Having never attended a composition class, I can only guess what is taught in one. I assume a
lot of attention is given to the craft of composition; things like
orchestration, handling various ensembles, the potential of percussion (if the
preponderance of new works involving batteries of percussion is anything to go
by) and non-percussion instruments. I
also imagine that things like texture, structure and harmony get covered. Certainly most new works seem to show an understanding of instrumental (and vocal) techniques and most have some basic
sense of a structure. True, contemporary
ears, unlike Classical ears, are less willing to exert themselves to recognise
complex aural structures, so most new works involve a structure which is either
glaringly obvious (such as a superficial cyclical form in which the opening
reappears just before the end) or associated with some extra-musical image
which is more accessible to modern-day audiences (hence the current passion for
film music, where audiences know what is going on because of their familiarity
with the movie itself and so project the movie’s structure on to the music they
hear). The one thing which does not seem
to be taught to new composers is how to end their compositions.
The way a work ends is vital; something which Beethoven
clearly recognised as, determined that his audience should not only know that
the ending was upon them but also that what they had heard leading up to that
point was of great stature and significance, he would hammer his final cadences
home with so many repetitions and restatements of dominant/tonic chords that they
verge on the farcical (surely nobody can take the closing of the 8th
Symphony seriously?). Others – Wagner is a classic example – felt that a short,
sharp and decisive cadence is the perfect summation for expansive musical
arguments - for me, Charles Villiers Stanford was the master of the decisive
Perfect Cadence - while no composer in history was so adept at finding exactly
the right way to end his music, providing both summation and peroration, than J
S Bach.
Yet, as the 20th century progressed and composers
began to place more of an emphasis on the detail within their music, endings
fell by the wayside. While in 1879 Widor
reserved all his inspiration for the final cadence of his famous Toccata, creating a closing passage so
exciting as almost to demand rapturous applause (and nicely expunging the acres
of sterile invention which has gone before), 70 years later György Mushel did
things entirely the other way round, his Toccata
full of stimulating ideas until the very end when, in effect, it simply peters
out. (Noel Rawsthorne, who introduced
the work to the British public, once recorded it with a spectacular finish full
of gushing octaves and glissandi. When I
asked him about it, he confessed that he felt the original ending was so weak
he decided to improvise a brief but effective postscript to it.)
The cause may well be the tendency for composers now to work
to set time limits. I remember Alun
Hoddinott telling me about his Sarum Fanfare. He had been commissioned to write the
piece and approached it with so little enthusiasm that, as the deadline
approached, he had only written half of what was wanted. He then hit on the brilliant idea of simply
making up the shortfall by reversing what he had written and tacking it on to
the end; creating one of the few musical palindromes. Unfortunately the student he charged with
writing it out for publication never thought to transfer the accidentals, so
much of the second half includes weird harmonic effects which do not work and,
more particularly, an ending which, to be kind to my late professor, redefines
the dismal in music.
A particular habit composers have when writing new organ
music is simply to stop the piece when the time (or invention) runs out and
throw down a hulking great chord. And it
is this which got me thinking about the silly endings composers now seem happy
to adopt. Attending a very fine recital
last night in St Salvator’s Chapel, St Andrews, the organist, Thomas Wilkinson,
performed what he told us was the third performance of James MacMillan’s St Andrews Suite. MacMillan is unquestionably one of the most
talented new composers on the scene right now, and few would question his
ability to write very fine, thought-provoking and intelligent music. The St
Andrews Suite is all those things and a lot more besides, but there was
more than a hint that the work, commissioned to mark the 600th
anniversary of the founding of the University of St Andrews, had been produced
under rather tight time constraints. The
title itself seemed unimaginative (if apt), but the three movements, each very
distinctive, were simply listed as I, II and III (which helps nobody at
all). The first movement was a
scintillating Toccata, the second a somewhat complex Trio (Wilkinson eliciting
intakes of admiring breath from the people behind me as his fingers and feet
twinkled delicately over the independent strands of musical agility) and the
third a kind of jig based on a jaunty little jazz-like theme. This third movement started to head towards
the character of the opening Toccata, and I thought that here we had a classic
case of a cyclical structure, creating a nice, neat musical circle. However, just as we got into the apparent
peroration, Wilkinson stopped and pulled out a fistful of stops (for all its
charms, the St Salvator’s organ has such noisy stop action that every
registration change sounds as if a broom has fallen over in an adjacent
cupboard). He then sat on a big,
unrelated chord and I wondered what was going to come next. The answer was…nothing. That was the end. And very disappointing it was, too, somewhat
diluting the impact of what had, up to that point been a very satisfying piece.
For me, the most irritating habit young pianists have when
playing Bach is to end with a significant diminuendo. When I was a boy, I used to be criticised
for adding stops and (occasionally) opening the swell pedal as a Bach Fugue reached
its culmination (I still love the occasional admonition in the old Novello
edition of Bach Fugues to “add solo tuba” near the end); it seemed natural to
me that with all those voices coming in and the texture thickening with every
bar, the volume should likewise broaden out.
The current fashion is to fade away, ending great works of contrapuntal
complexity with a whimper rather than a shout. The blame probably lies with
generations of record producers who, faced with young writers who have written
a good song but have no idea what to do with it, have made the fade the almost
obligatory ending to pop music.
In its place, however, the fade can be very effective. Holst ended his Planets Suite with one of the most inspired fades of all, getting a
wordless chorus to fade off into the distance as if disappearing behind the
outer reaches of the universe. Of
course, in practice this does not always work.
I remember the first time we did this with the Malaysian Philharmonic
(under James Judd) the decision was to keep the chorus off stage and, to create
the fade, put them into the off-stage elevator and close the doors. Only in the dress rehearsal did the folly of
this idea reveal itself. The only way to
close the doors was to press the button to move the lift up to the next
level. Someone duly did this and as we
heard the choir fade away into a highly-effective near-silence, Judd smiled
with satisfaction, only to have the grin wiped from his face as the lift
reached the next level, the doors opened and the chorus emerged still
singing. There’s also a famous Albert
Hall story about the chorus leading off from the high balcony and disappearing behind
the organ. The person in front found a
set of double doors and, assuming they led out into the back stage area, pushed
through them with her fellow chanteuses behind, only to discover she had led
the choir out on to the other side of the organ and back into the auditorium.
Another work in last night’s concert tried a similar
trick. Again this was an outstanding piece
of new music by a Scottish composer. Edward
McGuire has, apparently, written a four-movement piece for various combinations
of brass instruments celebrating Outer Space and the Universe, and Bede
Williams and his wife, Vicky Williams, gave us the third movement, Orbit, scored for two trumpets. It was a highly-effective piece and played
with such clarity and commitment as they did, it had a powerful impact. There were touches of the theatre about it
which were highly effective without diminishing the musical impact, the final involving
Bede walking off stage like some automaton drawn by its trumpet into the infinite
darkness pursued by his wife (a kind of modern-day, sex-reversal Orpheus and
Eurydice). The idea, presumably, was
that they should keep going until the sound disappeared but, unfortunately, the
chapel geography did not allow this, so they hid behind a pulpit and, with
remarkable technical skill, reduced their sound to nothing. It inspired a few chuckles from the audience
- which we must assume was not McGuire’s intention - and I have to confess it
did seem a bit silly.
I am deeply impressed by the quality of new music coming
from Scottish composers, and this concert showed two of the very best. I just wish they could find a better way to
end their inspired creations.