WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM KID COMPOSERS

I was recently asked to adjudicate the 2017 Lincoln Music Teachers Association composition competition. More than 35 students, many in elementary school, submitted original pieces, which I heard for the second time in a recital on Sunday. I found their music incredibly refreshing, especially the work of the youngest students. These kids have some great natural habits that we "serious" adult composers should be trying to emulate:

• Kids write what they hear, and they don't try to write things they aren't hearing. There's no faking. Their music radiates honesty. 
• Kids' pieces are the exact length as the amount of music they come up with. If they have 30 seconds of music, the piece is 30 seconds long. No kid unnecessarily stretches a small amount of music into a 7-minute piece.
• Kids aren't afraid to write melodies. No one has told them this isn't cool, and they seem to do it naturally. Huh.
• Kids write music that is clever without sounding like they are trying to be clever. One girl had a piece that was entirely in C major, gentle and flowing, and then the last two chords, suddenly loud, were E7/G# and A minor. Hilarious.
• Kids are so clearly not trying to impress anyone. If you haven't seen a young child play music they've composed, I can't explain how totally great this is. Their music is just earnest and fun. This was the first composition recital I've been to in YEARS where I never wanted to roll my eyes. They are entirely unpretentious.
• Kids' music grows organically out of their musicianship. Everything is playable and idiomatic because they have to play it.

I hope that as these students grow, learn, and deepen their musical understanding, they don't lose these great intuitive compositional impulses. And let's all try to compose a little bit more like kids do.

THE BEST FOUR MEASURES EVER COMPOSED

Okay, the title may be a little hyperbolic. Or maybe not. These four(ish) bars are near the end of Domine Jesu, in the Mozart Requiem. I’ve been wondering for awhile if I can think of four measures anywhere that are more satisfying.

Here’s why I think this ten second chunk of music is so great:

1. REALLY GOOD COUNTERPOINT. Look at the soprano and alto in the first three bars. When one sustains, the other moves. They fill in the gaps. It’s so smooth. Each of the four vocal lines moves distinctly from the other three. The initial entrances of the three upper parts layer down from the top like a Renaissance motet. Every voice has breathing room. It just feels good (which everyone knows is the best way to judge counterpoint, #analysis). Then, before you realize what’s happening, they’ve all joined together and fallen into the cadence. Slick.

2. THE DELAYED SUSPENSIONS. In the downbeat of the first full bar, the soprano is hanging on to the high G as the chord below shifts from E-flat major up to F major (more on this below). We expect the G to resolve down to F, a simple 9-8 suspension. Instead, it drops all the way down to C, the 5th of the F major chord, THEN jumps back up to the F we were originally expecting. By then the chord has changed, and now the soprano F is the 5th of a B-flat major 7th chord in first inversion.

In the next bar, it happens again (Sequence Alert!): the soprano F is tied over the bar, and for a split second - one eighth note - it’s the 9th over a new E-flat major chord. Then it quickly repeats the same melodic gesture: drops down by a 5th (again to the 5th of the chord), but this time when it leaps back up by a 4th, the bass note doesn’t change, so we finally get our 9-8 resolution - however briefly. This melodic sequence in the soprano is the hook that makes these first few bars memorable.

3. LET'S TALK ABOUT THAT F MAJOR CHORD. This piece is in G minor, where the 7th scale degree is normally raised to F-sharp (instead of F), since it’s the leading tone of the key. F-sharp also happens to be an essential pitch in a D major chord, which is the superimportant “V” in G minor. So we hear a lot of F-sharps throughout this movement. When the E-flat chord at the beginning of our excerpt shifts up to F major, it feels like Mozart has wiped the harmonic slate clean after all the previous F-sharps throughout the piece. We would label this chord “VII,” meaning a major triad that is built on the natural (lowered) 7th scale degree, as opposed to the leading tone. It’s not a particularly frequent chord in minor key-music of this era. Combine this with the soprano pitch G being tied over from the previous bar, and we essentially hear F(add9) at this important moment. Unexpected and beautiful.

4. GREAT COUNTERPOINT PART II: CHOIR v. ORCHESTRA. Just as the choral parts complement each other with just the right mix of long and short notes (largely half notes and quarters), the instruments are playing shorter eighths and sixteenths through this whole passage. Their quick, bubbling accompaniment contrasts the smooth choral texture above. The listener experiences multiple, distinct layers of counterpoint.

5. CONTRASTING WHAT CAME BEFORE. Here’s what happened before these four bars: the fugue (it starts at 2:00 in the video below) is full of quick, punchy gestures in all four voices. Very busy and active. Then at 2:46, the main motive gets passed back and forth between the sopranos and the other voices over a dramatic low D (dominant) pedal tone. This continues for four full bars, building up tension and momentum with the same busy melodic gestures. Then, finally, it opens up into these four measures. Suddenly, each voice is singing long, sustained notes in this beautiful and surprising harmonic progression. What a contrast.

To really feel how satisfying this short section of the music is, you have to hear it in context with the entire movement. The whole thing is less than 4 minutes, and our part starts at 3:03. Enjoy!

Uploaded by margotlorena2 on 2013-07-14.

3 THINGS CHORAL COMPOSERS DO WRONG

I've been thinking lately about some of the compositional pitfalls that are specific to writing vocal music. I see student composers fall victim to these all the time, and established professionals don't always do better! Let's explore...

1. STRESSING THE WRONG SYLLABLES

When strong syllables don't get placed on strong musical beats, it doesn't sound right. Tap the beat while you sing this, and see what I mean:

I hope it's obvious why this is bad - when you speak these words, you naturally lean on certain syllables (“STRESS the cor-RECT...”). But by putting the first (weak) part of “correct” on the strong beat 3, the natural stresses of the text and music are working against each other. The rhythm isn’t serving the text.

Here it is, fixed:

When the rhythm/phrasing is irregular, you can use mixed meter to keep strong syllables on strong beats. Here’s an excerpt from one of my liturgical settings - notice how every strong syllable is on a downbeat (or beat 3 of a 4/4 measure):

2. OVERWRITING

Three similar issues I see all the time:

a. WAY, WAY, WAY TOO MUCH HOMOPHONY. So much contemporary choral music is dominated by chordal textures. “Chord-Chord-Chord” gets exhausting to listen to. I wish composers would utilize more counterpoint and independent lines. The great composers seemed to think this was a good idea, but it seems like many of today’s composers aren’t so interested in writing distinct horizontal gestures in each voice part. 

b. CONSTANT DIVISI. There aren’t very many pieces that really need to be scored for 8 voices. When I hear a piece with a lot of divisi, I often feel like the composer is trying to use the “vertical busy-ness” to distract us from their lack of interesting musical ideas. Bach, Mozart, and countless others had no trouble writing nuanced, complex music in 4 voices. Why do so many contemporary choral composers and composition students think they need 6-8 parts all the time? It’s easy to throw down a bunch of thick, dense chords, but it’s much harder to deftly weave that many different parts into great music.

c. ALL THE PARTS SINGING ALL THE TIME. Even in music with fewer voices, if every section is singing the whole time, it’s going to get tiresome. Give each section a break. Writing rests is a compositional decision. Thinning out the texture will make your big moments more compelling by comparison.

3. SETTING UNMUSICAL POETRY

Every great poem is not a great poem to set to music. Here’s an example of an excellent poem that I would probably never use for a piece:

I like this poem a lot, but I don’t see a lot of room for music here. There are a few phrases that work (the last three lines are good, especially rising and gliding), but the others would be clunky to sing (When I was shown the charts and diagrams … where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room). These lines don’t feel inherently musical to me; they feel like prose.

In Jake Runestad’s recent interview with the International Choral Bulletin, he talked about setting text:

“There are so many engaging texts that have been written but not all lend themselves to being set to music. Many writings already contain all of the information (or too much information) one needs to experience their meaning. When searching for a text for vocal work, I seek words that are simple, direct, and communicate something about the human experience. These words must not be too flowery or too descriptive so that there is room for the music to add meaning of its own.”

“Simple and direct.” That’s the type of language that music brings to life most effectively. There’s a reason contemporary choral composers overuse Sara Teasdale. Look how much breathing room is in these lines. There is space for music to lift up the words: