Composers shouldn't talk about their own music

Bach and Mozart wrote hundreds of musical compositions each. One thing they didn't write much of was prose describing their creative process and explaining deliberately unusual features in a particular piece, or in their oeuvre as a whole. Why does Mozart's "Prague" Symphony lack a minuet or what prompted him to conclude the "Jupiter" Symphony with a fugue? We can argue and speculate, but most likely we won't find words by Mozart that neatly answer these questions.

Today's composers are in a very different position, of course. With the modern obsession with free markets and the diminished attention span of potential Audience members, composers have to sell themselves: they have to write words that will convince the public that their music is worth buying the ticket or the CD. This leads to predictable topes and the occasional silly statement. It's a careful balancing act.

"My music blends old and new" is one such predictable trope, one that I am guilty of myself. You see, the "old" reassures you that my music has familiar elements you can savor, that it's not just one off-putting innovation after the other, demanding an unreasonable chunk of your time so that the music can grow on you. However, the "new" is very important to have as well, because if my music only rehashes old techniques that you already like, it makes more sense for you to listen old music and not bother investing the time required for my music to grow on you.

As for silly statements, a perfect example is what Robert Simpson said about Matthew Taylor conducting a performance of his Symphony No. 7 that stirred in him "a compulsion to compose a symphony for him." This was Simpson's Symphony No. 11. Simpson said that "it depends on his [Taylor's] opinion of that performance of No. 7 whether he considers this new symphony a reward or an act of revenge! If the latter, I do not share his views." Simpson could have done without that last statement and still gotten that polite fake laughter accorded VIPs. Robert Simpson is an excellent composer and a brilliant analyst of Bruckner's music. He's written very insightfully on Sibelius and Nielsen, too. But for his own music, I'd rather ignore most of his own words about it.

And then there's Ross Edwards, a pretty good Australian composer. In regards to White Ghost Dancing, Edwards says "I believe that music ... has enormous therapeutic properties." Yawn. Shut up. Something else modern composers would be well advised to avoid in talking about their music is suggesting what the listener's state ought to be. Edwards goes on to say that "the ideal state of mind for the listener is one of calm intensity with attention focused on each detail as it occurs, instead of projecting the mind back and forth in an attempt to perceive structural connections." Actually, that's quite insightful. But the reality is that a composer really can't dictate a listener's state of mind with prose directives, or perhaps even with events in the music itself (consider the surprise in Joseph Haydn's "Surprise" Symphony, for example). If the listener is worrying about the babysitter back at home, it doesn't matter how sublime the music is, the listener will be distracted.

Jacob Ficken, as a student composer, wrote an interesting piece called Memories for small orchestra which is perhaps over-ambitious in its aim for big orchestral effect beyond what eight players can deliver. Nevertheless, his music is quite well worth hearing and his prose about his own music is best ignored. "My hope in writing this piece is that both performers and listeners associate the music [with] their own special memories, thus making the experience more than just playing or listening to music." Well, la-di-da, this almost comes across just as dictatorial as Ross Edwards telling us what our state of mind ought to be in listening to his music. It's not enough for the performers to play his music and for the Audience to listen attentively, they also have to dredge up angry, sad or happy memories depending on the music? Really, it is quite enough to just listen attentively, and not be distracted by whatever worries plague one that day.

But I'm not advocating that composers say nothing at all about their own music. There can be great value in what they say to performers, even in those cases in which their scores are models of clarity. For those in the Audience, the composer best serves himself with a very brief explanation of what gave the inspiring original impetus and then letting the writers of the programme notes do their job. With Simpson's Symphony No. 11 it's quite sufficient for the Audience to know that the composer felt a compulsion to write it for Matthew Taylor after hearing the latter conduct one of the former's earlier works.

As for my own music that I'm working on, it will be enough for any future Audience to know that the impetus to write my Horn Concerto in B-flat major, which was commissioned by the Canadian accountant Ray Barnes, was the question "How would Bruckner have written a Concerto?" And in regards to my music for string quartet which has been performed in public concerts: my Quartet in G major was for a grant-funded experiment in which I wanted music spotlighting members of the quartet other than the first violinist (which is the case with the quartets by Michael Haydn, some early Mozart, etc.). I wrote the Quartet in A-flat major aiming for an extreme of rhythmic independence among the four players in the first movement which is followed by a unison minuet (like the one which ends Veracini's Overture in G minor). And in my Quartet in A major, I wanted to go to the extreme of writing as many double, triple and quadruple stops as possible, treating the two violins, viola and cello almost as if they were guitars. (This piece you can hear on the Tiger Stadium Postcard CD, which is available from Dearborn Music, Marwil, City Bird and Flute Specialists).

String quartets which play my music in the future may or may not care to hear what I think of past performances of my music. If they do, I will tell them.