Pre-composition

 

Found myself this morning shaking my head over the arguments between musicians in the '80s and '90s over "pre-composition." So funny! And so sad, really. 

Pre-composition in those days meant setting up interval sets, integer series, rows of rhythms, structural diagrams and such that would guide the music. The process had become somewhat elaborate in response to the new possibilities opened up by serialism in the mid-century. 

The argument was that such pre-compositional decisions restricted or even denied true musical impulse and left the resulting music chained to a completely logical, rational ideal that had no link to emotional expression. What those who argued against pre-compositional practice were saying was, in effect, your music sucks. Probably it would have been better to simply state it like that.

I can't think of a way that musical composition can't involve pre-compositional decision making. Even with the idea of found sounds, even setting up a microphone on a street corner or standing in the middle of a crowd and saying THAT is music. That's a choice, it's not a purely intuitive form of expression. An improviser—any worth listening to—will have studied and have reams of such choices in their head before they play a note. They may not know what they're going to play, but what their going to play is to some extent predetermined by their training and their interests and their emotional state and their choice of scales and chords or modes or whatever—and so on.

The argument was never anything other ridiculous. The use of integer series, interval sets, row forms for any aspect of the music or whatever else, is all a musical process. Perhaps no sound results as you're doing it, but it is musical in its intent and, for a good composer, the result will a unified, highly expressive musical experience.  

I mean really, the things people get upset about .... The argument was never about the practice of composition really. It was about people taking sides over musical aesthetics and trying to "prove" their point with tangible goods. All in vain. Such efforts only make enemies out of friends, needlessly muddying the water of the spirit in which we all swim.

--C.

5/8/21