I’ve recently been reading a lot of Music for the Films, a hugely relevant book by the two German-American immigrant composers Hanns Eisler and Theodor Adorno. Even more striking than the book’s content and criticisms is the fact that it was written in 1947, yet it sounds like it was written yesterday. The 40s and 50s were the the tail end of Hollywood’s Golden Age, with a huge amount of new films being produced every year (Read: Film Music of the 1940s), featuring such industry giants as Max Steiner, David Raksin, and Alfred Newman. Unfortunately, it was also during this time that the studio system reached maturity, ever tightening its vice-like grip over the creative rights of all individuals involved. Absurd rules were in place: exact specifications on the length and form of opening titles, in extreme cases the inability to use any minor chord in said titles, to such nuisances as the inability to write music which didn’t stem from a source on screen (also known as underscore, which we now take mostly for granted.) It’s almost hard to believe that film composers didn’t walk off the job—until you realize that this was among the most profitable careers in the wake of the Second World War.

To a lesser extent, modern film composers have to deal with these same problems. Probably the most deplorable stipulation in practice today is that, upon signing off their completed music, composers no longer own any rights to it—the studio does. This isn’t to say that composers don’t get any royalties—many mainstream composers could stop writing today and live the rest of their lives quite comfortably—but that the composer can no longer use their ‘locked’ music in ways that they see fit. I won’t get into many more details here, but do have a look at the article after the jump.

Anyways, the intent of this post was to relate two ‘new’ approaches to the composition of music, both of which appear in the introduction to Music for the Films. These may or may not lead to a higher quality of work, but are at least relevant to keep in mind while creating.

1. The ‘camera’ analogy – music with focus, similar to a camera’s depth of field. You can choose to focus wherever you want—foreground, middle, back—but there’s always something out of focus; patterns or sonorities whose edges aren’t clearly defined. For example, the easiest way to define your focus might be with dynamics—as simple as having some elements come forward while pushing others back. Other possibilities could be the relative rate of new events—in this case the layer with the most activity becomes the one in focus—or something as simple as introducing the damper pedal on a piano. The amount of difference between what you define as ‘blurry’ and ‘not blurry’ determines the depth of field which your music will exhibit.
2. Music that is appealing on all levels. This one’s a little more up in the air, so I’ll stick to the basics for now. The idea is that the composer writes with multiple perspectives in mind, taking care to make sure that each is satisfying unto itself. Take Bach as an example—the musically uneducated can easily acknowledge the complexity without explanation, while a theoretical expert can approach the same material from a high level of analysis and still walk away satisfied. What’s important is that during the writing process the composer is aware of what ‘layers’ are even possible, and secondly that each ‘layer’ maintains its own level of interest. This is where it’s highly subjective, as 20 people listening to a piece of music might walk away with 20 completely unique impressions of it. Can a composer anticipate for this? Should they care what people think? I don’t have the answer right now, but it bears importance to wrestle with this on your own terms and see if it affects your own process of creating.

More info:

• Film History of the 1940s

I just came across an eye-opener while reading Art and Music, An Introduction (Cleaver & Eddins). While it seems obvious, I didn’t realize how important it is to put yourself in the listener’s shoes while writing:

Loudness, timbre, melody, texture, and tonality all help to create form, but our perception of music form ultimately depents on our memory, since the musical events take place within a time continuum. We compare what we hear at one time with what we hear at another, and we are led to expect certain sound possibilities yet to come, thus, proper timing is the very essence of musical form.

How much of a piece goes by unnoticed or unrecognized just because a person didn’t remember what you wanted them to? From now on, I’m going back over my pieces and making sure that what I want people to remember is actually memorable, or somehow stands out easily from the rest of the piece.

How much of a piece should be pre-planned before you start writing it? Here’s a few possible methods:

• Pre-planning everything: not writing a note before you have the entire piece figured out. This is the way Mozart worked. I tried this once, and while it did turn out a well-rounded piece, I would have preferred not banging my head against a wall and staring hopelessly at a blank page for hours on end.
• Pre-planning nothing: while working this way could mean that you start writing right away, it also comes with its own caveats. Namely, if you don’t have an idea, or if you forget the idea along the way, you’re lost. I had a frustrating time with this while working on my first album; I was constantly aggravated by how I was unable to see more than about 3 bars ahead of where I was. I guess that if you want to be successful with this method you’ve got to always keep mulling over the idea, so that it becomes fully developed, with no corner left unexplored.
• Working by revision: as Dan Visconti points out, sometimes the best way of composing is to plough through an entire rough draft, using notes as ‘placeholders’, which relieves a huge amount of stress in the end because now you can see the overall form of the piece, and zero in on those sections which need work. Another spin on this particular method is working out the short score, then going back and filling out the instruments. In the end, I find this method the most comforting, as the overall shape of the piece is solidified in the early stages, and the constant revision ensures that your ideas become fully developed.

Read: Composing Like a Painter, by Dan Visconti