Hi, Donald.  I, for one, did study composition briefly, but that has never been my gift.  However, I've been an arranger since about the age of 15, for over 50 years, and have learned a greate deal by trial and error--LOTS of errors!!

 

However, I approach arranging as composition using pre-existing material.  (In other words, the 90% perspiration without benefit of the 10% inspiration!)  In fact when I attempt to compose something completely original I often get blocked until I convince myself that I'm actually arranging, and then things often start to flow.

 

In my book it isn't an arranger's job to do nothing but the mechanical work--harmonizing and assigning lines from a piano accompaniment to individual instruments--even though that is sometimes what an arranger is asked to do.

 

My late wife was a good arranger, but a much better composer, and I was envious of her ability to start from scratch with nothing but the basic building blocks of music and end up with something both original and absolutely right.  She studied composition with Audley Wasson in Dayton, and was the only girl in her composition seminars at Indiana University, and none of the young men could understand why anyone would want to compose nice melodies!!!

 

When I was in the USAF Band, Sam Nestico was chief arranger for the Airmen of Note, the excellent jazz big band, and at least a half-dozen of us were after him to teach an arranging course.  And he refused.  But he did give advice that has turned out to be the best advice I've ever had:  "Just open up your ears!"

All the best,

John

As a student of music way back in the late 1950s and into the 1960s, I did the usual study of 'theory', including harmony.  Then at short notice I found myself studying in Italy for two years.  My music there was limited to attending organ concerts by Fernando Germani.  After that it was back to my home-country and a career in the public service.  During the decades of public service I maintained my sanity (I think) by working with choirs as well as singing in others.  Every now and then the urge to do something musically creative would rise, but I never really did anything about it - until into the 1990s I discovered the Sibelius notation programme.  It cost a lot of money, but I could afford it at that stage, so I bought it.  That meant I had to use it...  It also meant digging back throguh all the years to recover and expand on what I had studied all those decades previously.  The greatest surprise to me was that having produced something, it seemed almost alien.  This is where I have to introduce an almost spookly element.  The end result, though coming from me, seemed somehow other than of me.  At first I found this quite disconcerting, even disturbing.  But then, I got use to the idea that this was how it happened.  I laughingly called this sense of 'otherness' my muse.  Composing and/or arranging is not something I can turn on and off.  Rather the opposite seems to be the case.  When the urge strikes, I have to go with it.  OTOH, much as I may wish to work on a piece, unless the 'muse' is well disposed, nothing will happen, regardless of my conscious wish.  There are more pieces in my files that have been started only to be abandoned for lack of any inspiration.  Not being in close touch with any other composer/s, I have no idea if this kind of thing is particular to me, or if others share this experience.

 

I also write some poetry - well, that's what I call it.  Oddly, when involved in that, music composition just stops.  Contrariwise, when the music flows, there is no poetry.  Nor can I set any of my poetry, except in a very hamfisted fashion...  Two different muses refusing to share the same space?

 

I find arranging to be quite different to original composition.  It is harder for individual's creativity to come through and work with what is essentially the composition of another.  Whatever, it is hard to beat the sense of satisfaction when I have completed an original piece that just seems to me to work well.

I took a semester of composition lessons (if it could be called that) when I was an undergrad. Although I had the highest respect for my professor I learned diddly squat. Somewhere I heard "make every phrase the same, only different." At the time I didn't understand that sentence and I don't believe it came from my professor. I received almost no advice or assistance and everything I do has been learned simply on listening to what my gut tells me when it comes to variation in my music. Music Theory and discussions there of ways to develop musical ideas have been more beneficial to me in my performing, conducting, and writing then anything I learned from a composition professor.

 

Craig

I'll just add this.  When in high school I met Jean Berger at a contemporary choral festival.  I told him I loved choral music and I wanted to become a condcutor.  He fixed me with his kind gaze and said, "then study the craft of composition."  Although my life took a different turn (also public service, David), his advice still rings true.  The best conductors and critics, in my experience, understand form, pacing, exposition, motifs and development, etc.  Of course they must also know about historical and musicological context, in addition to the technical aspects of performance.  But a conductor can only cause a piece of music to take the audience on a journey if s/he can read the composer's map!  chris

What a wonderful message, Donald!  And what a lovely way to start the morning, watching "How to Write a Song", with the brilliant Morten Lauridsen discussing his choral gem, Dirait-on.  He expresses himself here with such humility and tenderness - and never, for a moment, becomes patronizing or condescending in his delivery.  I've decided to send this inspirational video to my entire choir.

 

Thanks for this, and for getting this topic going.  It took me many, many years as a professional musician to summon the courage to get into choral arranging (Sibelius certainly helped!).  I still have lots to explore in that vein.  But the next step for me (in the not-too-distant future, I hope) should be composition... perhaps starting with that idea of a single musical cell.  (When I accompanied for dance classes over the course of several years, my improvisations often came from just that kind of a source.)  Perhaps your blog will help motivate me to just get out there and do it!

All the best,

 

Jenny Crober, 

Artistic Director,

VOCA Chorus of Toronto

www.vocachorus.ca

Thanks for posting this, Donald.  I didn't start composing until rather late in life, and only then because I was "pushed" into it by one of my professors, who thought a small piece I'd written in order to have something to use for Finale class showed promise (it was an arrangement of "O Dear! What Can the Matter Be?" for SA + piano).  I returned to school in 2003 at age 52, after a 30+-yr hiatus working in Information Technology  My initial plan was to major in conducting; composition wasn't even on the radar at the time I enrolled.

 

The process Lauridsen describes in the video is precisely how I was taught to do it.  The first quarter of Composition was spent learning how to manipulate a short sequence of pitches or "motif" to produce multiple "ideas" that could be incorporated into a full-blown piece of music.  Lauridsen uses a specific chord as his starting point for "Dirait-on"; we were taught to choose the pitch sequence however we could: a chord, by tossing dice, by picking out random pitches on a piano, etc.  The course of study involved a series of exercises, each intended to demonstarte mastery of a particular technique: sequence, iteration/repetition, inversion, retrograde, etc.  We worked with only melody that first quarter.  Each week, we had to produce 7-10 measures of music based on a "kernal" that we created, employing a particular technique, and it had to be "compelling" and satisfy the "Golden Mean" in its rise/fall / tension/resolution / etc.

 

By second quarter, we could start writing more complex music (multiple voices), and had to name several composers who we considered "models."  My list included Donald Patriquin (yes, it really did), along with Alice Parker, Johannes Brahms, and R. Murray Schafer.  As we worked our way through form (our first assignement was to compose a simple ABA piece), we were expected to apply those first lessons, and talk about how our models might inform our own individual styles.  It was a learning style that worked for me -- I LOVED the idea of a puzzle, of something that could be built from a very simple starting point (5-7 notes).  And when I started actually setting text, I was in heaven, as the text seemed to dictate the starting "kernal" for me.

 

And so there it is -- I continued down my original path to study conducting, but stayed in the composition track as well, and ended up with a triple major (conducting, composition, and vocal performance/pedagogy) when I graduated in 2006.

 

Knowing how music is constructed has definitely influenced the selection of pieces for my own choirs.  I feel I can choose "better" music, certainly more satisfying music, by being able to see and understand how it came to be.  It doesn't have to be complex; simple pieces (like "Dirait-on") can be just a "meaty" as much more complicated works.  And I still use those first lessons in my own composition process, especially if I feel "stuck."

 

I'm just happy that I agreed to "try composition for just one quarter" when I was pushed into it by that professor in 2003.