The Composer's Ego -- Structured Improvisation

Composing is an immensely ego-gratifying process. I remember the first time I conducted musicians playing my music, and it really was extremely fulfilling to hear everything that I had spent so much time on come off the page and move with its own life. Suddenly, the worlds I had only imagined were manifest in this world. Exciting!

However, I also derive a great deal of pleasure from improvising, and especially from playing with other improvisers. The thrill of the perfect collective improvisation rivals that of composing, although there is a very different process going on. Whereas writing builds up my ego, in a group improvisation the ego is relinquished to the whole, each individual musician sacrificing their own personal expression to that of the collective.

Things get really sticky when one enters the area between the two - structured improvisation. Although the term may sound contradictory, there is a sizable body of work in this category, including jazz tunes, post-Cagean conceptual and graphic pieces, and many different genres of classical "world" music, including Indian, Indonesian, and African traditions. The degree of strictness in the parameters of these improvisations varies, but the idea is the same - to lead the musician into the most successful musical expression possible.

Therefore, it is necessary to combine the two worlds of improvisation and composition, and consequently use the ego in an "egoless" way. This is difficult thing to accomplish, to balance the line between the decision-making of the composer and the decision-making of the improvisers. I have found in listening to structured improvisations that the most interesting pieces allow the musicians to transcend their own limitations and create something that otherwise wouldn't have been possible. It is easy to fall into traps like composing improvisations for "effects" (something I have fallen into more times than I'm willing to admit). Although in and of itself there is nothing wrong with this, it's not the best balance between the two worlds. The job of the composer in this situation, as Anthony Braxton said (somewhere), is to establish new structural realities and new landscapes for the players. Basically, it is important to give musicians stable parameters -- in the form of melodies, rhythms, harmonies (changes), formal structures, lyrics, performance instructions, graphics -- which enable them to realize themselves to the fullest. Easier said than done.

Messiaen?

Anyone who knows my musical preferences knows that I think Olivier Messiaen is the greatest "classical" composer in the 20th century. The timbral and rhythmic vitality of his music is uncontested in modernist composition, and he is still my favorite composer to rip off. Earlier, I was listening to one of my favorite of his pieces, the Turangalîla-Symphonie. I love how over the top and indulgent this piece is: it employs an enormous orchestra, a huge percussion section of exotic instruments played by 11 musicians, a virtuosic piano part, and a solo ondes Martenot (an early electronic keyboard instrument). All this adds up to what Morton Feldman disdainfully called "Technicolor orchestration." Not only that, but his compositional style emphasizes sudden juxtapositions of material, acting as an extension of Stravinsky's use of this technique. Together, these two aspects lead occasionally to truly insane episodes of music, like this section of movement 8 of Turangalîla (about five minutes in):

Yes! I dream of writing things like that. Definitely not the best part of this piece, but one of those places that always excites me. This piece is filled with moments like that.

I've felt for a long time that "programmatic" music is a lot more interesting to listen to than "abstract" music. (Not that jazz is necessarily programmatic in the classical sense; I love jazz, but it's a different kind of listening. I'll save that for another day.) This piece is a demonstration of that, because Messiaen's music is always, even at its most abstract, highly programmatic. It is inherent in his compositional style in the form of his birdsong quotations and transmutations, and most of his pieces (including this one) have many leitmotifs. Additionally, he sometimes writes the "colors" associated with his harmonies or orchestrations directly in the score (Messiaen was synaesthetic: he "saw" colors when he heard music).

You get the impression, sometimes implicitly, that he's always symbolizing something with his music, even if it's something spiritual or metaphysical. Regardless of whether the listener is familiar with the sources of this symbolism or not, I feel it communicates somehow into the impression of the music. This is sometimes evident in the musical "personifications" of his music, each sound idea having a particular character that exists on a "higher" level than just rhythms or intervals (like serialism). The presence of strange musical effects in his music points to this idea, and it is the same idea found in much programmatic music, from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, to Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, to newer music like John Zorn's "cartoon sounds." Historically, some in the establishment have criticized these types of effects as "cheap" or "crude." I find these effects stimulating and exciting, and aren't those important aspects of music in general?

Iannis Xenakis - Compositional method

For my first music post, I thought I would offer a brief thought or two on a text I'm reading right now, Iannis Xenakis's Formalized Music. I could certainly talk a lot about this book, and probably will discuss it at length on a later date, but today I'll limit myself to Xenakis's description of the compositional process he undergoes when he "constructs" his pieces.

To those who don't know, Xenakis was notable for pioneering a method of composition he called stochastic, after the Greek stochas ("goal," or "guess"; Xenakis seems to prefer the former definition). It is derived from the mathematical branch of the same name, which concerns itself with fields such as probability theory, game theory, mathematical randomness, etc. and can be used to model many physical processes.  Although from this discussion it seems that his music would be quite austere and off-putting, and the evidence of his compositional approach is discernible in the sound of his music, I find much of it to be very exciting and for lack of a better term "psychedelic." Here's a recording of his early orchestral composition Metastasis, and a later electronic piece, Gendy3:

That said, one can assume that his method of composition is quite rigid and logical. This it is, but I find that at the root I follow a similar process. I suppose you could break down composing into two basic approaches. The first approach could be termed "linear," in that the writing takes place in a sequential way (improvisation in slow motion), with minimal planning on a broad formal level. The second approach could be termed "constructive," in that it places a great deal of emphasis on pre-compositional processes. This can also be seen as a top-down approach to writing, starting with the big picture and working down to the details. Most composers probably use a combination of these approaches. For me personally, a constructive approach seems the most fruitful, both on the level of inspiration and in terms of aural intelligibility. This is the perspective Xenakis appears to advocate with this scheme:

1. Initial conceptions (intuitions, provisional  or definitive data) ;

2. Definition of the sonic entities and of their symbolism communicable with the limits of possible means (sounds of musical instruments, electronic sounds, noises, sets of ordered sonic elements, granular or continuous formations, etc.) ;

3. Definition of the transformations which these sonic entities must undergo in the course of the composition (macrocomposition: general choice of logical framework, i.e., of the elementary algebraic operations and the setting up of relations between entities, sets, and their symbols as defined in 2.) ; and the arrangement of these operations in lexicographic time with the aid of succession and simultaneity) ; 

4. Microcomposition (choice and detailed fixing of the functional or stochastic relations of the elements of 2.) , i.e., algebra outside-time, and algebra in-time ;

5. Sequential programming of 3. and 4. (the schema and pattern of the work in its entirety) ;

6. Implementation of calculations, verifications, feedbacks, and definitive modifications of the sequential program ;

7. Final symbolic result of the programming (setting out the music on paper in traditional notation, numerical expressions, graphs, or other means of solfeggio) ;

8. Sonic realization of the program (direct orchestral performance, manipulations of the type of electromagnetic music, computerized construction of the sonic entities and their transformations) .  

Obviously this list is skewed toward Xenakis's peculiar style of writing (including his penchant for calculation and his acceptance of electronic means), but with some modifications, I find it a very useful guide to approaching composition in general. He simply starts from the broadest of terms and then defines in more and more detail as he goes. Reading this has helped clarify in my own mind certain shortcomings in my style, namely that I need to further refine my conception of detail within the larger structures (steps 3, and especially 4). I find that the importance of schemes like this cannot be underestimated.

For more information, check out his book:

http://www.amazon.com/Formalized-Music-Mathematics-Composition-Harmonologia/dp/1576470792/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328120844&sr=8-1

Introductions

For those of you who don't know me (or don't know me well), my name is Brett Carson and I'm an Atlanta area pianist (and aspiring laptop musician) who also likes to compose and improvise whenever he can. My main creative outlet is with a project called Alembic Circle, which gives me a chance to test things I've been thinking about regarding the composition/improvisation continuum (I'll post score samples eventually).

I've decided to start a blog, mainly for the reason of getting my thoughts in order. Hopefully, there are other people in the world who share my interests and will get something out of this as well. Most of the subjects I cover here will be music related, but I have a wide range of interests and may talk about anything at any given time. Please feel free to comment profusely and don't shy away from emailing me at zioseberrun1@yahoo.com.