NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/rec/music/compose/358

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From: [e-mail] (Matthew Fields)
Subject: GEMS 1 [reprint]
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Sender: [e-mail] (Mr. News)
Organization: University of Michigan EECS Dept., Ann Arbor, MI
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 21:13:15 GMT
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GEMS 1
==== =

Matthew H. Fields

I mentioned a willingness to post some general and specific observations
regarding music composition, and so far, I've received an enthusiastic
response.  Therefore, this is the first such posting.

The topic for today is:

DRAMATIC SHAPE

I have chosen to present this topic first because it seems the most useful
to the greatest number of people, and, of all the topics I've offered to
write about, it is the least tied to a particular style.

Disclaimers:  I am presenting the material here mainly as my opinion.  If
you try to make use of my suggestions and they don't help you write
fabulous music, I don't accept any liability.  Likewise, it is strictly
to your credit and none of mine if you do write fabulous music before or
after reading these posts.  Plenty of the ideas I will be discussing
in this series have been mentioned before, and some theorists may even
wish to lay copyright claim or patent claim to some of them.  However, I
claim that the core ideas have been known to composers and used by them
long before anybody published any writings on them, and these ideas are
therefore basically in the public domain.

On the other hand, I actually sat down and wrote the text of this posting,
and it took me a bit of time and thought, so if anybody were to exploit
this text as a commodity without consulting me, I might get very mad
(standard disclaimer).

All that having been said, I am interested in getting some feedback
on how interesting or useful you find this article.

ABSTRACT
In this article, I will explore several basic hints for writing pieces
with convincing climaxes.

INTRODUCTION
One way in which I like to classify music is into two kinds: pieces which
move from a beginning towards a climax, and pieces which don't.  Really,
the only way which a piece can avoid a sense of climax is to keep a fairly
consistent level of intensity throughout.  Many pop/rock songs do this,
and pop/rock composers may feel that this article is irrelevant to their
art.  On the other hand, such artists often compose a series of their
songs or performances as an album side, a dance set, or an uninterrupted
portion of a concert, and on this scale they often seek to create a
motion to a climax across many songs.  Therefore, perhaps this topic will
be interesting to them and performers in general, too.

DEFINITIONS
Now, by intensity, I refer to a rather abstract psychological variable,
something on the order of "level of frenzy".  Typical ways of expressing
increasing intensity are:
a) getting louder (making a more emphatic music);
b) moving towards extremes of pitch, both high and low (again, immitating
   spoken expressions of strong feeling);
c) adding additional instruments to those playing (in classical music
   we call this "thickening the texture")
d) interspersing melody with more and more irregular, frequent rests
   (in emulation of shortness of breath)
and so forth (you may always use your imagination to find more ways
to use in addition to these).

Sometimes, people will refer to the dramatic curve of a composition as
its "form".  This is a tricky word to use, at least in English, because
it can also refer to what I call a rhyme scheme for a piece (is it
made of repeating verses with a bridge, is it sonata-allegro form, is
it ABA form, rondo, or what?)...  So, if I were called upon to discuss
dramatic shape as a kind of form, I would have to distinguish between
"dramatic form" and "rhetorical form".  The two can have clear correlations;
e.g., in a form that goes Refrain-verse-Refrain-verse-Bridge-Refrain,
the climax might typically be towards the end of the Bridge; however,
there's no rule that says the climax has to be in any particular part
of the rhetorical anatomy of a piece.  In sonatas, climaxes typically
come at the beginning of the recap, or at the beginning of the coda,
or at the beginning of the recapitulation of the second key area, or
at the very end, or...

FOUR BASIC SUGGESTIONS
OK, so by now, I'm assuming you have a basic idea what I'm talking about.
what are the hints that I can offer on this material?

1) Strongly consider having only ONE main climax.  You can have lots of
subsidiary climaxes, but if you make one peak just this much more intense
than all the others, this may give your piece a sense of having really
argued its point, having really expressed its emotion, etc.  If you
have two nearly-equal main peaks, you run the risk of the second one
seeming tedious.  Consider making the second one bigger/louder or
gentler/softer than the first.

2) DO SOMETHING ASSERTIVE AT THE BEGINNING OF YOUR PIECE.  This needn't
be loud or sharp, but if you start too soft or mild in the hopes of
then gradually cranking the intensity up, you run the risk of failing
to grab the listener's attention.

Let me tell a little story.  Once, several years ago, I took a composition
lesson with a famous New England composer who will remain nameless.  Fresh
off a plane from his backwoods home, still wearing his coonskin cap,
stinking of cheap whiskey and cigarettes, he arrived having had less than
2 hours sleep in the previous 2 days.  After listening to a few minutes
of my recent compositions, he said, "Well, I can see that I don't have
to encourage you to get to know any basic mechanical transformations for
your material, Matt."

Then he reached over and yanked me to my feet by my collar.  "Your music
has to grab me like this, and NOT LET GO UNTIL THE VERY END!"  With this,
he ended the lesson.  Perhaps I experienced Zen enlightenment in that
moment; perhaps not.

In any case, the suggestion is to save your softest music for just a
little ways into your piece, or for the ending.

3) In works of longer than 30 seconds duration (this figure is chosen
somewhat arbitrarily, but the exact number is irrelevant), the main
climax does not come at the beginning.  It does not come at the
middle.  It comes anywhere from 60% of the way through the piece to
right at the end.  Otherwise you run a terrible risk of having your
listeners get bored with the gradual denoument of your work.

4) Having gotten good at implementing suggestions 1-3, you may still feel
that your climax is somewhat dissappointing.  Let's say you now have a piece
which works like this:

i                                                ^
n                                               / \-
t                                             -/    \
e                                           -/   ^   \-
n                                       ---/     |     \-
s                               -------/         |       \--
i -\                  ---------/                 |          \---
t   --\ /------------/                           |              \--
y      v                                         |                 \--
                                 time            |
                                                 |

                                                 climax

An easy method that often works to make the climax less disappointing goes
by the name "prolonging the climax".  What it often is is a prolongation
of the music just before the climax, and how it works is like this:

1) make sure the music just before the climax strongly suggests that the
   climax is coming;
2) write and insert more of it--possibly a lot more of it.  In classical
   music, this is accomplished by such technicalities as dominant pedals,
   deceptive cadences (Fokke: see the passage just after the horn calls
   in that piano piece!), etc.  My favorite example from pop music is one
   almost everybody has heard: Lennon/McCartney's HEY JUDE.  It works
   up to a frenzy, then spends about half the cut repeating the frenzied
   verse over and over. 2 minutes later, the industry-standard fade-out
   is applied.  When this single was released, the crowd went wild.

Now, this suggestion doesn't guarantee a fix.  If you're expecting
a solo flute playing in its lowest octave to sound climactic during
a symphony band piece, you may need to rethink other aspects of the piece.
However, it works so remarkably well so much of the time that it's worth
trying, at least part of the time.

Concerning the dramatic shape we saw above, suggestion no.4 would
revise it to look like this:


i                                                         ^
n                                               ---------/ \-
t                                             -/             \
e                                           -/      ^     ^   \-
n                                       ---/        |     |     \-
s                               -------/            |     |       \--
i -\                  ---------/                    |     |          \---
t   --\ /------------/                              |     |              \--
y      v                                            |     |                 \--
                                 time               |     |
                                                          |
                                          prolongation    |

                                                       climax

Another famous way of carrying out the same procedure is to get almost
to the climax, then suddenly cut back to a very low level of intensity and
build back up to the climax in just a few seconds of music.  In fact, there
are so many variations and permutations on variations of these techniques
to be explored that you can have endless fun being creative with them.
As a composer, you might want to listen to a variety of works which you
feel have powerful climaxes, and see how they address the motion to the
climax.

OTHER CONCERNS
Now, I haven't mentioned how words create or don't create climaxes of
their own; a favorite suggestion of mine is to experiment with the possibility
that in the midst of a rising vocal line, the climactic text is suddenly
sung very softly, or whispered, so that the text is understated, and then
the accompaniment may or may not state the climax just afterward.  This
can be a particularly spooky, frightening effect.

A lot of people feel that they should compose a piece from the
beginning to the end.  Obviously, suggestion no.4 above says that you
needn't feel constrained to do so (in this way, composition differs
from improvisation, in which, once you've played, you can't go
backwards in time and adjust things).  This is a general admonishment
of mine: don't feel constrained to work in sequential order! You're
the composer, so you can work in whatever order is best for you.  In
particular, when you have a great idea for some part of your piece
which is out of sequence, by all means record it (on tape or in
writing), so you can use it when the time comes.  Along with this
admonshment comes another basic one: no note is absolutely sacredly
unchangeable, not one of yours, not one of mine, ... heck, I can even
imagine that some day there might be someone who could improve
compositions that were originally written by Mozart.  Finally,
there are two important admonishments: 1) a word to beginning composers:
begin! and 2) sooner or later, you're going to have to be satisfied
with how well you've polished your piece, so you might as well call it
"done" and play it for someone, then start a new piece.

The previous paragraph of admonishments will apply well to techniques
that I describe in detail in future articles, too.

LISTENING ASSIGNMENT
For those who are interested, a work to get to know and study which
demonstrates a lot of what I've been talking about is TREN OFIRAM
HIROSZIMY (Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima), by the living
Polish composer Krysztof Penderecki (composition date: about 1964).
This piece is scored for 52 violin-family instruments (violins,
violas, cellos, and basses), who play a variety of massed sounds,
screeching noises, scratching noises, etc.  The piece has no regular
beat, and no recognizable melodic shapes; really, the main feature of
this work is its undulating, shifting level of sound density,
intensity, and emotional fervor.  After a few subsidiary climaxes, the
piece comes to a point about 65% of the way through its length where
the players drop out one by one until, after a brief cello solo, there's
a couple seconds of silence.  Then, a renewed build of intensity
leads to several minutes of almost-climax, a brief pause, and a final
climactic ringing chord.

The sounds of this piece are not friendly, but rather fierce.  They
are not deeply grounded in the Western Classical Tradition, or in
any folk music either, for that matter.  But the dramatic curve of
the piece as a whole is as classical as the motion to a climax in a
Shakespeare play.

The piece can be heard on several recordings, including a current
CD from Warsaw on Conifer Records.

WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT
For those who like to practice principles in little studies, here's
one which I've assigned to beginning students.

Write a composition for 1-4 players.
Limit your duration to about a minute.
Use only "found sounds", that is, noises made by non-musical objects that
you have handy.
Notate your piece with a graphical notation of your own devising, NOT
incorporating any conventional music notation.  Preface your piece with
a legend or key so that your players can quickly decode your notation.
Stage a small performance and perhaps even a recording session of
your new work.

Suggestions: don't be overly specific about matters of time or pitch: this
tends to delay your premiere and make you ponder extra considerations other
than dramatic shape.
DO seek out interesting sounds, like attaching a contact mike to a string
from which a wire hanger is dangled.  DO seek to express yourself, even
with these (possibly) unfamiliar restrictions on sounds/materials.
DO try to build a convincing climax to your piece.  DO try to throw
in something special to mark the end of your piece, if your piece
continues beyond its climax.  DO experiment with prolonging the
climax.

If you try this assignment and feel moved to violate some of its rules,
relax!  There will be no penalty.

CONCLUSION
I hope some of these ideas are useful to some of you out there.  The
only way to learn to use them is to play with them constantly until
they become an automatic part of your musical personality.

For at least a while I will be keeping a copy of this article here
in my disk directory.  As long as the volume of "reprint" requests
is reasonably manageable, I will offer to send copies out by e-mail.

I have heard a lot of interest in my hints for canon and fugue, but
as a matter of logical sequence, I intend to delay them until I've
had a chance to post concerning the mystery of parallel perfect intervals
(some of you clearly already have a good idea what I'm talking about
here, and some of you probably have no idea, but I'm most concerned
about the middle third: those who have come across the proscription of
parallel perfections in a theory class, but don't see what it has to
do with the real world) and 4-part harmony.

I can't really tell you when the next article will be ready for
posting, since I haven't written it yet.  The feedback I get from
this article may have important consequences concerning how I write the
next one.

11 August 1992  Matthew H. Fields, D.M.A.