How do you write a long-form piece?

What makes fire? He thought back to school. To all those science classes. Had he ever learned what made a fire? Did a teacher ever stand up there and say, "This is what makes a fire..."

-- Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

It's been a long time since I read that book, but this quote, which I somehow remembered, hit me the other day when I realized that, for all I've learned in school, nobody ever stood up there and said, "This is what Mahler did when he felt like writing a half-hour movement of an hour-and-a-half symphony." Writing a minute of music is easy. Themes are easy.

Development is hard. Let's say you have a theme, and you want to elaborate on it and the current musical feeling before moving on to another section with its own theme. You extend the last measures of the theme into a little bit of development, but that lasts a half-minute at most. Whenever I feel like I need more time -- say, four or five minutes -- to express a point musically, there comes that one measure when I need to start writing non-thematic material, the real "stuff" of development. I feel like development is actually not really based on the theme before it at all, except for the transition. It's just material of its own, less thematic, developmental in character but more like a stream of consciousness.

I find that sort of thing really difficult to write. I don't know how much to allude to existing themes, how much repetition in sequences to use before it gets boring, how to know when a rhythmic or melodic or harmonic-system change is safe to make or too jarring for the moment. I'm working right now on a symphonic poem in six contiguous movements, projected at more than a half hour, I expect, and I'm really interested in your guys' answers: how do you write a long-form movement? How do you write a long-form piece?

I have that same problem. I listen to Mahler and I'm like, "HOW?".

My symphony that I recently finished was only 30 minutes long. I dont know if that is long or short but whatever. I really just try to develop and develop.

That's all I can say. :)

Once I find something that grabs my interest, I play with it. My problem has always been to find the way to stop it. I have written pieces that are 6 minutes long that really only have one theme that has been twisted around a few times. When I have a piece that has a theme and a counter theme I am lucky when I get it to stop around 10 minutes. Since I know that most listeners (today) prefer shorter pieces, I spend a good deal of my time finding places to delete. I have a piece that I wrote that is just the remnants of other pieces(the parts cut from others).

But I understand your question to be more towards, How to do it, then the answer has to include where it comes from.

My musical muse sees that I need help, so she comes down in the middle of the night and sprinkles pixie dust on my head and the next day I can write. I am not trying to be satirical here, I wish I had an answer.

I think all of us are afraid at some point that we have used too much repetition in a piece, and most times this seems to be just our own closeness to the work manifesting itself.

Sometimes I think those with all of the training need to stop worrying about what is the "correct" way to do some thing and just let the music flow. Granted in your classes you need to follow the correct way. But try from time to time to find your way and you may find that your way works better. Just don't let your teachers know that.

What you should always try to do is listen to your piece from the point of view of someone hearing it for the first time. While you sleep, eat, and breathe your themes and motifs, someone hearing them for the first time will need to have them reinforced in several ways before a development even makes sense. And from my own experience I've found that when I felt that repeating something more made it boring, most listeners actually were glad that I took the time to relish that moment of music and spin it out.

On the other hand, bearing in mind something Stravinsky said, paraphrased "many pieces of music end too late after they finish", you must be sure that the material you are using is actually worth a one-hour working. Some material requires a short, aphoristic piece: there is certainly a reason why Webern's music is often very short and concentrated. Again, it also depends on your personal style and flavour. While I don't like minimal music, which becomes boring very soon in my ears, I certainly appreciate the way an idea is gradually transformed in a way that you can hear every minute change.

The question you ask is one that I have been struggling with ever since I began composing. What has helped me is to make a conceptual sketch of how I want the structure of the piece to flow, and what kind of things you want to achieve in the development. While you refer to it as a stream-of-consciousness, you really have to be careful that you write only notes which have a meaning so as not to alienate your listener. That is, if you want to take your listener on a 'journey'. If you wish to, well, drop him in a field full of flowers and just roam about there for an hour, obviously your music would be different, but then again, there is no real development going on.

In other words, if you're thinking in terms of exposition-development-recap, always keep in mind that your development needs to lead somewhere. It shouldn't necessarily be a constant build-up of tension or an unendliche melodie, but it should have a purpose more concrete than 'developing thematic material'. Especially if you're working on a symphonic poem, you might want to prepare things which will happen much later on in the piece. You can foreshadow a lot without giving anything away, and this makes the actual material you are foreshadowing feel much more natural and relieving when it finally arrives.

In the end, I think it has to do not so much with 'how am I going to fill another ten minutes with this material', but more with 'what can I do with this material that will be satisfying' or 'what does this material NEED in order to fully settle and become more than just a melody or a motif'. It's a question of experience, and writing lots and lots of music I guess, and looking at the masters in all shapes forms, and sizes, and seeing why they work their material in the way they do, and why it works.

I'm sure you know the anecdote where someone asks Mozart how to write a symphony, and he answers, 'well, you have to study harmony and counterpoint and then write some rondos and whatnots, and then you can try your hand at a symphony'. The student remarks 'but you wrote your first symphony when you were ?9? (or whatever)!' and Mozart says 'yes, but I didn't have to ask anyone how to do it.'

In other words, in order to write a large scale work, you must have had the experience of growing from a few bars to a page, to several pages, to a work of a few minutes, etc. etc. etc.

Let me know how you're faring ;-) and much good luck.