Whitacre, Eric (b 1970)

[Vox Humana]

Yes - "the Traditional methods" of teaching "Bachian" Four-part Chorale Harmonization, or "Palestrinian" Species Counterpoint (that is, as primarily a set of paper exercises, following "rules") doesn't - and cannot - encourage genuine critical listening. But taught properly such study should essentially be listening-strengthening study, concentrating on how "voices" work with each other - how melodic lines can suggest different harmonic possibilities - and what helps "define" the "appropriateness" of these different possibilities. It should be precisely a way of listening to a repertoire from the Western Classical Traditions in analytical and critical ways.

Sadly, Music Teachers have a half-hour every week for a maximum of eighteen months - so it's reduced to "these are the rules, don't break them; here's the melody and a pencil"

Thank you. That puts it so much better than I did.

[Vox Humana]

One has the impression that first performances were often received with bafflement. Perhaps it is only with the benefit of hindsight and several centuries of digesting his music that we can proclaim Beethoven's personality as "consistent".

I would agree with that.

[Richard Barrett]

That reminds me of something he posted on his Facebook page a few months ago, which I happened to see courtesy of a friend who "liked" it. I have been unable to locate it and can't recall his exact words, but the gist of it was: "Don't bother reading the theory books: just write what you feel." I think he was exhorting composers to give free rein to their imaginations, which I'm sure any composer would endorse, but I'm not convinced that an ignorance of the rules of traditional harmony and counterpoint, which amongst other things assist in developing a critical ear, confers an advantage in this respect.

"Writing what you feel", though, or giving "free rein to your imagination," is very likely to consist only of rehashes of someone else's feelings and imagination unless it's the result of developing the focus and discipline to transcend what you already know. Does this require knowledge of the "rules of traditional harmony and counterpoint"? I have a few observations about this:
(1) I don't think it's helpful to think of them as rules. You refer for example to consecutive fifths. It's important to understand that the lack of consecutive fifths in, say, Palestrina, isn't the result of a strategy of avoidance but of concentration on a certain kind of harmonic-textural consistency. Once something like that is understood, felt one might say, it can be seen as one among many possible characteristics of many different kinds of harmonic-textural consistency, whether we're talking about Renaissance counterpoint or integral serialism. Understanding how to achieve consistency is an important skill, even or especially if that consistency constitutes a starting point for all kinds of extrapolations and contradictions; but studying traditional harmony is I think only one of many possible ways of acquiring that skill.
(2) I don't think it's necessary to learn compositional techniques that one has no interest in, or no interest in using. But with the kind of focus and discipline I mentioned before, one can know how to go about acquiring a given technique should it ever be desirable to do so. Personally I am not interested in using traditional forms and techniques: the invention of forms and techniques is for me part of composing, and another part is constantly to try to go beyond ideas that I already know about and know how to realise. On the other hand I'm interested in knowing about those traditional things because I'm interested in much of the music that embodies them, and I do feel that this knowledge has a positive if intangible effect on what I do. But I wouldn't try to force it on anyone else. Regarding the aforementioned acquisition of techniques, I've never for example written a fugue in my life, having received almost no formal training, and I can't imagine a situation where I would wish to, but I think I would know how to do it if for example someone held a gun to my head.
(3) I wouldn't wish to imply that I think Eric Whitacre is lacking in compositional skills per se, but I don't see much point in boasting about one's lack of knowledge, as I've said before, and while his off-the-shelf approach obviously enables him to do what he does, what he does seems to me extremely limited, for whatever reason.
(4) Apart from anything else, harmony, whether traditional or nontraditional or absent, is only one possible feature of music. I find it a shame that for example rhythm isn't normally studied to the same degree of sophistication, compared for example to the way rhythm is studied in some other traditions, particularly the Karnatic tradition of southern India in which it's necessary to make free use of rhythmical complexities that would frighten off most Western performers. Or electronic composition - I mean in particular the experience of working directly on sound materials, composing timbres and sound-textures in the sense that a traditional composer would compose harmonies. I don't understand creativity that isn't accompanied by a thirst for knowledge, something EW seems proud to have lacked.

[jean]

By chance, someone sent me this just after this thread started:

Nothing to argue with there, of course, and nothing about what we should sing (except his music in the background!)

[Ian]

Perhaps I should reiterate my earlier quote from EW in expanded form: "You mean that [Pärt and others] are the real artists and I’m simply popularising their message? If I hear something and find it to be true, I have no hesitation in using it in my music. With all respect to Pärt, I think you’ll find I have also been influenced by Björk, Thomas Newman, Debussy, The Beatles and Britten. I’ll happily write in another style if it serves to communicate the text or the message. I guess you could call that derivative." So it isn't as if he doesn't admit to it.

Yes, but ‘writing’ in another style’ isn’t necessarily the same thing as ‘I'll alter a few things and bingo’. It is possible to come up with original, ingredient x type, ideas in any style.

And, later in the same interview, "[When I started] I flouted so many traditions without knowing they were there to be flouted. I’m happy I was untethered. There’s great power in being a dumb hick from Nevada. You’re too naive to know what you don’t know.” In other words, my ignorance was better than other people's knowledge.

He is, of course, referring to his ignorance in the past tense. He sounds like someone with an innate passion and gut-level feel for composing who isn’t going to not compose because because he hasn’t yet studied all music or been indoctrinated with the expectations involved in writing for the ‘canon’.

[Ian]

I would agree with that. Here's another way of looking at Krebs and Bach: the former's music is more a symptom of its cultural environment - it does what's expected of it, fulfilling a function efficiently enough, and with maybe an occasional spark of fascination - while the latter's music is a response to that environment - it doesn't just do what's expected of it but implicitly questions the musical milieu in which it's embedded in such a way as to retain its significance through many generations, styles of interpretation, historical developments etc. One of them, to take a literary metaphor (but not too far!) is more like documentary evidence, the other more like profound explanation.

A modern-times complication regarding the concept of a ‘cultural environment’ is that they are now many co-existing cultural environments. So what might seem to be a ‘symptom’ of one such environment could be seen as a ‘response‘ in another.

[Ian]

Poulenc was able to do such things without raising aesthetic concerns;

Are you sure? I remember reading an article in the BBC music magazine about the banning of Poulenc from broadcast on R3 (or whatever it was called back then). The article reprinted some of the internal messages - obviously for comic effect.

[ahinton]

"Writing what you feel", though, or giving "free rein to your imagination," is very likely to consist only of rehashes of someone else's feelings and imagination unless it's the result of developing the focus and discipline to transcend what you already know. Does this require knowledge of the "rules of traditional harmony and counterpoint"? I have a few observations about this:
(1) I don't think it's helpful to think of them as rules. You refer for example to consecutive fifths. It's important to understand that the lack of consecutive fifths in, say, Palestrina, isn't the result of a strategy of avoidance but of concentration on a certain kind of harmonic-textural consistency. Once something like that is understood, felt one might say, it can be seen as one among many possible characteristics of many different kinds of harmonic-textural consistency, whether we're talking about Renaissance counterpoint or integral serialism. Understanding how to achieve consistency is an important skill, even or especially if that consistency constitutes a starting point for all kinds of extrapolations and contradictions; but studying traditional harmony is I think only one of many possible ways of acquiring that skill.
(2) I don't think it's necessary to learn compositional techniques that one has no interest in, or no interest in using. But with the kind of focus and discipline I mentioned before, one can know how to go about acquiring a given technique should it ever be desirable to do so. Personally I am not interested in using traditional forms and techniques: the invention of forms and techniques is for me part of composing, and another part is constantly to try to go beyond ideas that I already know about and know how to realise. On the other hand I'm interested in knowing about those traditional things because I'm interested in much of the music that embodies them, and I do feel that this knowledge has a positive if intangible effect on what I do. But I wouldn't try to force it on anyone else. Regarding the aforementioned acquisition of techniques, I've never for example written a fugue in my life, having received almost no formal training, and I can't imagine a situation where I would wish to, but I think I would know how to do it if for example someone held a gun to my head.
(3) I wouldn't wish to imply that I think Eric Whitacre is lacking in compositional skills per se, but I don't see much point in boasting about one's lack of knowledge, as I've said before, and while his off-the-shelf approach obviously enables him to do what he does, what he does seems to me extremely limited, for whatever reason.
(4) Apart from anything else, harmony, whether traditional or nontraditional or absent, is only one possible feature of music. I find it a shame that for example rhythm isn't normally studied to the same degree of sophistication, compared for example to the way rhythm is studied in some other traditions, particularly the Karnatic tradition of southern India in which it's necessary to make free use of rhythmical complexities that would frighten off most Western performers. Or electronic composition - I mean in particular the experience of working directly on sound materials, composing timbres and sound-textures in the sense that a traditional composer would compose harmonies. I don't understand creativity that isn't accompanied by a thirst for knowledge, something EW seems proud to have lacked.

Lots to think about here, without doubt, with which some I can readily identify.

I do question, however, your first sentence here; why should - or even might - "writing what you feel" or giving "free rein to your imagination" be "very likely to consist only of rehashes of someone else's feelings and imagination", whether or not "it's the result of developing the focus and discipline to transcend what you already know"? The notion that it is so might be thought to imply that doing either or both of these things must presume some kind of insincerity of feeling and imagination by reason of being mere recyclings of someone else's, not to say contentment with them as such, a prospect that would surely be as depressing and dispiriting as it would be potentially dangerous.

I accept in principle what you write in (1).

I also broadly concur with what you write in (2); I have never been able, for example, to develop an interest in creating electronic music and so have never learned any techniques that might enable me to try my hand at this; the motivation has just never been there. As to fugal writing, I recall that Dutilleux used to write fugues (albeit mainly as exercises for his own benefit) at around the time that his younger compatriot Boulez was writing his first two piano sonatas; I guess that he must have felt sufficient reason to do this just as Boulez presumably didn't (at least as far as I know). Just let me have your address and I'll make an appointment to pop round with a suitable firearm (which I would first have to acquire and which would not in any event be loaded); a Barrett fugue would be an interesting prospect and I have no doubt that you'd know how to write one should to decide to do so. After all, you must have listened to hundreds of them in your time - and I well recall the young John Ogdon being asked how he'd managed to prepare the Brahms Second Piano Concerto in a matter of hours (when he'd been asked to stand in for the suddenly indisposed Gina Bachauer) and replying, "oh, well, I've heard it lots of times"...

I don't see much point in boasting about one's lack of knowledge either, but was EW actually doing that per se or just drawing attention to it en passant? - after all, you have yourself admitted to having had no formal training as a musician but I read that as a mere fact, not as a "boast" as such. Whether or not EW's approach to composition is a consistently "off-the-shelf" one is not something of which I'm certain so I would prefer to refrain from comment on it (and, in any case, the value of the results would presumably have to be dependent upon what he has on his particular shelf, I imagine) but, yes, what he does (or at least such as I've heard of it) also strikes me as limited and complacent, even if it isn't actually the latter. Given that a substantial proportion of his music is vocal, I wonder how far, if at all, it might lift him out of what some might take to be his comfort zone were he to be commissioned, for example, to compose a 30 minute sextet for piccolo, cor anglé, contrabass clarinet, euphonium, viola and double bass...

I fully concur with the first two sentences in your (4) and will have to refrain from comment on the third as I have no experience in that field. As to the last, is EW really "proud" to have lacked a thirst for knowledge?

I apologise that, as a response, the above barely even scratches the surface and there's much about which to give thought here.

[Ian]

That is a debatable assertion
but in my experience doing "the rules" meant that I became able to harmonise and write counterpoint that fitted "the rules" while listening to other music.

Yes, but that makes it sound as if you weren’t doing anything other than avoiding breaking rules. Where you also (whilst listening to other music) trying to come up with some ‘magic’ ideas? You know, the sort of thing that another composer might say “ ooh, I wish I’d thought of that”.

[Ian]

But was he perceived thus in his own time? One has the impression that first performances were often received with bafflement. Perhaps it is only with the benefit of hindsight and several centuries of digesting his music that we can proclaim Beethoven's personality as "consistent".

This narrative (that Beethoven was largely misunderstood in his lifetime and that it is was only after his death, over a period of decades, that we all learnt what a great composer he was) clearly serves the interest of much contemporary music that ‘also’ struggles to find a contemporary audience. The problem is, however, that in Beethoven’s case it is not really true. Which is not to say that individual damming assessments can’t be found - as they can regarding any composer - not least Eric Whitacre!

Despite Beethoven’s ‘greatness’ he still had a successful career as a jobbing composer fulling a wide range of commissions (often for amateurs of various abilities) and selling that music on to commercial publishers. I’ve no doubt that if in his day there was an international infrastructure of media dissemination coupled with copyright protection he would also have been extremely successful financially.

[Ian]

I've never for example written a fugue in my life, having received almost no formal training, and I can't imagine a situation where I would wish to, but I think I would know how to do it if for example someone held a gun to my head.

Official confirmation that every man has his price!

In complete contrast (i.e. everyone was saying “no. don’t do it”) I have relatively recently written a fugue (actually worse - a prelude and fugue)

It’s not that I particularly wanted to write a prelude and fugue it’s just that I had an idea for one which I liked. So my choice was either to write it or not.

I sure you would love to hear it:

https://soundcloud.com/heneghan-and-lawson/ian-lawson-prelude-and-fugue

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

This narrative (that Beethoven was largely misunderstood in his lifetime and that it is was only after his death, over a period of decades, that we all learnt what a great composer he was) clearly serves the interest of much contemporary music that ‘also’ struggles to find a contemporary audience. The problem is, however, that in Beethoven’s case it is not really true. ...

Despite Beethoven’s ‘greatness’ he still had a successful career as a jobbing composer fulling a wide range of commissions (often for amateurs of various abilities) and selling that music on to commercial publishers. I’ve no doubt that if in his day there was an international infrastructure of media dissemination coupled with copyright protection he would also have been extremely successful financially.

Oh, indeed - Beethoven wrote potboilers to gain extra income; the Flute Serenades, the Incidental Music, the arrangements of Scottish folksongs, the Battle "Symphony" - all the stuff that isn't much performed these says. But whilst it no doubt serves the interests of much contemporary music that also seeks to entertain a contemporary audience, it should not be entirely forgotten that the works upon which his lasting reputation is secured appealed only to a small audience of enthusiasts, regarded as cranks by the majority of their contemporaries (and for very many years afterwards).

The purpose of your post, Ian, isn't entirely clear to me (my dimness, no doubt) - is it that EW, in addition to his "popular" publications, is also producing works that are more "demanding" and/or "challenging" of the listener? If so, could links to recordings of these works be provided, please.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Official confirmation that every man has his price!

So, if somebody put a gun to your head, you would still refuse to write, say, a piece using the techniques of "Integrated Serialism"?

In complete contrast (i.e. everyone was saying “no. don’t do it”) I have relatively recently written a fugue (actually worse - a prelude and fugue)
It’s not that I particularly wanted to write a prelude and fugue it’s just that I had an idea for one which I liked. So my choice was either to write it or not.
I sure you would love to hear it:

https://soundcloud.com/heneghan-and-...lude-and-fugue

I'm a sucker for Fugues - and much enjoyed this one, Ian, thank you. (The Prelude was a bit noodly-doodly for my taste, but that's just me.) Have you heard Alistair's String Quintet? Superb fugal writing there.

[Richard Barrett]

So, if somebody put a gun to your head, you would still refuse to write, say, a piece using the techniques of "Integrated Serialism"?

Ha!

I enjoyed the fugue too.

[Ian]

Oh, indeed - Beethoven wrote potboilers to gain extra income; the Flute Serenades, the Incidental Music, the arrangements of Scottish folksongs, the Battle "Symphony" - all the stuff that isn't much performed these says. But whilst it no doubt serves the interests of much contemporary music that also seeks to entertain a contemporary audience, it should not be entirely forgotten that the works upon which his lasting reputation is secured appealed only to a small audience of enthusiasts, regarded as cranks by the majority of their contemporaries (and for very many years afterwards).

But that is the point I’m arguing is greatly overstated. Many of his major works - i.e. Symphonies, concertos, quartets, piano sonatas - were very successful in his lifetime.

From the preface of the Barenteiter edition of the 9th:

'Although the enormous costs of mounting the concert (1st performance of the ninth) prevented Beethoven from earning as much as he had expected, it was nevertheless a great success'... etc, etc...

It is true however that the work was less successful a little later in London - with the audience apparently bewildered by the last movement. Perhaps they were bothered by Beethoven pulling such a obvious crowd-pleaser on them!

However, it was only ten or so years later though the symphony’s current status was sewn up across the board.