I haven't written for a while because I arrived two weeks ago in The Hague, and I was just trying to get the hang of things again, get used again to my conservatoire-student lifestyle, living alone and all that. Back home I didn't have to worry about so many things as here, like buying food or cleaning the house, or washing my clothes, etc. so here I need to get used to that again after one month of not caring about it at all. So I was in the midst of that and I didn't give myself time to write here.
As anyone who reads this blog may now already, I think a lot about stuff. Maybe my thoughts are not complex, maybe they are very naive, but I can't help but thinking about stuff all the time, maybe even worrying uselessly about things. My main concern these past two months has been the fact that I haven't been able to write a single bar of music that I find worthy of keeping. I don't think it is because I lack the ability to achieve this, but more that I haven't found the right approach to reach what I want in my music. What do I want in music? Speaking for myself today (this might change in the future), I seek the following things in my music:
- That it is well crafted, meaning that there is a logical relationship between all the elements that compose it.
- That it is not over the top. It has to be expressive without being unnecessarily loud or cheesy.
- That it has substance. It has to communicate something, or at least not leave the audience with the feeling that nothing happened.
These three elements are the most important aspects I seek while composing. The first has to do with the process, the second one with the result of this process, and the third one with the perception by the audience of this result.
I think my main problem is with the first point I specified. To analyze this I need first to know what are the elements I perceive as composing my music as of today. I can say my main interest for now has been mainly in rhythm and timbre (instrumentation mainly, rather than extended techniques in a particular instrument). This has left me with a huge void in the areas of melody and harmony. Of these two I feel the greatest weakness in harmony. I don't understand how to form a coherent progression of chords, be it in a tonal or atonal context. I mean, in a proper tonal context it is rather easy because the rules are already given, but to make it interesting and "original" has proven almost impossible for me. In the atonal world it is even worse because there I don't feel any control at all.
So I decided to read a bit and see what other composers have done to face this problem (I don't think I am the only one that has had this problem, for one I know John cage never solved it and was never interested in it, but I am... so I need to find a way of approaching it). I began reading about Peter Schat's Tone Clock (Toonklok), mainly because there is a huge sculpture of it in the main foyer of the conservatoire. I promise a picture of it on my next post (I have to take it myself since there are none in the internet). Below a drawing of it. It is a very interesting serialist technique which gives very interesting results and which he himself encouraged other people to use. I like the idea of going for some time into serialism because I think it gives a strict base to organize ideas, which can later be stretched further and further, given rise to more interesting solutions to the problem of harmony. The other book I am beginning to read is volume 7 of Olivier Messiaen's Traité de rythme, de couleur et d'ornithologie. The reason to read this book is because I have always been fascinated by Messiaen's use of harmony, and the beautiful, strange chords he sometimes finds.
I leave you now with one of my favorite pieces by Messiaen, L'apparition de l'Église eternelle (The Apparition of the Eternal Church).
