Attempting to compose in spite of the musical "pollution" all around us...

[persona]

What do you think about this: if one listens to a lot of classical music and indeed acquires the "sensitivity" some times needed to understand it, is it possible to try and compose classical-like music even though 70% of what one listens to unwillingly throughout the day is inevitably jingles, hip hop, pop, or even worse, techno! I mean, do you think it's possible for someone to compose without being influenced by anything they dislike, or do you think catchy jingles actually "pollute" our musical creativity?

[pianistimo]

i always viewed composition as a sort of means of self-expression of the times and situation that one lives in.  we don't live in the baroque, or classical, or romantic or even 20th century times.  we live in the 21st century.  so - to have the MOST amount of people identify with what you write - it has to sound 'relevant.'  not something that has already been done before.  otherwise people will say 'that sounds like beethoven.'

ok.  rant over.  that said - i have composed things that are direct takes off of beethoven.  that is because i happen to like beethoven's music.  so - do anything you well please that makes YOU happy.  but, i think it's good to be open to the ideas of music theory history - what was done then and how it got to now.

if i were teaching a music composition class - i would make everybody write a piece of music in each style of the 'period'  (although the word 'period' is misleading - because periods didn't stop when one person died).

ok.  so we get to this point and things are rather fast paced - (ie technology) - a bit of stress to it - uneven rhythms sometimes/ and other times very even.  exemplifying disorder to order.  i mean - my ultimate composition would be reflective of war - and then peace.  i think i'd call it 'war and peace.'  despite my attempted creativity - i realize this is not a very original title.

[Bob]

I think it could be done.  It's your own music, coming from you.

But I could see it either way.  I think Mahler went into the country and made a point not to listen to anyone else's music -- because whatever he heard might find its way into his head and he might think it was actually his.

There are lots of different styles of classical music.  You could say that one style of classical music is "corrupting" your own composition in another style.  I started differing in tastes after hearing a lot of early music.  I doubt listening to other styles would have aided that acquisition of taste.

[pianowolfi]

I don't decline a particular style when I try to compose. There might be the need of using even rap or techno for some purposes, even when you compose in a "classical" way. I take every style elements I need to express the particular musical idea. Until now I never used hip hop or techno but I won't exclude that in principle; keeping every door open so to say.

[danny elfboy]

First of all it's impossible for music not to be derivative or influenced.
The idea of "originality" as "inherently dis-linked from anything else or that came before" is human naivety at its worst.

There's no such a thing as music that comes from nowhere.
In nature nothing is created and nothing is destroyed.
Music is a language and as such its very existence depends on the musical information we have assimilated in our life.

If you were kept from any communication and socialization with other human beings, being raised all alone in a basement just being given food to survive you would have no music in your head, you would never be able to compose anything and would not even conceive music.

In the same situation you would never develop a language and would never be able to express your thought with words.

The very act of composition is expressing ourselves using a language made of words, sentences and vocabules we have heard millions of times before and have always existed.

The philosopher Karl Popper (but many other philophers of the rational period too) was literally "disgusted" by theorists and composers that believed in music as something following a path in time, something that follows a specific linear evolution and must evolve in a past to future pattern. He believed that to be a way in which accademists hide their ignorance and lack of creativity.

Someone who has studied a bit of languages will see that language is timeless, that it can't be evolved but can only change on its own and the most well known way in which it changes is how groups of people forming small-societies and affinity circumstance develop language uses on their own reflecting their cultures. Dialects and slang/jargon are the most important examples.

All of this in music has happened in everything we listen around us.
The belief that the music created or experimented in accademies is more descriptive of our times is pure nonsense. Rock, pop, dance, musicals, jazz even jingles.

One can't really be snob with music. Believing there's music which is more serious than others is like claiming that the main language is more serious than dialects but the truth is that dialects are noble languages on their own, with a purpose and with a story.

And when one says that you can express the confusion and uncertainties of our times using lot of dissonances or uneven rhythm or strange sounds you're already being influenced by something since music (being abstract) can't express something specific unless the author ties that music to a particular emotion or meaning or unless the author is using a musical cliche used many other times.

In both the cases there's no reason why for example a scarlatti like melody can't express those modern feelings because either the author ties those feelings to music in an independent manner or the author doesn't choose cliches.

In both instances believing that certain music can express modernity and certain modern feelings is being enslaved and limited by music, is being derivative at the highest level possible and it's a huge limit in real individual creativity.

Pianistimo talks about a "ultimate composition" but composing is not just about "ultimate compositions". One can't really write tons of music trying to intellectualize it to the same old dogma or message. There's room for a lot in the between.

Language is a mean which we use to express important beliefs and our entrospectiveness, but it's also a mean to communicate at more friendly levels, a mean to express humour and the need to laugh, a mean to express dreams, hallucinatory immaginations, a mean to tell tales and create stories and fables and especially a mean to express about the social, about us in the collective and not just in the entrospective.

We can't even consider war a definitive point in time which allowed music to take a well-defined evolutionary path. In fact we know that even in something as universal as war or miserable human conditions the musical language has created as always its own cultural microcosmos. The examples are thousands but the more remarkable are the spirituals which the black population used to find something positive or hopeful in their condition. The chansons of the post-war France, the need for a more simple ways to express certain forgotten emotions. The liscio of the post-war Italy and a more optimistic and social way to conceive music. The contestations ballads of the 70's from Bob Dylan to Joan Baez, the post-depression blooming of swing, blues, twist in USA.

I don't know of any person with a background in musicology that really believes that the music from accademies is inherently superior or more serious than popular music; music doesn't work that way. Besides that all classical music is derived from popular music and variated from it.

Music is timeless and when music seems to change is not because a switch in time has been triggered but because a part of it self-evolved spontaneously in a cultural microcosmos it doesn't mean that the rest becomes obsolete or ancient. It's like the branches of a tree which never allow someone to cut the tree and just maintain the branches.

As all languages the music we create is influenced and tied by the culture we like in (any attempt to break from such unavoidable fact which is at the basis of all languages is ridicolous and laughable at best) as such the music that Mozart and Beethoven composed were influenced by the whole cultural context they lived in including the politics, the aestethic sensitivity and so on. But this doesn't mean they were not original.
In a way (when we're honest with what we create) we can't help but being original because each of us has assimilated and processed music in a unique way.

To answer your question persona:
You can't think of music in that way.
You can't think of music as something "pure" within us which can be "polluted" by sounds from the external. Everything about you is "polluted". You're the result of "pollution" and without "pollution" you would be less functioning than a plant in a vase.
 
The music we have in mind is the result of the processing of all the sounds we've been exposed to, including those you don't "consciously" like. But music is not conscious, the process by which music is created within you is not conscious and that process depends on absorbing all sounds not just those you "like". And it's a process you can't control, it's a process you're not aware of but it is also the only process that allows music to be in your brain in the first place.

You can't be "unpolluted" and your music can't be "unpolluted".

I think such approach to creating music is flawed.
You're already consciously self-limiting yourself.
You're more worried about the source of what you have in mind than you trust what you have in mind and want to express. This is artistic dihonesty against yourself. If you've music in your mind, if you have something to express and it is just dying to come out and be heard the last thing you should worry about is what it is made of.

Just write music, just express yourself ... if you'll like the end product and you feel like expressing something through it you should never worry about what the source material is. You seem to be more worried of the mean than the end product, but the mean is nothing, the mean is just a tool and its relevance ends where the goal begins.

It's what I call "anxiety of influence" and no, don't fool yourself into believing that you can really create honest music while being haunted by such anxiety. You can't really freely express yourself when you're always inhibiting your free creative flow by trying to avoid this or that or trying to put something there at all cost or trying to remove "pollutions" from your musical and creative baggage.
As a pianist you probably well know how it is impossible to make a good performance when the free flow piano playing is inhibited at a physical and neuromuscolar levels by the fears of making a mistake, but the fear of being judged by the fear of forgetting what you're playing. Anxiety always inhibits creative freedom and the things you're worrying about shows a great amount of such anxiety.

Maybe when you'll really compose in absolutely freedom and your only worry will be that to express what you have inside or what you want to, you'll end up composing variations on a jingle theme and will be so (as it should be) focused on the end result that would not care the sound source was a jingle, a jingle that nonetheless is part of your culture and is a intrinsic part of everything which is "music" inside you.

[nightingale11]

 

[counterpoint]

I mean, do you think it's possible for someone to compose without being influenced by anything they dislike, or do you think catchy jingles actually "pollute" our musical creativity?

I agree here with danny elfboy. Everything you hear and see will influence your work, and why should this be bad? You reflect what you hear and see. The quality of your work depends on how personal, original and unique these reflections are. A great painter can paint a garbage dump or a natural disaster - and it will be a great work of art. Don't fear the influences from "outside" - use them!

[pianistimo]

agreed with some of the things you say, danny_elfboy.  but, i take exception to the idea that karl popper was entirely right.  the example coming to mind would be the development of the instruments themselves (and accordingly the technique).  also, ways of writing down music.  this has obviously been 'one thing led to another.' 

but, in all fairness - i think i see what you mean.  all the elements for making music of any kind has always been here.  it's just taken a certain amount of time for some to develop to the extent that they have.  and, that people now have leisure time to study 'musicology' or 'music theory' or 'composition' with the aid of computer technology.  things don't take so long to put down on paper and ideas can be manipulated in many ways by utilizing ideas that came before.

perhaps what we miss is the 'hands on' in the formative years.  mozart was exposed to a lot of music up close.  violinists, singers, etc.  we use the radio nowdays.  it's not quite the same.  you don't 'experience' the music as much.  it's just there - like a roll of toilet paper.  you might hear the same song three times within a couple of hours.  not that pop music is terrible or anything - but i don't like so much repetition even within the same song.  'flossie flossie... or whatever that song is - whenever it comes on, i have to roll my eyes and think - 'whatever!  all they talk about is people doing it.  i'd rather hear that jazz version of ?'s - where he actually never repeats the same words twice - excepting the one line - 'let's you and me do it - fall in love.'  i think it starts out 'mosquitos do it, katydids do it - let's you and me do it...fall in love.'  i'd rather hear that long song (with no real reps) once - than the other pop songs three times in an hour.

one man/woman's garbage is anothe man/woman's treasure.  perhaps creativity is not just sparked by taking 'music appreciation' - but to just go around experimenting on your own (as a lot of musicians seem to do).  finding some answers might take a lot longer than taking a class - but hey, whatever works.  i don't think that music IS all in books.  but, a great deal of the understanding of what is behind the music is.  maybe it depends on the personality type of the composer.  if you like to just spontaneously generate - then do that and don't worry about what you don't know.  if you like to find out the 'theories' that people had - then study them and practice each one.  if you find music somewhat existential - then almost every type of music will appeal to you.  if you think that music has manipulative powers - you might attempt to seduce your girl/guy with music you think they like (although, this sometimes backfires - as most people tend to like completely different music than one another.  and, i've found it rare that my favorite pieces are also someone else's favorites...or what strikes me as absolutely stunning or breathtaking in a piece - is sort of 'blah' to someone else).