Music Composition Tips

Hi! My name's Matt and I recently graduated with degrees in Music Composition and Music Industry from James Madison University in Virginia. This blog is for all of you who are curious about composing classically. Hope you enjoy!

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You gotta have a plan…

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This deserves more notes

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Top Ten Spookiest Classical Pieces

Perhaps I’m feeling macabre, but tonight I’m digging out my favorite spooky classical pieces and listening to them. So I thought putting together a top ten list of these would be fun while I drink my scotch. Note: These are not really in any particular order. I love them all.

1. Beethoven: Piano Trio in D major, op. 70 no. 1, “Ghost” - 2nd movement. Rattling of chains, shrieking of spirits; the nickname of this trio fits it well. The first and third movements are good as well, but only the second movement is really spooky. 2. Schubert: Der Leiermann (from Winterreise). A heartbroken young man sings about the hurdy-gurdy, an outcast who sits just outside the village and plays his instrument while dogs snarl at him and people ignore him. Particularly chilling is that this is the last song of an hour-long cycle, and it drones on without clear resolution, ending with the line: “Strange old man, should I go with you? Will you accompany my songs on your hurdy-gurdy?”  3. Mussorgsky: Night On Bald Mountain. You may know this one from Disney’s Fantasia, which is featured during the Witches’ Sabbath sequence. 4. Schubert: Der Erlkönig. Based on a poem by Goethe, this song tells the chilling story of a father and his ailing child riding through the woods on horseback, while a malicious spirit tries to lure the boy away, unseen and unheard by the father. 5. Saint-Saens: Danse Macabre. Death plays his fiddle in the cemetery, rousing all the skeletons from their graves and dancing with them until they have to slink back at the first light of dawn. 6. Brahms: Ballade in D minor, op. 10 no. 1, “Edward.” Based on a Scottish ballade, the story is of a mother who knows that her son has murdered his father - she just wants to hear him say it himself. 7. Shostakovich: Viola Sonata. Shostakovich composed during the height of Soviet censorship, and his music almost always has a hunted, almost panicked feel to it. He composed this viola sonata just a month before his death. 8. Shostakovich: String Quartet no. 8 in C minor, op. 110. Between the frenzy of the second movement and the insistent “knocking on the door” of the fourth, this quartet can really put you on edge. What makes this music even freakier is Shostakovich’s musical signature (D E-flat C B) throughout the work. 9. Mussorgsky: The Hut of Baba Yaga the Witch (from Pictures at an Exhibition). This one always sounds like Baba Yaga’s “Hut On Chicken’s Legs” is chasing me through the woods, but that might just be my wild imagination. 10. Scriabin: Piano Sonata no. 9, “Black Mass.” Some of the directions that Scriabin writes in the score are “mysteriously murmuring”, and “with a sweetness that becomes increasingly poisonous,” which is a pretty apt description for much of this work. It begins mysteriously, then builds in tension until it all explodes in some kind of orgiastic climax. It ends just as enigmatically as it begins.

[musictheoryaugmented]

When somebody in the early music survey explains, at length, how “major keys are happy and minor keys are sad”

[senfonikankara]

Vivaldi | Blokflüt Konçertosu RV443

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this is the nichest meme ive ever made

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Can’t risk it

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The duck of creativity. I waited so long for it.

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Things that I learned at the Schubert Geburtshaus: Franz Peter Schubert could feasibly punch me in the face and I would thank him.

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Only he wasn’t tall enough to punch you in the face. He would punch you in the kneecap.

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big band voicings (as used by sammy nestico and the count basie orchestra), from rayburn wright’s 1982 book ‘inside the score’.

(click and image to zoom)

[shostagroovich]

My new theory book is an adventure

[musiccompositiontips]

Tchaikovsky: *tried to commit suicide*

Chopin: *was depressed*

Berlioz: *was depressed*

Bruckner: *was depressed*

Rachmaninov: *was depressed*

Schumann: *went insane*

Scriabin: *went insane*

Smetana: *went insane*

Hugo wolf: *went insane and was suicidal*

me: yeah being a composer sounds fun

[musiccompositiontips]

composers: a summary

bach: I FKN HATE PARALLEL FIFTHS

vivaldi: 3 billion concertos hhaha

cpe bach: who am i

mozart: sunshine and smiles

haydn: i basically invented every single genre lol

beethoven: ANGST ANGST ANGST and triplets and going deaf

chopin: my soUL

paganini: hahhaha noobs

liszt: AHAHAHHAHA noobs

alkan: fck ur fingers lol

brahms: cLARA

schubert: im a mushroom

wagner: have a twenty year long opera lol and leitmotifs

tchaikovsky: boom boom cannons

rachmaninoff: HANDS

debussy: sevenths and modes and whole tones awww yiss

ravel: bitch please ninths elevenths quadrillionths

holst: who needs stringed instruments ha anD I HATE THE PLANETS

prokofiev: lol get out of my way conventional tonality i will modulate in one measure to f double fuckflat minor and stay there for a page

shostakovich: anGST ANGST ANGST FUCK YOU STALIN

cage:

reich: rrrrererreeepepeepeppppeeeaaaeaeaeaeeaaaatattatttt

stravinsky: da da da da da DA da da

schoenberg: (/79jjsOO##jksi&@'

satie: im funny

mahler:*singing* I'VE GOT THE WHOOOOLE WORLD, IN MY SCORES

[platitudeproblem]

Page 120 of “Conversations with Igor Stravinsky” by Robert Craft. Love those glyphs.

[doing-it-for-debussy]

a compilation of some of my favourite composer quotes:

“Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.”  - Igor Stravinsky

“I am sure my music has a taste of codfish in it.” - Edvard Grieg 

“Never look at the trombones. It only encourages them.” - Richard Strauss

“He’d be better off shovelling snow than scribbling on manuscript paper.” - Richard Strauss on Schoenberg

“I liked your opera. I think I will set it to music.” - Ludvig van Beethoven

“I have written a chorale both sober and suitable. In it I have put everything I know about boredom. I dedicate this to those who do not like me.” - Erik Satie

“ Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour.” - Gioacchino Rossini

“What a good thing this isn’t music.” - Gioacchino Rossini on Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique 

“Oh how wonderful, really wonderful opera would be if there were no singers!” - Gioacchino Rossini

“In opera there is always too much singing.” - Claude Debussy

“Bring me coffee before I turn into a goat!” - Johann Sebastian Bach

“Listening to the 5th Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.” - Aaron Copland 

“The audience expected something big, something colossal, but they were served instead with some agitated water in a saucer.” - Louis Schnieder on Debussy’s La Mer

“He gives me the impression of being a spoilt child.” - Clara Schumann on Liszt 

“What a giftless bastard!” - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky on Brahms

“Handel is only fourth rate. He is not even interesting.” - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

“Bach on the wrong notes” -  Sergei Prokofiev on Stravinsky 

And, saving the best for last…

“Lick my ass up and down” -Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 

Feel free to add more! (Also please don’t think that I agree with all of these, I am a huge fan of Symphonie Fantastique and La Mer!!)

[musiccompositiontips]

Stay sassy my friends..

[over-whelm-ing-ly-a-ver-age]

Life Hack:

Subdivide

[musiccompositiontips]

Classical Music Ask

1: favourite composer

2: favourite instrument

3: piece you last listened to

4: favourite type of piece (concerto, symphony, sonata etc)

5: favourite section of the orchestra

6: least favourite composer

7: least favourite instrument

8: instruments you play

9: instruments you want to play

10: favourite instrument

11: least favourite instrument

12: favourite piece

13: favourite symphony

14: favourite concerto

15: favourite solo work

16: favourite era of classical music

17: conducting or composing?

18: best piece you can play

19: favourite string instrument

20: favourite brass instrument

21: favourite woodwind instrument

22: favourite percussion instrument

23: favourite musical effect (pizz., con sordino, con legno etc)

24: favourite tempo speed to play

25: fastest you've had to play

26: last concert you went to

27: last piece you played

28: last composer you played

29: program music or absolute music?

30: purchasing music or illegally downloading music?

31: three interesting facts about you and classical music