I find one of the most difficult things a composer can be asked to do—right up there with starting a new piece and coming up with a title—is to write program notes for his or her music.
My teacher is trying to convince me that what my next piece really needs is some kind of extra-musical concept to tie it all together. A program, a story, a poem, an image, a character, a game, an object. I don’t buy such things. They’re fine for other people if they want to organize their thoughts, but I’ve never listened to Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring and thought to myself, “Hey, that sounds just like the rolling hills of West Virginia and parts of twelve other states.” Have you? I just got home from the premiere of my friend Matt Schoendorff’s wind ensemble piece The Standard Model, which is a set of character pieces inspired by the standard model of particle physics. It was an incredible piece, but never did I think to myself, “Wow, so that’s what the Higgs boson would sound like if it existed!” (+5 nerd points if you got my quantum physics joke). I think of music as a complete abstraction. There are exceptions, obvious among them are songs with words. But in general, I think the only thing music is “about” is music.
I have a piece being played by the incomparable h2 quartet on their program Thursday night at 6:00 in the MSU Music Auditorium. If I had a concept like Aaron’s or Matt’s program notes would still not be easy, but at least I’d have somewhere to start. Compounding my problem is the way I come up with titles. I write most of the piece, and then I think to myself, “You know, this kind of reminds me of …” and I come up with titles like Falling Up the Down Escalator and Inner/Outer Monologue (which for about a year, my mother thought was Inner/Outer Mongolia).
The first of those titles is the piece being played this week. I can’t say, “This piece is about some guy falling on an escalator that is moving down, but somehow he’s falling up it, against gravity.” I can’t say that because 1) It’s not true, and 2) It doesn’t really make much sense. Here’s the problem: if my music is as I posit, an abstraction, how can I write meaningfully about it in a program note? It’s not impossible, but it’s very very tricky. Considerations of audience are key. No one wants to read a theory paper in their concert program, not even a theorist. Also, you don’t want to spoil any surprises. My piece has a section (which for the sake of mystery, I will not name or describe) that I like to think of as a social experiment, but it wouldn’t really work if the audience knew it was coming.
Here’s what I came up with for the note. It’s short, but I think it’s solid:
Falling Up the Down Escalator was influenced by jazz, blues, and contemporary concert music. My hope is that the piece will reorient the listener’s concepts of what is musically “comfortable.” The piece presents musical ideas that are generally considered uncomfortable (groupings of 5 notes, for example) and uses them as though they are not, in some ways, inverting the senses of consonance and dissonance.
So, how do you feel about extra-musical concepts? What do you want to read in your program? Tell us in the comments!
#1 by Matt Schoendorff - September 30th, 2009 at 02:28
Wow, good thoughts, Dave. I think extra-musical concepts are great when they serve as a jumping-off point for a piece. For instance, the standard model was a fantastic way for me to organize compositional materials, but only because I went into the piece with that as the program. If a program is conceived once a piece is well under a construction, I feel it is somehow less effective. Not only does the program have to conform to the material that is already composed, but the piece as a whole now must fit into this program. It seems counter-productive, at the very least.
Some pieces probably do not need program notes. I would go as far to say that even those pieces that requires program notes to be fully understood (I submit my own “The Standard Model” as a case-and-point), should be able to exist cohesively at some level without the aid of program notes.
#2 by Tim - September 30th, 2009 at 08:56
What I absolutely DO NOT WANT is for the composer to lie to me. If your piece isn’t about an escalator, then don’t make me think about one. If you piece IS about the hills of WV, then tell me so I can think about WV. Otherwise, call it by its Opus number or something so I am not distracted.
#3 by Dave - September 30th, 2009 at 19:42
Why can’t I suggest that you think of an escalator without the piece being “about” an escalator? In some ways, it’s part of the piece.
#4 by Ty - September 30th, 2009 at 22:50
Personally, I think good program notes give the listener a window into better understanding the piece. Those of us who are trained musicians/composers/musicologists have been taught to listen and think critically about music for a long time, and thus don’t need a lot of extra musical information to find interesting things about a composition. The casual listener, however, can frequently get lost in contemporary music without being given some sort of foothold.
These notes, of course, don’t have to extra-musical. It can be something like “In the opening section, I contrast a lyrical theme played by the cello with aggressive rhythmic figures played by the xylophone…” and so on. This gives the listener a clue what to listen for and allows them to orient themselves within the piece.
It can also be interesting to know what the composer was going through when he/she wrote the piece. Were they going through trouble in their personal life? Were they studying folk music of southern Morocco? Was it written in a cocaine-fueled frenzy after the composer had been awake for 47 straight hours? How do these things manifest themselves in the music?
When I write program notes as a performer, I try to think about what would allow listeners to get into the piece, what kind of images/emotions/ideas might help them to relate to the piece, the sonic “landmarks” to listen for to help them understand the formal structure, and so on.
Those are my thoughts. I hope that it is somehow helpful.
#5 by Sam - October 3rd, 2009 at 14:02
In many cases – and Dave’s piece is one of these – the title of the work serves perfectly well as the program. Falling up the Down Escalator? Come on now. Anyone who can’t get the gist of what the music intends to convey by this is only at the concert because they want to hit on sound guy. Often times, I really want to leave to program at just the title because it doesn’t give enough information to serve as a program, yet is intentionally designed to yield program information if someone wants to search it out. My masters thesis piece is called hawl wadig. Now I could go into an explanation of where this title comes from and what I feel the connection to the piece to be,
#6 by Ryan - October 12th, 2009 at 00:15
Recently was on a flight seated next to a real life particle physicist. He talked to me for awhile about the Haydn I was studying, and then I asked him to wax on the Copenhagen Paradox and to explain HOW the Higgs Boson works in simple English. Hell of a flight!
#7 by Phillip - October 18th, 2009 at 14:34
I agree with the teacher in a sense. When we write music these days, we are often inspired by SOMETHING out there. Whether it be a state of mind, memory, fleeting moment… Are you saying you wrote the music, just for music’s sake?…as in it being a purely abstract piece? I think it helps us reach an audience when we can attach something tangible to the intangible musical experience. I want to argue that it is rather pointless to write “Sonata in G for Flute and Clarinet” these days. It doesn’t really mean anything to anybody now. A single adjective/ thought/scene can suffice without making a piece programmatic.