# formulaic music



## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

The Mozart and Adele threads both have me thinking about the use of formula in music. Often it's considered bad, and "formulaic" is deployed as an insult.

I'm not sure I agree with this. I often find that I get pleasure from formulaic music precisely because it's formulaic. Every cadential trill in Mozart and Haydn, tonic pedal at the end of a Bach fugue, cross-relation in Tudor music, every Picardy third everywhere - these things generally give me pleasure, in themselves.

When we object that something is formulaic, we usually mean that we hear a bunch of formulas thrown together in a way that fails to add up to anything compelling. So we aren't really objecting to the formulas but to poor composition.

Why do I enjoy formulas? There are a number of possible reasons:

-They generally developed because they have some kind of inherent appeal. In other words, they sound good.

-They instantly connect the piece to thousands of others like it, invoking an entire tradition or even culture, from which the piece draws its richness.

-We can appreciate the compositional virtuosity involved in making cliches sound natural and inevitable. Mozart was particularly great at this.

-Formulas can interact with each other in interesting ways. The cross-relation in Tallis and Byrd, arising from the application of musica ficta, is one example of this. So are the dissonances or modal mixtures that can be created by ordinary appoggiaturas.

-Sometimes they can be deliberately subverted, by being placed in an unfamiliar context, so that the formula becomes a source of novelty.

This all applies to pop music too.

Anyone else love formulaic music?


----------



## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

That's a pretty broad question. There is so much music that could be said to be formulaic depending on one's definition of the term. Under my definition, there is good and bad formulaic music. Worse-case example in pop music: so-called bubble-gum music of the 1960s: 'Yummy, yummy, yummy, I've got love in my tummy.' Actually sounds creepy today.


----------



## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Vivaldi's various concerti, Mendelssohn's string symphonies. Play a group of them and I soon loose track of where I am and which is playing as parts seem interchangeable. That is all part of the reason why I have not spent more time exploring some of the other baroque composers such as Telemann.


----------



## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Formulae play a very important role in our enjoyment of music: familiarity can breed both feelings of security and of boredom, so the trick, the skill, has always been in the proper blending of the familiar and the wholly new. The theorist Leonard Meyer did pioneering work on this aspect of how music works. One's own personal comfort ratio of formula to novelty varies widely also, maybe even by the hour, or minute. Interesting subject indeed!


----------



## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I like the formulas and I like it when they are broken. Or what Strange Magic said.^


----------



## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

The thing about formulas is, they make things interesting when used properly. Peter Schickele told about a man who wanted to make music interesting by devising an algorithm which, when you played a note, would tell you the least expected note. The trouble is, if no notes follow an expected sequence, the lack of context made the music incomprehensible. Schikele noted that to make something interesting, repeat a phrase three times, then change it the fourth time. Setting up expectations and then thwarting them is more interesting.


----------



## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Weston said:


> I like the formulas and I like it when they are broken. Or what Strange Magic said.^


This reminds me of a cartoon I saw years ago: a high-powered executive type is seen holding the sketches for a new advertising campaign, and saying to his creative director: "If this is so original, why haven't I seen it before!?!"


----------



## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

If a formula works for us, we don't call it formulaic.

It is, I think, yet another one of those adjectives that _seems_ to prescribe a rule about what we consider good versus bad music (or art, or life) but actually is just an after-the-fact rationalisation. We can complain about a composer's work - "I don't like it because it's so formulaic" - but there's undoubtedly some other composer we like whose work is just as formulaic but we rationalise our like of it some other way - "like putting on an old comfortable pair of slippers", "like meeting an old friend", or whatever.


----------



## Lyricus (Dec 11, 2015)

FWIW, the bias against formulaic art is ancient. One of the chief criticisms against Homer was that he included so many formulae for metrical reasons. But his world was an oral world. I think formulaic music becomes especially boring if you listen to a whole lot of other music that came before. There were no written Greek epics before Homer, and recordings didn't exist before the mid-19th century.


----------



## manyene (Feb 7, 2015)

I can think of a lot of offenders, like Philip Glass and his endless arpeggios, pop music that uses three or if you are lucky, four basic chords, and some modern hymn tunes with banal melodies and no modulations at all. All regressions from progression.


----------



## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

manyene said:


> I can think of a lot of offenders, like Philip Glass and his endless arpeggios, pop music that uses three or if you are lucky, four basic chords, and some modern hymn tunes with banal melodies and no modulations at all. All regressions from progression.


I like all that stuff, especially pop songs with three chords.


----------



## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

What is formulaic? The great Baroque da-capo aria is "formulaic" but some of the finet arias ever written for the human voice was based on this aesthetic. So just like playing tennis, it's not the racket that matters but what you do with it. Pure and simple.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Music sounds "formulaic" when composers fail to do anything inventive or moving with the forms and devices they use. Passacaglias, themes with variations, sonata-allegro movements, rondos, cadences - they can all sound predictable and mechanical if the music is trite and mediocre, or if we simply don't like it. Most music relies on certain formal devices typical of its composer or era, and if we like the music we may enjoy the devices, if we even notice them, or at least forgive their presence. 

I do sometimes find that I'd enjoy some music more if it relied less on formulas. This applies mainly to the Classical era. Whenever I hear a Mozart opera I brace myself for a lot of by-the-yard cadences, some of them repeated literally, complete with words, four times. Hey, Figaro, I heard you the first time!


----------



## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> I do sometimes find that I'd enjoy some music more if it relied less on formulas. This applies mainly to the Classical era. Whenever I hear a Mozart opera I brace myself for a lot of by-the-yard cadences, some of them repeated literally, complete with words, four times. Hey, Figaro, I heard you the first time!


There are LONG stretches of Mozart in which no one measure or even phrase is of much interest on its own. The secret is everything is in exactly the right place in relation to everything else.


----------



## manyene (Feb 7, 2015)

isorhythm said:


> There are LONG stretches of Mozart in which no one measure or even phrase is of much interest on its own. The secret is everything is in exactly the right place in relation to everything else.


But the point about Mozart (and indeed any) opera is that it should be seen rather than heard.


----------

