but of (self-)awareness.

[Beef Oven!]

But... one can't write any other kind of music, if one's worldview has actually been formed during the 21st century... perhaps there are some older composers writing "20th century music", but I don't think it's possible to write music from any other time period unless one is a time traveler.

So there wouldn't have been any point to Robert's question in the first place. But Robert seems to agree with you about 'style'. It's all a bit confusing. I think I'm with ahinton on this one.

[Flosshilde]

But... one can't write any other kind of music, if one's worldview has actually been formed during the 21st century... perhaps there are some older composers writing "20th century music", but I don't think it's possible to write music from any other time period unless one is a time traveler.

Quite - so whether Alex is 'worried' about his music being '21st century' (& I wonder what you mean by that) or not, it clearly is because it has been written during the 21st century. A response to RB's question could be that it 'reflects the time' in which it was written because it was written in that time.

[Pabmusic]

I've opened it. Well done! (whatever it sounds like). I'll listen to it within the nest 24 hours.

[Richard Barrett]

A response to RB's question could be that it 'reflects the time' in which it was written because it was written in that time.

It could be, but I would make a difference between something which "reflects" its time, as a symptom so to speak, and something which responds to its time, which takes the stylistic stance that it does through a positive decision rather than by default. This is what I mean by awareness.

[ahinton]

It could be, but I would make a difference between something which "reflects" its time, as a symptom so to speak, and something which responds to its time, which takes the stylistic stance that it does through a positive decision rather than by default. This is what I mean by awareness.

Whilst identification of that difference is welcome in principle, I'm less than confident that specific agreed parameters could be put forward to identify beyond question whether, how and to what extent any composers might be determined as having either "reflected" or "responded to" their time in their work; to me, opinions on either would almost certainly be as personal, individual asnd divergent as the phenomena themselves - i.e. not everyone would agree on either. Also, I'm wondering where in the scheme of things composers might prioritise the duty, conscious desire or whatever else to reflect or respond to their time in their work; in other words, does or should this come first and foremost or are there wider and more pressing considerations?

Rachmaninov has been mentioned upthread; whilst Stravinsky and others were wont to pour scorn on him as a composer who, having relocated to America, had nothing new to say but continued nevertheless to say it (albeit only from time to time), I don't think that he stagnated during that time; it seems to me that he simply continued to develop in his own way, which might well not have been widely accepted as "of its time" (in either of the above senses) but still represented development for the composer himself (gone, for example, are the big tunes of the time of the second symphony). Just a thought or two...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Rachmaninov has been mentioned upthread; whilst Stravinsky and others were wont to pour scorn on him as a composer who, having relocated to America, had nothing new to say but continued nevertheless to say it (albeit only from time to time), I don't think that he stagnated during that time; it seems to me that he simply continued to develop in his own way, which might well not have been widely accepted as "of its time" (in either of the above senses) but still represented development for the composer himself (gone, for example, are the big tunes of the time of the second symphony). Just a thought or two...

Except that, when Rachmaninoff was 27 he had already published sixteen works (including the First Symphony) and was about to start work on his Second Piano Concerto. None of these works were written in a style that could be confused with that of a hundred years earlier: Rachmaninoff developed a style of his own that had its foundations in the current Music that existed in Russia when he was a young man; not that of generations before.

It is interesting that it is only now that there are composers who adopt the mannerisms of a previous century wholeheartedly and expect to be taken seriously. It is only in the world of Music that this happens - nobody paints in the style of Alma-Tadema, nobody writes plays a la Pinero or novels in the manner of Rudyard Kipling. Quite apart from any individual's work, this is a fascinating aspect of early Twenty-First Century Musical attitudes - perhaps on a different Thread. (But I think Alex might find it useful to consider such points.)