# What is unethical as a composer and aspiring composer?



## clavichorder

I have been a bit paranoid because I have written what I think are some really cool fragments, but I don't have a sense that they really come from me. How did I do that? They don't sound quite like anything I've heard, I don't think. 

I want to feel proud but can't exactly. Perhaps that means that these are still student pieces in material, no matter what I did with the craft. Or maybe its not so bad to not be entirely original? I don't know. Maybe if I want to be a film score composer. I am starting to understand better the distinction between art music and craft like music. I can't decide which direction I want to take. And its pretty gray.

I kind of feel like I tapped into manic inspiration for the start of this work and it wasn't diligent enough of work. I also have such negative associations with the thoughts I had at the start of this piece... So I added all sort of extra stuff to make it stranger and more complicated, more like something I would do and am playing it more detached than the original grand feel I was cooking up. 

Really, I wish I could be more specific. I generally have a sense of feeling mixed up in my life right now, so I might just be paranoid. Maybe I should record those fragments and post them here? Tonal, basically, but with some modern and strange elements. Takes things from different periods but tries to blend more smoothly. Wider use of the keyboard than previous works.


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## KenOC

Some years back George Harrison was sued for "unconscious plagiarism." He had a hit song, "My Sweet Lord." Turned out he had copied it, entirely but accidentally, from "He's So Fine," actually a well-known song by the Chiffons. Since Harrison's song made a lot of money, lawsuits followed and money changed hands ultimately...

Anyway, if you're nervous, you can post here or on the "Identifying music" subforum. But Handel wouldn't have bothered!


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## clavichorder

Interesting. If another camp has a perspective, I will be interested in hearing an unbiased counter. I am really in the middle right now.

Since I don't really have a melody, and the theme that could be borrowed is worked in an entirely different way, perhaps I'm okay. I use some historical idioms but I try to add my own complex spin on them making them removed from their roots. Some may even be against starting with something someone else did unconsciously and advancing from those roots, which is what I have likely done. 

Sometimes I get pretty close to a throw in this, throw in that, mentality and will even nearly quote. Schnittke does it. But in this one, I was pretty clever I thought. The mood of the piece scares me, so I play it detached. (I have been allowing myself to get paranoid by likely well meaning, religious people. I just want to be sane..., and please take this as partly a tongue in cheek jibe, which is kind of is and isn't.)


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## PetrB

_** "Me, I don't care if he had a toothache when he wrote it."*_

Between the Morgenstern - Barlow index of musical themes (I think you can access that online), and the collective ears of members here, I think it is nearly certain you will at least be able to confirm it did or did not 'come from somebody else.'

Whether copyright enters the picture or no, it is common enough to make up something and then have a constant and niggling thought it may be unconsciously 'lifted' from another composer's works -- the more repertoire you know, the greater the possibilities and / or self doubts. For the sake of your reputation, as well as copyright on more recent material, it is a good thing to check. I'd guess well over 90% of the time there is some associative similarity that you have with your own material, coupled with the data bank of all you've heard, but chances of wholesale replication are beyond slight (unless it is a simple pop song with clear melody line and but a few harmonic changes.)

If the dilemma is a bit more self-centered, as in 'I wrote it but _where did it come from_? There is no real simple answer on that particular score.

I don't know where my ideas come from, even if they are the end result of a bit of noodling at the keyboard, i.e. 'discovered' vs. more consciously premeditated and then worked.

I can tell you the longer you are in music and writing fairly regularly, there is an analogous 'well' which is then primed and it remains primed; musical ideas will come out whether you consciously pump the handle or no --- if you are dwelling in the place of composition, the sub-conscious is always at work, is typically long term 'on the job,' even during what you may think are your 'off hours.' Et Voila! An idea pops out, and you haven't a clue 'where it came from,' though a part of your brain has been actively working on it for some time prior sitting down to compose.

I cannot imagine outside circumstance or personal mood having much of any effect upon what you write / what is written for the simple reason I have no such associations with music (while composing). Even if I wanted to, I can't conceive of how those 'apply' to the kernel idea or the piece as it is being written. To me, they are so not related that the whole premise of steering a piece of music that way sounds like putting icing on a cake after it is baked 

In the act of composing, you _are_ the medium: a good deal of your persona, pathology, emotional frames of reference will be part of whatever you write, without your consciously attempting to 'get them in' to the music or worry about the music being 'expressive.' It is completely my nature to approach composing this way, as it may be your nature to agonize over directly expressing 'how you feel,' as you write. I think emotional content, mood, expressiveness blazes through (if one is at all technically competent) no matter what you think you are thinking or feeling at the moment.

For every audience member who feels they want or need the irrelevant and completely unnecessary data around a particular piece, i.e. "What mood was the composer in / what was he thinking - feeling / when he wrote it?" -- you will find about an equal number who might just as likely perceive something quite 'other' about the music. Even if you told them what you thought was the truth, the actual truth is 'what you were about' all that while your subconscious was at work on the music -- if you have no idea 'where it came from,' how could you possibly attribute specific frames of mind and emotions, which came from the unconscious / intuitive from times previous to when your conscious self began to work on the piece?

At any rate, you will be later astonished to find your listeners have perhaps a similar emotional reaction which did 'match your mood,' while composing these pieces, but at least as many will have a completely different set of emotive reactions far afield of 'what you were thinking when you wrote it.'

* It may help you to know there are some, myself included, who, as a teacher said to me about Chopin, feel this way about all the non-musical externals...
"I don't care if he had a toothache when he wrote it."

Check the index; Check this TC member base, and 'worry' only about continuing to write as well as you do, improving, and making more. Life is too short for quasi-manufactured existential quandries 

P.s. Re: Copyright issues.
I agree with Ken OC that Haendel would not have bothered, but there and back then, Mozart did not bother either. Mozart either lifted or spontaneously duplicated a famous four note motif first used in a Haydn symphony -- that motif having the exact same interval order and the same ratio of note duration -- as the first of the five themes used in the polyphonic romp of the finale of Mozart's Symphony No. 40.

Back then, it was 'alright,' Now, either composer, or their publishers or agents, would be on the phones, talking settlements or lawyers to protect the revenue from their intellectual property (which, BTW, I am all for.) Since we live in the here and now and not then, it is more than pertinent to check that you are not -- accidentally, even -- making use of the music of another without specifically having their permission


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## Ramako

I think I know what you're talking about clavichorder, though I wouldn't term it 'ethics', since that, to me, just refers to copyright...

I often approach composition from a series of different angles. I can label 3 categories, though there is a fair bit of intermixing. Sometimes I run by inspiration - I just feel that the notes I am writing down are the right ones (not that they always are of course). Others I decide I directly want to express something and I try to write down a certain emotion or emotions and sometimes I focus on the craft, the technical side. Usually the second doesn't work very well unless combined with one of the others. These are sub-conscious rather than conscious ways of approaching music.

I am very interested in deliberate expression in music, though I don't have the technical ability to be able to do it at the moment. I approach this mostly as inspired to it by Mahler, who appears to have worked that way. I should perhaps add that a still increasing appreciation for the emotional 'journey' of a composition has been probably the single most important part of my musical learning so far.

There are other ways I sometimes approach composition which usually fail. The most common of these is where I decide to write something not because I want to, but because someone else wants me to. I'm not talking about commissioning, but rather that the style or something else about the music I am trying to write is unnatural to me and I am bending to outward pressures in an unconscious way (if it is conscious, that is better, because then I can treat that aspect of it as a 'fixed point' and work with it with my more intuitive musicality). These pieces are rarely very successful, and I haven't listed any in my recent completed compositions.

I don't believe that 'being in tune' with oneself as a composer is an ethical responsibility - more that it will simply, by nature as it were, lead to better compositions. It's a practical thing.


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## Tomposer

I think it's important to realise that there's something about music's fundamental nature which is that it is a _shared _thing. Only comparatively recently in the Western world was a notion developed that a composer owns a piece they write. If we look at medieval music and early renaissance music, we will note that a composer creates a piece by using a "cantus firmus" which is (as many of you would know) a traditional religious melody, often with its origins lost in antiquity - ancient to even those early composers. So a student would take a master's work and elaborate on it.

More recently we have various examples of shared musical culture particularly in non-"art music" streams, where people tended (at first) to be less high and mighty. Here elaborations on an existing theme were the way things went - a standard, played as a head, distinguished by unique individual approaches; or in hiphop you have sampling, for example. The list goes on.

The complete idea of copyright doesn't sit easily with these facts. I personally think by and large we need a copyright system, but it pays to keep in mind that the matter is not a simple one, and that we shouldn't make assumptions about "musical morality" just because we understand the does and don'ts of the law.


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## Crudblud

Tomposer said:


> The complete idea of copyright doesn't sit easily with these facts. I personally think by and large we need a copyright system, but it pays to keep in mind that the matter is not a simple one, and that we shouldn't make assumptions about "musical morality" just because we understand the does and don'ts of the law.


This is why I'm a supporter of Copyleft, and particularly the Attribution-ShareAlike licence.


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## clavichorder

Tomposer said:


> I think it's important to realise that there's something about music's fundamental nature which is that it is a _shared _thing


Nice post. Here's my thought: A composer could theoretically borrow from music itself in anyway way that is pleasing or serves the purpose in mind, and also use that knowledge to teach other composers. The musical world could indeed be a bit more generous; all the artistic egos and the skills that grow out of them are fun sometimes to marvel at or strive to become, but it has the potential to be a field where people really learn to understand each other. Of course, I still think its desirable to have an artistic presence.


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## PetrB

clavichorder said:


> Nice post. Here's my thought: A composer could theoretically borrow from music itself in anyway way that is pleasing or serves the purpose in mind, and also use that knowledge to teach other composers. The musical world could indeed be a bit more generous; all the artistic egos and the skills that grow out of them are fun sometimes to marvel at or strive to become, but it has the potential to be a field where people really learn to understand each other. Of course, I still think its desirable to have an artistic presence.


'The greats' have more than 'borrowed,' but simply taken the material of another which interested them, and used it. The only important thing there (current copyright law set aside as an issue) is that whatever the material, you work it enough to yield something which is unquestionably 'your own,' i.e. add enough of something fresh where there is not mistaking the work for a shallow imitation, and that plagiarism is not even a matter which would come up.

If the quote, or bit you have used as material is under copyright, or not, it is considered conventional and politic to mention the composer and / or work, either in the title or as a secondary bit of information.

Bach, Stravinsky, among others, were tremendous 'Borrowers.' "Bach the borrower" is a set phrase used in showing that one aspect of Bach, all that Vivaldi, lifted wholesale and reworked, the air on the G string was the melody of another composer, originally not in G, etc.

Stravinsky put a humorous semantic spin on it when he said, "great composers do not borrow: they steal!"

Of young composers in training and youngish composers, there are two known aspects which commonly manifest. Though I'm sure you've heard both, they are.

"Short-winded" comps.

The tendency to "Throw in everything but the kitchen sink," (and sometimes the kitchen sink as well) into one -- again probably too brief -- comp

To hand you that cautionary advice you've likely heard already several times, do consider how many elements of 'this or that' you are playing with within one piece, your strengths to date, and as usual, for a clearer statement and better chance of optimum success, 'limit your subject.'


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## clavichorder

Maybe Medtner truly was among the greatest composers of all time...that's what I'm thinking now. Really high in ability and deep in passion, really rigid in what he did, not wanting to consciously borrow any techniques from anyone, and was just never successful. I think Brahms may have had a similar fate but compromised just a little.

A certain type of composer that is very serious about certain things and doesn't ever let loose as a result? Wonder how many of those there are. Or the reverse, composers who didn't take it very seriously and were too loose? (Telemann, Martinu?)

I have ideas like this all the time, and I don't claim they haven't been thought before, but I am pleased to be coming to my own understanding on these things. Thank you for all your responses, they seem to straighten things up a bit. I have a bad habit of not getting my thoughts out there, and not even realizing it.


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## clavichorder

PetrB said:


> To hand you that cautionary advice you've likely heard already several times, do consider how many elements of 'this or that' you are playing with within one piece, your strengths to date, and as usual, for a clearer statement and better chance of optimum success, 'limit your subject.'


Its true. But what if I have learned to like composers who naturally do the things I do? I have the first tendency to polish to perfection before I even have enough material. Federico Mompou and Emmanuel Chabrier are very gem like like that, and perhaps why I feel such comfort with their music and the tightest of baroque music. Maybe I don't feel like its suitable to my personality to be the perfect composer. Maybe when I try I will actually find some limitations, but I try too slow so I have all these big ideas. My former teacher wanted to loosen me up, and I was afraid I'd lose the big ideas, unconsciously perhaps. But it seems that I kind of want to shed them now and nail some kind of a style eventually.

Renaissance music and neoclassical and sturm und drang, and Telemann and Scarlatti, have all given me an idea of varying phrase lengths and a sense that the quirks are really fun and mind bending.

Then there is the kitchen sink tendency when I bypass that. From that I get a feel for the oddities of some Brahms and Nikolai Medtner, and also Bach, and maybe Richard Strauss, Mahler, ect.

There is this tendency to to want to smooth things to academic perfection and that may be what happens with Medtner and Bach.

Composers are so interesting...

I think ultimately I would want to function with a Telemann or Haydn like mentality, but that does seem to be trendy these days actually. Whitacre, Glass, and others who copy themselves much. Adams is a favorite of mine these days.

If anyone has any corrections they want to try to assert on my thinking, I would try to listen. But also, suggestions of modern composers, now that I'm starting to see a bigger picture. I sometimes wonder if my limited view has its advantages too. Not enough probably.


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## kv466

Fear not for every sound and tune already exists and has been played.


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## clavichorder

kv466 said:


> Fear not for every sound and tune already exists and has been played.


I prefer to see things a little bit complicated though. There are some advantages, though a great deal of personal unhappiness exists from over complication.

Are things really very static these days? I think these could actually be really exciting times for composers.


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## clavichorder

In order to be a certain kind of art music composer you kind of have to be what psychiatrists would call a cerebral narcissist(or just a plain narcissist) unless it really is just that smooth and natural for you. Is that really such a bad thing? I feel like I don't get a break from people being hard on me or being hard on myself.

I probably sound like I've been smoking pot, and the truth is, I haven't...for months and never intend to again.


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## Ramako

In terms of 'borrowing' things, so much depends on where a tune or idea is placed within a composition. Often an idea can sound really rather mediocre by itself, but when placed correctly can become so much better...

Of course this is no original thought, and Mozart is often mentioned for having themes which are great 'in themselves'... But it is Mozart who has recently emphasised this point to me very strongly - there is a descending sequence in the A major string quartet no. 18 which is the most basic of material, most cliche... And yet it is to my mind (or heart?) one of the most affecting passages ever written.


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