Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Composer's Lounge What styles can we really "get away" with writing nowadays?

Commenting on Nico's Ballade just a moment ago really made me want to raise this question - It feels like Classical music is really cornering itself right now with the whole post-modernism trend. We really don't know what musical styles (not from the past) we can both enjoy and also accept as new works. I mean, I can really only see one new way of being unique, and it still won't be possible until music technology develops even further than it has now, with the work that research-and-developpers (like me) are doing to make this possible.

In the meantime, what is so wrong with just setting aside our qualms about doing things that have already been done, and just use the styles of music we like as "starting places" for original endeavors by particularly creative composers to take off from? I think alot of composers nowadays feel very insecure about their compositions (myself included) just because we know how particularly hard it is (not that it was ever easy) to please everyone within the larger musical circle of people who enjoy absolute and programmed music.

Thoughts?

Quoth Bartok:

"Every art has the right to strike its roots in the art of a previous age; it not only has the right to but it must stem from it."

I guess the bottom line on composing is to please ourselves. If in turn we find an audience, that's great.

I think as long as music is well done there will be an audience no matter what style one is composing.

I'd rather find a small selective audience that truly appreciates my music than to have a large audience of trend seekers that just want to appear hip.

Best, John

Bach "...drew together almost all of the strands of the baroque style and brought it to its ultimate maturity. Although he introduced no new musical forms, he enriched the prevailing German style...." --Wikipedia

Liszt, similarly, took music that already existed and played with it.

I see no problem doing so today.

Bartok, when he was younger, really liked Strauss. So his first composition (non-published) was a waltz that sounded just like a Viennese Waltz. Then he found out that he really liked Chopin, so he started writing (non-published) polonaises that sounded just like Chopin. Then he found out that he really liked Brahms, so he started writing (non-published) intermezzos that sounded just like Brahms.

It wasn't until his early 20s when he discovered folk music that he started to become innovative and discover his own unique style.


Same thing with Beethoven. During his teenage years, he wasn't concerned about finding his own style. He was perfectly happy just following the formulas of his day and age, and he learned a great deal in doing so. Then, in his 20s, he started to develop his own style, and he started to publish more of his works with opus numbers.


Prokofiev, when he was a kid, contented himself in writing "Liszt Rhapsodies." His mother had to explain to him that he couldn't write a "Liszt" Rhapsody, because Liszt was a composer not a genre. Listen to his first published Sonata, Op. 1 - it sounds just like Chopin. It wasn't until later that he began to develop his own unique style.

I've dabbled in a lot of musical styles and I always find myself coming back to tonal, romantic sounding music. I've ceased to care about finding a completely different sound - because if I find it, chances are I won't really enjoy making music in that style. I'm comfortable writing in a romantic style, and if it's not completely new, so what...

Now, try telling that to my composition professor back in my college days...

couldn't have said it better

I find this, because I listen and play music much more often than I compose, when I do sit down to compose, my 'style' has shifted dramatically. There are certain idiosyncracies that always stick though.

I can totally identify with this