Musical Structure

[Alison]

'No matter how intricate or unpredictable the twists and turns of a piece of work, the artist must first erect the invisible, objective structures that support their material like scaffolding supports the construction of a building.' (TOM COULT)

Discuss.

[Richard Barrett]

Discuss.

I didn't know who Tom Coult was, and I was about to say this is the typical sort of ill-defined and limited but meaningful-sounding pontification that musical fuddy-duddies of the mid-20th century might come up with.

"The artist must..." No, there's nothing the artist "must" do.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It's a bit like saying "no matter what the twists and turns of personality and character a human being has, the parents must first construct the skeleton of their children".

Many a 19th Century Symphony (for example) was marred by the idea that "Form" is a noun - a sort-of "blueprint" of "first this happens, and then this, and then this ...". "Form" (or "structure") can also be a verb - something that the composer does as s/he "writes": the structure emerging, rather than sounds being "tailored" to fit a pre-planned "pattern". (Bruckner's critics' problems with and hostility towards his Symphonies are rooted in their failure to understand this.*)

Coult's idea is understandable from his point of view as a director - he has to understand an existing and "finished"(-ish) work of performance art, and base his own reading of this on what's already there. And composers required to produce Music for film or stage also need to make their work "fit" another artefact that already exists (a composer making their own operatic version of Hamlet can adjust the order of the scenes because the Music sounds better that way, but I don't think that a s/he'd get regular employment if s/he insisted that "To be or not to be" makes for better Musical sense moved to the Mime scene.)

* = which also shows that "structuring", is something that listeners also need to do: going to a performance of an unfamiliar piece with a pre-arranged idea of what the structure of the work is going to be (and "should") be can lead to a most unpleasant waste of time.

[Alison]

I like the noun/verb point Ferney.

I'm often struck by how often reviews of contemporary music are mainly based on the perceived presence or lack of structure.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I'm often struck by how often reviews of contemporary music are mainly based on the perceived presence or lack of structure.

Yes - but I think it's always been the contemporaries of the critics who so "perceive", Alison, as with Bruckner (and Delius - it took ten years of living in the weather conditions of a Bradford postcode for me to follow the progression in his larger-scale works!)

It's only human - if a listener has set ideas about what constitutes "good structure", then it's difficult for them to hear what a composer is doing when s/he does something that doesn't conform to those preconceptions.

Which makes life very difficult for them when these preconceptions are confronted by a piece created on the moment in improvisation.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

We had a university lecturer who's mantra was "Form and expression are synonymous. No-one can argue with that."

We did argue, of course, but he did have a point.

[MrGongGong]

On several occasions i've worked with otherwise very talented young composers who bring along a whole heap of "structural ideas" for a piece without much consideration for the sound of the music. When questioned about how it will sound I usually get a whole heap of stuff about how one section will relate to another even in terms of key and tonality BUT no sense of the sonic fingerprint at all.

[QUOTE] "The artist must..." No, there's nothing the artist "must" do.[QUOTE]

Spot on RB

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Yes - for students training themselves/being trained to think Musically in ways that they're unfamiliar with, setting "structural boundaries" can be a good exercise. Trouble is when they continue to think that this way of thinking is what they "should" be doing - they remain bad students throughout their careers (rewarded with a Doctorate and a single 10-minute Proms commission in their early twenties then forgotten about thereafter, appointed to a University/Conservatory post and passing on their bad ideas to hapless future generations of composers).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Happy May day, everyone!

[Serial_Apologist]

Happy May day, everyone!

And in seconding that, to yourself too, ferney!

Personally, I think it is possible to derive pleasure from the surprise of having one's preconceptions about a forthcoming piece shattered. One is always going to have preconceptions of some sort, I would guess. It happens quite often, for me, whenever hearing a Haydn symphony I have not previously heard. I'm not going to say which, because I can never remember - there are so many of them, after all!!!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Personally, I think it is possible to derive pleasure from the surprise of having one's preconceptions about a forthcoming piece shattered.

Yes - I particularly love it when a piece I imagine from previous experience that I'm not going to enjoy is given a performance that (at the very least) gives me a glimpse of the delights that others find in it.

One is always going to have preconceptions of some sort, I would guess. It happens quite often, for me, whenever hearing a Haydn symphony I have not previously heard. I'm not going to say which, because I can never remember - there are so many of them, after all!!!

Indeed - part of the success of many works is the way that the composer(/artist/writer) plays with expectations. Some knowledge of the Sonata Principle(s) is essential to appreciate when a composer re-imagines how this/these can work. It's when "principles"/guidelines become "rules" that ossification has a tendency of settling in - and when long-established procedures become paradigms of "eternal Truths" (long after those procedures have exhausted their expressive potential). IMO.

[vinteuil]

And in seconding that, to yourself too, ferney!

Personally, I think it is possible to derive pleasure from the surprise of having one's preconceptions about a forthcoming piece shattered. One is always going to have preconceptions of some sort, I would guess. It happens quite often, for me, whenever hearing a Haydn symphony I have not previously heard. I'm not going to say which, because I can never remember - there are so many of them, after all!!!

... I suddenly recall a passage in Thomas Love Peacock's 'Headlong Hall', describing the notion of 'surprise' when laying out a landscape garden [chapter 4, 'The Grounds'] -

"I perceive," said Mr Milestone, after they had walked a few paces, "these grounds have never been touched by the finger of taste."

"The place is quite a wilderness," said Squire Headlong: "for, during the latter part of my father's life, while I was finishing my education, he troubled himself about nothing but the cellar, and suffered everything else to go to rack and ruin. A mere wilderness, as you see, even now in December; but in summer a complete nursery of briers, a forest of thistles, a plantation of nettles, without any live stock but goats, that have eaten up all the bark of the trees. Here you see is the pedestal of a statue, with only half a leg and four toes remaining: there were many here once. When I was a boy, I used to sit every day on the shoulders of Hercules: what became of him I have never been able to ascertain. Neptune has been lying these seven years in the dust-hole; Atlas had his head knocked off to fit him for propping a shed; and only the day before yesterday we fished Bacchus out of the horse-pond."

"My dear sir," said Mr Milestone, "accord me your permission to wave the wand of enchantment over your grounds. The rocks shall be blown up, the trees shall be cut down, the wilderness and all its goats shall vanish like mist. Pagodas and Chinese bridges, gravel walks and shrubberies, bowling-greens, canals, and clumps of larch, shall rise upon its ruins. One age, sir, has brought to light the treasures of ancient learning; a second has penetrated into the depths of metaphysics; a third has brought to perfection the science of astronomy; but it was reserved for the exclusive genius of the present times, to invent the noble art of picturesque gardening, which has given, as it were, a new tint to the complexion of nature, and a new outline to the physiognomy of the universe!"

"Give me leave," said Sir Patrick O'Prism, "to take an exception to that same. Your system of levelling, and trimming, and clipping, and docking, and clumping, and polishing, and cropping, and shaving, destroys all the beautiful intricacies of natural luxuriance, and all the graduated harmonies of light and shade, melting into one another, as you see them on that rock over yonder. I never saw one of your improved places, as you call them, and which are nothing but big bowling-greens, like sheets of green paper, with a parcel of round clumps scattered over them, like so many spots of ink, flicked at random out of a pen, and a solitary animal here and there looking as if it were lost, that I did not think it was for all the world like Hounslow Heath, thinly sprinkled over with bushes and highwaymen."

"Sir," said Mr Milestone, "you will have the goodness to make a distinction between the picturesque and the beautiful."

"Will I?" said Sir Patrick, "och! but I won't. For what is beautiful? That what pleases the eye. And what pleases the eye? Tints variously broken and blended. Now, tints variously broken and blended constitute the picturesque."

"Allow me," said Mr Gall. "I distinguish the picturesque and the beautiful, and I add to them, in the laying out of grounds, a third and distinct character, which I call unexpectedness."

"Pray, sir," said Mr Milestone, "by what name do you distinguish this character, when a person walks round the grounds for the second time?"



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[BBMmk2]

I avoid posts liken this that at the end of it says, discuss. IMO, it sounds like an order!

[Alison]

I avoid posts liken this that at the end of it says, discuss. IMO, it sounds like an order!

A brief comment can often suffice, Maestro!

See #2

[Serial_Apologist]

"Pray, sir," said Mr Milestone, "by what name do you distinguish this character, when a person walks round the grounds for the second time?"

Reminds me of someone who wanted to know what satisfaction could I possibly derive from repeatedly taking the same walks, when surely by now I must be familiar with every nook and cranny? I replied that nature always moves on. On the other side of the picture, we move on from our intial perceptions of static structures too, and experience them in the light of our own inner development.