Leaderboard

… and in turn you are oversimplifying. It certainly cannot be easily divided into any of these categories. Every great composer has a highly personalized aesthetic design which exhibits signs of all of these things which arguably means it falls under none of them. Only gimmicky composers can be pigeonholed in such a way - also I understand the terms you mentioned differently than you defined them, especially deconstruction which is definitely not conservative. I also disagree strongly with your broad categories as I find them arbitrary and simplistic. If I humor your definitions anyway, it's quite easy to conclude that without emotion music is pointless, and without kinesis it is stagnant. I don't understand your definition of spirituality, it seems only to denote great works that are respected. That of course has nothing to do with the music - it either is great or it isn't. It's a consequence of the work's greatness, not a characteristic or attribute. Nobody says: "I am going to write great music that is spiritual" or on the flipside: "I want to write meaningless kinetic music," at least not if they are being serious. One writes good music that is to be respected if one is capable and poor music if one is not, unless the work in question is just a pointless project you care nothing about written for monetary other extramusical reasons - I would hardly call that a legitimate musical offering.

This reminds me of Alan Belkin's A Practical Guide to Musical Composition:http://www.dolmetsch.com/form.pdf I recommend giving it a look over. Its a short read. It's sure helped me stay on track in terms of form. If you think about your music in terms of what the listener is hearing, remembering, and expecting, you'll have a lot easier time writing engaging music.