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This chapter examines the musical creativities of three modern composers who explore the many ways of musical composition for opera houses, concert halls, music theatres, and popular music venues. It briefly discusses composition as an object, and takes a look at identifiable composed musics. It then describes the practices of three modern post-classical composers and illustrates their creativities by discussing the nature of their compositional work, their work in performance, and through performances of their compositions. The chapter also shows how musical creativity becomes a part of the composer's habitus.

Most studies of musical composition are accounts of individual composers or analyses of scores divorced from the writing process. We lack information on the prototypical ways that pieces take shape and the core ideas and impulses that catalyse the process. This chapter draws on in-depth interviews with twenty-four ‘creative’ New Music composers to examine the ways that these composers write; findings are then related to broader theories of the creative process. The creative process in this group of composers can be characterized in part by a single Stage Theory (i.e., distinct stages through which all of these creators pass). But extending beyond traditional stage theories, two basic prototypical compositional strategies are also identified: Within-Domain and Beyond-Domain. Within-Domain processes are inspired predominantly by musical materials themselves. Beyond-Domain processes are influenced mostly by conceptual frameworks such as metaphors and associations from outside of the discipline of music. A small subset of processes called Hybrids more evenly reflect both Within-Domain and Beyond-Domain processes.

Between the early nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, a cultivated relationship with the music of a favoured period in the distant national past was a pervasive aspect of high, and sometimes lower, musical culture in England. This chapter first sketches a general picture of that relationship before presenting some particular case studies. It addresses the following questions: to what extent does Tudorism in music refer to the revival of music itself, to what extent to its stylistic emulation in nineteenth- and twentieth-century English compositions? Was it a matter of appealing to the Tudors to set a political agenda for music? Tudorism in English music was many things but also one very definite thing — a conscious modelling of style or atmosphere in musical composition on that of a perceived golden age of national culture. It was in some respects part of the early music movement that Harry Haskell identified as beginning in 1829 with Mendelssohn's revival of J. S. Bach's St Matthew Passion, yet not the same thing insofar as that movement was about reviving discarded old music and Tudorism was about creating new music in an earlier image.

This chapter examines recent developments in arranging and composition, with an emphasis on innovative techniques and formal structures. The relationship of the composers to their works differs fundamentally in the three pieces analyzed here. Maria Schneider writes intensely personal music requiring that her players understand the motivation for her work. Carla Bley, though she writes with a core group of players in mind, composes self-contained works meant to require little or no explanation. The third composition, by Jim McNeely, was commissioned by the VJO and is a jazz concerto, a vehicle for a specific performer.

This chapter presents the text of the article titled Music by Slide Rule, which was published in the September 24, 1944, issue ofNewsweek. The article questions George Gershwin's fitness as a composer. It claims that Gershwin used Schillinger System of Musical Composition and that by doing he was able to continue to compose music, but music of a lesser quality.

This chapter presents the text of Ira Gershwin's reply to criticism on his brother George's fitness as a composer and his use of the Schillinger method of composition, which was published in 1944. Ira aimed to set to rest the claims that George was somehow lacking in inspiration following his early success. He explains that George's studies with Joseph Schillinger were not an attempt to restart a compositional energy that had run dry.

This chapter describes the development of electronic music in America. The lack of institutional support after the Second World War resulted in no major system of lasting significance, until the mid-1950s. Many so-called studios were merely of a collection of tape recorders and interconnecting wires assembled in a back room or, at best, commercial recording systems leased for experimentation. Despite this general lack of resources, however, several composers managed to investigate the creative possibilities of manipulating sounds recorded on tape. Two notable events were Radio Corporation of America's development of a fully self-contained sound synthesizer and the establishment of the Columbia–Princeton Electronic Music Center at Columbia University.

This chapter presents the text of Deems Taylor's narrative guide in December 1928 for George Gershwin's orchestral music An American in Paris. This guide discussed Gershwin's experience during his visit to Paris, France. It also described how Gershwin completed the composition of his walking themes and the song An American in Paris.

The arts revival following World War II increased institutional support for the development of electronic music. In Europe two broadcasting networks, Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (RTF) in Paris, and Norwestdeutscher Rundfunk (NWDR) in Cologne, took up the initiative. Movements toward new paths in musical composition during the second half of the century tended, at least initially, to polarize around select groups of activists with a strongly defended identity, and these studios were no exception. This chapter focuses on the Paris group, which became dedicated to the advancement of musique concrète, and its pioneer Pierre Schaeffer.

This chapter focuses on the development elektronische Musik which, unlike musique concrète, did not result from the efforts of a single individual, but from a collaborative venture between several interested parties, drawn from both musical and technical backgrounds. Among them are Dr. Werner Meyer-Eppler, director of the Department of Phonetics at Bonn University; Robert Beyer of Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk; and composer Herbert Eimert. In 1950 the three men entered into an informal association to promote the development of elektronische Musik.

This chapter focuses on the more significant electronic works produced in the 1960s and 1970s. In Milan, Luciano Berio lost interest in the studio and moved away to work at Columbia/Princeton and then briefly at the RTF studio in Paris. With his departure, attention focused on the work of his contemporary, Luigi Nono. At the RTF studio in Paris, creative work polarized around the principal members of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales, in particular François Bayle, Luc Ferrari, Ivo Malec, and Iannis Xenakis. In Cologne, Karlheinz Stockhausen completed another major tape work Hymnen (1967). In the previous year, however, during a visit to Japan, he had completed another work in the same genre, Telemusik, at the studio of NHK Radio, Tokyo.

This chapter examines the canons and counterpoints in the musical career of Johann Sebastian Bach. It suggests that Bach took the unusual step of completing a second set of twenty-four keyboard preludes and fugues in all the major and minor keys in 1742. It speculates that Bach's reason for compiling this second book might have been to give definitive form to the music he had composed many years earlier. It explains that this concern became very important to Bach during the 1730s.

This chapter examines the musical heritage of Johann Sebastian Bach. It mentions a commentary by a critic who recognized in Bach's music the perfection and culmination of all that his predecessors had been striving towards. Bach's craftsmanship was universally acknowledged and the pedagogical value of his chorale harmonizations and keyboard fugues were recognized. His compositions are still being listened to and played in churches. But despite this, Bach had very minimal influence on other composers.

This chapter examines the compositional side of the music of dazzlement of Olivier Messiaen's religious music. It analyzes five passages from La Transfiguration and suggests though that there are great mutual differences between them there are also a number of tendencies that they have in common. At the point of spectacle of breakthrough and dazzlement, Messiaen appears to be doing a great deal more than evoking synthetic effects in his music because there are aspects of narrativity and mise-en-scene in play that indicate a step beyond musical content in the direction of form.

This chapter examines decline in the compositional productivity of Johann Sebastian Bach in Leipzig after 1729 and his decision to engage in musical parodies. After 1729, only one of Bach's extant cantatas can be considered wholly original. These are a lot of speculations about why Bach stopped writing cantatas and Passions for Leipzig. This chapter suggests that it may be because of Bach's completion of his five-year plan for well-regulated church music or his interest in bringing his music to some kind of final form.

This chapter looks at the musical activities and compositions of Kay Swift during the 1970s. It explains that during this period Swift focused on composing in classical style and she also wrote children's songs, including Shoana, which was a tribute to her great granddaughter. Some of her most notable works during this decade include Man, Have Pity Man, The Bee Song, and Yes, I Shall.

This chapter examines the church music composed by Johann Sebastian Bach for the Leipzig liturgy. More than half of the volume in the Bachgessellschaft edition of Bach's work are devoted and his most incomparable repertory written during the first five or six years of this tenure at Leipzig. This chapter describes the Leipzig composition of Bach including his cantatas, motets, and magnificats.