Macker: I had the privilege of being one member of the audience during Williams’ last concert in Vienna. And indeed I don’t need to be convinced that he’s great. He is on par with the great classical composers (although hearing the music live shows as well that he does from time to time suboptimal orchestration).

I also know very well the intuitive and emotional aspects of composing music. They’re a result of the complex shape that our neural network dedicated to music acquires through years and years of music listening. Our brain even knows music theory, but we are not conscious about it, so we have to study it explicitly.

However, I know also very well that Williams compose according to the standard, rational procedure developed by the classical masters.  And Williams himself has several times explained that melodies do not always come up to him suddenly, as a daydream, rather by tinkering a lot with the piano, altering an initial idea note by note until something special is found. If I don’t remember badly, this was case with the Indian Jones theme.

And once one has the melody, the standard classical procedure guides him/her in finding melody, harmony, accompaniment, material development. Therefore all the other pieces of the puzzle can be found again just trying patterns, variations, ostinatos at the piano, nothing magical. I’m not claiming that having mastery of the classical composition process is easy, rather that it doesn’t require exceptional internal hearing to be carried out, *now* that we have technological tools to hear instantly a good approximation of the music we write.

So no, Williams is not Williams because he composed without modern technology, but because he masters composition, other than having that intuitive “good taste” and communication ability that makes the great composer. By the way, one could claim as well, that only the deaf Beethoven was the ultimate composer, since piano is a technology that facilitates composition as well.

I’d say instead that the way Zimmer composes is recently more intuitive and less rational (or just I don’t understand it, which is likely).

Frederico, acquiring a profound and proficient grasp of music theory is one thing, but becoming adept at innovation in music composition is something quite beyond music theory. Even so, and quite rightly, we do expect innovative composers to know music theory.

Perhaps we can regard music 'theory' as, albeit imperfectly, a collection of 'methodological and syntactical norms' used prior to and including this moment in history. Isn't it somewhat like studying a spoken language? As such, rarely if ever does such formal study afford the student any clues about where or how innovation is now possible, permissible or acceptable. Usage of the mother tongue of a culture is, I believe, the archetypal model of democracy, in that everyone participates and may - here and there, perhaps suddenly or over time, accidentally or deliberately, collectively or individually - bring about changes in usage of the language. That is to say, linguistic norms are not set in concrete.

And yet it appears there are many subtle but quite powerful 'anti-innovation measures' embodied in our participation of the culture, most especially in our usage of the mother tongue. After all, we don't want our understandings of each other via language to be seriously degraded or impaired by egregious departures from, or unwholesome perversions or corruptions of, our shared linguistic norms.

But by contrast to usage of our mother tongue, in the language of music there is considerable scope for not only novelties but also innovations. I distinguish novelty and innovation by considering that one's 'normality' is essentially altered by the latter, whereas the former may only perhaps 'colour' or otherwise alter our perspective of our normality in various non-essential ways. From even a cursory look through the list of composers in history deemed now to be "greats", it's hard to avoid the conclusion that innovatory prowess matters a great deal in our appraisals of composers; although of course several other factors, such as taste and style, also weigh hugely.

Innovation is an act of perfidy, whereas to abide by and support normality is fidelity. Innovators must of course be very careful to contain and limit their will to commit perfidious acts. There are some notorious examples of highly innovative composers and other artists who have allowed their will-to-perfidy to spill out into their social and moral life, with scandalous consequences (e.g. R.W.). Generally speaking, perfidy is potentially harmful to social and moral order and may, especially in certain ideologically rigid polities, in some cases be treated as criminally culpable. Little wonder that the art of innovation is not taught in academia - not that any art as such can be taught!

So where might this bring us vis-à-vis the contention here that composers with a background as orchestral musicians and/or conductors tend to be more adept and/or successful at composing? Given that innovation is a potent factor, I think it comes down to the norms of musical reality being far more real, alive, meaningful and powerful in the real presence of an orchestra, as compared to, for example, the case of an individual who has only ever tinkered with musical ideas on his DAW at home. To innovate necessarily includes, it seems to me, a profound appreciation of the power of current norms and normality, which is best acquired in real social situations.

Maker, you speak about music theory, but I didn’t use that word in my last post. People design with the term “music theory” something far more narrow that what I’m talking about, for example harmony, counterpoint, orchestration, which indeed it's useless alone. Studying music also means reading, reading and reading what previous composers did. As a novel writer that needs not only to know the grammar of the language, but also the patterns and forms of previous novels, which is acquired through reading, so the composer needs to know music theory as well as to *read* previous literature. That is not acquired through live listening, but with lots of off-line reading. 

Then one can see and understand the technical innovations of Williams with respect to classical composers, and by the way with respect to all 20th century music, Beatles, jazz and whatever included. But as it is the case with other composers, the innovations are relatively few. Nothing radically new makes Williams with respect to Holst and other previous music, who does nothing radically new with respect to Wagner and late romantic composers etc. Or going forward, look at what Elfman did after Williams and so on. As in science, small innovation after small innovation one gets huge and radical changes in the course of history (e.g. film music sounds quite different from Mozart’s music), with occasional, very rare revolutions. I don’t think Williams has revolutionized anything, as any other great composer he has built his own, coherent voice with the most advanced tools that were available, with very few technical inventions. There were indeed really few revolutions in the history music, I think. Everything was quite gradual and continuous, indeed, like in science.

To answer your question why “composers with a background as orchestral musicians and/or conductors tend to be more adept and successful composers”, I’d say that the question is itself a false assumption. It lacks the word *in the past*. Elfman is for example already a counterexample, and now in the digital age there will be more and more counterexamples, as my argument predicts. Of course, to have a counterexample to what you’re saying, it’s necessary a great composer to start with. I personally dislike the music that nowadays is written, so yeah, I guess I’ll have to wait to see the next Williams.

Frederico, you sure? What about:-

"Our brain even knows music theory, but we are not conscious about it, so we have to study it explicitly."

and in you previous post:-

"The real problem is that now people don't study enough music theory ...."

OveralI, I think we'll have to agree to differ. You seem now to be coming out, as I surmised earlier, as firmly in favour of intellectually-focused study, explicit knowledge, and literal-minded understanding; whereas as I've tried to point out, I firmly believe it's much more than just that. Sorry, far too lopsided for me to consider further.

Ah well, thanks anyway for your contribution.

P.S. if you read Tom Kuhn, you'll understand that revolutionary science - i.e. a "paradigm shift" - is in no way analogous to the innovations in music I'm talking about. Please don't try to draw such baseless parallels between science and music - you'll likely offend musicians and composers here, as well as mislead others.

Macker, your quotations don't make any sense. I did talk about music theory, but not in the sense you claimed to, and I already did clarify what I meant.

Well, I know very well Kuhn theory and I'm free to apply it to whatever context I like. Should other composers get offended, it's the last of my concerns, honestly. If they're afraid of rational thought, it's their problem, not mine. And of course you're free to restate your theory, I respect your opinion, although I still think is wrong.

Interesting statements by both Federico and Macker.  I think that the intuitive aspect of composition can go beyond any theory, though with study of theory one can get ideas.  I remember when studying music theory in high school parallel fifths were frowned upon. I immediately went home and wrote several melodies with all parallel fifths.  Just to be contrary.  With Williams, Federico is correct in that he didn't particularly "innovate" but his music is so perfect it doesn't matter.  I completely agree he is on a par with many great classical composers, and will be known for his great work in the future.   Bernard Herrmann definitely innovated, with his refusal to use the popular (among film composers such as Max Steiner)  Wagnerian leitmotif style, and instead wrote purely symphonic scores with extremely detailed orchestration.  But in general the knowledge of orchestral performance gained from the real world - like playing or conducting - is of huge value for a composer. It gives specific ideas about what exactly each instrument really does best, and that can inspire more ideas for composition.

I think one should see music theory as explanation of what composers during a certain period did. It’s very useful, but I agree it should not taken as a prescription. Moreover, what many people call “music theory” is instead theory of the music of the classical period. An updated, modern music theory can already be formulated, although there are not many books about it. Moreover one should understand the meaning of rules. Yes, parallel perfect consonances were not employed in the classical period, if the effect to be achieved was counterpoint, but already Mozart started to use violins I and II in octaves, since he understood that was not meant to be counterpoint. And I agree having orchestral experience cannot be but useful. Many people don’t however know that conductors study in great detail scores before rehearsals, they don’t just learn by doing.

Just watched the last half of a live-online Berliner Phil concert conducted by Thomas Adès, including works by  himself and Gerald Barry. Ugh! What a nightmare!

Huge conclusion for this thread:- those who are determined to compose but only have in their studio various instrumentalities that can render writtten music in Equal Temperament, including a piano, then - I contend - there will be a marked difference between those who have in their heads substantial experience of hearing Orchestral Intonation (OI), and those who don't. This difference will be most apparent in those who use much modern dissonance in their works, expecially those for whom extreme dissonances are central features of their works.

Moreover, it seems there is a hardcore of aficionados of the attempted revolution in music composition kicked off by the Neue Wiener Schule, who don't give a tinker's cuss about the differences between ET and OI and just presume that if their composition sounds acceptable to their own ears in ET, then it "must therefore'" be acceptable to everyone when heard played by an orchestra. All too often this is symptomatic of "toddler think".

Intellectually, Adès ticks all the right boxes, e.g. having taken a double-starred first at Kings College, Cambridge, and now being a professor at the Royal Academy of Music, London. But, especially in music composition, I think there is a consensus in this thread regarding the essential contribution that other mental faculties, skills and talents make in composition. I'll leave it at that.

Perhaps many if not most classical music lovers would agree that something important was lost in Beethoven's works after he became profoundly deaf. Hard to say what this might 'prove', if anything, but I suspect it is vital for composers to hear the results of their novelties and especially their innovations - if only on the piano at first. Did Beethoven's integrity deter him from taking risks with novelties and innovations when he was too deaf to hear them at all? If so, it bears luminous testament to this great man's integrity as a composer.

Tragic though it was for Beethoven, if I'm right about this, his example ought to shine forth today and be taught with earnest reverence in colleges and music schools that attempt to teach composition.

Alas, integrity has certainly never been the strong suit of the "toddlers" - and that's why I call them toddlers. Academia could do our cultures a great service by spotting and weeding out the "toddlers" as early as possible - because they lack the requisite empathy for composing; and in the "toddlers" I speak of, that lack cannot be remedied.

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You've confirmed what I've long assumed, which is that for harmonies containing intervals more 'exotic' than the mundane 4th, 5th, 3rd, 6th, or perhaps major 7th, orchestral players simply play the literal Pythagorean pitches of written notes. Thanks, William.

[Update] The point I was trying to bring out, but didn't do so very clearly - my fault - is that ET, especially when played on piano, tends to be far more forgiving and kind to highly dissonant intervals, compared to Pythagorean. Indeed it's easily possible to play almost any random bunch of notes with one or both hands on a piano and not wince at the resulting dissonances. By contrast, playing those same handfuls of notes in Pythagorean (but not on virtual piano because that involves offending our deep-seated recognition of piano tuning) can produce much rougher, more unpleasant, even cringe-inducing results.

This is hardly surprising, given that ET's 12 notes are a sort of dumbed-down, cartoon-like representation of the 29 or so Pythagorean notes used by orchestras. DAW users without broad and deep experience of real orchestral sounds - or at least an adept grasp of Orchestral Intonation (OI) in theory - trying to compose modern atonal music for an orchestra, are in effect walking through a kind of deferred-action minefield. The difference is that the mines, if stepped on, don't detonate until a real orchestra (or virtual orchestra with OI) plays the piece.

For any readers who may not be familiar with the concept of Orchestral Intonation, here are links to a couple of old YT videos on the topic. The principles in these videos can be applied not only to real strings but also to brass and woodwind.

Intonation: Which System to Use When

Intonation Master Class: Mozart String Quartet

Some interesting points of view here. I haven't read anyone talking about how theory, or perhaps the lesser loaded expression, study, has another extremely important benefit for a budding composer. Whilst studying and more importantly, practising techniques (just reading about technique is never enough), the young composer with the wits to do so, will also be discovering much about their own aesthetic proclivities, especially as they eventually assimilate and then apply or reject any new methodologies according to their own musical instincts.

The adaptation and transformation of technique into the role of support and guidance is a crucial step to becoming able to freely, confidently and perhaps even uniquely, express oneself in music imo.

Mike, excellent point!

At first I was thinking about responding in terms of the pedagogical styles in which various particular academic institutes tend to treat the business of 'educating' their students in music theory and the crafts of composition. Some such institutes are more pedantic than others, in that they offer the student too little leeway for individual taste, style and - above all - art. After all, "education" is supposed to mean "leading out", not "shoving in", lol.

Alas though, gathering reliable info on even a few institutes in order to substantiate my contention would probably be a nigh on impossible task for the short term.

But then it occurred to me that even in private self-study, away from any and all formal institutional constraints and influences, there is still, potentially, the dimension of strict pedantry versus liberal leeway, which the student has to negotiate his way through. In my case, having studied music theory and composition on my own for about 8 years (albeit very late in life), I had to deal with, for instance, the rigidly scientific paradigm proposed by Helmholtz in his famous "Die lehre von den Tonempfindungen" (the English translation with voluminous annotation by Ellis), as well as the equally famous but far more liberal "Traité de L'Harmonie" by Rameau (Gossett's English translation). Even Fux's treatment of modal counterpoint in his classic study, "Gradus ad Parnassum", though at first sight extremely strict, offers the student at every step the opportunity - however tiny - for some art. 

In these and other, more up to date cases, finding scope for my own taste, style and art was helped substantially by discovering early on that both Helmholtz and Rameau were simply wrong about the extent to which Just Intonation provides the physical basis for music; and thereafter, by developing my own appreciation of the far greater scope, beauty and versatility of Pythagorean Intonation. Also, although Hindemith's teaching of his take on "modern" composition is - pedagogically - wonderfully adept, adroit, engaging and liberal, for me it represented certain unacceptable departures from the aesthetics that I held and still hold dear. And so on and so forth for 8 long and arduous years.

So, how best is today's would-be student of composition to proceed? I think you've nailed it, Mike. Students must of course not only devise and carry out studies of their own but also practise, practise and practise with these studies, if they are to discover and develop the methodologies, shapes, forms, morphologies, etc, of their own tastes, styles and - above all - art. And all this can be ongoing, if perhaps episodic. Look how many great composers have even published the best of their "études".

In some (perhaps many) cases, this might involve waiting until after one has graduated and departed from an academic institute, given that not all of these institutes are equal in terms of the liberal scope for individual style, taste and art they afford their students. All the while, seriously ambitious students will no doubt treasure and entertain in all of their studies - institutional or private - some adroit and apposite degrees of musical rebelliousness and artful perfidiousness. But going back to my initial, cynical thought in this post, our 'advice' here presupposes that the institute does not permanently impair or even wreck the young student's chances of doing this.

Hi guys,

My more than 2 cents worth (but not much more...) on this discussion:

I am talking from personal experience, the experience of colleagues known to me personally and whom I respect, and plenty of music history and biographies of the greats (not Wikipedia pages).

I can hear the level of schooling and music knowledge within seconds in somebody's music (under a minute if it is a really slow track). This is not an extraordinary ability. Everybody with the same schooling and knowledge as me or higher can do as well or a lot better. It is as simple as that. Seasoned professors (or great and learned ears) will even hear disparities in correct harmonic procedures. I am not talking about parallel 5ths and 8ves, something that every unschooled person brings up as an example in order to dismiss theory by citing composers that flouted this particular rule... There are so many conventions! And would you follow the German or the French school regarding them, for example?

Music Theory is not the be all and end all in art-music composition but it is a study of its own, with its own Bachelors, Masters degrees, etc. It does not merely form a part of an instrumentalist's or a composer's studies. I say to those who diss music theory - because they never studied it to an advanced degree; I personally don't know anybody that knows theory to ridicule it - have you noticed that most (if not all) great composers knew theory backwards before deliberately eschewing some of its rules? Ergo, methodically eschewing them? Ergo, not simply making inadvertent errors?

And I say to those who say -laughably- that learning theory is useless as it dampens the imagination: Is your music freer and more imaginative than the music of Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Wagner, Debussy, Strauss, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Schoenberg, Lutoslawcki, Penderecki, Schnittke? By the way, if you want to ascertain how much theory you know (ballpark experiment of course), listen to Mozart's Musical Joke -use the score too- and see if you can discover all the places where you are supposed to laugh, and why. That work was composed by the great man for the entertainment of connoisseurs. A lay audience (= those who don't know music theory) would take it as a normal piece of music save for knowing the title and a few very crude passages.

Now, as to which music theory to learn in order to compose. Macker referred to a few great but antiquated manuals. He also said that he is very much interested in intonation issues. If that is the case, manuals contextualising musical conventions from the Gregorian to Baroque eras would be useful, but I would suggest more recent ones that incorporate the information found in those classics. For those who wish to write equal-tempered music, tonal or atonal, they should learn theory that applies to Bach's music onwards. 

Like any serious skill, music theory cannot be acquired by watching a few videos, no matter what those videos claim. It takes years, and it took years for the aforementioned geniuses, for they didn't just learn I-IV-V-I with all the 7ths, 13ths and sus4s included. Plus, it is not a skill that you can learn by yourself. You can read and memorise all you want. If you don't put that knowledge to the test by harmonising Bach chorales, composing inventions, canons, fugues, sonatas, etc. and have somebody look them over, you are wasting your time! It is yours to waste of course.

Will knowledge of music theory (university level) make you a great composer? Please...

Will knowledge of music theory (university level) make you a better composer? Infinitely. 

At this belated point, I must confess that I personally HATED studying Music Theory almost as much as I HATED Analysis assignments.

Do I use theory when I compose? Do you mean do I comb my scores for all the rules of harmony?... Do you actually know how many there are?! Are you asking me whether I look through an entire work to see whether my upward leaps of major 7ths in the bass are resolved correctly, or whether I have any downward such leaps, which are not allowed unless there is at least one other note in between (it might actually be the other way around, I don't remember anymore...)?

Are you serious?

However, I am not Brahms, am I? Let's compare our scores to his and see who has the most mistakes, and how many more... (Let's not actually)

As with languages, it all has to do with sum of knowledge and fluency, which comes from practice as well as talent.

You might say that such considerations are ludicrous when one writes at an advanced chromatic idiom. Well, yes and no. Somehow, composers that know their theory (theory that does not apply to their harmonic systems), they still write better sounding music. Better balanced. Better voiced. You see, theory was determined by compositional conventions that most talented musicians more than less agreed on. They agreed that music sounded better that way, and it seems to be the case. Somehow, proficiency in this knowledge transposes favourably to more advanced harmonic systems, and Schoenberg insisted upon very sound traditional theoretical training for his students, even though he was the proponent of a compositional system that had nothing in common with classical theory. He "threw" John Cage out of his class because he realised the man had no interest and/or capacity for harmony. And Cage found a way to not need it. But he barely composed for instruments as we know them, did he?..

P.S.: Thomas Adès, Macker? Why? What possessed you?

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@William said:

For example how did blues players learn how to do the music they mastered?  No school would ever dream of teaching it.  So the great blues cats all had to learn on their own, figuring out harmonies, styles of voice leading, all of what the music did - without the help of textbooks.  It is striking how many of the greatest blues and jazz players valued old 78 rpm records that had been cut by a great player - they were like treasure because they contained the real musical principles that people were trying to understand. So that was an example of a very different kind of "theory" but just as meaningful.  

You are right, of course. I was referring to art-music in my post, but a lot that applies to other musics as well. These blues artists, the ones with great ears, did arrive at some of the same theoretical conventions as well. But not one individual did. They were learning from each other, exchanging ideas with one another, slowly reaching a consensus similar to that of the art-composers of the distant past, and it took a lot of time for their conventions to become 'rules'.

The blues artists created something similar without a textbook, but the art-music composer could not do this as art-music is incomparably more complex than blues and even jazz music (not that jazz cannot get highly sophisticated). Huge ensembles and complex harmonies that often modulate a lot faster, and do so chromatically, instead of mostly in parallel motion.

In addition, art-music's legacy and veneration lies on the written page. This I have tried to explain to jazz aficionados as one of the great differences between the two kinds of music. In blues and jazz the performance is much more important than the piece itself (hence all the improvisations or singing styles where the real magic in the genres happen). They are music of the moment (I don't mean that derogatorily). In art-music, no performance by any conductor will ever be greater than the work itself as it lies, skeletally, on the page; the bare instructions of its potential realisation. It is like a Platonic ideal. Rigid in its formal and notational content (no matter what some conductors used to do 100 years ago as to the latter). So, since it is the score that is more important than any single performance, orthography and correctness became equally important. It is one reason that composers and publishers go to the expense of publishing revisions.

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I love both studios! I personnaly still writing on paper, my conservatories years give me the ability to write music (ffrom piano to orchestra) without instrument only pen and paper... Of course at conservatory we learn music from the past from Bach to Ravel. But honestly If you can write music in style of, let's say, ravel It will not be really hard to compose film music in the actual style...

I just talk about skills, I'm not talking about talent, this is an other story...

Anyway, it's nice to see John williams' studio.

Errikos, I know, I know .... me listening to Adès?? Lolol. But you're right, it does require some explanation.

I had two burning questions:- (1) what on earth possessed the management of the Berliner Phil not only to  invite Adès to conduct a concert, but also to agree to Adès' selection of works for the concert? And (2) what possessed the Royal Academy of Music to appoint Adès as a professor?

Also, I wanted to spend those 45 excruciating minutes in re-visiting my old opinions and feelings about his kind of balderdash (see below), and to bring them into the present day in mercilessly vengeful form. And lastly, I also wanted that time I spent in purgatory to serve as a painful wake-up call to remind me what could happen next if the extremist neo-marxian ideologues have actually succeeded now in capturing important territory in our beloved world of orchestral music.

Being a Boomer, I vaguely recall - in the '60s? - when the UK Musicians' Union started organising industrial action by orchestral musicians. These musicians were complaining bitterly that the amount of modernist atonal works they were required to play was causing their hair to fall out, giving them nasty headaches, and putting a serious damper on their private conjugal enjoyments at home! The Union won; orchestra repertoires were revised to exclude pretty much all the worst of the modernist drivel. I remember being wholly in sympathy with the musicians' cause.

As I watched the Berliner Phil musicians render the grotesque, ghastly, incoherent poppycock written by Adès, for much of the time they were showing their usual highly professional facial expressions and other body language. But towards the end of the concert I started seeing frowns and somewhat depressed comportments. Poor buggers - they had all my sympathy.

If there's to be a fight in mainstream and social media about whether or not the worst imaginable modernist garbage written by "toddlers" with no soul should be foisted on the public, I'm now solidly up for that fight, thanks to my 45 minute session of 'self-flagellation', lol.

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William: That was my point exactly. Jazz is a genre where variation on a given composition is mandatory. The original composition is given as a guide for extemporaneous explorations; a point of departure. Art-music is very different in that regard. As far as complexity is concerned, I would say that apart from the aspect of rhythm jazz does not begin to compare with art-music. As sophisticated as it can get melodically and harmonically, and as many sub-genres of jazz as there are, and as much as it has evolved, it ultimately is based on specific patterns. I am certainly not saying that they all sound the same; far from that. However, I don't see anything in the same universe as the variety existing in art-music. I don't hear anything as disparate as I do in art-music. Shostakovich's, Poulenc's, and Varese's lives for example heavily overlap.