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“Britain’s greatest living composer”

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Sir John Tavener, according to Ian Youngs in an article on the BBC website, is regarded as ‘one of Britain’s greatest living composers’. I mean no disrespect to Sir John Tavener, but don’t journalists say this about a lot of composers? Isn’t it just something you say whenever a composer is in the news (otherwise, why would the story be worth reading?).

I decided to check, by googling “one of Britain’s greatest living composers“, and as I suspected, the pantheon is so large as to make the term almost meaningless. Take your pick from James MacMillan, Oliver Knussen, Harrison Birtwistle, John Tavener, Michael Finnissy, Maxwell Davies, and many others, including the recently deceased such as Jonathan Harvey, Malcolm Arnold and Rodney Bennett. The term is often preceded by the phrase ‘considered by many’ or ‘regarded by some’ or ‘deemed to be’, especially in the press releases of the composers’ music publishers, of course.

If you search for “Britain’s greatest living composer”, who’s that? Now that is really interesting, because it brings up many of the same names such as James MacMillan and Maxwell Davies, but also, right near the top, Alfred Ketélbey, who was called that in 1929 in the Performing Right Gazette on the basis of the number of performances of his works. On that basis, Karl Jenkins would be Britain’s greatest living composer. But in fact, if you search for ‘Britain’s greatest living composer’ and then add some of the names above after the quotation marks, you get this:

  • Macmillan: 234
  • Maxwell Davies: 104 
  • Birtwistle: 56
  • Tavener: 46 
  • Jenkins: 9 

It may not be the most rigorous of methods, but it’s interesting. In terms of works performed, Jenkins wins outright, even though he only gets 9 hits. The other composers’ claims to greatness are preceded not by sales or performance figures, but by ‘arguably’ or ‘in my view’ or ‘without question’, ‘has been called’, or ‘regarded by many’. ‘Many’ in this sense is clearly a different kind of ‘many’ – the many people who go to performances of Jenkins’ works don’t count in the same way as the ‘many’ who regard Macmillan or Maxwell Davies as Britain’s greatest living composer. But whereas we can count the ‘many’ in Jenkins case, we have no figures at all for the other ‘many’. 

Playing for ballet class tips #22: With harmony too, less is more

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Swanilda's famous waltz. The first harmonic change comes only at the very end of the phrase.

Swanilda’s famous waltz from Coppélia. The first harmonic change comes only at the very end of the phrase.

If you’re improvising or harmonising a melody, there’s a lot to be said for just sticking to simple harmonies, and avoiding chromaticism or excessive modulation for the sake of it. It’s not a competition to see who can fit the most chords in. On the contrary, dance music depends on a certain amount of harmonic simplicity for its dance quality and feeling of lift and lightness.

It was one of my dissertation students who first drew my attention to this: if you look at some of the most famous and well-loved waltzes you can think of, many of them of them follow the pattern of Swanilda’s variation, which is to stay on the tonic for 6 bars, and then move to the dominant only in bars 7 and 8. In the case of Swanilda, what then happens is the reverse, like a harmonic palindrome – 6 bars of dominant 7th, followed by 2 bars of tonic.

Strauss does it, and Tchaikovsky does it. Another variant is to stay four bars in the tonic, and four in the dominant. Whatever happens, you get very simple harmony with a bass line toggling between the 1st and 5th degrees of the scale, little more. I looked at Oskar Nedbal’s Valse Triste for ages, trying to work out how he had achieved such subtle and unusual beauty, only to find that most of it was down to what he doesn’t do – he never moves from a bass line of G and D in the first 8 bars;  and again, the harmony is tonic for 6 bars, dominant(ish) for 2.

Likewise, two of the most famous codas in the ballet repertoire, the one in Don Quixote pas de deux and the one from Black Swan pas de deux, sit on a tonic pedal for ages, and modulate properly only right at the end of the phrase.

Yet the temptation when you’re improvising or composing is to try and throw as many tricks as you can into 16 bars of music, like you’re loading your plate at the salad bar.  I’ve seen 16 bar compositions for tendu exercises that have already modulated to a remote key by bar 4 (with a change of key signature), chromatic inner voices and bass-lines, interrupted cadences, and hardly a simple tonic or dominant chord in sight. I’d like to say that the result is a real dog’s dinner, harmonically, but in fact, dogs’ dinners I’ve seen tend to make more culinary sense.

If there’s a principle to follow, it’s to remember that 16 bars of music in a dance class have to be imagined as being a ‘clip’ of something larger, not a self-contained miniature. In fact, who writes 16 bar miniatures? There isn’t enough time to develop and resolve musical tension, so don’t try.

Playing for ballet class tips #18: take a lesson in 18th century composition

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zweyer

One of Riepel’s examples – reprinted by Eckhart (click to view the article)

A lot of pianists are frightened of ‘improvisation’  because the term is widely (mis)understood to mean that you play a chord with your left hand and wait for God to tell you what to do with your right.  It’s seen as a gift, or – even more damning – as a sign of liberation from the constraints that hold lesser mortals (like you or me) back. But this is just wrong. Improvisation is all about working within conventions and constraints. That’s why I haven’t even mentioned it until now – how can you improvise if you’ve got no models to work with? The appearance of spontaneity is the result of years of enculturation and practice, some of which looks much more like ‘composition’  than improvisation.  For more on that, read Peter Martin’s excellent chapters on improvisation in Music and the sociological gaze. 

The line between composition and improvisation is fuzzy: composers try stuff out in an improvisational way before working that material into something more studied; improvisers privately use compositional models and techniques to develop material that they’ll use ‘spontaneously’ in a performance.  And contrary to our modern concept of composition as drawing inspiration down from heaven to create something completely original on a blank sheet, 18th century composers learned their craft in a way that looks more like what we’d call improvisation, working with models to create music within the conventions of a recognisable style.

18th century composition manuals offer wonderful lessons in how to ‘improvise’ for class, because they draw attention to the mechanics and processes involved in conventions that are so conventional it’s hard to see how they’re constructed.  My favourite is Riepel’s Anfangsgründe zur musicalischen Setzkunst (Fundamentals of Musical Composition), which is a written-out conversation with a student on how to write a minuet. Even better than the original is Stefan Eckert’s article on it, So, you want to write a Minuet?” – Historical Perspectives in Teaching Theory, free to read over at Music  Theory Online. 

One of the first thing that Riepel teaches you is about the phrase construction of a minuet – ideally, two zweyers and a vierer (two two-bar phrases and a four-bar phrase). Don’t screw this up, he says (well, in so many words), because this is what makes a minuet a minuet. Then Riepel has all kinds of advice about how to construct melodies in this framework, using an imaginary student composition as an example, pulling it apart, improving it according to rules and procedures, until it begins to look like a minuet you’d buy in the shops.

Look at your average plié exercise, and you’ll see that this, too, is built on the same pattern (two demi-pliés and a full, 2+2+4). Most of what goes wrong with music for pliés is when the phrasing can’t breathe with the exercise, and all you need to get it right is to think like Riepel about whether you need zweyers or vierers.  And if you think you can’t improvise, then this surely makes it easier – it’s two things, another two things, and then four things. If you think you can improvise, don’t think it’s all about ‘breaking convention’. Some of those conventions help the dancer to phrase their movement.

Another fascinating insight into the improvisational and artisanal character of composition is in the use of Gebrauchs-formulas, described by Robert Gjerdingen in his article of the same name.  That article is behind a Jstor paywall, but you can view his translations of composition manuals at the wonderful site, Monuments of Partimenti. 

And on that subject, a big round of applause, please, for Simon Frosi, whose bacherlor’s dissertation (The Improvisation of Structured Keyboard Accompaniments for the Ballet Class) is probably the first and only place that you’ll see a discussion of the relationship between partimenti and ballet class improvisation. It’s free to read – press the ‘download’ button.

Update on 16th Feb 2013: If improvsation and the baroque interests you, you might also like this  article just released from Music Performance Research online: Incorporating long-range planning into the pedagogy of Baroque-style keyboard improvisation (Vol. 5, 59-78)

Playing for ballet class tips #17: Composing and improvising

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Today I’m delighted to have a guest blog by Andy Higgs, friend, composer and musician who’s currently company pianist at Ballett am Rhein in Düsseldorf. This all came about because he asked if I was going to do something about composing for class. I said that I was going to, but more as a footnote – because I think that class is all about working within rules, conventions and constraints, and as such has much more to do with improvisation than ‘composition’ in the usual sense of the word. But who better to talk about composing than a composer who plays for class? So I asked Andy if he’d be willing to be a guest expert blogger.  As it happens, what he’s written touches on a whole bunch of  issues that lie at the heart of playing for class, and I believe (as I think he does) that it’s holding those different things in constant tension that make a good accompanist, and that’s about as good a tip as you can get about this job.  The improvisation/composition point he raises at the end is a whole other topic, so I’m going to deal with that tomorrow!

Guest blog by Andy Higgs:

COMPOSING USING YOUR OWN ORIGINAL MUSIC FOR CLASS.

I am writing this as I have just played for class and so the thoughts and feelings are fresh in my mind. I was observing myself reacting to the ballet mistress’s requirements and trying to consider exactly how composing original music can be a help as well as a hinderance for class.

If you are a composer, I think it is an excellent idea to have a few of your own creations to add to your repertoire. Good ballet accompaniment requires some variety, and there is room for completely new music within that. The unspoken rule of good party music is something for everyone – not listening to a Madonna CD in its entirety – and I think it is healthy to approach ballet class in the same way. Playing a class entirely of my own music would be a mistake, and teachers who use CDs tend to like to mix and match and not rely on only one for the whole class. I noticed today that the best decision I made after playing something quite experimental for pliés – a piece I had sketched a few days earlier – was to launch immediately into a jazzy Irving Berlin tune for tendus, because it completely altered the atmosphere in the room.

This evening I was playing a short 45 mins warm-up before the performance, and the  dancers usually appreciate a bunch of fun tunes to help them relax or lift their spirits before the show. For daily training in the studio, however, there is room for experimentation, and if you are lucky enough to work with an appreciative director and dancers who like to be challenged, then it is a great opportunity to try out some of your own creations. Playing for ballet often involves throwing yourself into it with the focus being on momentum, energy and expression and it can be a good way to come up with ideas that you can work into proper pieces later. The way ballet is constructed made me think a lot about how music is put together in the simple ways I’d forgotten about at music college, where I’d learnt to obsess over pitch and trying to sound original.

In my experience this experimentation in the studio is more helpful than sitting at a desk and trying to come up with something suitable using my composing brain. There is always that feeling of, ‘it doesn’t quite fit’, when I do this. It is different if you have written and recorded a CD of your music, as the teacher is likely to prepare exercises to the music at home, but expecting your composition to just work to something in morning class isn’t always realistic, especially with very imaginative teachers. A good ballet pianist won’t just play Gershwin’s Stairway to Paradise  for grands battements, they will play their own version of it, responding to the important rhythmic elements of the exercise. Similarly, I find I have to adapt my compositions slightly to make them suitable. From this perspective it is the ability to improvise, adapt and be spontaneous that remain the most valuable skills in the ballet studio.

Also, ballet has an insatiable appetite for music and devours everything that comes into its path, and anyone who has tried writing for class will know that music – which can take hours to write – disappears in a matter of seconds. It’s gone. You have to compose some more. It could take a fairly industrious composer maybe a month to write an hour and a half of music for one class, and even then, how often are you going to use it (the exception being, of course, if it was written for official syllabus work)? You’d need vast amounts of music as you’d soon tire of playing these pieces. Certainly 64 bars of composed music for a Grand Valse is not going to get you very far playing for company class. Even if you have something composed as a foundation, you will soon find yourself having to launch into something else, or extemporise around the piece to keep it sounding fresh. Sounding stale and uninspiring is possibly a ballet accompanist’s biggest fear and I have noticed that this is more likely to happen if I rely too much on one system of playing (for example if I only improvise, or if I only play show tunes). The more tricks I have up my sleeve to get out of this sticky situation the better.

I think there is a certain confidence and completeness about a nicely worked composition that is difficult to achieve with improvisation, which has a risk factor which can work for or against you. But what is required in the ballet studio is very different. It is changeable from moment to moment, and it would make the job less enjoyable by attempting to solve this problem with only one approach to the music making.

Ballet troubles & music

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Picture of view from the Royal Ballet Studios, Covent Garden

The view from here

Music in Motion is an article on new scores for NYCB from The New Yorker by Alex Ross, author of The Rest is Noise. (Via theballetbag via Twitter)

I enjoyed reading The Rest is Noise more than any other book I’ve read on music, which is saying something, because I usually can’t even bring myself to even walk past the  ‘music’ section in bookshops.  By ‘music’, I mean that very specialised thing that people do in concert halls, or in the privacy of their own home hifi, the contemplation of works. And so by ‘books on music’ I mean things like biographies of composers, and the whole fawning and promotional literary culture that surrounds the classical music industry.  Since the moment I had the experience of seeing people dance while I played the piano, I found it difficult to find music without movement interesting or enjoyable any more, and it is the premise of so much writing about music that nothing, but nothing, should come between ‘the music’ and ‘the audience’ – especially not dance.

So I was rather sorry to see an author I admire so much be so dismissive of ballet. As a friend of mine pointed out recently, no-one would think it was OK to be ignorant of a work of literature or a canonical work of music, but when it comes to dance, there’s almost a certain hipness about saying you’ve never seen any, or don’t understand it, or don’t know anything about it. Ross quotes the pianist Susan Tomes as someone who also writes about her ‘ballet troubles’ in her book, Out of Silence. “I feel a sense of frustration that the dancers’ steps are not actually to the music, but merely run in parallel with it. I’m all too aware of the way they have rehearsed their movements in the studio using spoken rhythms (‘And one-and-two-and-point-and-turn,’ etc.).”

I don’t mind that she feels frustration – heaven knows, some of the worst nights I’ve ever had in a theatre have been watching ballet – but what does this mean,  ‘the dancer’s steps are not actually to the music’? Which dancers? All ballets? All music? All steps? And what determines the right of anyone to say what the music is, and that others have somehow got it wrong?  What’s so terrible about spoken rhythms, or rehearsing?  Watching pianists rehearse is no picnic  either.

So much of Western art music has dance at its very heart (see the section on ‘mind and body’ from Philip Tagg’s great article on High and Low, Cool and Uncool: aesthetic and historical falsifications about music in Europe), and there’s a whiff of high-mindedness about both Ross & Tomes on this subject – it’s only the body, it’s only dancing, how could it matter, compared to the great rational minds that create music?