How did the great composers of the classical world write such beautiful, complex and (often) incredibly long pieces?
First of all, how did they come up with the little tunes (5-10 second sequences) that would be stitched together and mixed into a larger piece? Was it just playing around with an instrument until they heard something they liked?
Secondly, how did they decide which bits should go to which instruments? How did they know how it would sound on various instruments? (they could try it out or have a musician play the melody, but I doubt they’d have a bunch of musicians just waiting to try out a bit).
by the way, I’m assuming here that these big symphonies were built from many smaller pieces and linked together (some in series, others played at the same time as complementary melodies). If that’s incorrect, mention that, as well.
What’s really eluding me is where it comes from in the composers head. I mean with a painting or sculpture you can see what inspired them (even with stuff like Picasso and Dali), but classic music rarely resembles any natural sounds. Even when it captures the spirit of something it’s hard to explain why this sequence of notes makes me picture a mouse scampering around (Minute Waltz) or a burbling stream (Four Seasons).
Short answer: Partly talent and inspiration, partly knowledge of music theory and technique (gained through a combination of training and experience), partly hard work (with some trial and error).
There isn’t exactly a formula for coming up with a classical masterpiece, but there are patterns and forms and techniques that any good composer is familiar with.
Just as an insight, my father once asked Benjamin Britten how he composed*. Britten said he sat at a desk and wrote the score. He didn’t need a piano but “heard” the notes as he wrote them down. That would lead me to believe that the first draft didn’t include all the instruments – just the ones he wanted to focus on in that section. He would later fill it out.
*Britten was staying with my grandfather and befriended my father when he was 14. He actually got very enamored of him. Yes, in that way, though my father never realized it.
I think the masters from that era were able to hear music in their heads without having to actually listen to it being played. Supposedly this is how Beethoven was able to compose pieces like his ninth symphony even though he was completely deaf by that time.
It might also be helpful to think of music in terms of language. We can all learn to read and write with the proper teaching, but most of us will not become great poets or novelists. I think it’s the same way with music. The masters have a talent that most us don’t, and I don’t know if that can be taught any more than one can be taught how to write great poetry or a great novel.
I’ve found one the best, most accessible ways to understand symphonic music to be the “Young People’s Concerts” series that Leonard Bernstein did from the late 1950s through the early 70s. Bernstein looked at many aspects of classical music, and though they were nominally aimed at introducing children to the world of the concert hall, they can be educational experiences for people of all ages.
They’re available on DVD, although that’s a fairly expensive route. Your local public library might have some you can borrow. Some of them are also on YouTube, although I’m not sure about their copyright status so I don’t know how legal they are.
You might look in particular at the episodes “What is a Melody?” and “What is Orchestration?” While not exactly a how-to-write-music guide, Bernstein in these episodes does get into a lot about how symphonic music is put together. The orchestration episode, especially, is devoted to answering the very question of how composers decide “which bits should go to which instruments,” which is exactly what the word “orchestration” means.
Music follows similar rules to language. It isn’t just putting down random notes until you find something that sounds good, there are actually structures to the music.
There are sentences, phrases, themes, melodies and motives. There are particular chord progressions that are acceptable, and some that are not.
Once you know all the music theory behind composition, it does become like writing a novel, in that there are grammatical rules that are not there to constrain, but to guide you. You still need to be creative, and come up with a story that people want to experience, but it is in using these tools that a framework is created that can be appreciated by the listener.
The great composers then take all these rules, and break them. Terrible composers sometimes think that because they are breaking the rules, that makes them great.
I wanted to go compose symphonies and stuff… except incorporating motifs and rhythms and such from hard rock… when I was 19-20. Went to college, majoring in music.
I hear them in my head. Years of listening to classical music probably makes one’s musical imagination shape itself around long-trajectory musical phrases.
Also, being a piano player, i could bang out the separate parts which would make it easier for me to “hear them in my head” superimposed on other stuff that would also be going on.
To some extent, books like The Techniques of Orchestration help you figure that out, but you also abstract a lot from the classical music you’ve heard during your life — I mean, you don’t just imagine a specific musical phrase as a series of chords and melody-trajectories, you also imagine the tone of it, an array of trumpets or a hive of busy violins churning it or a delicate lilt of woodwinds or whatever.
But yes, this was what I was hoping a music education would teach me. The book could tell me what the range of an oboe was but it would not teach me that two oboes playing in the lower part of that range would be drowned out by cellos doing this and trombones doing a descending passage, and that if I wanted that phrase to stand out I’d need more oboes or back the other instruments off or hand the part to more or different instruments… or whatever (etc)
Thank you, all. The Bernstein videos look rather promising. I’ll have to check it out. The Confutatis video illustrates a lot, especially once you understand that the musical backing is their shared understanding.
It’s also sounding lot like cooking. You start with a standard process/framework (e.g. mix flour, baking powder/yeast, liquid/fat and binder, then apply heat), adjust the various components and their ratios, and add seasonings, flavors, and/or textures for enjoyment. Music without seasoning is just variations on scales, or, possibly, a dictionary in Gregorian chant; food without seasoning would be a basic biscuit or pie crust (even basic bread has added flavor (salt, sugar) and textures. Also, like cooking, it tends to follow established methods and standards.
So, do they write a symphony straight from beginning to end? Or do you come up with a variety of pieces and tunes (a bit of quick googling shows I’m talking about ‘phrases’ and ‘sentences’ here) and link and order them afterwards?
Composers of complex music don’t all do it the same way. The sheer complexity mandates some degree of formal structure, but the snippets (phrases and sentences) may be initially created as improvisions. (Yeah, classical composers jam). A different composer might contemplate an interesting tonal structure in musical-theory terms instead, and then render that in various ways. Some composers (most likely the ones who work from a theory schema like that) may do more of a top-down design and gradually flesh in the details and nuances, whereas someone who is more of a “seat of the pants” kind of composer might jot down a large array of snippets and then, as you said, link and order them together into a structure later on.
