About My Musical Language (an imaginary Q & A)
First, I should say that this interview – unlike all others I’ve published over the years – is not quite “real.” It is an imaginary dialogue that I concocted in an attempt to explain my compositional style and process. I created it in the hopes that it might help musicians who have chosen to perform my music to understand my approach to composition. CE
Q: So, Colin Eatock, I understand you compose music. Why do you do this? Is it because you are some kind of super-talented musical genius?
A: I compose because I believe that making music – really creating it, from scratch – is the most amazing and wonderful thing a human being could possibly do. As for super-talented geniuses, I have met a few – and I can assure you that I’m not one of them! I would say that my raw musical talents are about average. And if I've managed to write any music that’s worthy of performing and listening to, I guess that proves that you don’t have to be a genius to write good music. But you do have to be very determined, and you must hold yourself to very high standards.
Q: And what kind of music do you write?
A: That’s a challenging question, and a lot of composers tie themselves in knots trying to answer it. When I’m asked, I like to say, “I write classical music.” (But first, I had to practise in front of a mirror!)
Q: Who would you say are your main influences?
A: I’m composing a lot of choral music these days – and where choral music is concerned, I think I have been much influenced by the “Three Ps”: Palestrina, Poulenc and Pärt. I’m also a big fan of the choral music of Bruckner and Rachmaninoff. In my instrumental music, I sometimes feel the influence of Shostakovich, Debussy and Britten, among others.
Q: How do you think about music, and approach composing?
A: I’ve heard that there’s a dictionary that defines music as “the art of combining tones.” And I’ve heard musicians criticize this definition as too narrow. “Silly dictionary,” they say, “there’s more to music than just tones! There’s also rhythm, dynamics, texture, timbre, expression and other things, as well. Clearly, whoever wrote that definition was no musician!” But applied to my music, “the art of combining tones” fits pretty well. Yes, of course there are many other aspects to music – and to my music – but my primary interest as a composer lies in the interaction of pitches.
Q: Let's take a closer look at your scores. I see a lot of sharps and flats, but no key-signature. So is your music atonal – or what?
A: No, my music is not atonal. But neither is it tonal in a traditional sense. Often, my music is a chromatically fluid continuum of tonalities: it’s more about the journey than the destination (although my pieces often have a way of ending up where they started). Sometimes, my music may seem to settle into a key-centre for a few bars, but it’s not long before it wanders off in a different direction. I don’t really think about keys when I’m composing – and performers needn’t worry about them, either. Often, worrying about key-centres in my music would be like worrying about which way is “up” if you’re floating in outer space.
That said, I should also say that I do occasionally go to the opposite extreme, and write a piece that is fiercely loyal to its tonal centre. But in my catalogue, such pieces are the exception.
Q: Couldn’t you add key-signatures to your music, after you’ve written the piece?
A: I could – and occasionally I do. But with most of my pieces, a key-signature would only get in the way. And by not using key-signatures I invite the performer into my creative thought-process. There are 12 pitches in an octave, and I like them all! Of course, the same notational rules apply to my music as apply to “normal” music: sharps and flats persist through the measure, but are cancelled out by the next bar line.
Q: And what about the strange way you sometimes spell notes?
A: Different kinds of musicians feel differently about this issue. Keyboard players don’t care much if they’re looking at an E-flat or a D-sharp on the page. It’s all the same to them. Wind and string players may care a little more – and singers care very much. So it’s mostly vocalists who find some of my spelling decisions perplexing. But here’s the problem: often, when I try to make the notation of my horizontal lines look as smooth and clear as possible, vertically the score is a mess, full of weirdly-spelled chords. And when I concentrate on making my music look right vertically, I get horizontal gibberish, bursting with awkward intervals. Often, the best I can do is a compromise between vertical and horizontal logic. There’s simply no way to make my music look like Mozart on the page.
Q: How would you describe your harmonic language?
A: I’m glad you asked! In part, it’s the product of some deliberate stylistic restrictions I’ve imposed on myself. First of all, in keeping with the tenets of 20th-century modernism, in which I was schooled, I avoid simple major or minor triads like the plague. However, in a clear and deliberate break with modernism, I also enforce a strict a ban on vertical semitones in my music. You will never find a D and an E-flat sounding simultaneously, or a G-sharp sounding against an A, for example – not even “in passing” (whatever that term even means). Vertical sonority is very tightly controlled in my music.
Q: So what kind of chords do you use?
A: The basic “building blocks” of my music are four-note chords. I like dominant seventh and dominant ninth chords, half-diminished seventh chords, and quartal and pentatonic chords. Occasionally I’ll write a fully diminished seventh chord, or a chord derived from a whole-tone scale.
Would a little set-theory help here? My four-note chords are: 0246, 0247, 0248, 0249, 0257, 0258, 0259, 0268, 0269, 0369.
To put it another way, you’d have a hard time finding a chord in my music that Wagner never wrote. And for this reason, my music is very much connected to the sound-world of the second half of the 19th century.
Q: And what about chord progressions? How do you get from one chord to the next?
A: That’s where it gets kind of tricky. Usually, I’ll use some kind of pivoting technique, making use of common pitches. I'm especially fond of tritone and minor-third substitutions. (Maybe I should say something about my debt to Ernő Lendvai's "axis theory" – but if I try to get too technical here, I'll only get myself in trouble.) In any event, it’s quite rare for me to make a leap from one chord to another chord that contains no pitches in common. The result is a kind of chromatic “slip-sliding” – and sometimes even my suspensions have suspensions!
Q: What about rhythm and meter in your music?
A: Usually, I strive for the same kind of fluidity in rhythm and meter as I do in my harmonic style. So I usually compose without time signatures and bar-lines, marking them in later.
Q: And what about melody?
A: I generally avoid any kind of melodic writing that sounds straight-up diatonic: just as my harmonies are chromatic, so too are most of my melodies. For my melodic material, I’m a big fan of the octatonic scale. Also I’ve been known to use pentatonic (or altered pentatonic) scales, or minor-scale modes, among other sources. Another one of my melodic tricks is to spread a melody across several voices, or instruments – so that the melodic line passes from one performer to another.
Q: So why make yourself (and your performers) jump through all these restrictive stylistic hoops?
A: I can best answer that question by talking about the difference between originality and distinctiveness. In the dark days of the 20th century, many composers were obsessed with the desire to be original. And the results could be hideous – hideous in a highly original way, perhaps, but hideous nonetheless.
Personally, I do not aspire to be “original” in my music, but I do wish to have a strong, audibly distinctive and consistent personal style. While I can make no claim to having invented a unique musical language, I have striven to develop an idiosyncratic “musical dialect.”
In this regard, I think Francis Poulenc is an excellent role-model: there’s nothing especially original about his music, but his style is so distinctive that it’s impossible to hear a few bars of it without knowing that it’s by Poulenc. I would like the same thing to hold true of my music: after just a few bars, it’s clearly and recognizably mine. And to achieve this, I’ve established some pretty strong stylistic parameters.
I’m well aware that there are some composers nowadays who take a very different approach, embracing eclecticism – even to the point of radically mixing styles within the same piece. But I don’t want to be one of them.
Q: So I guess that's about all you have to say about music – is it?
A: Not at all! I've made a list of things I've come to believe over the years. And– if I may beg your indulgence – here it is, in no particular order:
© Colin Eatock 2022
Q: So, Colin Eatock, I understand you compose music. Why do you do this? Is it because you are some kind of super-talented musical genius?
A: I compose because I believe that making music – really creating it, from scratch – is the most amazing and wonderful thing a human being could possibly do. As for super-talented geniuses, I have met a few – and I can assure you that I’m not one of them! I would say that my raw musical talents are about average. And if I've managed to write any music that’s worthy of performing and listening to, I guess that proves that you don’t have to be a genius to write good music. But you do have to be very determined, and you must hold yourself to very high standards.
Q: And what kind of music do you write?
A: That’s a challenging question, and a lot of composers tie themselves in knots trying to answer it. When I’m asked, I like to say, “I write classical music.” (But first, I had to practise in front of a mirror!)
Q: Who would you say are your main influences?
A: I’m composing a lot of choral music these days – and where choral music is concerned, I think I have been much influenced by the “Three Ps”: Palestrina, Poulenc and Pärt. I’m also a big fan of the choral music of Bruckner and Rachmaninoff. In my instrumental music, I sometimes feel the influence of Shostakovich, Debussy and Britten, among others.
Q: How do you think about music, and approach composing?
A: I’ve heard that there’s a dictionary that defines music as “the art of combining tones.” And I’ve heard musicians criticize this definition as too narrow. “Silly dictionary,” they say, “there’s more to music than just tones! There’s also rhythm, dynamics, texture, timbre, expression and other things, as well. Clearly, whoever wrote that definition was no musician!” But applied to my music, “the art of combining tones” fits pretty well. Yes, of course there are many other aspects to music – and to my music – but my primary interest as a composer lies in the interaction of pitches.
Q: Let's take a closer look at your scores. I see a lot of sharps and flats, but no key-signature. So is your music atonal – or what?
A: No, my music is not atonal. But neither is it tonal in a traditional sense. Often, my music is a chromatically fluid continuum of tonalities: it’s more about the journey than the destination (although my pieces often have a way of ending up where they started). Sometimes, my music may seem to settle into a key-centre for a few bars, but it’s not long before it wanders off in a different direction. I don’t really think about keys when I’m composing – and performers needn’t worry about them, either. Often, worrying about key-centres in my music would be like worrying about which way is “up” if you’re floating in outer space.
That said, I should also say that I do occasionally go to the opposite extreme, and write a piece that is fiercely loyal to its tonal centre. But in my catalogue, such pieces are the exception.
Q: Couldn’t you add key-signatures to your music, after you’ve written the piece?
A: I could – and occasionally I do. But with most of my pieces, a key-signature would only get in the way. And by not using key-signatures I invite the performer into my creative thought-process. There are 12 pitches in an octave, and I like them all! Of course, the same notational rules apply to my music as apply to “normal” music: sharps and flats persist through the measure, but are cancelled out by the next bar line.
Q: And what about the strange way you sometimes spell notes?
A: Different kinds of musicians feel differently about this issue. Keyboard players don’t care much if they’re looking at an E-flat or a D-sharp on the page. It’s all the same to them. Wind and string players may care a little more – and singers care very much. So it’s mostly vocalists who find some of my spelling decisions perplexing. But here’s the problem: often, when I try to make the notation of my horizontal lines look as smooth and clear as possible, vertically the score is a mess, full of weirdly-spelled chords. And when I concentrate on making my music look right vertically, I get horizontal gibberish, bursting with awkward intervals. Often, the best I can do is a compromise between vertical and horizontal logic. There’s simply no way to make my music look like Mozart on the page.
Q: How would you describe your harmonic language?
A: I’m glad you asked! In part, it’s the product of some deliberate stylistic restrictions I’ve imposed on myself. First of all, in keeping with the tenets of 20th-century modernism, in which I was schooled, I avoid simple major or minor triads like the plague. However, in a clear and deliberate break with modernism, I also enforce a strict a ban on vertical semitones in my music. You will never find a D and an E-flat sounding simultaneously, or a G-sharp sounding against an A, for example – not even “in passing” (whatever that term even means). Vertical sonority is very tightly controlled in my music.
Q: So what kind of chords do you use?
A: The basic “building blocks” of my music are four-note chords. I like dominant seventh and dominant ninth chords, half-diminished seventh chords, and quartal and pentatonic chords. Occasionally I’ll write a fully diminished seventh chord, or a chord derived from a whole-tone scale.
Would a little set-theory help here? My four-note chords are: 0246, 0247, 0248, 0249, 0257, 0258, 0259, 0268, 0269, 0369.
To put it another way, you’d have a hard time finding a chord in my music that Wagner never wrote. And for this reason, my music is very much connected to the sound-world of the second half of the 19th century.
Q: And what about chord progressions? How do you get from one chord to the next?
A: That’s where it gets kind of tricky. Usually, I’ll use some kind of pivoting technique, making use of common pitches. I'm especially fond of tritone and minor-third substitutions. (Maybe I should say something about my debt to Ernő Lendvai's "axis theory" – but if I try to get too technical here, I'll only get myself in trouble.) In any event, it’s quite rare for me to make a leap from one chord to another chord that contains no pitches in common. The result is a kind of chromatic “slip-sliding” – and sometimes even my suspensions have suspensions!
Q: What about rhythm and meter in your music?
A: Usually, I strive for the same kind of fluidity in rhythm and meter as I do in my harmonic style. So I usually compose without time signatures and bar-lines, marking them in later.
Q: And what about melody?
A: I generally avoid any kind of melodic writing that sounds straight-up diatonic: just as my harmonies are chromatic, so too are most of my melodies. For my melodic material, I’m a big fan of the octatonic scale. Also I’ve been known to use pentatonic (or altered pentatonic) scales, or minor-scale modes, among other sources. Another one of my melodic tricks is to spread a melody across several voices, or instruments – so that the melodic line passes from one performer to another.
Q: So why make yourself (and your performers) jump through all these restrictive stylistic hoops?
A: I can best answer that question by talking about the difference between originality and distinctiveness. In the dark days of the 20th century, many composers were obsessed with the desire to be original. And the results could be hideous – hideous in a highly original way, perhaps, but hideous nonetheless.
Personally, I do not aspire to be “original” in my music, but I do wish to have a strong, audibly distinctive and consistent personal style. While I can make no claim to having invented a unique musical language, I have striven to develop an idiosyncratic “musical dialect.”
In this regard, I think Francis Poulenc is an excellent role-model: there’s nothing especially original about his music, but his style is so distinctive that it’s impossible to hear a few bars of it without knowing that it’s by Poulenc. I would like the same thing to hold true of my music: after just a few bars, it’s clearly and recognizably mine. And to achieve this, I’ve established some pretty strong stylistic parameters.
I’m well aware that there are some composers nowadays who take a very different approach, embracing eclecticism – even to the point of radically mixing styles within the same piece. But I don’t want to be one of them.
Q: So I guess that's about all you have to say about music – is it?
A: Not at all! I've made a list of things I've come to believe over the years. And– if I may beg your indulgence – here it is, in no particular order:
- The high modernist classical music of the second half of the 20th century will never be embraced by more than a tiny number of people. (Message to high modernists of the 21st century: Even King Canute knew when his feet were wet!)
- I don’t much care whether tonality is an acquired cultural imperative or an innate psychological imperative. But either way, it is an imperative.
- Most composers who claim to have no interest in achieving popularity are lying to themselves. (They’d love it!) And the few who can honestly say this are disturbed, pathetic, misanthropes.
- I reject “composers’ solidarity,” in both theory and practice. It’s okay for a composer to not like the music of other contemporary composers, and to say so.
- Neatly copied music sounds better.
- The best way for a composer to interest a performer in a piece is with an excellent recording of an excellent performance of the piece. Most performers either can’t or won’t study a score.
- There are some aspects of popular music that classical-music composers are right to reject: its lowest-common-denominator musical vocabulary; its three-minute attention-span; its ephemeral un-durability; its shameless commercialization. But, having said all that, I think it’s unhealthy for classical composers to entirely shun pop music and culture.
- Natural talent does not preclude the necessity of hard work. And hard work does not preclude the necessity of natural talent.
- In the world of classical music, professionalism is often fetishized. Yet Schubert never really succeeded as a professional composer – and neither Borodin nor Ives even tried to become professionals. So let’s not confuse professionalism with artistic quality.
- The task of organizing rehearsals for musicians becomes exponentially more difficult as the number of musicians increases arithmetically. Organizing a rehearsal for two musicians is twice as hard as organizing a rehearsal for one. But organizing a rehearsal for three musicians is four times as hard. For four musicians it’s eight times as hard; for five musicians it’s sixteen times as hard; etc.
- My primary motivation for composing is the desire to realize musical ideas that occur to me and I believe are worth pursuing. I’m very motivated when I think of a good idea for a piece of music – but, unfortunately, not very motivated at all when I'm offered an idea by someone else, however worthy it might be. This is one of the reasons why I don't like to accept commissions: other people's ideas don't generally inspire me.
- I have a pretty high opinion of my opinions about music. Cultivating my opinions is something I have worked to achieve: I was a music critic for over 20 years. I make no apologies for having well-formed views on music; on the contrary, I’m proud of it. I think all composers (and other artists, as well) should give plenty of thought to what opinions they hold, and why they hold them.
- Masterpieces don't have “best parts”: they are consistently and unfailingly excellent from the first note to the last. (That is what makes them masterpieces.)
- I look for newness and goodness in contemporary music. But I also look for “legs.” To be entirely pleased and impressed, I have to feel that a new piece might enjoy some measure of success in the world, and actually go somewhere. It depresses me to hear a fine new piece that seems doomed by the unlikelihood that anyone will ever perform it again.
- There’s a story about King Louis XIV (that may or may not be true). After seeing some kind of performance at his royal theatre, a courtier asked him if he enjoyed it. The king frowned and said, “We were not astonished!” I think this is a useful little story about the purpose of art, and about maintaining high artistic standards. If it’s not astonishing, it’s not really good enough. It’s good to have high standards, and to stay in touch with them.
- I’m attracted to the concept of “Gebrauchsmusik” – yet I use the term in a very different sense than Paul Hindemith did. He used the term to mean works composed for a specific performer and/or occasion. My interpretation of the term is the polar opposite: music that lends itself to performance by many different performers on many occasions. It’s not very often that I will write a piece with the expectation it will be performed only once, or that is only performable by certain specific musicians.
- I believe it was Alberto Ginastera who said that if a composer has ho distinctive voice, he can’t bring distinctiveness to his music; and if he does have a distinctive voice, he will not be able to keep it out. (Or words to that effect.) He was probably right.
- In music (and perhaps in other things, as well) ideas that may seem breathtakingly beautiful, wonderful and amazing in their simplicity often turn out to be more complex than they first appear.
- The worst time for a composer to approach a performer about performing on of the composer’s works is at the performer’s post-concert reception. It might seem like a good time: the mood is festive, with congratulations and goodwill in the air. But if a composer takes advantage of the moment to say, “I’ve got a piece that you might like to play – would you like to take a look at it?”, the performer may feel trapped and manipulated. How can he or she say no, under these social circumstances? So the the performer will say yes – but when the composer sends the piece, the performer may exact a kind of passive-aggressive revenge, by burying it at the bottom of a pile of scores that will probably never be looked at.
- It is my considered opinion that most classical performers are better described as artisans, rather than artists. (I’m aware that this view may offend some people.)
- In the movie Topsy Turvy, Gilbert says to Sullivan: "I have had what I deem to be a good idea – and such ideas are not three-a-penny.” This has been my experience, also: good ideas are not abundantly plentiful.
© Colin Eatock 2022
