Today we'll skim through the three musical style periods that involved the development of what's called "Common Practice" (music built on the homophonic - vertically stacked - concept of chords progressing, as opposed to the polyphonic - horizontal lines - concept we saw in the musical examples last week)
Then we'll briefly scan some attempts to transcend or escape Common Practice.
I'll be mentioning dozens of composers today - from the Baroque, 1600-1750 all over Europe; from the Cassical Era, 1750-about 1810 centered in Vienna; and from the Romantic Era, around 1810-1900 but persisting in many aspects to the present, all over Europe and America and in certain regards exercising influence worldwide - and most of the composers' names will be familiar to you. I HAVE NOT PUT LINKS TO THEM ALL ON TODAY'S PAGE, so please choose whichever comosers are most interesting to you and "Google" or "Wikipedia" or "YouTube" them as you wish, on your own...
(See the "To Be A Composer..." section below as well)
Shift from Renaissance Polyphony to Baroque "Common Practice"
Composers include Moteverdi (opera), Vivaldi (municipal position), Telemann, Rameau (Theory Treatise), and (all born in 1685!) Scarlatti (died 1757), Bach (died 1750), and Handel (died 1759)... and MANY MANY others!!
"Patronage" (wealthy courts, huge churches, municipal appointments) kept competent composers settled in well-paying steady jobs from their teenaged years until they died.
The THEORY underlying the structure of this vertical/homophonic music was straightforward, and we will DO A FEW BRIEF EXPLORATIONS TO ILLUSTRATE THIS (see this week's handout).
In brief:
switch from the old church modes to major and minor scales
in "tempered" tuning
which allows for chords to not only "progress"
but also to "modulate"
in "balanced phrases" that conclude with one of four "cadence" possibilities.
The chords retain their "function," even when "inverted" and regardless of "spacing."
Composers could improvise, based on these basic Common Practice principles - which is part of why some analysts have seen a connection between the Baroque, and American jazz.
INSTRUMENTS
Instruments were increasingly standardized and available, allowing composers to compose for string orchestra and other hefty ensembles, leading to the adoption of idiomatic practices such as "continuo," and encouraging specifically orchestrated INSTRUMENTAL composition. Several remarkable single-melodic line solo works for instruments were composed (Bach Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello, etc). Virtuoso performers were featured in concertos, often with the composer as soloist (Bach on harpsichord on Brandenburg Concerto #5). Meter tended to be very clear and tempo very steady, since there were still usually no "conductors"...
Solo works often were paired, for example toccata and fugue, where one section involves considerable freedom and improvisation, while the other is a strict jigsaw-puzzle of composed design involving two distinct key areas.
Keyboard players MUST be able to improvise, to "realize" the figured bass - which is notated as just a single melodic line (usually played by cello) with "figures" indicating how the line can be fleshed out (by the harpsichordist or perhaps by another chording instrument such as lute) to reveal full chords, interestingly voiced and decorated.
The main keyboeards of the Baroque are still harpsichord and church organ, so there's no "piano" writing yet (although harpsichord pieces would continue to be played on modern pianos long after harpsichords had fallen out of regular use, if you were wondering why piano books regularly include Bach and the others).
Guarneri family (and later Stradivari family) construct violins whose sound cannot be surpassed, to this day.
The common formal designs of purely-instrumental music include suites, concertos, sonatas, etc. - all of which are longer forms than were commonly conceived prior to 1600.
VOICES
Vocal music has a wonderful heyday in the Baroque - but not the shared-amateur-performance of madrigals without accompaniment! OPERA is a centerpiece of Baroque entertainment, featuring orchestra with continuo, AND solo virtuoso singers, AND mighty choruses. Opera themes tend to be Mythology and Heroes. Opera is SO unbelievably popular (and potentially financially rewarding for virtuoso singers, who are the pop star divas of their day), that parents sometimes castrate promising male children in the hopes that they might someday become one of the famed "castrati" opera stars. Composers write for SUCH acrobatic high-range male singing, that their operas can seldom be performed today. Only a few "counter-tenors" can sing that high in full voice rather than falsetto, here is an example of a modern counter-tenor singing an aria from a Handel opera.
Meanwhile, Lutheran Churches featured weekly CANTATAS (like little operas, musically, in their alternation of choral and solo sections with orchestral accompaniment), and the congregation (unlike in Catholicism) joined in singing anthems. Eventually a third opera-like form - ORATORIO - also arises. ALL of these vocal vehicles - opera, cantata, oratorio - are long complex works, completely unlike the short madrigals of the Renaissance.
For us as modern-day composers, here is an interesting phenomenon to note: At the beginning of the Baroque, homophonic texture dominates, in a sort of backlash to the "old fashioned" madrigal polyphony, but by mid-Baroque, composers were happy to use monophonic, polyphonic, and homophonic passages for effect (listen to Hallelujah Chorus again, which starts homophonic, has strong monophonic "For the Lord God Omnipotent Reigneth" between homophonic "Hallelujah" outburts, and then sprawls open into a magnificent polyphonic overlapping development of "For the Lord God Omnipotent Reigneth") YouTube of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus with vocal parts shown
There's great interest in "ornamentation" in the Baroque a Couperin example
And there is a great interest in CONTRAST (of instruments, of paired sections, of dynamics, of everything) and a sense of passing ideas back and forth among players and in slightly altered keys and so forth a Brandenburg #5 example
It was, in part, in objection to so much "activity" that the simpler more elegant, aristocratic style of Classicism followed. C. P. E. Bach (one of J. S. Bach's sons, and a very fine composer in his own right) considered his father's style "old fashioned" and was one of several composers determined to displace the "busy" continuo-driven contrapuntal style of the High Baroque with a more "transparent" style - and thus J.S. Bach's densely-textured continuo-based High Baroque style became all but forgotten soon after his death.
(See the "To Be A Composer..." section below as well)
C. P. E. Bach's works were highly regarded and did help to model the changes in style, but the better-known composers of this era are actually Haydn and Mozart (and Beethoven in his youth - his later works would propel music into the Romantic Era).
The symphony arises, and with it an abstract formal design called "sonata form" involving two contrasting themes in two distinct but related keys, with a "development" of the thematic material - a sophisticated design still sometimes used by composers to this day.
The piano displaces the harpsichord, bit by bit, leading to the first compositions "idiomatic" to the piano (that is, they cannot reasonably be played on either the harpsichord or the organ).
The characteristic ability of the piano to (unlike the harpsichord) gradually increase and decrease volume (dynamics) is mirrored in similarly graduated dynamics in ensembles and in solo instrumental works, with composers' scores regularly featuring crescendo and decrescendo markings.
The orchestra continues to evolve into an ever-more-settled design, larger (more likely to involve a conductor) and without any "continuo" anymore.
Castles and cathedrals continue to support good composers, offering steady and often quite luxurious jobs. Haydn had such a long-term position in a castle, Mozart did not.
Amateurs played instrumental works as a pasttime, and so audiences tended to be knowledgeable and discriminating, especially among the wealthy but often among the working class as well. When Schubert was young, and beginning to study music seriously with the last of the Classical Era teachers, he would return home from his travels and sit right down to play string quartets with his father and siblings, as a welcome home. Ah, the days before television...
Both Haydn and Mozart are clear examples of the variety of output expected of composers at this time. Mozart's individual output, in his short lifetime, includes: symphonies (Mozart completed 41, Haydn published over 100 symphonies), concertos (but of a different, more sophisticated design than in the Baroque, built around sonata form), numerous varied (still-performed-today) operas (outgrowing the Baroque reliance on pyrotechnics from castrati, expanding to themes far beyond the mere mythic/heroic, and featuring wonderful ensemble singing of several soloists at once), a constant stream of chamber works - especially string quartets but also piano trios and other small ensembles, a Requiem Mass, an array of solo piano works, and some art songs. In both the Baroque and the Classical Era, composers in general churned out hundreds of works, and were not prone to indulge in painstaking angst-ridden struggles about composing but simply wrote in all the formulaic styles day in and day out.
"Common Practice" could be utilized in such a completely formulaic manner as to allow the quick construction of many of the "set" forms. WE WILL COLLABORATIVELY COMPOSE A FEW MEASURES OF MINUET
A lovely page with links, about Classical Era
This may be a good time to consider the Wikipedia article on musical form, although I can give a better sketch of "sonata form" than this article does, and explain its relationship to "fugue" too...
(See the "To Be A Composer..." section below as well)
A lovely page with links, about Romantic Era
Beethoven, Paganini, Rossini, Schubert, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Verdi, Wagner, Brahms, Bizet, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Grieg, Rimsky-Korsakov, Faure Puccini, Mahler, Debussy, Johann Strauss Sr & Jr, Richard Strauss (1864-1949), Sibelius (1865-1957), etc etc etc, you are probably already familiar with the sound of these composers.
Less about formal design, much more about The Individual - composing something that "no one else could have composed"... Mozart and Bach and all those before had also developed their own "signature sound," but the Romantic composers were looking for more than just a personal style - they were striving for a truly unique expression in each individual work they created.
Seldom do composers write in all styles anymore: the tendency is to specialize. Verdi and Wagner and Puccini etc "do" opera (NOT so much symphony or chamber music or art song), Chopin "does" solo piano, Schubert "does" art song (over 600 published songs, and there are 9 symphonies and various works in other genres but he is "identified" as composer of art songs). The extreme differences between the composers' lifestyles and output make it harder and harder to generalize about composing. Some succeed wildly in their own lifetime (Verdi) while others die nearly unknown in complete poverty (Schubert).
In terms of compositional tools and techniques: Sonata form continues but in expanded and less formulaic ways. Symphonies' movements shift and expand: the minuet gives way to the more abstract and intense scherzo. Alternatives to sonata form, such as theme and variation, are approached afresh.
Control of articulation and dynamic markings (and no more improvisation from the performers), but for the composer an emphasis on the personal, the emotional, self-expression. The strange coexistence of "hyper-control" (with the most elaborate markings in score: dynamics, articulation, effects, etc), along WITH an ideal of "freedom" - resulting in such conventions as "rubato."
Excellence in the art of Orchestration.
Excellence in the demanding art of composing for large-scale forms including ballet choreography.
Thrilling virtuosity (think Paganini), piano in its heyday (think Liszt, Chopin, etc), the rise of managers and empressarios, images of composers as uniquely heroic and/or struggling characters, literature as both instigator and force (all the fine poetry of the time set as art songs, all the publishing of critic's reviews), an interest in things mysterious (especially as a counter-balance to industrialization), an interest in folklore (Chopin's use of mazurka and polonaise, but not for actual dancing), and in nationalism (especially after the French and American Revolutions, the downfall of the aristocracies)
The beginning of great performers publicly playing the music of OTHERS, so for instance, Beethoven would not have had reason to publicly play Bach or Mozart, but soon after Beethoven's life, Clara Schumann toured widely playing not only her own works but far more often the works of her husband Robert, of Brahms, of Beethoven, and of others. The pieces which we now consider "standard use" such as the Here Comes The Bride (from a Wagner opera) and the graduation march (from an Elgar Suite) were composed in the Romantic Era.
A return of fascination with extreme contrasts: works both "miniature" (especially piano miniatures) and "monumental" (Berlioz symphonies, Wagner's operas, etc), intimate (art songs, piano nocturnes) and bombastic (piano etudes, and Liszt theatrical performing of piano transcriptions of operas and symphonies, shaking the whole piano, putting women into a swoon!).
Loss of patronage, reinforcing the sense of autonomy in composition but forcing nearly all composers to become good at marketing themselves. Decline of both castle-based orchestras and castle-based opera houses, and decline of grand church-music programs as well. The need for municipal support for standing orchestras, now that castles could no longer be counted on to maintain a full orchestra's-worth of players plus a resident composer "on staff." The need for each composition to be reviewed in print, and to be "shopped around" to the public venues of various cities.
Much more extended chromaticism, unorthodox chord shifts, the dissolution or transcendence of straightforward formulaic progressions and resolutions found in standard Common Practice. Introduction of "exotic" influences (Debussy's use of whole tone scale, of Indonesian gamelan rhythms, etc). Counter-rhythms such as Brahms frequent "3 against 2"...
Despite the lack of patronage, composers continue to write in the large forms of opera and operetta, symphony and concerto, "tone poem" as a sort of wordless art song for orchestra (Debussy's Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun was inspired by a poem but does not literally include any text)...
Many "programmatic" works (such as Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique) but also composers like Brahms writing abstract works.
There arises a frustrating sense that "too much is happening for anyone to pinpoint a Style or a Technique that would be important for ALL composers to master," now that the act of composing tends to be less about "composing quickly, on demand, in well-defined styles" and more about "waiting for inspiration," writing hyper-personally, and composing "without commission." Nonetheless, conservatories hire established composers to try to train the next generation of composers.
Great effort was eventually made by some composers to transcend or escape what felt like the LIMITS of Common Practice. Just as Monet painted ever-more abstract versions of bridges, and Picasso tried cubist approaches as a way of thwarting realism, composers sought to blur the confines of Common Practice's forms and conventions.
SCALES: introduce so many chromatic non-scale tones as to obscure the core scale pattern; utilize pre-modern-scale antique modes; utilize non-western (asian especially) or folk-based (such as Hungarian) scales; make up theoretical scales (whole tone and others); defy scale construction by using series that do not feature the octave or that are distinctively different ascending from descending; attempt to arrange the twelve chromatic tones in rows that defy physics-based organization (atonality, serialism)
CHORDS: add pitches until the neat triads are expanded, perhaps into wide-ranging stacks or into dense clusters; avoid "progressing" as expected; avoid the normal methods of "modulation" and arrive ion new key centers "out of the blue"; sustain dissonance (tension) without the expected resolution (release); explore the notion that if it is all dissonance and all without release, then the entire system of "expectations" is thwarted
RHYTHM: avoid the predictable and balanced meters and phrases; pit strong rhythms against one another; utilize non-western approaches to rhythm; shift meter so constantly as to defy the perception of meter; notate pitch without meter, perhaps with just clock time given for each segment
FORMAL DESIGN: abandon the complex forms (such as sonata form) completely; extend sections so oceanically as to defy any sense of interior organization; conversely, craft things so miniature as to be not just gem-like (as art songs and piano miniatures of the Romantic had been), but perhpas snowflake-like, whole and unique but tiny (Webern's "symphonies" or Schoenberg's songs in Pierrot Lunaire, for example); perhaps engage abstract design priciples (12-tone rows in retrograde and inversion, total serialization)
EXPECTATIONS: rather than setting up and satisfying expectations (as was typical in formally-designed Common Practice works), try setting up expectations and then thwarting them (for example, displace the pitches of what would have been a "sensible" melody into widely-dispersed octaves), or at least long delaying the satisfaction. Try abandoning the expectations in the first place, by undoing the "norms" of scale, chord, rhythm, and design, as mentioned above.
CONTROL: take control to its extremes, either hyper-detailing EVERY aspect of the attack and sustain and demise of every single sound, or giving as your "score" a non-standrad-notation graphic sketch or verbal paragraph which will require the performer to virtually invent their OWN music in some response to your vague non-notational suggestions.
ORCHESTRATION: knowing the norms of masterful orchestration, purposefully thwart them: use instruments in extreme ranges, in unbalanced section-against-section, abnormally divisi (ie every violinist playing a different line, rather than the violins playing as a section), doing unorthodox things (such as cellists rapping with their knuckles on the wood of the cello body). Look to PERCUSSION, as the previously unplumbed instrumental possibility. Look to electronics for new sounds. Allow or require players to improvise.
After about 1900, music became so "not of any one identifiable style" (especially with the fragmented and hugely expanded market created by ELECTRONIC recording of music!) that it is hard to summarize techniques or forms. Many important but finite ideas (for instance, serialism) flourished in their own self-contained circles and then simply became part of the ever-expanding ill-defined eclectic brew of possibilities that composers feel free to draw from, now.
If you want to look into some of the post-Romantic trends, try searching
Impressionism
Serialism
Aleatory Music
Electronic Music
Minimalism
etc.
A lovely page with links, about Twentieth Century
Depending on the intended AUDIENCE (now far less unified than in previous centuries, thanks to electronic listening), composers might
continue to use Common Practice procedures (especially for choral music, church anthems, patriotic works, large still-Romantic works such as R. Strauss' Four Last Songs)
OR... might toy with avant garde anti-high-art ideas: John Cage's infamous piano work 4'33" (of silence, as it turned out)
OR... might focus on jazz (think Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, countless others)
OR... might be music for films (Maurice Jarre's Lawrence of Arabia, Bernard Hermann's Psycho and Vertigo, Henry Mancini's The Pink Panther, countless others)
OR... might be Broadway musicals (especially as opera transitions to being RE-creations rather than freshly-composed, for the most part)
OR... might be accompaniment for ballet or modern dance choreography (Stravinsky, Copland, others)
OR... be dabbling in the new electronic music (Stockhausen, Varese, countless others)
OR... be writing/arranging radio pop songs - either Big Band (Dorsey, Ellington, etc) or solo song (for Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, etc)
OR... might be disdainfully holding out for a staunch "Common Practice Is Dead" atonality (Schoenberg, Boulez, Babbitt, etc), with the attitude that the audience is too undisciplined too appreciate the beauty of the unique design and internal logic of each seemingly-dissonant piece, but astute will "come around," and then this high art will be the total future of serious music - which in fact was definitely the dominant attitude in educational settings mid-20th-century, the constant mantra "Tonality is Dead"
OR... you could be experimenting with what would become known as Minimalism (Riley, Reich, etc)...
OR.. you just might be determined to be a true one-of-a-kind (the stated goal of many a modern composer), like Harry Partch off in the desert making your own personal instruments to play your own unique music.
ANY success in ANY of those categories could qualify you as A Composer, and it is worth pointing out that by this point in history MOST composers are only active in one or perhaps two of those categories (a deepening of the specialization which arose in the 19th century), with few exceptions (Bernstein comes to mind as a notable "Renaissance Man" multi-genre exception).
"Anyone's a composer/ Nobody's a composer"... Who is Denman Maroney and why should we bother being curious? He says he's a composer, but - Is he Nobody? Is He Somebody? Is he crazy? (lots of our now-canonic composers from history were thought to be crazy at first). How can we assess modern music? Is "what we like" enough of a category? Is there TOO MUCH OUT THERE nowadays? There's not enough TIME to even begin to hear everything, no matter how much you narrow down your listening! Well, check out Maroney's MySpace page yup, MySpace pages for composers now... try the track Udentity VII - is it jazz? classical? Want to see how the program notes write about it? Hmmm...
"Officially-recognized composers" are mostly identifiable by the fact that they are usually in tenure-track university teaching posts, and probably receiving some sort of small grant moneys as well. Example: Augusta Reed Thomas, tenured composition teacher at Eastman Conservatory. She is one of hundreds in similar positions.
"Pop" and "jazz" and "musical theatre" composers are essentially defined by commercial success, and can be searched via Grammy and Tony and other such awards, and are featured in Billboard and Variety and Rolling Stone as they have been for decades now.
But how would "the next Stravinsky" or "the Debussy for our times" or any "keeper" composer emerge, now? Are we historically past the point of "keeper" composers? Somebody somewhere has both Beethoven and Maroney on their iPod, along with a Sondheim song and some Beatles and the Hallelujah Chorus and various pop bands and 600 other must-have mp3s, plus a cool loops-mix their eight-year-old little brother made over the weekend. They have the iPod set to Random Shuffle, as they listen with their noise-blocking headphones on the subway heading downtown to hear new string quartets being premiered by their friends who spend all day in the practice rooms at Juilliard. What a mix!
It's hard to say where all of that might lead. It's hard to say how, as a composer, one might even begin to choose a style or genre to try. It's hard to say what would be useful for a composer to have as "core skills," and what might be important to study next. It's hard to say how you would connect with your potential audience (or is it "fans"?) now - is a MySpace page too much? Many of the composers now taken most seriously began by making women swoon in some party-like setting (Liszt, for example) or entertaining beer-drinking friends down at the corner bar (Scubert) or frightening the society folks who had just come to see some ballet (Stravinsky). Who can say where and how a wave of exciting and masterful composition might arise? If Mozart came back to life, would he have a MySpace page? Surely, he'd at least have a website!
- choose a mode, and create a single-line non-metered melody
- either handwrite in the "neumes" (square) church notation, OR handwrite tablature if your work is for lute, OR have a really good memory/imagination to create and remember yourwork without notation
- either be a solo performer, OR find friends to sing what you've written (Hildegard's works, even her 90-minute Ordo Virtutum musical, were all for the nuns she lived with all her life there at the convent in Germany)
- either focus on old-style single-line troubadour-style songs, OR try composing the new multi-line polyphonic "motets" (like our singing 3 Blind/RowRow/EensyWeensySpider in class)
- maybe try marketing yourself, as Machaut did, even though it involves a lot of hand-copying and a lot of legwork!
- notate rhythms using the new (diamond heads) notation
- see that your future involves seeking access to publishing (mechanical printing), once Josquin's monopoly ends
- hope that the phenomenon of "amateurs buying lots of music" is not just a passing fad, and that humanism's outlook on "literacy" as including MUSICAL literacy continues; compose for the pleasures of musically literate household performers
- master the increasingly complex practices of polyphonic madrigals and motets designed for unaccompanied voices
- market your music to the public, print enough to hope for geographical distribution all around Europe, and seek commissions from wealthy nobles and churches
- be able to compose quickly and "to order," to provide music for events and festive occasions nearly overnight
- compose for both the popular and the church settings, both playful madrigals and serious Latin sacred works
- be an excellent keyboard performer (preferably both harpsichord and church organ)
- shift gears completely, as the madrigal (horizontal, polyphonic) market fades and the opera/concerto/sonata (vertical/homophonic with continuo) market takes hold, and then shift again as the mostly-homophonic early baroque style gives way to the re-acceptance of polyphonic textures in the middle and high baroque
- eventually be able to use monophonic, polyphonic, and homophonic textures freely, all in the context of the "Common Practice" style
- get a good steady job at a church or castle or possibly someplace like an orphanage with a strong music program
- improvise, perhaps fantasias and so forth, probably any keyboard solos such as preludes at your church job or solos in your castle concertos, but definitely you will need to be able to improvise the "continuo" chords at sight
- know all the theory underlying Common Practice chord progressions, including some chromatically altered chords and some common means of modulation into nearby keys
- be willing to compose "for where you are," and for whatever musical resources are at hand, and in whatever styles and forms your employer expects of you
- make extremely clear and sophisticated orchestration choices, for whatever size otchestra was available
- be specific about notating choices of tempo, dynamics, and articulations
- handle increasingly complex chromaticism and modulation
- compose movements in sonata form and other set forms such as rondo or theme and variations
- "develop" a theme, and create contrasting yet related themes
- be marketable as a conductor, and also as a virtuoso performer (one of Berlioz problems was that he could compose, but he was not a virtuoso performer on any instrument)
- market yourself, hopefully to one of the remaining opulently musical castles (like Haydn's gig with the Esterhazy family, with a standing orchestra of the best musicians money can buy and with architecturally magnificent concert halls, chamber music rooms, and opera houses), since church and municipal jobs are pretty much over with in terms of serious income. Good luck if you go the freelance route (ask Mozart. In fact, ask Beethoven).
- have credentials, from studying at a conservatory or with an already-famous teacher
- capitalize on your networking and connections (mentors, favorable critics, supportive conductors, etc)
- promote your work independently, and probably also teach at your alma mater or similar institution to support yourself, or else write a lot, conduct a lot, travel and perform as a virtuoso soloist a lot, teach privately a lot, OR ELSE market yourself "pop" (such as ragtime sheet music composers, J. Strauss party waltz orchestras, etc)
- possibly incorporate "exotic" aspects (whole tone scales, non-western rhythms, etc) or strongly nationalistic (think of Smetana's Czech countrysides in orchestral tone poems, or the "Russian-sounding" pieces of Mussorgsky and his colleagues)
- be fluent in all prior forms and conventions, but able to personalize them or even purposefully and boldly disregard them
- be able to use such extreme chromaticism that the Common Practice sound becomes ambiguous
- be able to orchestrate and arrange for all sorts of ensembles including the very large orchestra.
- get good RECORDINGS - as well as good performances - of your works
- possibly focus on jazz, pop, or film-scoring rather than the still-eurocentric traditional ideas of "symphony" etc
- possibly try avant garde ideas, as another route out of the old traditions
- possibly learn the very complex skills for electronic music composition (very difficult until the advent of DIGITAL, though)
- at least know ABOUT all the various styles and genres (atonality, jazz, etc) since eclecticism is expected of most composers, so that even if you personally concentrate on just one particular genre you are still expected to be cognizant of the others.
- extend your eclecticism to also embrace world music ideas and digital music, on top of ALL the other ideas already being incorporated by composers
- be ready (if seeking a teaching position) to demonstrate fluency in both Common Practice AND atonal analysis, AND fluency in computer softwares related to music (and you may be expected to actually be fluent in a computer programming language such as "C" as well), AND be able to do digital audio recording and editing, to the point that these generalized technical skills might be considered far more meaningful in assessing you "as a composer" than any aesthetic aspects of your actual compositions might be
- deal with the ever more splintered audiences, and the easy availability of so much music competing for each listener's attention every moment of every day
- be brilliant at grant-writing and "networking," and have unending patience and persistence
- deal with the continuing challenge of what to do about an ever-less-arts-oriented culture
- probably be willing to invest your own money to get your music heard (no shame: Beethoven and Berlioz and countless others certainly did the same)
- use the internet to establish your persona and market your music.
So. Times change, and the expectaion of fluent composing with six polyphonic voices that might have been a requirement for you to "be a composer" around 1600 gives way to the expectation that of course if you're a composer you'll write symphonies - which gives way to the idea that maybe you should be writing atonal electro-acoustic chamber music or something!
But the real questions are the philosophical ones from Class 1: Now that we can KNOW all the history and the styles and the shifting expectations across time, what is it that interests and engages YOU? And how can you learn to compose exactly what YOU wish to compose? Times change, compositional skill-sets expand and shift, but beyond specific techniques and the fashionable styles of each musical era, composing remains an essentially personal activity, every time.
Again I would suggest that creative writing and visual arts offer easy-to-see parallels to this idea, that techniques and styles may follow cultural shifts, but the creative impulses that propel artworks into being remain personal.
