Boredom Fugues

This is all a bunch of nonsense, sorry. QC, Daniel, and Voce of course, are pretty much on the money. Whatever made you think Bach didn't think when he wrote his music is absolutely and unequivocally wrong. Nevermind that to employ the baroque affects and symbolisms like Bach and other composers of his time did requires a good deal of thinking and planning. It's the reason why you don't see a saltus doriusculus or such planted just anywhere.

In fact, the constructions of motives and counterpoint development is thought and planned ahead of time or you can run yourself into a dead end. Likewise with Vienna Classic forms. Bach improvised, but there's a great deal of form and stylistic conscious choices that baroque improvisation follows. It's not "Just whatever." Moreover, each country has its own tradition for cyphered bass improvisation, and composers themselves were very different as well.

If you're thinking that conscious decision making is nonsense (in art), I suppose you don't think when you write your own music. Yet I find this impossible to believe, since to write a note a decision must be made. To lay a rhythm, to choose a style, to select from different harmonic palettes or composition techniques, require all conscious choice.

That these decisions be commanded by the composer's intuition is one thing, but they can also be a result of stylistic recreation, form-implementations, and any other number of factors.

If you're saying the Mozart requiem isn't derived from formulas and aesthetic parameters from Mozart's own time and his contemporaries, you certainly have a lot to learn. In case you aren't aware, musicology always works backwards, not forwards in time. We NOW know that Mozart used a lot of specific formulas, choices, and so on that are founded not in speculation, but in the clear influences he had in his life as a composer and the time he lived in.

He certainly was aware of it, but there was no "book" on it in his time. It's nice you talk about reading letters and so on from composers, but the music speaks for itself when contrasted with music from the same time. It's evident that Mozart took much of what he composed from CPE Bach and Haydn, which means a synthesis of these composers' works into formulas which he later recreated to his own taste.

That's how composers learned before, and it still remains the absolute best way to write in "style." Copy, copy, reduce things to formulas that you can reproduce. That's what Mozart, Bach, Fux, Schumann, ETC ETC did.

In essence, if you disqualify music based on its writing method, simply put, you have a LOT to learn. Lurk moar.

Your post is a perfect example of what's wrong in modern music education. It tricks people into thinking that just because they can analyze, spout theoretical maxims, remember the names of obscure chords and their theoretical associations, and generate notation that they are some how capable of creating worthwhile music.

It's like the artisan trying to pass off as an artist. All learning but no art.

To better understand how real composers write music one might look at how Michelangelo created sculptures from stone.

As for Mozart being a "synthesis" of other composers ... being subconciously influenced or even using a passage and then creating something new from it is an act of imaginative creation. Mozart did not sit there saying "hmmm, i'll add a dash of haydn, sprinkle of bach, a tablespoon of handel" and so on. He just wrote music and his entire music experience influenced his imagination. But it was his imagination not some set of theoretical maxims and procedures that created his music. Once again you've confused analysis (what modern music schools are good at teaching) with the art of composing. Having said that it's only human nature to see our gods through the lens of our own inadequecies. Indeed we create god in our image.

As for this:

"That's how composers learned before, and it still remains the absolute best way to write in "style." Copy, copy, reduce things to formulas that you can reproduce. That's what Mozart, Bach, Fux, Schumann, ETC ETC did."

Copying is a great way to learn. Sure. They all did it. Anyone who composes does it now. However when it comes to actually creating a new piece of music one doesnt say, "according to my formula ... " and have that be how the notes are entere. If you've decided on a style the notes come naturally in that style and it's informed sub-conciously by what you've learned. If you're sitting down deciding what note to write next then you aren't a composer. You have to at least be able conceive passage at a time with at least the base line. Same with writing fugues. If you cant imagine three voices in counterpoint then composing fugues is not something you have any talent for it.

I don't know what wonders you might create if you weren't so encumbered by what you've been taught but the process you've described is not that of the great composers by their words, the words of those who've known them, and by what is known and understood of the creation of all art.

By the way, I just reviewed one of your fugues. It would be great if you could review my funeral march. It's not a fugue but it's got a brief fugue-like passage thats really just a strict canon.

Ginger!

Originally Posted by Seraphim

Your post is a perfect example of what's wrong in modern music education. It tricks people into thinking that just because they can analyze, spout theoretical maxims, remember the names of obscure chords and their theoretical associations, and generate notation that they are some how capable of creating worthwhile music.

Oh please. I'm not going to waste my time with someone who a couple of posts back was saying everyone was mediocre compared to Mozart.

And no, I'm not going to review any of your pieces on grounds that what you said about my little'ol fugue is not a real review (and I had to take out the score (for attachment space reasons) and I thought nobody would need it again so obviously you couldn't even see it. If you really cared you could've as well requested a score which I could've uploaded right away.)

Nevermind that you looked it up just to compare me to god-damned nico (Or Bach.)

You're not really impressing anyone with your discourse on education, seeing as you apparently have none yourself.

Ach mein Gott. This is ridiculous. Your opinions are compatible!

I still stand by my original statement that "the people with the greatest talent do analyse their way through everything, but with minimum effort" (or, at least, far less effort than it might take you or I to do the same). As far as I'm aware, all the evidence points in this direction, and it also reconciles your opinions. It explains why Handel could write the Messiah so quickly, how Bach wrote so many astounding cantatas with such velocity, and how both are yet intellectually and emotionally wrought. A parallel example would be the natural ability that makes some performers brilliant. This natural ability does not mean they never need practise, or pour endless effort into their performances. It just catalyses their hard work.

Originally Posted by Zetetic

Ach mein Gott. This is ridiculous. Your opinions are compatible!

I still stand by my original statement that "the people with the greatest talent do analyse their way through everything, but with minimum effort" (or, at least, far less effort than it might take you or I to do the same). As far as I'm aware, all the evidence points in this direction, and it also reconciles your opinions. It explains why Handel could write the Messiah so quickly, how Bach wrote so many astounding cantatas with such velocity, and how both are yet intellectually and emotionally wrought. A parallel example would be the natural ability that makes some performers brilliant. This natural ability does not mean they never need practise, or pour endless effort into their performances. It just catalyses their hard work.

You are indeed a brilliant fellow to have found common ground between us. Fabulous.

Too bad I don't agree with him on that specific point. ;P

But we've had that conversation before, so I will avoid going into it again.

Originally Posted by SSC

Oh please. I'm not going to waste my time with someone who a couple of posts back was saying everyone was mediocre compared to Mozart.

And no, I'm not going to review any of your pieces on grounds that what you said about my little'ol fugue is not a real review (and I had to take out the score (for attachment space reasons) and I thought nobody would need it again so obviously you couldn't even see it. If you really cared you could've as well requested a score which I could've uploaded right away.)

Nevermind that you looked it up just to compare me to god-damned nico (Or Bach.)

You're not really impressing anyone with your discourse on education, seeing as you apparently have none yourself.

So much anger ... now if only you could put that in music that would be something to listen to!

Beethoven sketched extensively before writing, and then when he was done writing, he went back and edited. So did Schubert and Schumann. So did Wagner, and Mahler, and Haydn, and Purcell, and Tallis, and Schönberg, and Britten, and yes, even Mozart, though his sketches seem to have existed in his head, rather than on the page (incidentally, that's called improvising, not composing).

I don't know how you think Michelangelo sculpted - but he too sketched extensively before beginning in stone. He invited models to his studio, and sketched them in various poses, from different angles, before deciding on one he liked. Then he would sketch the sketch, imagining its different angles. Finally, when he had every angle drawn, only THEN would he start in clay or marble.

Leonardo da Vinci also sketched extensively before moving into his "finished" medium. So did Picasso. Jackson Pollack didn't, but his theory was different.

Oh, and by the way, I don't know if you noticed, but Nico's banned. He's been banned twice now. And I don't know if that makes a difference or anything, but it kind of makes you look like an ass - someone who just comes in to spew about the theoretical nature of art without actively contributing to the compositional development of either the forum or its other members.

Or is that a troll? I don't get the internet slang. Meh.

Originally Posted by Christopher Dunn-Rankin

Beethoven sketched extensively before writing, and then when he was done writing, he went back and edited. So did Schubert and Schumann. So did Wagner, and Mahler, and Haydn, and Purcell, and Tallis, and Schönberg, and Britten, and yes, even Mozart, though his sketches seem to have existed in his head, rather than on the page (incidentally, that's called improvising, not composing).

I don't know how you think Michelangelo sculpted - but he too sketched extensively before beginning in stone. He invited models to his studio, and sketched them in various poses, from different angles, before deciding on one he liked. Then he would sketch the sketch, imagining its different angles. Finally, when he had every angle drawn, only THEN would he start in clay or marble.

Leonardo da Vinci also sketched extensively before moving into his "finished" medium. So did Picasso. Jackson Pollack didn't, but his theory was different.

Oh, and by the way, I don't know if you noticed, but Nico's banned. He's been banned twice now. And I don't know if that makes a difference or anything, but it kind of makes you look like an ass - someone who just comes in to spew about the theoretical nature of art without actively contributing to the compositional development of either the forum or its other members.

Or is that a troll? I don't get the internet slang. Meh.

Actually a good description of a troll is someone who runs around forums insulting other people for no apparent reason and often without any consideration or understanding of the actual points being discussed.