# Should modern music be written in a modern way?



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Beethoven spent two years writing his 9th Symphony, a bare hour of music. Assuming a standard 1,860-hour work year (40-hour weeks less holidays, vacation, and sick days), that means he had to labor for about an hour for every second of music! But what if he had been blessed by a more modern organization and approach?

In looking at the 1990 restoration of the soundtrack to "Home Alone." John Williams is listed as composer, conductor, and producer. But also credited are four "orchestrators" plus another four on a "scoring crew". And Williams takes home Grammies faster than Beethoven could crank out even potboilers.

So, my question: Should modern classical music composers write music in a modern way? After all, they've got seven billion people needing music. Or should they continue in the ancient artisan tradition of the lone craftsman in a sort of cottage industry? What do you think?


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

Not necessarily. I'm a huge fan of John Tavener and his work is hardly modern sounding but a throwback to the "ancient" religious music of the past. Yet he enlightens us in the modern world with meditative inspiration.


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

I think you'll find that Williams employed that crew not because he prefers it, but because he had a very tight deadline to meet.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I'm glad John Williams made his millions, but neither his music, nor the commercial Hollywood dreck it accompanies will mean much in the future. And it means nothing to me in the present. Modern or old style doesn't even matter when considering this insignificant music. Because it's just that.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

albertfallickwang said:


> Not necessarily. I'm a huge fan of John Tavener and his work is hardly modern sounding but a throwback to the "ancient" religious music of the past. Yet he enlightens us in the modern world with meditative inspiration.


I appears you may be missing the point of the OP.

Ken is talking about the mechanics that film composers use to create a film score.

In classical music the tradition is for a single composer the create a piece of music. Just Beethoven composed one of his symphonies.

In film scores and most popular forms of music, the music is created by a team of composers and arrangers. In film music a single composer does not create a sound track. There is an entire team which prepares the sound track. The composer and frequently many orchestrators. I remember reading that Korngold used several orchestrators for the soundtrack to _Robin Hood_.

This is also true for Broadway musicals. Robert Russell Bennett arranged and orchestrated the musicals of Roger and Hammerstein and Lerner & Lowe.

What I think Ken is asking is should classical composers also retain orchestrators to help them compose a symphony or orchestral music in general.

In practice I really do not think it would work in the world of classical music. One reason is that classical music does not generate the capital necessary to pay for a composer and a team of orchestrators to compose a symphony. Maybe if a classical composer received one million dollars to compose a symphony he would have the funds necessary to contract out the orchestration to arrangers. Even if he did, if he had the time, he would still do the entire project himself and keep the whole million. Now maybe if he had a deadline of only six weeks.

However I think Ken already knows this.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Film music has its own operations and purpose, this sets it apart from classical music. Even John Williams's non-film score work were not written in the way film scores are written.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

The challenge with the "modern way" is that almost any means of a score can be modern, from conceptual pieces lasting a few minutes to hundreds of symphonies by Leif Segerstam (well over 200, probably towards 300 symphonies). How could you argue "modern"? Anything goes!


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

ArtMusic said:


> The challenge with the "modern way" is that almost any means of a score can be modern, from conceptual pieces lasting a few minutes to hundreds of symphonies by Leif Segerstam (well over 200, probably towards 300 symphonies). How could you argue "modern"? Anything goes!


Art, as I have stated earlier, Ken's comment has nothing to do with the style of classical music. He is addressing the administration of music. He is asking should classical composers employ the practices of film composers by hiring others to prepared the orchestrations of their concert works?


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Couple of possibly irrelevant asides. I've been involved a little in playing motion picture sound tracks (nothing major) - one of the things that I hadn't been aware of before I did was the extent of extempore alteration that occurs in the recording sessions. Orchestration is changed, sections cut, repeats or vamps inserted, even lines and harmony rewritten - the score and parts that come to the sessions are often nothing more than a nearly final draft. In fancy soundtrack recording now, the score and parts are constantly being reprinted. That's just how these guys manage time and resources but a big difference to how concert music is made

Also, I played a show of recent film music last month - selected for recognition of the movie titles rather than quality of the music it was pretty dire. Attendance was impressive, which was good as the hire costs of this stuff (How to Train Your Dragon suite, anyone??!) are exorbitant


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

KenOC said:


> Beethoven spent two years writing his 9th Symphony, a bare hour of music. Assuming a standard 1,860-hour work year (40-hour weeks less holidays, vacation, and sick days), that means he had to labor for about an hour for every second of music! But what if he had been blessed by a more modern organization and approach?
> 
> In looking at the 1990 restoration of the soundtrack to "Home Alone." John Williams is listed as composer, conductor, and producer. But also credited are four "orchestrators" plus another four on a "scoring crew". And Williams takes home Grammies faster than Beethoven could crank out even potboilers.
> 
> So, my question: Should modern classical music composers write music in a modern way? After all, they've got seven billion people needing music. Or should they continue in the ancient artisan tradition of the lone craftsman in a sort of cottage industry? What do you think?


I cannot believe this is even a question. Computers and music notation software already make for 'faster' production, or at least vastly reduce the time it takes to write out a score, make revisions, and copy parts. Contemporary composers, therefore, are writing music "in the modern way," using the newer tools.

The "modern' production methods you mention are an industrial shop (chop-shop?) aspect very much part of the Hollywood industry and how they do film scores, and the at-least-used-to-be schedule of the composer getting the final cut of the film and being expected to deliver the complete soundtrack, score, and parts _within two weeks after receiving that final cut of the film!_ Piano drafts or particell scores (mutliple stave draft scores generally indicating the disposition of musical materials assigned to strings, winds, brass) are delivered to a speedster expert orchestrator, who orchestrates to order as per the orchestral resources for which the studio has allotted a non-negotiable expenditure. Famously, though Williams is a fine orchestrator, as was Bernard Hermann, many a 'great' film score composer does not do the orchestrations, speed and the Hollywood way dictate otherwise.

Mozart wrote three masterpiece symphonies in less than two months -- Luigi often drafted, revised, and seems to have hacked doggedly away at some of his works more like a sculptor chipping away at a block of marble. Schubert was, like Mozart, near superhuman fast in both conception and realization of his scores. Artist's rates of production vary greatly, very much a matter of their individual capacities and temperaments.

*What your proposal does not take into account is that, on average, a work of about thirty minutes' duration takes a composer about nine months to complete -- that is not time mainly occupied with the writing out, or copying of parts, but of 'making the piece and making it work,' this because they are not writing some generic music interchangeable with and often highly derivative of other pieces of music, but a unique musical edifice -- very different from the referenced and often enough generic and near to directly ripped off from the old rep kind of music which comprises many a film score. I.e. it is a typical businessman's notion of how production could be improved, without any concept at all of what it takes to make a more substantial piece of music than a film score.*

BTW, I cannot imagine, even without looking the rep up, that Luigi wrote nothing else over that two-year period, either... which, as written with the detailed math of so many minutes of music taking so many hours, the OP is calculated to lead some of the more naive readers to believe. He certainly wrote other music to keep the cash flowing _while he also worked intermittently_ for two years on that symphony. (To me, this sort of cherry-picked presentation smacks of a disingenuous tack, quite skewed, with the intent of stirring the pot, a tactic I really do not admire.)

Historically, especially in those eras when orchestrations were fairly standard, one general style in use across the board, composers would hand over full drafts to colleagues to complete the orchestrations, and of course copyists for parts were employed.

When we get into the early romantic era and beyond, the individual composer's treatment of the orchestra and orchestral color led to less and less of the former practice of handing a full draft over to a colleague, though there are more than a few instances of just that process through the early 20th century.

With the currently available computers and music notation software programs, there is little reason or excuse -- if any at all -- for any composer today to have need to avail themselves of those older practices of handing the finishing work to a colleague, or to capitulate to "the Hollywood way" of quick production.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

starthrower said:


> I'm glad John Williams made his millions, but neither his music, nor the commercial Hollywood dreck it accompanies will mean much in the future. And it means nothing to me in the present. Modern or old style doesn't even matter when considering this insignificant music. Because it's just that.


Thank you for this very heartfelt and blunt post!

That you hold this opinion is a ray of hope showing that classical music is in good hands and that ensures both the continuity and future well-being of classical music.

If any are cynical about any of those much under their late sixties and the supposed dearth of listeners able to discern and discriminate, just consider this post. There are actually many more people rather like him who have similar sensibilities and hold similar opinions. In fact, of the youngest contingency, university music departments and conservatories are filled with younger men and women devoted to classical music, and many would give a similar opinion on the OP.

Contemporary classical and appreciation of the older repertoire are not dead, and a good number of listeners do not have lowered standards or expectations of what good music is.

To all the alarmist and moaning cynics who claim classical is near dead, that there is a dearth of an audience, that music must be more populist and accessible than it already is in order to stay alive and bring in and keep audiences, or that current audiences are lacking in both their number and their ability to discern quality, yada yada yah: 
well, there is less of a meal, and less of that negative "its all dying" argument, than you make out to be.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

PetrB said:


> I cannot believe this is even a question. Computers and music notation software already make for 'faster' production, or at least vastly reduce the time it takes to write out a score, make revisions, and copy parts. Contemporary composers, therefore, are writing music "in the modern way," using the newer tools.


I shudder to think of what would have happened if Haydn had access to this technology.


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

PetrB said:


> BTW, I cannot imagine, even without looking the rep up, that Luigi wrote nothing else over that two-year period, either... which, as written with the detailed math of so many minutes of music taking so many hours, the OP is calculated to lead some of the more naive readers to believe. He certainly wrote other music to keep the cash flowing _while he also worked intermittently_ for two years on that symphony.


I'm surprised that no one has put more emphasis on this! The OP has done his homework poorly and should be given ½ an infraction point for trying to falsify history... 

/ptr


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

ptr said:


> I'm surprised that no one has put more emphasis on this! The OP has done his homework poorly and should be given ½ an infraction point for trying to falsify history...
> 
> /ptr


Ka-ching!  As presented in the OP, it is not worth the virtual paper it is printed upon.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

PetrB said:


> ...BTW, I cannot imagine, even without looking the rep up, that Luigi wrote nothing else over that two-year period, either... which, as written with the detailed math of so many minutes of music taking so many hours, the OP is calculated to lead some of the more naive readers to believe. He certainly wrote other music to keep the cash flowing _while he also worked intermittently_ for two years on that symphony. (To me, this sort of cherry-picked presentation smacks of a disingenuous tack, quite skewed, with the intent of stirring the pot, a tactic I really do not admire.)"


The two-year "real-time" estimate for the 9th Symphony comes from Cooper. Beethoven worked fitfully on the symphony from 1820 until 1822. He dropped it completely, only returning to it in spring 1823 when he had disposed of the Missa, the Diabelli's, and the Op. 119 Bagatelles. It was then essentially his only occupation from that point through late Spring 1824. Thus the two-year estimate.

Cooper discusses this in the context of economics: how the quartets, although earning less per composition, actually paid much better per month, per year, or whatever. Publishers were paying a very good price for Beethoven's quartets, each could be written in about a quarter of the calendar time of the symphony, and neither concert of Beethoven's 9th in his lifetime turned a profit.

BTW Arpeggio has it exactly right. By "modern music" I mean music being written in modern times -- _i.e_., today. Nothing to do with the style. Amazing how some words become politicized around here, making the bull see red -- or blue, depending! :lol:


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Blancrocher said:


> I shudder to think of what would have happened if Haydn had access to this technology.


:lol: Ha ha, that's funny! If Vivaldi had access to this technology, he could have written 5,555,555 concertos, or "the same concerto 5,555,555 times."


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> :lol: Ha ha, that's funny! If Vivaldi had access to this technology, he could have written 5,555,555 concertos, or "the same concerto 5,555,555 times."


Well, I've sometimes thought that both interchangeable parts and assembly-line production began in the music industry. Maybe Henry Ford was inspired by Vivaldi: "They can have 'em in any color they want, so long as it's B-flat."


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> :lol: Ha ha, that's funny! If Vivaldi had access to this technology, he could have written 5,555,555 concertos, or "the same concerto 5,555,555 times."


Or one concerto with 5,555,555 movements.


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## Kibbles Croquettes (Dec 2, 2014)

arpeggio said:


> Or one concerto with 5,555,555 movements.


This reminds me of my idea that lottery would be simpler if one didn't have to pick seven numbers from 39 possible but just one number out of 77519922480. It would also make the lottery machine more glorious/ominous if all of those numbers had their own individual ball in the machine.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

arpeggio said:


> I appears you may be missing the point of the OP.
> 
> Ken is talking about the mechanics that film composers use to create a film score.
> 
> ...


Ooops sorry about my misreading. Perhaps our little "Beethoven" of today is a Max Richter with samplers and keyboards remixing Vivaldi and other composers of the past into postmodern collages?


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

Musicians should use what they've got to do what they can, whether that's a piano, a pen and some paper, or a fully functional studio with a computer and other gadgets, or whatever else. The question need not be one of old vs. new but one of validity, and all these approaches are totally valid.


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## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

Blancrocher said:


> I shudder to think of what would have happened if Haydn had access to this technology.


Segerstam is the second coming of Haydn.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Der Leiermann said:


> Segerstam is the second coming of Haydn.


I would love to hear Segerstam's baryton trios!


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## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> I would love to hear Segerstam's baryton trios!


And I would love to hear his symphonies! Wait...


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## Guest (Dec 22, 2014)

To answer Ken's OP: why yes, of course modern music should be written in a modern way, just as our modern lives should be lived in a modern way, unless one is into pastiche and historical fetishism.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

TalkingHead said:


> To answer Ken's OP: why yes, of course modern music should be written in a modern way, just as our modern lives should be lived in a modern way, unless one is into pastiche and historical fetishism.


Which would be fine, after all. Let each to his own tastes!

The hobby farming lifestyle has some appeal to me. I make try taking it up in my sixties.... Wouldn't it be nice? Me with a bunch of ducks and goats and pigs and chickens and a couple cows and a big vegetable garden, churning butter and brewing cider and boiling syrup? Chopping off chicken heads and eating their bodies for dinner that night! (I've lived on a farm, seen it done just like that.) But the factory farm and the grocery store are the modern way....

I don't know, man. I'm tired now, and by my late 60s I'll be so exhausted, I might just want to sit in front of whatever has become the equivalent of a television eating salty foods and smoking until a heart attack delivers me from consciousness of predation and parasitism.

But an old-fashioned garden would be nice too, if I could get myself up for it.


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## Guest (Dec 22, 2014)

Well Science, intensive factory farming methods are not the only option open to us moderns. Certainly, from an economic-productive viewpoint it has its logic.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

TalkingHead said:


> Well Science, intensive factory farming methods are not the only option open to us moderns. Certainly, from an economic-productive viewpoint it has its logic.


Right, and in that sense everything old is still an open option if we can get creative enough to figure out how to get it. We _could_ get typewriters or quill pens or vellum or papyrus if we wanted, just as we could copy out all the parts of a composition by hand.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Yes, and we can all run away with our girlfriends (or boyfriends) and live on love. (grumble)


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

KenOC said:


> The two-year "real-time" estimate for the 9th Symphony comes from Cooper. Beethoven worked fitfully on the symphony from 1820 until 1822. He dropped it completely, only returning to it in spring 1823 when he had disposed of the Missa, the Diabelli's, and the Op. 119 Bagatelles. It was then essentially his only occupation from that point through late Spring 1824. Thus the two-year estimate.


Right there, with the 'dropped it completely' in 1822, and 'disposing of'
Missa Solemnis
Diabelli Variations, 
Op. 119 Bagatelles
and that 'worked fitfully' on the symphony from 1820 to 1822

is a very different record of activity than 'working on nothing else but the 9th symphony for a solid two years.' I wonder too, when this commission for a choral work from the London group crossed his desk, if that may have been more than a little pause for a bit of time out to figure out the best approach to tie that in, or graft that last movement on, to the completely earlier movements.

At any rate, the misrepresentation / slant as first appearing in the OP I thought very much exaggerated toward the purpose of installing a point which is totally illegitimate -- ergo more than a little skewed, and can only guess at the motivation of why that was done, or what effect it might have been thought to garner from the responses


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

PetrB said:


> Right there, with the 'dropped it completely' in 1822, and 'disposing of'
> Missa Solemnis
> Diabelli Variations,
> Op. 119 Bagatelles
> ...


The offer from the Philharmonic Society, which Beethoven heard of in late July or August 1822, was for a symphony, not a choral work. By "dispose of" I mean give absolute priority to -- all except the Bagatelles had been started long before. The Mass, of course, was way overdue. Payments were waiting for completion and delivery.

There was never a question of using the 9th's choral finale anywhere but its current place -- although Beethoven considered replacing it at one point with an instrumental finale. And BTW none of the early movements of the symphony had been written at that point.

I unsure why you don't just look these things up yourself instead of using them in an apparent attempt to accuse me of some sort of base motivation, whatever you imagine that might be. Frankly, I find it unpleasant.


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## mtmailey (Oct 21, 2011)

YES doing it by hand is a lot slower & harder the computer makes it easy to write music.With the software one can also printed out music which means there is no need for a publisher.COMPUTER ENGRAVING is better & faster you know.It took me like 6 weeks to a symphony by hand but on my computer it took less than a month.


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## Kibbles Croquettes (Dec 2, 2014)

mtmailey said:


> YES doing it by hand is a lot slower & harder the computer makes it easy to write music.With the software one can also printed out music which means there is no need for a publisher.COMPUTER ENGRAVING is better & faster you know.It took me like 6 weeks to a symphony by hand but on my computer it took less than a month.


Well, for me the best point about using a computer to write down music is the ability to play it back instantenously. I don't have to know in advance what I'm doing: I can try all options and then listen to them and pick the best! I guess if you just wanted, you could write the best classical piece in the world by first choosing a note from which to start, then you could try what note would absolutely be the best to come after that, then try what would be the best after those two notes etc. until silence would be the best choice. The problem is that there would be quite a lot of trying, with all possible notes in all octaves and all different lengths, articulations and so on. But maybe it would be worth it?


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## MoonlightSonata (Mar 29, 2014)

mtmailey said:


> YES doing it by hand is a lot slower & harder the computer makes it easy to write music.With the software one can also printed out music which means there is no need for a publisher.COMPUTER ENGRAVING is better & faster you know.It took me like 6 weeks to a symphony by hand but on my computer it took less than a month.


I also like having the ability to play back and transpose transposing instruments at the end when I'm finished. It's also good only to have to write out the music once even if you make a mistake.


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## Kibbles Croquettes (Dec 2, 2014)

MoonlightSonata said:


> I also like having the ability to play back and transpose transposing instruments at the end when I'm finished. It's also good only to have to write out the music once even if you make a mistake.


Oh, I had a terrible nightmare last night: I had to write down a short arrangement of a melody for a pianist to play, but I just kept making mistakes all the time and had to always start from the beginning. It's very impressive indeed how even such a dull thing as writing an arrangement down over and over again on a piece of paper may be the most intensive experience in a dream!


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## differencetone (Dec 13, 2014)

KenOC said:


> Beethoven spent two years writing his 9th Symphony, a bare hour of music. Assuming a standard 1,860-hour work year (40-hour weeks less holidays, vacation, and sick days), that means he had to labor for about an hour for every second of music! But what if he had been blessed by a more modern organization and approach?
> 
> In looking at the 1990 restoration of the soundtrack to "Home Alone." John Williams is listed as composer, conductor, and producer. But also credited are four "orchestrators" plus another four on a "scoring crew". And Williams takes home Grammies faster than Beethoven could crank out even potboilers.
> 
> So, my question: Should modern classical music composers write music in a modern way? After all, they've got seven billion people needing music. Or should they continue in the ancient artisan tradition of the lone craftsman in a sort of cottage industry? What do you think?


I quoted this because the thread is so long.

The reason that movie composers employ people is because they have a deadline and a huge budget. Most composers can not afford this. They are lucky to even get their music performed also if you are used to doing things a certain way, maybe you don't want to change that. There is a matter of pride. It would be unorthodox for a composer outside of the movie/musical etc. industry to hire arrangers and "copyists." I certainly would not look down on it but I imagine a lot of people would. It could be some kind of a scandal. Maybe composers and painters work alone because they are control freaks. Maybe they do it because this is the definition of a painter or a composer. If you are in a rock band, usually every member is a composer. Nobody tells the bass player what to play. I think more classical music should be like this. Probably it would not happen since there is a tremendous inertia in society about they way anything is done.


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## MoonlightSonata (Mar 29, 2014)

Kibbles Croquettes said:


> Oh, I had a terrible nightmare last night: I had to write down a short arrangement of a melody for a pianist to play, but I just kept making mistakes all the time and had to always start from the beginning. It's very impressive indeed how even such a dull thing as writing an arrangement down over and over again on a piece of paper may be the most intensive experience in a dream!


Dreams. They're strange things.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Shostakovich somewhere accused Prokofiev of assigning his students to orchestrate his works. I didn't even know Prokofiev had students! Anyway, I would guess if that were true, it was for educational purposes only. Dmitri himself claimed to compose directly in score without a piano intermediate, so he couldn't be accused of that.

John Williams (back to the OP) composed at the piano in pencil on regular manuscript paper. I don't think he used a computer.


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

KenOC said:


> Shostakovich somewhere accused Prokofiev of assigning his students to orchestrate his works.


I've heard that Fauré did this as well, which accounts for th mess that the various editions of the requiem are in.


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

ahammel said:


> I've heard that Fauré did this as well, which accounts for th mess that the various editions of the requiem are in.


His own orchestrations aren't brilliant.

From Wikipedia


> Poulenc, by contrast, described Fauré's orchestration as "a leaden overcoat ... instrumental mud"


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## Guest (Dec 23, 2014)

KenOC said:


> I unsure why you don't just look these things up yourself instead of using them in an apparent attempt to accuse me of some sort of base motivation, whatever you imagine that might be. Frankly, I find it unpleasant.


I had many of the same questions, however. The ostensible topic did not seem real (of course film composing is a completely different situation--for practical reasons*). And the topic as presented--"Should modern music be written in a modern way?"--seems more congruent with recent threads on modernism, particularly as focussed on whether retro-styles can be considered "modern," than it does with the subject as presented in the opening post.

Surely you can see that the question "Should modern music be written in a modern way?" sounds like a continuation of the recent TC debates on modernity, which is how some of the earliest posters took it. I took it that way, too, before reading the opening post. And since the opening post does not seem to present a real topic--since the two situations presented are so different from each other and since the presentation of the first situation leaves out so much (giving a false impression of how Beethoven worked)--it _is_ easy to wonder about why this thread was made. For what purpose.

Anyway, what people have actually ended up doing is taking about two similar situations, individual composers writing individual works, one by hand, one with composing software. What has not happened is another rancorous wrangle about modernity, deshalb Gott sei dank.:lol:

*meaning nothing to do with modernity per se.


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## Guest (Dec 23, 2014)

KenOC said:


> Shostakovich somewhere accused Prokofiev of assigning his students to orchestrate his works. I didn't even know Prokofiev had students!


And I still don't know that Shostakovich accused Prokofiev of doing this. Where is the "somewhere"? The only thing Google picked up about this was an old TC thread which was expressed equally vaguely. ("Rumor.")

That person claimed to have read this in several books, but never does come through with the names of those books or any page numbers.


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

This is a decision for each modern composer, to be taken when writing each modern piece.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I guess the idea has become that collaboration is the modern way but the isolated genius is the traditional way.

Is that really how it was? How about _Dafne_ or _Euridice_ by Peri and Caccini? Or all those events (such as big church services like the thanksgiving service of 1631 and the famous Medici wedding of 1589) and projects like the Tournai Mass or the Llibre Vermell de Montserrat or even any church services with Gregorian chants, to which ordinarily multiple composers submitted works?

Is collaboration really a modern phenomenon?


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## Guest (Dec 23, 2014)

I think collaboration was more usual before the so-called classical era and then became more usual again in the mid-twentieth century.

Like improvisation.

A lot of what passes for a norm in "classical music" is more or less descriptive of how things were done in the nineteenth century.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

Well, not completely "modern." Add to the above that Ferde Grofe orchestrated Rhapsody in Blue for Gershwin. Many artists (I think even Rembrandt) had "schools" of apprentices who would fill in the backgrounds for them when needed. Dumas (I think) had a writing factory in which assistants in places filled out his plot outlines. In his heyday, James Michener had a team of research assistants who dug up all the background info for his way too prolix novels. If you're commercial enough and popular enough, you can afford this.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

some guy said:


> And I still don't know that Shostakovich accused Prokofiev of doing this. Where is the "somewhere"? The only thing Google picked up about this was an old TC thread which was expressed equally vaguely. ("Rumor.")
> 
> That person claimed to have read this in several books, but never does come through with the names of those books or any page numbers.


I think it's in Testimony.


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## differencetone (Dec 13, 2014)

GGluek said:


> Well, not completely "modern." Add to the above that Ferde Grofe orchestrated Rhapsody in Blue for Gershwin.


And Gershwin could only play in one key.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Should modern music be written in a modern way?
But music is written today the same way it has always been written: in destitute poverty. :lol:


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Mahlerian said:


> I think it's in Testimony.


Mahlerian, I thought so too but couldn't easily find it there. However I did find this: "...orchestration was always work for him, hard work, which Prokofiev always tried to palm off on somebody else..." (p. 37)


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

OP: Sure it should. With a modern Bill O'Reilly "Don't be a Pinhead" inkpen.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

It can be. I'm bi-modern.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> Should modern music be written in a modern way?
> But music is written today the same way it has always been written: in destitute poverty. :lol:


That's true but the other challenge today is there are other types of music competing for listening ears, new music as well as very old music. That's why it's hard to answer this question, because there is no clear modern way, at all.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

Modernity always entails the disintegration of ways. When it freezes into a solid way, it settles in memory and becomes a tradition... no longer truly being modern. Of course it's not complete destruction, as then we wouldn't have anything to listen to. But the aesthetic is to constantly transform "ways." 

Modern is more of a verb than a noun.


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## Guest (Dec 23, 2014)

Transform is much better than disintegration.

And addition is better than both.

Modern entails addition.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

some guy said:


> Transform is much better than disintegration.
> 
> And addition is better than both.
> 
> Modern entails addition.


I was referring to the disintegration of a solid structure or method. It's no longer frozen in time, but moving in the now. Modern is both addition and subtraction.

Transformation is the better term, as it encompasses disintegration and creation.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

differencetone said:


> And Gershwin could only play in one key.


You just might be confusing that "one key only composer," it was Irving Berlin, who could neither read or write musical notation, and who could play (at the piano) near to exclusively in the key of F# 
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2664/if-irving-berlin-could-not-read-or-write-music-how-did-he-compose

Gerwshin was notational literate, but at the time of Rhapsody, had no real experience with orchestration. I know he did his own orchestration for the later _Concerto in F._


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## differencetone (Dec 13, 2014)

PetrB said:


> You just might be confusing that "one key only composer," it was Irving Berlin, who could neither read or write musical notation, and who could play (at the piano) near to exclusively in the key of F#
> http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2664/if-irving-berlin-could-not-read-or-write-music-how-did-he-compose
> 
> Gerwshin was notational literate, but at the time of Rhapsody, had no real experience with orchestration. I know he did his own orchestration for the later _Concerto in F._


Oh you are right. I stand corrected thanks. Don't know how I could have confused the two!


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