'The long graft of refining, of ordering'

[french frank]

"I'm not going to write about ideas when they're fully formed. Instead I want to reveal what it is to arrive at something, with all the possible accompanying uncertainties, all the things that change. I want to talk as much about what I reject as what I keep, to show how raw things can be at first, and something of the long graft of refining, of ordering. "

Michael Zev Gordon blogs about his Work in Progress - a commission for the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Any of our composers empathise with this?

[3rd Viennese School]

No.

[french frank]

I was laughing even before I saw what you'd written, 3VS

[MrGongGong]

Yes.

(and No sometimes)

[Serial_Apologist]

I recall Alexander Goehr, several years ago in a series of radio talks, stating the the most difficult thing for a composer to do was to write a clear melodic statement, and write a second melodic line to accompany it. Or words to that effect.

In "Silence", John Cage accorded to Debussy the statement that, when composing, he took all the notes that there were. He then got rid of the ones he didn't want, and used the rest.

How apocryphal this was, I've no idea.

S-A

[PatrickOD]

" I want to talk as much about what I reject as what I keep, to show how raw things can be at first, and something of the long graft of refining, of ordering. "

Not being a composer, ff, I thought of the process of writing poetry and that this could well be a description of that process, as I imagine it. I'm not a poet either, but cannot a cat look at a king?

Brahms, if I remember correctly, said much the same thing. He said it was not difficult to compose; the difficulty lay in deciding what were the unnecessary notes.

I must say that I'm disappointed in the response of our resident composer 3VS, and MrGongGong wasn't very forthcoming either.

[Serial_Apologist]

I think 3VS's answer was from the Webernian perspective

[french frank]

I must say that I'm disappointed in the response of our resident composer 3VS, and MrGongGong wasn't very forthcoming either.

Perhaps I unnecessarily focused on that one point, quoting and posing a question

A wider perspective is always possible.

[3rd Viennese School]

It would take years to talk about all the material rejected even for just one work!