A Child of the Snows: Ideas

Once one has decided firmly to write a piece, a good measure of how comfortably one is going to work on it is whether ideas readily spring to mind on first thinking or, in this case, a first reading of the text.  'Ideas' can be as specific as melodic fragments setting individual lines of text or as loose as a general feeling about texture or harmony for a certain passage.  Often, both present themselves at once.  The second type, whilst vague, is actually the more important for it dictates the character of the piece, which in turn has implications for forces required, structure and harmonic material. When starting a new composition, I try and look for the broader type first, as this provides both the foundations and later leads to some suggestion of how to 'build up' a work.

Allow me to go off at a slight tangent for a moment.  It is important to introduce the idea of 'superficial' and 'non-superficial' elements in a composition and stress the craft of balancing the two. 'Superficial' is not used here in a pejorative sense; it refers to elements that are literally 'on the surface' and which present themselves as being the salient feature to the listener at any given point in the music. Typically, melody (or at least the dominant textural line) is foremost, followed by harmony and orchestration. These tend to be elements which are subjected to frequent contrasts and mutations throughout of the course of even the smallest works, strengthening their role of arousing the listener's curiosity.  Non-superficial elements are generally concerns of structure, although the superficial elements also cross over into this category.  If orchestration is used to re-enforce the larger structure and texture (for example in an antiphonal passage in which two sets of instruments are alternated, or a solo instrument presenting an idea fixe) then it becomes less of an attention-grabbing device and instead a more fundamental part of the composition.  As far as I can see, the two exist in symbiosis, particularly so in a vocal work where both are ultimately derived from the texts being used. 

Gustav Holst once described composition as 'like approaching a house in fog. Slowly the details become clear - doors, windows.'  In a way, this is a simpler way of expressing what I have said above: the more superficial elements tend to appear later once they have a solid background to be positioned on. I suppose the same could be applied to the process of learning anything - for composing a piece is very much an exercise in learning how a certain body of material will best work itself out over a length of time. One has to start with the overall, generalised basics and then gradually refine the craft.

I already have the very big and some of the very small in ACOTS. At one end, the basic structure of the composition has been mapped out, and consists of an instrumental introduction, episodes of solo voice and choir, a faster middle section, more episodes of voice and choir, and a coda.  I rarely, if ever, write these structures down, as they can be recalled mentally with no effort.  This scheme is still flexible enough to allow for new ideas later on in the composing process and provides something akin to completing the edges of a jigsaw: smaller sub-assemblies can now be made up and can be roughly positioned in the central 'hole' for refinement later.  At the other end of the scale, I have been devising small snippets of melody, harmony and other surface ideas. In the next post I will be discussing some actual notes - ideas, motifs - and what can be done with them, but for now I want to conclude with discussion of a few overriding concepts regarding the surface of the music.

This most superficial element is, I suspect, the more fascinating aspect of composition for the interested reader. First, where do ideas come from?  The short answer is as far as I can tell, that thinking about the 'atmospheric' elements of the piece immediately starts one thinking about what fits this concept. Bear in mind I think about composition a lot without having to make much effort to do so or even being aware of it sometimes.  From then on it is simply a matter of trawling through one's thoughts on the piece until something of value suggests itself and gets written down.  So how does one decide what is worth keeping? And how exactly does one go about writing the surface material, spinning it all out in such a way that it doesn't end up as just aimless wandering?  These questions can be answered (at least in part) as one.  Returning to the opening paragraph, ideas, at least in my process, have to have some kind of context which dictates their inherent usefulness against various criteria.  In the case of this piece, there are several:

1. Setting the speech-rhythms of the text
2. Expressing the meaning and character of the text
3. Playability
4. Order of intensity

No.4 requires a little explanation but is actually simple enough. Order of Intensity (OoI) refers to the function of any element in the music with regards to whether it is pushing the music towards or away from a climactic point.  We could also term it 'dramaticism'.  This can be achieved using virtually any controllable parameter in the composition - volume, texture, orchestration, harmony, 'atmosphere'.  To use a very crude example, the successive diminished scales beloved of cinema pianists (typically accompanying Harold Lloyd dangling from a clock whilst someone is tied to the train tracks, etc) are very definitely an ascending OoI over a short temporal span. Most of the time in symphonic music, however, the OoI is much more subtle.  If you consider the opening of Brahms Second Symphony, the OoI in the cellos' four-note motif is very slight as it is moving towards a climax many bars away. The composer here requires a very stable sense of tonality and so uses just enough OoI to keep things moving forwards.  Even when this climax is reached there is still upwards OoI towards the biggest climax in the movement, towards the end of the movement and ultimately towards the end of the symphony.  As we can see, OoI is often operating on several planes at once in the same way as the structural plan described earlier.

So ideally, any ideas that spring to mind for inclusion in a piece will already suggest some degree of OoI in some context at some point in the work, however small or requiring of development/revision. If this is strong enough, such ideas can provide little 'strong points', around which the rest of the work can be completed. The fact that an ideas contains some readily suggested OoI might seem to apply to almost anything - hey, Bach Inventions and such like are often made up of the simplest and smallest groupings of notes - but we have to remember that we have started out with an 'atmospheric' concept and so are already selective in what we are looking for in the range and level of OoI (chiefly dictated by the scale and dramatic intensity of the work). In addition, I have a good idea of what (broadly, for I am open to influences) constitutes my own compositional style, further refining the process. Ideas that lie too far from these parameters seldom are considered even if they could potentially provide an excellent composition in other hands, simply because they are unsuitable for the task in hand. As ACOTS is a choral work there will be additional stimulus to be found in the texts used, which can suggest all manner of word-painting, colour, texture, etc.

What I've not mentioned so far is that these initial ideas almost always end up as significant motifs in the work, which brings us to a different area and technique of composition and one which constitutes a large part of how I work. In the next post, we will get to see some actual music. Promise.