Today’s article might strike a few nerves. At least I hope so. Every once in a while it’s good to shake things up a bit. So the question I’m putting forth today is a simple one. Are there any absolutes in music? I’m going to give you the answer right up top. You can then decide if you want to continue reading or not. The answer is no. There are no absolutes in music. There are guidelines and suggestions and certainly there are end goals, but there are no absolutes. What follows are my thoughts on this subject. Some of them may be a little radical.
In order to really answer this question properly, and not just the blurted out response I gave above, one needs to understand where the “absolutes” or “rules” came from.
Classical music was all about structure. You had many forms of classical music such as the symphony, sonata and so on. Each musical form had its own set of rules. And then there were more general rules such as “no salient parallel 5ths” which means none that are prominent or stick out.
We had these rules because there was a general consensus that we needed structure in music in order to avoid chaos. The problem with this theory, as I see it, is why is chaos so bad? Does music have to be so predictable that you can almost guess where the next note is going?
Many years ago, I had a discussion with a friend of mine by the name of Rich Friedman who now lives in Vietnam of all places. I so miss him and the good times we used to have discussing music.
Anyway, we were discussing what “good” or “commercial” music was. I essentially contended that it was all subjective. His response was simple. Good music is whatever is pleasing to the ear.
Therein lies the crux to almost every discussion on music that you can have. What defines what’s pleasing to the ear? Why is it that some sounds make us feel good or please our ears while others make us cringe and are to be avoided by composers?
If we try to answer that question we fail miserably because trying to understand human psychology on a musical level is like trying to understand why one man can look at a woman and drool all over himself and another man can look at the same woman and feel nothing but disgust or indifference at best. When you talk about things that are subjective and try to define them, you lose.
And yet, throughout history there are clear examples of certain types of music that are, if nothing else, more popular than others. Think about it. How many really popular pieces of music are just random notes played with no steady tempo and no time signature? Off the top of my head, I can’t think of one and I have listened to a lot of music.
Now granted, that’s an exaggerated example. Any monkey can bang out notes on the piano and call it a song. So maybe I’m not being fair. But have you listened to some of the experimental music of the 70s? Some of it is not far removed from random notes and none of it gathered more than a cult following at best.
So like it or not, there are certain constraints that we do need to adhere to IF we want to write things that are going to be pleasing to the ears of those listening.
But…is pleasing people a rule? Is it an absolute? See, this is where we dive into the personal nature of music composition. Why are you writing your music? Is it to please others or is it to please yourself? Can you do both?
Well, if you enjoy writing catchy pop tunes or well “structured” symphonies, then yes, you can do both and probably will do both. But what if your insides are yearning to just walk over the piano, turn on the midi recorder and start pounding on the keys with reckless abandon?
I have a confession to make. Many of my recent piano and violin duets are just that, my playing random notes on the piano, totally improvised on the spot. I then went back and tried to fit a violin part into the mix. Sometimes I was successful. Other times, not so much.
Yeah, I cheated a little bit. I would always end the piece with a recognizable tonic. I did give it that little bit of structure so that at least the piece had closure. But in most of these, I did little more than that. Some of the pieces are quite interesting and unnerving at the same time.
But were these pieces truly random? If I were to dig deeply into my mind and all my musical experience, wouldn’t I find that these were nothing more than little bits and pieces taken from various forms and thrown together in a clever way as to make it all appear random or chaotic? In short, didn’t I do this consciously?
I myself do not know the answer to that question. And the reason goes back to my original answer to the question in the title of this article. No, there are no absolutes in music. A true composer takes music too personally to allow himself to be confined to absolutes. He will stretch music as much as he wants depending on how much he DOES want to also please others.
As I write more and more, I am finding that my desire to please others is dwindling to near nothing. I spent most of my life trying to write a “hit” song. Time after time I failed. I think I finally reached a point where I said to myself, I’m tired of writing for others. It’s about time I started writing for me.
And when you are writing for you, there are no rules. There are no absolutes. There is only you and your keyboard or notation program or whatever it is you use to express yourself.
I truly believe that when a composer accepts that, it is then that he will write truly great music.
For The Love Of Music,
Steven “Wags” Wagenheim