Music has been evolving for many centuries. Since the Renaissance, composers of music have been able to make a living by writing catchy, interesting music; catchy, so that the audience remembers it and wants to hear it again, and interesting, to please the composer’s artistic interests and those of the musical community. Both these goals have changed over time to create the music of today. Music is still catchy– there’s no doubt about that. However, it is considerably less interesting in terms of instrumentation and tonal progression.
Instrumentation is the organization and selection of voices that play the melodies and harmonies of the piece. Good instrumentation can be observed when different voices harmonize in new ways as the piece progresses. In music by Bach, for example, different voices often play the same melody at staggered intervals of time. This creates a distinct harmonization called a fugue, which is difficult to compose. Nobody wrote any fugues in the year 2014.
What else has disappeared from music? Mr. Zugale, Band Director and Music Expert, states, “sonata allegro form. It was on its way out in the 19th century. It fell out of favor in the 20th century, and now most modern pieces are more along the lines of tone poems, I guess. I would like to see a greater variety of instrumentation, recorded sounds, words, any way that you can manipulate sounds that advances the timbre of the ensemble.”
Sonata allegro form is a method of dividing a piece into sections, like chorus and verses, which follows rondo form. A Sonata form has an exposition section, in which the main melody and chords are stated, a development section, in which a secondary melody or a different key may appear, and then a recapitulation section, which restates the main melody and concludes the piece. Most pieces prior to the 19th century, with the exception of Rondos, Chorales and short dance pieces, were written using Sonata Allegro form.
The virtual disappearance of this form of musical composition has led to the loss of incentive to include a developmental section in a work of music. The dearth of incentive to develop new and interesting melodies often leads to the repetition of the same melody over and over, as seen in songs like “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey. The song uses only four different chords, and it isn’t the only one to do so.
What’s confusing to a moderately seasoned musician such as myself is why the public accepts songs that repeat everything except for the lyrics, which in many cases are incredibly non-poetic, and, in equally many cases, extremely offensive. The public used to be much more sensitive to new and radical music. The best example of this by far is the premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring.
First performed in Paris in 1913, the radical music and choreography caused the audience to shout, rise from their seats and even engage in physical fighting over its quality, utterly destroying the theater. The Rite of Spring is today considered a great musical work. If the same audience were to observe the popular music of today, I think they would have a similar reaction. Today’s audiences are far less finicky, and tend to become rowdy out of excessive admiration for celebrities of questionable talent and creativity compared to artists of past ages.
What it’s important to understand, however, is that composing music is not easy. Tim Morrow ’17 explains what is difficult about it: “Actually starting. You get the inspiration and you get the different ideas of all these interlocking melodies and such, but to actually sit down and start putting these on paper is the hardest part. It’s not due to laziness or something else. It’s just a daunting task and can actually be a little intimidating.” Besides being intimidating, composing is very difficult unless the composer knows music theory from start to finish and can play a range of different instruments. Many old composers were known to have these abilities, but they are much rarer in today’s composers.
As sensitivity to new music disappears due to musical unawareness, it becomes easier for people to write and publish new music. Hopefully this will reopen the field of music to the point where it is possible to reinstate the elements of music employed by the geniuses of centuries ago.