Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Why no one posted anything in the composers forum lately?

You have the gift of derailing a topic.

At times, yes, but I wouldn't say "usually". The composers' forum has its busy times and its slow times. That's just the way it is.

People who write music usually do so off and on. That may explain part of it.

...sounds like this would be an excellent thread to post the link to the absolutely hilarious Grammar Nazis Video again.

It is still beyond me how so many of us desire to learn so many pieces that have already been written, instead of writing our own. It seems that there is limited satisfaction that can come from learning pieces that have already been written. What would happen if the composers we know and love only learned pieces already written by other composers?

Well the answer is rather obvious. Though, I think it's appropriate to point out that the piano repertoire is huge. There's also the fact that this world isn't really interested in new music and classical music is sadly dieing out. Of course it goes without saying, that composing and improvising, have become lost arts and have been less emphasized in favor of creating famous virtuosos, or teachers.

Is there the same limited satisfaction from reading a great poem, play, or novel that has already been written? From gazing upon a Mona Lisa that has already been painted? I could never write as well as Shakespeare nor paint as well as Leonardo da Vinci and thus it gives me the greatest satisfaction to read or view their masterpieces.

With music it is not enough to soundlessly view or read the score: we have to bring the score to life at the piano. In doing so we become partners, as it were, with the creator of the composition. I get the same glorious satisfaction from recreating a Chopin masterpiece at the piano as I do from reading a Shakespeare sonnet, and I know for sure I could never write as well as Chopin.

I will often reply to the music posted in the composers lounge but only if I have something positive or at least contructive to say and I don't listen to everything that is posted. If there is something you want an opinion on send me a message.

I would post a recent composition of my own if I had one but I've been on a non composing streak for a while, too busy with other activities to have the large chunk of undistracted time that it takes to create a new composition.

If you were a composer it makes sense to do both. Existing compositions are a huge resource of ideas for composers to mine. Why start from scratch when you can stand on the shoulders of giants (and wobble, lose your balance and fall off). But it's worth trying. Actually playing is a good way to become familiar with a composer's ideas. Just remembered that JSBach played other peoples work, and used their ideas - it worked quite well for him.

And great post jazzyP

Sorry- I have a bad tendency to digress.

Back on subject- the main problem with classical music right now is that canon stands squarely in the way of progress, and our educators are unwittingly at fault.

A lot of us got very uneasy in the early 1970's about the health and welfare of classical music as the last of the big composers died off and a subsequent generation of dweebs took over.

Until then, canon in harmony and composition was established, maintained and given direction by composers such as Stravinsky and Hindemith, but when they died off, the cats were away and the mice did play.

These days it is well nigh impossible to introduce radical new ideas, or even to suggest new and untried avenues of progress.

This is a far cry from the 1950's, when universities and concert halls had their collective heads stuck in Beethoven, Brahms and Bach, whereas the compositional techniques of most of the modern composers wasn't yet codified.

Georgi Ligeti, who was teaching at the University of Frankfurt the last time I was in contact with him (he died in 2006), flat out refused to discuss his methods for this very reason. He would teach composition, but he also played his cards very close to his chest when it came to his projects.

But his creative period really ended around 1963, and no one hs produced anything as ground-breaking and influential as his Requiem or Lux Aeterna since.

In his case he had oodles of opportunity, but like most people who do something ground-breaking early on, he was never able to repeat his earlier success.

The answer to the OP's question may just be that some of us are busy composing rather than talking about it on an internet forum. Speaking for myself, I sometimes join in the discussions in the Composers' Forum (especially about notation issues, or ways of composing) but I usually only comment on someone's music if [1]I don't have to download anything, [2]there's a written score to look at, [3]I have time to do it justice, and [4]I have something constructive to say.

You're absolutely right about that. It's important to absorb ideas from numerous sources to become a great composer, but I also believe it's important to focus on the development of your own musical language, which evidently is a scarce idea even among most modern composers I've seen. To duplicate another composer's style isn't a difficult task in my opinion. I'm sure we've all had those moments where we mentally improvised over someone else's melody. The difficulty comes in when we try to put individuality into our pieces. We don't want to be known as the incarnation of Bethoveen.. or at least I wouldn't. I would feel like a tool.



I totally agree with you. My perspective of music is it's like a box that holds so much information. Whatever's in the box is accepted by the public to some degree, yet that box has slowly shrunken to the point that new ideas are no longer welcome and the same proven forumulas are all that remains acceptable. It's the Brave New World of Music.

The actual point of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World was that writing for a mass market destroys the quality of writing. I can't remember his exact words in the story, but the gist of it is that the larger the audience, the more diluted the vehicle itself has to become in order to reach as many people as possible. He goes on to say that depth of any kind is only possible when you get into specifics, whereas when you appeal to a mass-market you have to speak in generalities that only touch on the surface.

Like Orwell, he predicted that the mass marketing of literature would lead to a process of dumbing-down in society.