Thoughts on Contemporary and Renaissance composing techniques

[kenjari]

Recently I found myself wondering if twelve-tone technique (and its extension, serialism) isn't going the way of Palestrina counterpoint. Most composers learn Palestrina counterpoint as part of their education; in fact, a good grounding in both modal and tonal counterpoint is commonly considered an essential part of a composer's training. However, it's been a few hundred years since modal counterpoint was the central compositional technique of serious Western art music. People still use both modal and tonal counterpoint in their compositions of course, but not often as the overall governing aspect. Very few composers base entire works on it nowadays (I know of two: myself and Robert Kyr), and I can't think of any who base their entire style around it. (Arvo Part doesn't count. Although his music has a medieval/Renaissance sound, his actual method is substantially different (1))
Similarly, almost all composers are taught twelve-tone technique (as developed and practiced by Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg). Twelve-tone composition is also taught in music history classes as a very important and fundamental element of contemporary music. However, it seems that fewer and fewer younger composers (and "younger" in the composing world means under 50) are employing twelve-tone composition as their primary technique. Most of the composers I can think of who do are people who started their careers at the time twelve-tone technique and serialsm were reaching the apex of their centrality (Milton Babbitt, for example). I think a lot of composers still use twelve-tone and serial techniques, but I see more of a trend towards using them as one element among several rather than as the overall governing aspect. Twelve-tone and serialsim seem to be losing their centrality in the compositional world in much the same way modal counterpoint did a few centuries ago.


(1)See Paul Hillier's book on Arvo Part for a detailed explanation of Part's compositional technique.

Comments

[apintrix.livejournal.com]

Well, there was always a certain degree of skepticism about tone rows...
On NPR the other day, they played a quartet by Shostakovich (I can't remember which one... arrrrgh!) that he supposedly wrote in response to contemporary who had made the statement that modern music which doesn't use tone rows can't possibly be taken seriously. (It might even have been Babbitt, but I don't think so.) The quartet begins with a tone row, but the last three notes of the row form a minor cadence, and the rest of the piece is an that key, with the tone row making appearances throughout. Unsubtle, but fun-- the atonality resolves right into that tonality. I always did admire the way Shosti mixes them up. And his quartets are always more intellectual than the symphonies-- makes you wonder what he might have written if the Soviets hadn't been breathing down his neck! It may well have been much more modern. Poor stoodge.

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

That sounds more like something Boulez would say than Babbitt. Babbitt was, after all, Sondheim's teacher. I love Shostakovich's 8th string quartet, but I am sadly unfamiliar with most of his work.

[ladybird97.livejournal.com]

I don't really have much to add to the technical discussion, but I wanted to point you both to an interesting article in today's NY Times about Shostakovich and modern scholarship on him - you can find it here (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/13/arts/music/13SHOS.html). (You need to register with the NY Times (if you haven't already) to read the article, but it's free.)

Enjoy :)

[epilimnion.livejournal.com]

Try Shosti Spymphony 5. It's pretty cool, and fairly accessible without being simplistic.

I like your parallel between serialism and counterpoint. Both are styles that were taken as far as they could go, to stylistic extremes even, until exhausted, at which point they rendered new forms and styles. And like counterpoint, there are many good techniques to employ within each style, as well as an aesthetic sense one develops through their study. I'm glad I learned both and can draw on them in many ways in my music. But I could never employ them exclusively and strictly, it's too limiting, and would force me to use sounds I don't necessarily like or want.

I think you can look at 12-tone in the same way as chant and early counterpoint: they were developed until the breaking point, and then became the foundation for new techniques and styles. But each can and should still be taught as foundations for either understanding of history and performance, or as "toolbox" development for composers.

[apintrix.livejournal.com]

It was probably Boulez. I'm getting a distinct "B" flavor off of my memory bank. (Why do so many composers start with b???)

The 8th quartet is the piece that I first loved of Shostakovich. If you like it, you should listen to the 2nd piano trio, which was the source of the main theme of the 2nd mvt of that quartet (the quartet is sort of a retrospective on Shosti, so it quotes a lot of works.)

I have a funny story about the 2nd piano trio. It opens with a series of agonizingly difficult false harmonics on the cello. When Shosti was writing it, he was teaching at the conservatory attended by Rostropovich, and Rostropovich, who idolized him, hung around a lot. Shosti called Rostropovich in to try out the passage, and asked him what he thought-- was the passage too difficult for most cellists? Rostropovich, of course, replied that he didn't think it was that bad.
And doomed us all. ;-D friggin geniuses!

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

To clarify, I certainly wasn't intending to imply that either 12-tone or Palestrina counterpoint should be eliminated from any musical curricula. Or that they weren't still useful in many ways. I think it's interesting, though, that 12-tone and serial techniques are often still perceived to be an important part of current contemporary music, even thought there is more evidence to indicate that they have become more a part of the past than the present. They aren't, in my experience, taught the same way that Palestrina counterpoint is, despite the similarities I outlined in my post.

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there are lots of pianist-composers who seem to have assumed that just because their massive mitts could easily reach a tenth or eleventh that most other people could too.

[epilimnion.livejournal.com]

I think they should be taught the same way! But then again, what people study in contemporary music courses usually only goes until the 60s, unless we're talking about recent pieces from well-established composers. So yeah, serialism was still alive and well then.

I think it's only in the last 20 or 30 years that serialism has relaxed its hold. But it's harder to teach the most recently produced material. just like in any study.