The Focus Of Composition

 

 

If composition is philosophical in nature, then focus on the strategies, i.e. the things you can or can't do artistically or culturally, how to reconcile what you've done before and what you want to do, and so on. On the level of craft, it's knowing the capabilities of the people you are writing for (players and audience), which informs the choice of meter, key, tempo, etc. At the theoretical level, one could be intellectually challenged by the arcane, just for the sake of itself, but in the end it redounds to the philosophical, and begs the question of whether music should even involve philosophy. Obviously it has for many composers in the past, and even in the present. For the pop artist, they might wrestle with some of these issues at some point, if in fact the work incorporates the abstract and conceptual.

7/2/2016