The Importance of Form in Music
1. The essence of music is not sound, but form. Sound is anywhere and everywhere - where there is the human ear, there must be sound.
2. Music must be organized sound - no random sequence of sound is to be considered as music.
3. In this case, it is true that all genre of music can be considered as music under this definition.
4. The greatness of a piece of music - musicality - is to be determined by the complexity of its form.
5. There are two kinds of form: micro and macro forms.
6. Micro forms have to do with harmonic structures, melodic lines, polyphoncity, rhythms, etc.
7. Macro forms have to do with large structures, like the cyclic structure, binary and ternary form, sonata-allegro form, etc.
8. Most people will agree that micro forms are important. Only the few avant-garde would be as absurd as having music that is randomly generated by a computer. While they would argue that the "randomness" is itself a pattern, it is a pattern that is the same thing as combination of tones and pitches in which you would call "the closing of a door". But that is not music. Music must be music; when a person is listening to a set of sound, the interpretation of the sound must be as music, not as something else. When we hear the ringing of the fire alarm, that set of tone/pitch pattern creating that irritating sound is not considered as form, because what we attach to that sound is the idea of fire. A form, on the other hand, is purely musical; one is not reminded of anything; a micro form of a sound contains no connotation but music.
9. Macro forms, in principle, are equally important to the creation of music. All music must be arranged in a pattern: it is not a matter of showing off formal skills, or allowing the listeners to remember the melodies more easily. It is the logic of the musical language. The Romantics, beginning with Franz Liszt, thought that form (especially the sonata-allegro form) is too restricting; so they began to write "symphonic poems" - music with no structure, and they call that a "form". Foolish romantics! They have lost the essence of music; instead they replaced it with pictoral or literal form. The symphonic poem is not a form at all! It is a blend of all the arts: poetry, painting, music, etc. But in doing so they are no longer writing music: they are merely writing pretty combinations of sound.
10. There is a reason why all the greatest composers pay the greatest attention to forms. Bach is a master of the fugue form; Beethoven and Brahms the sonata-allegro form. This is also why Schoenberg, after liberating music from its tonal restriction (in other words, he dissolved a key aspect of the micro form), he quickly re-established a new, more rigourous macro form for his music - the twelve tone method. All sensible composers know that form is the essence to music.
11. The composer Richard Strauss would be a good example to how a real composer is sensitive to form. Early in his career he was a Brahmsian: he wrote two symphonies, a violin concerto, a few sonatas, etc. Then in his mid-career he felt into the spell of Liszt and Wagner, and started to write symphonic poems. His best works are Also Sprach Zarathrustra and Ein Helleleben (A Hero's Life). But "conservative" critics complained: although Ein Helleleben is his masterpiece, and it directly challenges Beethoven's Eroica Symphony, the problem for Strauss is that his is not a symphony. So in his old age, the decade before his death, he began to write "conservatively". The two most moving works, I believe, are his Metamorphosen for 23 Strings and his Oboe Concerto. The Metamorphosen is a complicated piece, like a set of variations, that ends with Beethoven's Funeral March from the Eroica Symphony. The Oboe Concerto is a look back at Mozartian Concerto tradition, a full embracement of the sonata-allegro principle, with Strauss' own addition of the cyclic form. Thus Strauss, in my opinion, died as a great music master, because after the hurly-burly of the great symphonic outrages, which refuses forms, he went back to them.
12. Those who deny the importance of form in music - perhaps they are no more musical than an orchestra comprised of all the animals from the zoo.
2. Music must be organized sound - no random sequence of sound is to be considered as music.
3. In this case, it is true that all genre of music can be considered as music under this definition.
4. The greatness of a piece of music - musicality - is to be determined by the complexity of its form.
5. There are two kinds of form: micro and macro forms.
6. Micro forms have to do with harmonic structures, melodic lines, polyphoncity, rhythms, etc.
7. Macro forms have to do with large structures, like the cyclic structure, binary and ternary form, sonata-allegro form, etc.
8. Most people will agree that micro forms are important. Only the few avant-garde would be as absurd as having music that is randomly generated by a computer. While they would argue that the "randomness" is itself a pattern, it is a pattern that is the same thing as combination of tones and pitches in which you would call "the closing of a door". But that is not music. Music must be music; when a person is listening to a set of sound, the interpretation of the sound must be as music, not as something else. When we hear the ringing of the fire alarm, that set of tone/pitch pattern creating that irritating sound is not considered as form, because what we attach to that sound is the idea of fire. A form, on the other hand, is purely musical; one is not reminded of anything; a micro form of a sound contains no connotation but music.
9. Macro forms, in principle, are equally important to the creation of music. All music must be arranged in a pattern: it is not a matter of showing off formal skills, or allowing the listeners to remember the melodies more easily. It is the logic of the musical language. The Romantics, beginning with Franz Liszt, thought that form (especially the sonata-allegro form) is too restricting; so they began to write "symphonic poems" - music with no structure, and they call that a "form". Foolish romantics! They have lost the essence of music; instead they replaced it with pictoral or literal form. The symphonic poem is not a form at all! It is a blend of all the arts: poetry, painting, music, etc. But in doing so they are no longer writing music: they are merely writing pretty combinations of sound.
10. There is a reason why all the greatest composers pay the greatest attention to forms. Bach is a master of the fugue form; Beethoven and Brahms the sonata-allegro form. This is also why Schoenberg, after liberating music from its tonal restriction (in other words, he dissolved a key aspect of the micro form), he quickly re-established a new, more rigourous macro form for his music - the twelve tone method. All sensible composers know that form is the essence to music.
11. The composer Richard Strauss would be a good example to how a real composer is sensitive to form. Early in his career he was a Brahmsian: he wrote two symphonies, a violin concerto, a few sonatas, etc. Then in his mid-career he felt into the spell of Liszt and Wagner, and started to write symphonic poems. His best works are Also Sprach Zarathrustra and Ein Helleleben (A Hero's Life). But "conservative" critics complained: although Ein Helleleben is his masterpiece, and it directly challenges Beethoven's Eroica Symphony, the problem for Strauss is that his is not a symphony. So in his old age, the decade before his death, he began to write "conservatively". The two most moving works, I believe, are his Metamorphosen for 23 Strings and his Oboe Concerto. The Metamorphosen is a complicated piece, like a set of variations, that ends with Beethoven's Funeral March from the Eroica Symphony. The Oboe Concerto is a look back at Mozartian Concerto tradition, a full embracement of the sonata-allegro principle, with Strauss' own addition of the cyclic form. Thus Strauss, in my opinion, died as a great music master, because after the hurly-burly of the great symphonic outrages, which refuses forms, he went back to them.
12. Those who deny the importance of form in music - perhaps they are no more musical than an orchestra comprised of all the animals from the zoo.
posted by Tristan at 11:24 p.m.
1 Comments:
So you feel that the harmonic sounds computers are able to compose by following the mathematical rules or parameters set to them by their programmers are not music because the computers themselves are not aware of the different forms of music?
That's a little like saying that given a monkey, a typewriter and an infinite length of time, the monkey will never be able to compose a Shakespearean play because it is not aware of the rules of grammar or the meaning behind figurative language...
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