Whitacre, Eric (b 1970)

[Vox Humana]

Personally I'm not keen on describing composers as having/not having "something (of value) to say". It's a formulation that doesn't bear close scrutiny. To give one example among many: is it possible to speak of having "something to say" when everything one says has been said before? Surely not. Therefore having "something (of value) to say" really means having "something new to say", and we are back at a concept of originality. But really, the implication that what's going on in a musical experience is being "told" something by a composer is a very limiting way to look at what is (or perhaps ought to be) an active, two-way process of communication rather than a passive process of reception.

Fair point - but I think the concept of individuality is still valid.

[ahinton]

Fair point - but I think the concept of individuality is still valid.

Indeed so - and "of more value" than "originality", methinks.

[Richard Barrett]

Fair point - but I think the concept of individuality is still valid.

I wasn't suggesting for a moment that it isn't. But what does "individuality" mean but someone with a unique contribution to make? - or, in other words, something you haven't heard from anyone else. Once again we return to a concept of originality, whatever other terms one might use for it. And while I'm on the subject, everything we're saying about composers - individuality, originality and so on - apply also to those who participate in music as listeners. Some listeners develop their listening skills and tastes to a high degree through a profound involvement with the music they hear (NB this has nothing to do with whether one has a "musical education" or not), as can easily be seen from the contributions of many members of this forum, only a small proportion of whom are professionally involved in music I think; while others just want to hear something that sounds pleasant (which usually means more or less familiar), and of course there's every shade between these positions.

But returning to "the concept of individuality", it's something very particular to our own time and culture, and it can also be somewhat limiting. What about music which has been composed by more than one person? What does individuality mean then? Or in the case of much early music, where the identity of the composer isn't known? Personally I'm more interested in music than in composers. A composer isn't a different species from a listener; it's not something one is, it's something one does, it's a way of participating in the world of music that also comprises performers, listeners and all combinations of these (and more). I don't think this world should be thought of in terms of one-way traffic.

[ahinton]

I wasn't suggesting for a moment that it isn't. But what does "individuality" mean but someone with a unique contribution to make? - or, in other words, something you haven't heard from anyone else. Once again we return to a concept of originality, whatever other terms one might use for it. And while I'm on the subject, everything we're saying about composers - individuality, originality and so on - apply also to those who participate in music as listeners. Some listeners develop their listening skills and tastes to a high degree through a profound involvement with the music they hear (NB this has nothing to do with whether one has a "musical education" or not), as can easily be seen from the contributions of many members of this forum, only a small proportion of whom are professionally involved in music I think; while others just want to hear something that sounds pleasant (which usually means more or less familiar), and of course there's every shade between these positions.

Once again, very much to the point, methinks; whilst defining the distinction between "originality" and "individuality" in composers is far from easy, I suppose in a way that Ronald Stevenson's notion of the former as sometimes being represented by "originality for its own sake" and the latter by "that's the way that I do it because that's how I think and so I can't do it any other way". Not perfect by any means but I think that it does to some extent touch upon why it is that some people seek to distinguish between the two.

[Chris Watson]

Very interesting reading here.
I feel moved to defend EW not because of the fact that I like him personally, or because his music is singable and well enough written for the voice (I could name some modern composers for whom neither of those could be said, but won't for now...) nor indeed because he needs defending but because he has made (I think) a positive net contribution to the music (possibly, choral certainly) world. His music may well be a cocktail of those who went before him, but he really does have an individual voice. The pieces we recorded on the Polyphony Hyperion disc were written in the 1990s and did feel new and exciting at the time. Nowadays you often hear the cry 'it sounds like Whitacre' - this is certainly a legitimate criticism of the composer of the piece that's being criticised, but if anything is a compliment to EW - his style is recognisably his (I'll avoid getting drawn in to the originality/individuality argument as I'm not as well equipped for an academic discussion as others here). I had an argument on a social network recently with a composer well known for his choral writing (by no means all he writes), whose music I love and who I have commissioned myself, and one of his main criticisms of the EW school was that it has led to mass-imitation and a serious lack of learning/teaching of proper polyphonic writing. This may be true, but you can't blame the chocolate manufacturer if the shops decide one day only to sell chocolate. I also think the argument that 'A could write like B if he wanted but B could never write like A' is totally bogus. It may prove that A is a clever boy who paid more attention during the Old Masters lessons at Hogwarts but says absolutely nothing about the relative quality of A and B's own music. It's absolutely fine to have preferred composers and styles and obviously it's the case that some writers have more creative genius than others - Bach is a better composer than Wesley, and I can easily name many writers who I like but wouldn't choose to sit down and listen to for an hour or so without break. If you really can't cope with EW's music and would rather immerse yourself in Sorabji (I heard the composer I referred to a moment ago play some once - it was amazing but I left feeling rather battered) or Stockhausen (I absolutely love performing Stimmung, which I did most recently in Carnegie Hall, but could never sit and listen to it) that's absolutely fine but if you want to sit there and dismiss it I think you're barking up the wrong tree.

[Richard Barrett]

It's interesting, in view of EW's pronouncements on attention span quoted upthread, that you'd choose Sorabji and Stimmung with their extended durations as examples of music that leaves you feeling "battered" or that you could "never sit and listen to."

Indeed one shouldn't blame EW for his imitators; the problem is rather that his music itself is imitation; what you hear as an individual voice I hear as a blend of preexistent elements which seem thrown together as ephemeral "effects" rather than integrated into a coherent structure (even on a sub-10-minute timescale). Structural coherence can after all be an essential aspect of expressivity, whether a listener is consciously aware of it or not. EW's music strikes me as a kind of "music minus one" where the missing "one" is everything I find profound and memorable in music. Stimmung on the other hand emerges from and encourages a new way of listening: to voices, to harmony, to structural processes and more, and can constitute an endlessly thought-provoking experience for the receptive listener in a way that for example a mass by Ockeghem can, but which a few minutes of blandly diatonic word-illustration is hardly likely to be able to do. It depends on what you're looking for I suppose.

[Ian]

The idea that music ever has anything to ‘say’ (new, or otherwise) is such an imprecise concept as to be virtually useless - except for low-level rhetorical purposes. Has anyone ever been able to paraphrase something that a piece of music is supposed to be ‘saying’?

If what is meant by ‘having nothing new to say‘ is simply a vague rhetorical euphemism for ‘it’s not original‘ then it is the direct expression that should be used - at least then the issue can be meaningfully explored:

If we are to do this, it would be first useful to establish were we individually ‘set the bar‘ -above or below which we are prepared to ‘accept’ with the work in question. I have noticed that individuals set set their bar high or low according to the level of empathy they have with the style/genre to which the work is seen to be connected.

Which itself connects to another often-used meaningless rhetorical cliché “it’s a bit samey” usually used to avoid revealing that the similarity only exists with other works belonging to a particular style or genre which, a priori, the critic has no time for. But how do styles/genres come into existence except by works having things in common - i.e. being a bit samey? And of course the further you are away from a style the more similar its individual exemplars will seem.

A new piece of music can be original in many ways but not every one accepts all those ways as being valid. For a example if a composer writes a tune that sounds as if it could be a traditional English folk song - to what extent could that work be considered original?

It is clear that some would not give it the time of day on the grounds ‘that it could have been written centuries ago’ - and therefore could not possibly be original. For others, though its originality would depend to what extent the melody leaps out as being memorable and distinctive. It wouldn’t be enough simply for the tune to remind them of something else - it would have to have that ingredient X -something for which no analytical vocabulary exists.

I think this is pertinent to EW because some of this music does, to my ears, have that ingredient X. Sure you can see similarities in his work to other composers (for example compare EW’s Alleluia to Thomas Newman’s score for American Beauty) but, in the main, the similarities usually mentioned are no more than features of a style/genre that has emerged in recent decades.

[Chris Watson]

There's plenty of extended music that I enjoy listening to - Francis Pott Christus, the Messiaen extended organ pieces or his Turangalila, the Mahler symphonies or Mozart and Beethoven 4tets or the Masses of Ockeghem. I chose Sorabji and Stockhausen as they had been referenced one way or another in this discussion. Lack of attention span is not a problem, nor is a fondness for one style over another. I just find a place in my appreciation for what EW does for many reasons. "It depends on what you're looking for I suppose". Not just one thing, I guess.

[Chris Watson]

(for example compare EW’s Alleluia to Thomas Newman’s score for American Beauty)

Interestingly (?) Alleluia is a reworking of this piece, which received its premiere 8 months after American Beauty was released, so he will very probably have had the Newman soundtrack going round and round inside his head while he was writing it.

http://ericwhitacre.com/music-catalog/wind-symphony/october

[Richard Barrett]

he will very probably have had the Newman soundtrack going round and round inside his head while he was writing it.

This is exactly what I mean.

[Chris Watson]

You make it sound as if it's a problem! Almost any composer who's ever lived will have had other music in their heads and will have been influenced by it in one way or another. There will always be moments of really true original thought (I guess Schoenberg's first 12 tone pieces might count as one example) but many more great pieces that have echoes of the past.

[Richard Barrett]

You make it sound as if it's a problem!

Regurgitating music you've just heard on a film soundtrack is a problem! It's nothing to do with echoes of the past (of which Schoenberg's music has many - his first thoroughly 12-tone piece was in baroque dance suite form after all) but of having something floating around in your head and thinking that's nice, yes that'll do, I'll alter a few things and bingo. What kind of creativity is that?

[Serial_Apologist]

You make it sound as if it's a problem! Almost any composer who's ever lived will have had other music in their heads and will have been influenced by it in one way or another. There will always be moments of really true original thought (I guess Schoenberg's first 12 tone pieces might count as one example) but many more great pieces that have echoes of the past.

Actually Schoenberg's first piano pieces written using 12-tone methods reminded me straight away of the Bach 2- 3- and 4-part inventions I was made to learn at School. But despite conciously deploying Baroque methods to demonstrate the composer's continuity with his own tradition, denied by many of his detractors, they are nevertheless original in terms of their harmonic language.

[ahinton]

Actually Schoenberg's first piano pieces written using 12-tone methods reminded me straight away of the Bach 2- 3- and 4-part inventions I was made to learn at School. But despite conciously deploying Baroque methods to demonstrate the composer's continuity with his own tradition, denied by many of his detractors, they are nevertheless original in terms of their harmonic language.

Indeed - a question of seeing existing matter in a different light and/or from a different perspective, as it were; Sorabji wrote what is perhaps a quite surprisingly large number of fugues of one kind or another over some 60 years and, whilst Bach would never have contemplated writing fugues remotely like his, there can also be no doubt that Sorabji would not have written them as he did without the example of Bach (whom he revered). That said, I have a suspicion that Schönberg sought consciously at times to make his early dodecaphonic serial pieces relatively simple in textural, rhythmic and other terms in the hope that this somewhat leaner approah might help to render them more easily assimilable, for gone would appear to be some of the more elaborate intricacies of some of his earlier music such as the D minor string quartet, the E major chamber symphony, Pelleas, Gurrelieder and, perhaps most notably, Erwartung.

[Ian]

Regurgitating music you've just heard on a film soundtrack is a problem! It's nothing to do with echoes of the past (of which Schoenberg's music has many - his first thoroughly 12-tone piece was in baroque dance suite form after all) but of having something floating around in your head and thinking that's nice, yes that'll do, I'll alter a few things and bingo. What kind of creativity is that?

To dismiss the Whitacre on the grounds that his motivation must have been no more than to alter a few things to an existing, very well known (and copyright protected) film score seems to me like a lot of mean-spirited spin.

Certainly the opening few bars of Alleluia repeat a phrase that is clearly reminiscent of ‘Any other Name’ from American Beauty’ and I would say that the music that immediately follows this opening has a touch of Lauridsen about it - but no more than say Tippett’s A Child of Our Time can sound surprisingly like Vaughan Williams. But taken as a whole I don’t think the Whitacre could have been written by anyone else.