Category: Music Composition

Olivier Messiaen’s “Technique of my Musical Language”



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.

Here’s a YouTube video with score of Book Two of his Catalogue d’oiseaux.

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.

A grain of sand…

2017-06-24 08.36.35 copy


Sometimes you get an idea for a piece and then you begin to write with absolutely no problems. You’re on fire and the music flows from you like images from the end of Walt Disney’s animated paint brush. Sometimes the ideas may be there, but it’s an uphill slog every step of the way, each measure bought by blood sweat. For what it’s worth, that’s how it usually is. But, other times, you may need/want to write a piece but you have absolutely no ideas. Those times can be problematic. There are some ways to deal with drawing a blank.

  • One way is to create just a rhythm without regard to any pitches. This often gives rise to highly energetic, motivic music. Use the rhythmic motive as a vehicle to explore chord changes or key changes.
  • Often composers will devise a series of pitches without regard to rhythm and then explore different rhythmic treatments of that. I’ve never seen the evidence myself, but I remember hearing that Beethoven did this. Apparently, his sketchbooks show him experimenting: sometimes applying different key signatures to the same basic note names, sometimes changing the clef but keeping the general intervals intact (this changes the mode of the melody), sometimes giving different rhythmic values to a given series of pitches.
  • Another way is to take words–and this can be prose or poetry, prose or free verse often seems to work best because of its irregular rhythm–and use the natural rhythm of the words to suggest melodies and the syntax of the sentences to suggest phrase structure.
  • You might create some sort of game with dice or a spinner (Mozart did this!) to come up with rhythms, or a series of pitches, or content of a section, or the length of a section…any aspect of music. The key to this technique is to not be in thrall to it! Feel free to abandon any detail of what you’ve come up with. This is approach is just to serve as a prompt. It should not be cast in concrete.
  • Sometimes it will be just a chord progression that is created first. This is a somewhat dangerous approach because it lends itself to predictable harmonic rhythm, especially the kind that changes on every measure’s downbeat. So use this carefully, trying to pay attention to creating a not-too-predictable harmonic rhythm.
  • The common thread in all these examples is that one aspect of music was isolated and an idea was generated for only that one aspect. Trying to think of too much at once can sometimes stall getting started.
  • After you’ve created your “grain of sand,” then you start applying other aspect ideas to it, just as an oyster overlays organic material. If you had a purely melodic “grain of sand,” try overlaying different rhythms. If your “grain of sand” was a rhythm, try pouring different pitch sequences into it. On and on…it’s just working with the materials, one aspect at a time.

By the way, this technique can be applied to everyday writing. You don’t need to save it for when you’re completely bereft of ideas.

Who You Were Meant to Be



Who You Were Meant to Be
A Guide to Finding or Recovering Your Life’s Purpose
Lindsay C. Gibson, Psy.D
New Horizon Press
Far Hills, NJ
Copyright @2000 Lindsay C. Gibson		 You may wonder why I begin a blog about being a composer with a book about “Finding or Recovering Your Life’s Purpose.” First and foremost, you are a human. Somewhere down the line–nowhere near the top of the list–is a description of what you do, one of those things perhaps being composing. But way before the technical stuff comes the human stuff, including your purpose, your why. That’s what this book is about.

This book may be the most underlined and full of marginalia of any book I own. Something about this subject and her approach to it touches my soul deeply. She could easily have made each chapter a separate full book. I wish she’d do that. I would buy them all.

I can’t recommend this book highly enough to anyone who feels that one’s inner and outer life are not in sync, or simply doesn’t know what one should focus on, or simply want to better understand one’s choices.

She helped me in many ways and some of her suggestions I remember to this day and use. It’s an old book, and I doubt you’ll even find it for sale used, but if you do, snap it up. It’s the kind people don’t take to the thrift shop. I’m hanging on to mine!