Music 219 Graduate Composition Fall, 2009. A couple of important quotations!

Music 219Graduate Composition

Fall, 2009

• A couple of important quotations!

Saint Augustine (345-430)

• Beauty is the splendor of order.

Igor Stravinsky

• The more art is controlled, limited, worked over, the more it is free.

Poetics of Music (p. 63)

Paul Hindemith

• . . . anyone to whom a tone is more than a note on paper or a key pressed down, anyone who has ever experienced the intervals in singing, especially with others, as manifestations of bodily tension, of the conquest of space, and of the consumption of energy, anyone who has ever tasted the delights of pure intonation by the continual displacement of the comma in string-quartet playing, must come to the conclusion that there can be no such thing as atonal music, in which the existence of tone-relationships is denied.

• The Craft of Musical Composition. Book I p. 155

• Get to know one another.

http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/music219.html

Music 219Graduate Composition

Fall, 2009David Cope, InstructorMeetings: Thurs. 4-7Music Center 191A

Office Hours: Thursday 2-4Phone: 459-3417

Email: [email protected]

Each student will work on five small worksFollowing class assignments. All music must

Be presented in either Finale or SibeliusFormat and brought in-progress to class on

Thumb drives with MIDI instruments assigned.Each student will select one of these works

For extension and live performance during thefinal exam period:

Tuesday, December 8: 7:30pm

1. Overview/Basics/Chromatic Tonality2. Presentations3. Post-Tonality and Set Theory4. Presentations5. Serialism and Integration6. Presentations7. Gestural/Timbral Composition8. Presentations9. Algorithmic Composition10. Presentations

Ten important concepts

for composers.

1. Inspiration

Well . . . . .

2. Overviews

Not in cement, but important guides.

Sculpture versus painting.

Ligeti

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXh07JJeA28&feature=PlayList&p=9C166AD81BF9F39F&index=0&playnext=1

3. Titles

Before you begin

4. Compose every day

Even a little is better than none.

5. Sketching

Beethoven’s sketchbooks

Don’t use computer notation programs as you compose!!!!

6. Listening• Joonas Kokkonen

• Lepo Sumera

• Aulis Sallinen

• Per Norgard

• Kaija Saariaho

• Wolfgang Rihm

• Shulamit Ran

• (Ligeti, Xenakis, Berio, Messiaen, Harbison, Chavez, Tower, Rautavaara, Takemitsu, Ung, Sciarrino, Lewis, Murail, etc.)

7. Real/imagined time.

8. On the wall (1 side)

Stravinsky

Debussy

Afterlife

9. No naked notes

10. Occam’s Razor.

Tonality

• Tonality usually means notes sounding primarily according to a given scale

• Major scales consist of stepwise intervals

• Major scale: M2 M2 m2 M2 M2 M2 m2

• Natural minor scale M2 m2 M2 M2 m2 M2 M2

• Notes not in scale called chromatic

Key

• Keys are defined by scales and can be centered around any one of 12 starting notes

• To create the proper intervallic content some keys must have sharped and flatted notes

• Key signatures make these easier to read

Motives

• Motives are groups of 3 to 7 notes that have some distinctive property (pitch, rhythm, etc.)

• Motives are varied in many ways (transposition, inversion, extrapolation, etc.)

• Motives help identify longer melodic lines

Notes sounding together

• Are called harmony if they move together

• Are called polyphony or counterpoint if moving offset

• Fugues and canons are examples of polyphony

Harmony

• Harmony has function (syntax and semantics)

• Harmonic syntax means what can follow what

• Harmonic semantics means what constitutes the harmony itself

Harmonic syntax and semantics

• In tonal music, some harmonies can follow other harmonics but not others

• We use Roman numerals in indicate semantics as in a major scale:

• I, IV, and V indicate Tonic, Subdominant, and Dominant harmonic called primary functions

• ii (supertonic), iii (mediant), vi (submediant), and vii (leading-tone), called secondary functions

Harmonic syntax

• I can be followed by anything

• V is best followed by I (authentic) or vi (deceptive) but never IV

• IV can be followed by V (mostly) and I

• ii belongs to the IV family, iii the I family, vi the I family, and vii the V family interchangeably.

Harmonic syntax

• I means home base

• IV means moving toward V (pre-dominant)

• V means needs to go home

Phrases

• Music consists of phrases usually as long as a human breath (based on past on singing)

• Phrases end in cadences

• Cadences usually end in I (authentic), V, (half), or V-vi (deceptive)

• Phrases usually come in pairs in tonal music as in (cadences V and then I - question/answer.

Modulation

• Modulation means to subtly change keys for variety

• Best key changes mean to move from a key 1 sharp or 1 flat more of less in key signature.

Periods

• Phrases group into periods consisting usually of two matching Q and A phrases

• Periods can repeat, repeat with variation, or contrast

Sections

• Sections consist of two or more periods

• Sections can consist of contrasting or similar periods

Form

• Form delineates the material of a work or movement of music

• Form is usually described by u.c. letters in alphabetical order

• ABA form (called ternary) indicates one musical idea (section A) followed by a contrasting musical idea (section B) followed by a return of section A

Structure

• Structure is NOT form

• Structure indicates relative importance of musical material (hierarchy)

• Structure deletes less important musica material in order to highlight the important musical material

Example

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Chromaticism in Tonal Music

• Secondary dominants and L.T.7s

• Borrowed Notes and Chords

• Neapolitan Chords

• Augmented Sixth Chords

• Regions

• Simple Modulations

• Far-Related Modulations

Chromatic Mediants

• Mediants and Submediants with chromatic alterations

• Like I, V, and IV, mirror one another around the Tonic

• Typically have common tones with previous and/or following chords

Chromatic Non-Harmonic Tones

• Passing

• Neighboring

• Anticipations

• Suspensions

• Delayed resolutions

Tristan Sample

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Some More

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Do I Dare?

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Composers?

• Name ten composers whose music could be described as highly chromatic tonal but not post-tonal.

• Name ten more composers as above but who are presently alive.

Compose

• Can we compose some examples quickly?

Great music is music that:

• Sells the most?

• Performed the most?

• Listened to the most?

• Talked about the most?

• Differing arrangements the most?

• Quoted the most?

• Lasts the longest?

If so

• The best restaurant would be Macdonalds

• The best film would be Titanic

• The best author would be Stephen King

• The best hotel would Best Western

• The best music would be the Star Spangled Banner

Then what is it?

• Best: music that does the most with the least

• Worst: music that does the least with the most

Or

• Best: music that gets better the more you listen to it

• Worst: music that you listen to once.

Best music is like an onion

• Keep peeling off the layers and continue to discover something new.

Personal taste

• There is no such thing as good music.

• There is no such thing as bad music.

• There is only music you like or don’t like.

Beginnings

Basic Principle

Get their attention

But

Don’t give the ship away

Parallels

• Novels

• Film

• Relationships

• Games

• Striptease

Music

• Soft and foreboding (mysterious)

• Soft and lyrical (classical)

• Loud and threatening

• Loud and triumphant

• Fast and compulsive

• Fast and jubilant

• Medium anything

Endings

Slowing down

• Melody with longer and longer note values

• Tempo slowing

• Replace shorter values with longer ones

Speeding up

• Melody with shorter and shorter note values

• Tempo accelerating

• Replace longer values with shorter ones

Hold on

• Hold a note or chord until unbearable

Dynamics

• Get louder and louder until . . .

• Get softer and softer until . . .

Repeat

• Repeat a note, chord, rhythm until . . .

Pitch

• Get higher and higher until . . . .

• Get lower and lower until . . . .

Cadence

• Home base

• Strongest cadence so far

Coda

• New material of cadential merit

Completion

• Complete something that has so far been left incomplete

• Solve a question posed musically

Cyclic

• Palindrome

• Return to beginning

• After development, return to main theme unvaried for first time

• Cyclic form (not exact palindrome)

Reverse variation

• Theme parts presented first and then the theme itself only appears at the end.

Stretto

• Speed up contrapuntal entrances until they finally occur simultaneously

• Shorten theme until it cannot be shortened any more

Variation

• Vary a theme until it clearly becomes a new theme

Pedal tone.

• Held note under other cadential material

Orchestration

• Save full orchestra texture until the end.

• Conversely, orchestration to one lone player (Farewell Symphony, Haydn)

Focus

• Focus on a single note, chord, rhythm, or . . . .

Harshest chord possible

• Yikes!

Allusion

• To the ending of another work.

Silence

• Just before the final cadence use silence and hold it to give the finality what it needs.

Fade away

• When all else fails.

Whoops!

• No ending, no matter how effective in itself, will produce the desired effect if that which goes before it does not lead well to it. Endings in themselves are worthless.