Samuel Adler: Knowing What You're Doing

[@boyisun]

4:10 "The pieces you write now, in five years, you're going to be sorry to see again." -- The father of Samuel Adler. This is so extremely true!!! I can very much relate to this!

[@irbomusic]

Me too XD

[@itsvertx]

it's actally 2 weeks lol not even 5 years

[@greenlevel2276]

I studied composition with Dr Adler in the summer of 97 at the Brevard music camp for high school students. It’s very interesting to see this and hear his voice again. Needless to say he was a towering figure for me at that junction and remains so! I often recall the lessons learned. I remember one class where he told us to choose three intervals e.g. a minor third, a perfect 5th and a major 6th, and to create a melody using those, and only those intervals. When we regrouped he pointed to me and said “you’re 1st - go write your melody up on the board.” I went up the there and started chalking my piece as he continued to lecture. After a few min he glanced back and yelled “boy, what are you doing?!… the assignment was to use ONLY three intervals!” Terrified, I stammered out that I had not yet written in the sharps and flats, and assured him that once complete, my melody would comply with requirements of the exercise. That was a close call! Dr. Adler could be withering in his criticism, but he also had a fantastic sense of humor. Through him we felt a connection to the mainline of the great European-American tradition of master composers stretching back all the way to Bach. It was a magical time. Wish you well, Professor.

[@शिव_सागर]

Thank You Very Much Sir! 🙂💛🙏

[@irbomusic]

Thank you so much man! Thank you for making this public for people like me to watch and learn from it. Much appreciated.

[@michaelleecomposer]

Very charismatic and insightful interview, thanks for posting

[@LeonardHeussComposer]

What a delightful man

[@jorgestramusic]

Excellent thank you.

[@khaledshokry5070]

Thank you! :)

[@paulmitchell5349]

Art Garfunkel says the arbiter of composition is the composer's own ear.

[@grantmalone]

Art Garfunkel isn't a composer.

[@0live0wire0]

Let's hope the composer has a good ear then. My harmony teacher used to say "you can't hear anything, don't delude yourselves" and thinking back he seems right. Everyone who dabbles in composition likes to think he's an all-knowing arbiter of what "good music" is which is not the case. One needs many years of honing his craft before that possibility arises.

[@juwonnnnn]

👏

[@camilloflaim8933]

What do you can to say Samuel Adler about my compositions not only for organ( i am organist) to for orchestra for Wind quartetto for strings. Thanks.

[@AnthonySternstein]

Adler sounds like an older version of Daniel Day Lewis

[@timothywilliams1359]

I like Adler as a human being and a teacher a lot more than I like him as a composer. His music is simply too dissonant, and despite his constant talk of melody and "communication," his musical vocabulary is too fragmented and harsh to communicate anything meaningful (to me, at any rate). I do not mean that music has to be "happy." But it should be profound and ennobling, even when it is somber.

[@stompinknowledge3968]

Which composers (especially of the modern era) do you regard as having produced profound or enobling music?

[@timothywilliams1359]

@@stompinknowledge3968 There is no lack of them: Piston, William Schumann, Benjamin Lees, Katchaturian, Guastavino, Peter Mennin... The list is endless. Apart from the serialists and the more facile minimalist works, I have broad tastes. Adler just sounds - to me - like a sterile, "academic" composer, like Milton Babbitt, et al.

[@stompinknowledge3968]

@@timothywilliams1359 thanks! Who of those you've listed - or not - would you suggest as a good starting point for someone with a newfound interest in composing (or moreso, 'how composers think about composing', in my case) to read about and try gathering an understanding of? As it happens, I've been acquiring a few books on composing/composers and chance has it that I've started with the serialist types - save for the minimalists, is the only way from here 'up'? I agree with you in the sense that 'technicality' seems tantamount to fetished by the "New Music" bunch, although my opinion is a laymans and I still find it interesting regardless. Composers with a taste for the "profound and ennobling", as you say, strike me as a welcome change of pace being a few months into this curiosity.

[@timothywilliams1359]

@@stompinknowledge3968 Well, if you want to compose, I would say the tough part is that you are pretty much on your own as far as "finding your way." The really good teachers of composition are few and far between. Most of them just offer helpful critiques of how a passage can be improved, or some comments on what pitfalls to avoid. I am an amateur composer myself. My music professors did not teach me much about composing. I just had to figure out what works for me. I learned primarily by studying how music that I admired was put together harmonically and melodically. I studied a lot of Hindemith, some Samuel Barber, a lot of Ned Rorem. (I primarily write art songs, so Rorem was especially important to me.) I cannot really think of any textbook on composition that was beneficial to me. One thing I would say is that one should NEVER be concerned with being original. That is a fetish. Write the kind of music you enjoy hearing, or whatever kind of writing gives you enjoyment. I do not worry when someone tells me "That passage sounds a little bit like Fauré... Barber... Ginasterra (whomever). By the way, Schönberg's theoretical books (I'm thinking of his textbook on harmony) are actually quite good. It's just his music that is generally awful (in my opinion). Except maybe for his piano concerto, which has moments... For young composers, I always recommend that they start by writing SONGS. Because studying and working with a poetic text will suggest melodic lines to you, and especially rhythmic patterns, maybe even certain sonorities. The hardest thing to do when composing is to GET STARTED. The blank page is very intimidating. But having a poem to start with eliminates that problem. The text limits your possibilities, and begins to suggest things to you right away, if you study the poetry with sensitivity and intelligence.

[@stompinknowledge3968]

@@timothywilliams1359 Thank you Timothy! This reads as solid advice - Schoenberg books are ordered. Thanks for taking the time to write, I'm sincerely contemplating it. Are any of your art music pieces on youtube or elsewhere?

[@greenlevel2276]

I studied composition with Dr Adler in the summer of 97 at the Brevard music camp for high school students. It’s very interesting to see this and hear his voice again. Needless to say he was a towering figure for me at that junction and remains so! I often recall the lessons learned. I remember one class where he told us to choose three intervals e.g. a minor third, a perfect 5th and a major 6th, and to create a melody using those, and only those intervals. When we regrouped he pointed to me and said “you’re 1st - go write your melody up on the board.” I went up the there and started chalking my piece as he continued to lecture. After a few min he glanced back and yelled “boy, what are you doing?!… the assignment was to use ONLY three intervals!” Terrified, I stammered out that I had not yet written in the sharps and flats, and assured him that once complete, my melody would comply with requirements of the exercise. That was a close call! Dr. Adler could be withering in his criticism, but he also had a fantastic sense of humor. Through him we felt a connection to the mainline of the great European-American tradition of master composers stretching back all the way to Bach. It was a magical time. Wish you well, Professor.

[@stompinknowledge3968]

Nice, I love to read posts of revollections like this. Don't suppose I can trouble you for some texts you'd recommend for learning about composition? Got any favourites, or just ones that are particularly useful or illuminating?