Musical Composition #42

[@lucianogiordana]

Serious channels about composition is rare these days. Congrats!!

[@JesseBFournier]

Yes, almost all of them are just trash for simple people, honestly. One with even a bit of musical education and common sense knows that.

[@MREmusique]

Priceless information, as usual, Alan.

[@pristian]

Excellent video about musical composition skills.

[@ssmith5048]

As always, excellence from you Alan. Thank you.

[@TheKiriru]

Sir, I really appreciate your work and talent to dilever all these invaluables to public domain. I wish you all the very best.

[@sonicguppy]

superb outline - well structured and thought out

[@HumbleNewMusic]

thanks alan 🎵

[@rubenmolino1480]

excelent ¡¡

[@ne0romantic]

These days the older ways have seen some light. Partimento might be better than species. Species is supposed to be the way to learn Palestrina style but it's not. The real way to learn Palestrina style, the way that was actually used at the time, might see some light. Partimento methods, which are the real way common practice period composers learned, are coming up, but they are not called composition class, they are called "period composition" class. For example, your parallel 5ths: Both of your examples are wrong according to what I was taught in college, but that was because they were trying to teach me species, a series of made up rules that were supposed to mimic polyphony that was much earlier than the music we were studying, and don't even. Had I gone on to "Baroque counterpoint" (which I did in name only, that class was taught by a TA and all we did was review species all year because everything took longer than the teacher had anticipated... anyway,) I've come to understand that by "Baroque" rules your second example is not Parallel fifths at all. In Partimento teaching something like a 5-6 chain, with 5ths on every downbeat, is a common Schema... now you say, those are just different rules and I'm missing the point. I got your point there. My point is, learning the rules that were actually used to teach composers at the time when the music you're studying was written could be more useful than learning the other arbitrary rules that were taught when I went to school, even though both are useful in the way you said. Now, all that said, what do you get when you teach an uncommon prodigy from a young age Partimento method in modern times? Well, it's been done; we know it. You get Alma Deutscher, and yes it's amazing to hear her improvise a sonata from notes pulled from a hat, but her music is not my absolute favorite. What I've heard from her so far sounds exactly like common practice period music, Mozart or similar (edit: I just went and listened to something by her and it's more interesting than I remember, I should pay more attention to her work), so going back to "the old ways" may not be a complete answer, but I do think you might take your philosophy here but either replace species training with Partimento training or include some Partimento method and it could be an improvement.

[@alanbelkin8611]

I agree that as a method to learn 16th century style, the species method is not great. But the point here is not about learning one specific style, but getting lots of practice in finding your way from one bar to the next. Partimento is derinitely a good way to learn classical style; I'm less sure of its use in a composer's education, since it explicitly aims at pastiche. One thing I did not mention in my video, which is really a whole subject in itself, is that, once a student has become fairly fluent in harmony, counterpoint, orchestration and form, the next step is to find their own voice as a composer. This basically is a combination of their preferences in each area, what used to be called "their personal voice". Like any other mature composer, I like certain kinds of harmony, certain types of orchestral textures, etc. The sum total of my preferences can be thought of as my style. I'll do another video about that at some point. In some cases of course, the person may not have a very personal voice, but still be very fluent in known styles. Nothing bad about this in itself, as long as they realise its limits.

[@LearnCompositionOnline]

Very Good. Fux is beloved in universities because it makes easier for the teacher to give points. You just forgot improvisation, aesthetics and reading of orchestral scores at the piano, next to accompagning singers, playing a concert, sight-singing and conducting. Ah, and using of notation software. To not say that i forgot that a CLASSICAL CONCERT composer needs to know the history of music: he needs to understand what created historical changes in music and compose the music of his own time. But american universities dont want this, they want gender and race, and they want to cancel who tries to set a higher standard: a higher standar might be “opressive”. Dont expect too much in the next 10 years