The tune name of this famous Hymn is St Anne. The words are equally famous: “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.” Seems like an appropriate text for these days.
This rendition has all 6 verses as found in NCH #25. There’s a very short intro and the first verse begins when the trumpet enters. Hang on to your part because starting in verse 3 the descants begin (there’s 4 verses with descants)!
Here’s a link to three chorale preludes for solo piano I composed a couple years ago that are based on ST ANNE. They’re audio streaming (nothing to download). You can hear the famous melody used in various ways. For instance, in the slow movement, it’s the top notes of the accompaniment.
And…you’re welcome to download the score HERE, for free. Of course, every composer hopes maybe somebody will feel like playing a piece if there’s a free score on offer!
Long ago, way before personal computers and the Internet, there was a young woman I knew who, from an early age, collected quotes from books on 3×5 index cards. Even though only in her very early 20s, she’d collected hundreds of these quotes. Almost all of them were from fiction. Although I’ve never had the persistence to accumulate such a storehouse of quotes, from time to time, I noted some passages in fiction that affected me deeply. They expressed a truth about life that resonated with me.
Here’s an example: “As Hagrid had said, what would come, would come…and he would have to meet it when it did.” from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling.
I just “Googled” that entire quote for the heck of it and discovered that it was listed on goodreads.com J.K. Rowling > Quotes > Quotable Quote page. Someone else had found it meaningful also.
The older I get, the more slowly I read, the more I return to re-read books I’ve read before, and the more I savor those bits of truth I find. I’ve certainly read my fair share of self-help and applied philosophy books, but I’ve never found as many helpful truths in those books as I have in fiction, for as Albert Camus said, “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
Similarly, never have I found as many helpful truths in literary fiction as I have in genre fiction.
Stephen King’s 2003 National Book Awards acceptance speech is terrific. Not only does he talk about the truth in in the life (fiction), more importantly, he takes to task the academic (“literary”) fiction network and bias. I highly recommend his speech: Stephen King, Recipient of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Award, 2003 (http://www.nationalbook.org/nbaacceptspeech_sking.html).
In an old blog I had, I once posted, “If I were able to write a novel, the kind of novel I’d hope to be able to write is the one I just finished reading, The Starboard Sea, by Amber Dermont.” The reason I felt that way was because of the underlying truth–a truth that is true for any human being–that was the premise of the story. It affected me deeply because events in my own life vibrated in sympathy with the tones struck in that story.
Part of what makes some authors so great is that they write “as if” they were inside the reader’s own existence. They must have the capacity to experience their books as we do and that inner perception must inform what they write. I also believe that the best musicians, be they performer, conductor, or composer, write/perform what they do for the benefit of the audience, not to aggrandize themselves.
In the field of professional music performers the best musicians also have a knack for hearing what and how they’re playing from the audience’s viewpoint, as part of the whole…as if they were outside themselves, sitting in the audience…quite literally and acoustically. They don’t just play their part from their own viewpoint.
The best composers have a way of doing something similar: they are able to experiencing what they’re writing from within time–just as a listener experiences it–not just from their viewpoint outside of time as a composer looking at the whole. In both cases, the musician/composer is performs/creates for the listener, not for the informed critic. This has always been true. Most people forget that Bach, Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven were all writing for the masses, they weren’t writing for the intelligentsia.
So, the moral of this story is to encourage composers to speak to the universal emotional experiences of their listeners. Engage the audience. Don’t write for critics. Write for the audience. You do that by providing them with an emotional experience. Become aware of your own emotions. Get in touch with the fact that we’re one person, that we inhabit a shared emotional world. Don’t just write notes.
Feeling the urge to return to writing the occasional composition-teacher post! Some time ago I made a list of titles for posts I had ideas to write. Here’s one…
“Tailgate trombone” is a term that applies to a typical trombone part in “Dixieland” jazz or traditional jazz in tutti sections (tutti, Italian from Latin totus, “all,” is where everyone is playing at the same time). This “tailgate” part sort of follows its own course, outlining often descending chromatic lines inherent in the harmonic progression of the tune being improvised upon.
The reason for titling this post with that designation is that in “Dixieland” jazz or traditional jazz (I’ve never been absolutely sure to what extent those two styles are mutually exclusive) each instrument has a set role and melodic character that’s unchanging in the tutti sections.
Those are typically as follows:
trumpet plays embellished tune melody
clarinet plays arpeggiated harmonic structure
trombone plays tailgate part
tuba plays bass part
banjo plays harmony rhythmicized
Having these set roles in tutti sections helps clarify the texture, keeping everyone out of everyone else’s way while madly improvising in “le jazz hot.”
My purpose in raising this topic is that all too often, as useful as this device is, too many student composers do the same thing to their classical compositions, never allowing the parts of the texture to deviate from their set roles.
I do the same thing myself for certain reasons, especially when I’m wanting to create a static atmosphere.
For, that’s the danger: the music becomes static.
It’s definitely true that as great a composer as Mozart utilizes static texture, sometimes called mono-textural music. But, it’s worth your effort to take something like a Mozart piano sonata that definitely falls into this category, and see how even he breaks the texture from one phrase or group of phrases to the next into contrasting textures of different characters.
Then, take a look at someone like Beethoven to see how even the seams between contrasting sections are disguised so you start with one texture and miraculously discover you’re in a different texture without noticing how you got there.
This is even more true with someone like Mahler!
Mono-texture isn’t “bad” and multi-textural “good.” The goal is to become adept at handling texture freely without being forced to being stuck when you don’t want to be.
This is the most important truth I still have to learn for every piece. It’s like I completely forget how to write music after every piece. At one point in my life, I kept the first scraps of paper from pieces so I could look back, the next time, to see how miserable the first notes were. This really is the Number One lesson to learn. That Disney thing where the brush sweeps across the screen and the picture just flows off the brush just isn’t the way it really happens. It’s true, the Cosmic Radio does exist, but sometimed the reception isn’t that great. It can be like driving across country late at night and listening to AM radio. You might pick up a station that’s really from a different piece, or maybe a different spot in the same piece, or perhaps just a bad idea, or maybe…aliens.
if you can firmly hear one note in your mind, the mind will usually wait to “play” the next note for you
About hearing notes in your mind: if you can firmly hear one note in your mind, the mind will usually wait to “play” the next note for you until you’ve done whatever you have to do to figure out what the first note was. It’s as if the notes are sort of already in a tube waiting for you and you can take them out one at a time. They won’t all disappear (usually!). If the “cosmic radio” metaphor doesn’t resonate for you, maybe think of the process as a “musical Pez dispenser.”
It takes a while to trust this process. Use whatever it takes to facilitate identifying the pitches: take an ear-training class, sing them into a tape recorder, use your music software to find them, find them on a keyboard or some other instrument, record them and painstakingly identify them one note at a time in the editor, guess (sometimes you’ll be right).
I recommend singing them and taking an ear-training class. Those two things are part and parcel of the same skill. Secondly, my next preferred method is finding them on a keyboard. The danger with that method is that all too often, the fingers will “do the talking,” and what they come up with isn’t what you heard.
But, as you develop your ear-training skills, usually the notes will be there in your “cosmic radio,” waiting for you. Try singing. It strengthens your ear and also keeps you honest so you don’t write “paper music.”
This post is a further exploration of one of the tricks mentioned in a grain of sand: coming up with a rhythmic idea devoid of any pitch content.
There is a legend, quite possibly not apocryphal, because the game of billiards was indeed one of his hobbies (another apparently being the collection of bathroom graffiti while on tours throughout Europe which he detailed in letters to his father), that Mozart would sometimes use the rhythmic pattern of the clicking of the balls in a break as the generation of rhythmic motives.
But, unless you’re a billiards or lawn bowling player (hmmm… shuffleboard would work too, wouldn’t it?!), you’ve undoubtably given into the urge to spontaneously tap out a rhythm on the tabletop of a diner while waiting for a 2 a.m. breakfast, or, possibly scat sing one like THIS. For this discussion, we’ll use my vocalized motive heard in that example.
The next step can be tough for someone without formal ear-training–but it’s doable with some effort and free software–and that’s turning that improvisation into written music notation. Either of those methods, however, depend on one basic skill: memory. Develop the skill of remembering exactly what you just improvised so you can repeat it exactly, over and over until you’ve sussed out the notation of the rhythm.
Developing this skill has other applications, too. There’s a technique used in certain types of pop vocals where the artist overdubs tracks with themselves singing in unison with what they sang before. I’ve heard pros who could do this matching every slight inflection and nuance of their first track’s performance for a 3 minute tune. Memory is a valuable skill.
Anyway, back to the task at hand.
Once you’re certain you’ve got your riff (motive) deeply embedded in your memory, you’re ready to write it down using the techniques you learned in Ear Training 101…or, if you prefer the software method, record it on your cell phone, then open the mp3 in your freeAudacity software. I use Magix’s SoundForge Pro Mac 3, simply because I’ve used it for so long and my fingers do their thing without me having to think about it, but Audacity is great. Get it. It’s cross platform. And it’s FREE! Whichever audio editor you use, you’ll see your waveform, like this:
Now, I bet you “patted your foot,” either mentally or physically, when you improvised your rhythm. Breaking down this procedure a little bit further, let try to identify where those “foot pats” are in the waveform.
The red lines in the above example represent where I felt the beat to be for my riff. That tells us a little, but not everything we need to know. To get closer, try tapping your foot exactly twice as fast as you listen to the motive. The blue lines in the following example show where those would fall.
We’re almost there! Now, suppose we subdivide each of those in half. The green lines in the next example represent those subdivisions.
Patience, patience, patience…almost done, almost done.
Now, suppose that the distance between red lines is a quarter note, then the four subdivisions would each be sixteenth notes, wouldn’t they? Mapping that out using music notation it would be 2 sixteenth notes, then a long note starting on the last sixteenth of that beat, then another short note halfway through the next beat, followed by two more sixteenth notes on the beat (like the opening). Looks like this in music notation:
OK…that’s enough for now. We’ll continue this exploration next post by adding pitches, harmony, orchestration, tempi, and dynamics in Tabletop drummer part 2. We’ll also take a peek in a 3rd part at how this motive could be explored even further by developing into throughout time.
The Eastman School of Music Sibley Library is possibly the largest music library in the world, rivaled by maybe only the Library of Congress and the other world class state conservatories (Moscow, Paris, London). Despite its size I remember wandering around it as a graduate student and coming to the realization that damn few of the books about music had little to teach that was truly useful, or if they did, perhaps only a scrap or two of ideas in the whole book were of lasting value.
The collection of music scores and recordings (and live performances, of course), however, was an entirely different story. That, mostly, is where I learned what I learned, the music itself (including the musical examples in the books). If you have $10 bucks and a choice between a book about music and the music itself, buy the score!
That said, there are books that I keep beside my desk, even in this world of the Internet in which we keep the sum of the world’s knowledge (and quite a few lies) in our shirt pocket. This is my list. If you can find them and afford to buy them, I recommend them. A few were only of value to me when I was young, but most still help me, and I reach for them often when working.
Next to each book, you’ll see some of the ideas that spoke to me most in that book.
ORCHESTRATION
The Study of Orchestration — Samuel Adler
Everything!
The Technique of Orchestration — Kent Kennan
Everything…much less info than the Adler, but sometimes that’s just what you need.
ESTHETICS
What to Listen for in Music — Aaron Copland
A Composer’s World — Paul Hindemith
MODAL COUNTERPOINT
Counterpoint — Knud Jeppesen
This is the primo modal counterpoint book. If you’re one of those who believes in “the two-voice framework” modal counterpoint is essential
Polyphonic Composition — Owen Swindale
While the Jeppesen is practically a primary source, the Swindale actually teaches you how to write points of imitations and motets and such…that’s why it’s named what it’s named.
FORM
Form in Tonal Music — Douglass M. Green
Each of these books covers the same material, but each has its own unique observations and techniques of showing them.
Form in Music — Wallace Berry
Musical Form — Ellis B. Kohs
TONAL COUNTERPOINT
Essentials of Eighteenth-Century Counterpoint — Neale B. Mason
As Swindale does for the 16th Century, this book does for the 18the Century. It teaches you how to actually compose in its contrapuntal forms.
Counterpoint — Walter Piston
An early, but important, counterpoint book, although not as authoritative as the Jeppesen is to modal counterpoint.
“MODERN” HARMONY
The Craft of Musical Composition — Paul Hindemith
His unique theory and approach to step progressions (that melodies have skeletons) and his classification of harmonic dissonances make this important; later theories (Heinrich Schenker, for instance, took Hindemith’s step progression theory way too far until it became meaningless. Hindemith keeps it reigned in.)
20th Century Harmony — Vincent Persichetti
Not valuable for me any more, but as a high-school student it gave me entry into something beyond J. S. Bach (I was an organist).
TRADITIONAL HARMONY
Harmony — Walter Piston
An early, but important, harmony book. Its weakness is, in a way, its strength: it’s only concerned with the order of traditional harmonic progression.
The Contrapuntal Harmonic Technique of the Eighteenth Century — Allen McHose
McHose’s approach to analysis was entirely statistical, based on rigorous statistical analysis of important Classical composers. What I like about his approach, other than this statistical grounding, is his chart of traditional harmonic progressions that I will present in my own simplified form at some point in this blog.
I know, I know, I know: yes, I’m betraying my very old-fashioned training; yes, each one of those books (except the Adler and the Kennan) may only contain a few fragments of ideas that are valuable; yes, some of those books are so old they’re probably not in print any more. NEVERTHELESS, they’re my favorites (was raised on ’em) and I was surprised to see that even something as obscure as the McHose is available, used, on the Internet. The Hindemith Craft of Musical Composition is even available in downloadable PDF. So…hunt around, you can find them, and probably pretty cheap. Keep them in your knapsack.
Books by historically significant composers on composing are few and those that do exist are uneven in their approach. My favorite, probably, is Olivier Messiaen‘s book, Technique of my Musical Language. You probably won’t find it for sale anywhere and if you do, it will be prohibitively expensive. But, you do occasionally find it in major libraries. Also, most university libraries can get it for you on interlibrary loan from somewhere like the Eastman School of Music Sibley Library (I notice there’s a link on that page to interlibrary loans). Note, the copy at the Sibley Library (Eastman is where I got my master’s degree) is the traditional two-volume version (text in one volume, examples in another) — be sure to get both volumes.
What I like so much about Messiaen’s approach is how thoroughly practical it is. He doesn’t justify anything. He just describes what he does. It’s quite literally about how he composes. He only describes some of the things he, himself, does, certainly not everyone. It’s the most honest book on composition I know. It is completely without pretense.
If you get a chance to look at this book, I recommend it to you. It may give you some ideas.
You might discover you don’t like his music, but you do like some of the ideas in his book. That’s okay. That can happen! Don’t let prejudice against his style blind you to what valuable ideas you might discover in his book. And, you never know…someday you might find you like, at least, some of his music. I know I do.
