Thoughts on Composing...
a conversation with OSKAR MORAWETZ
One of the questions most commonly asked a composer is, "How do you get your ideas?"
A big misconception is the notion that you must have an immediate personal experience of suffering to write a
sad piece, a mood of gaiety to write happy music, or a walk by a beautiful lake to be inspired to write lyrical
music. It is of course impossible that Verdi or Wagner, writing a tragic opera over a period of two years,
lived in sustained grief all during that time.
Tchaikovsky wrote his patron, Madame von Meck, that often his best ideas came on days when he would like to do
anything but compose. He felt that if he didn't work every free moment, he would never achieve his potential in
craft and maturity. Frequently when he forced himself to work, he wrote his most inspired music. Just as a soloist
or actor might give his most exciting interpretation on a day when he feels least like performing, so a composer
must discipline himself to recreate past moods, feelings or experiences regardless of his state of mind on any
particular day. Richard Strauss was once asked when he got his best ideas, and he answered, "Between nine
and twelve, and two and six; these are my working hours." When Bach wrote a Cantata for the Church every week,
and Haydn a symphony regularly for Count Esterhazy, they couldn't afford to wait for "inspiration".
The question of originality in new music has become a real preoccupation of our age. To invent something new,
and to avoid being labelled "eclectic" seems to some musicologists the only criteria of quality.
Basically there have always been two types of composers: first those who open up new areas or directions
(Stravinsky, Wagner, Schoenberg), and secondly those who, by their inspiration and skill, brought to a culminating
point a style already in existence. The greatness of Bach and Mozart is unquestionable, but in his day the former
was completely overshadowed by his "avant-garde" sons who were more 'contemporary'." Rudolf Serkin
once said, "I think I love no composer as much as Mozart. He wrote in exactly the same style as all his
contemporaries, but he did it so much better that all the others seem like dwarfs compared to him." Brahms
was very old-fashioned. He was born twenty years later than Wagner, survived him by fourteen years, and still
his last works, written ten years after Wagner's death, are more conservative than Tannhauser, which was
premiered half a century earlier. Works that remain in today's repertoire survive solely on their merit,
irrespective of their chronological order.
Just as Shakespeare gave hardly any stage directions compared to contemporary playwrights like Arthur Miller or
G. B. Shaw, so Bach gave very little interpretive directions compared to Bartok or Britten, who left very few notes
"undirected". As there is so little rehearsal time, and as the composer can't always be present at the
preparation of a new work, editing must be very exact so that the interpretation of the performing artist is as
close as possible to the imagination of the composer. The enormous amount of time this consumes is more desirable
to a composer than hearing a work premiered and not recognizing it as his own.
Strangely enough it is often the composer's own fault if the metronome indications are wrong. The Hungarian Quartet
studied very thoroughly all Bartok's Quartets and wrote him listing all the places where they felt sure he must
have misjudged the tempo. In his answer Bartok agreed with most of their objections. How could a composer of such
gift and experience make mistakes which were obvious to the performers? One reason is that most composers work out
the metronome markings at the piano, and the sustained sound of a string quartet or an orchestra often needs a
slower tempo than the quickly-dying sound of a piano. Particularly unfortunate is an experience which Shostakovich
related to Oistrakh. After many works had been published and performed all over the world, he discovered that the
reason why so many of his works were played too fast was that his metronome had not been checked for many years
against a clock and was inaccurate!
It amazes people to think that Beethoven wrote most of his later works when he was completely deaf. How can a
composer write music which he cannot hear? But many composers not suffering Beethoven's tragic fate write their
music without in a sense hearing it. How is this possible? Well a composer can hear it in his mind in the same way
that a layman can imagine in his mind a well-known folksong without humming it.
But just as the layman gets more pleasure, satisfaction and excitement by singing the song aloud, so some
composers find that their inspiration flows more freely and vividly when they play their ideas on the piano,
although this is not true for all. Bach forbade his pupils to use the piano when they composed and called
composers who found the piano necessary "Fingerknechte" (slaves of the fingers). Hindemith wrote many
of his compositions in trains and airplanes, while others such as Stravinski, Copland or Debussy always composed
with the piano. It seems perhaps that composers who are particularly interested in new colours and rhythms feel
that the aural plus physical contact with the piano give their ideas more vitality and originality.
Another misconception, which exists even among professional musicians, is the idea that a gifted composer
should be able to write his masterpieces after completing his training in harmony and counterpoint. Many gifted
students give up composition because they find that after three years of instruction in theory, they still are
unable to write a piece of any originality, though nobody would expect a pianist to play with a major orchestra
after studying his instrument for such a short time. Of course there are soloists like Menuhin, or composers like
Mozart, who were prodigies even before their teens, but these are exceptions. When Wagner was eighteen years old,
he composed a number of minuets in Haydn's style. At the same age Berg wrote in the style of Weber, and
Schoenberg wrote songs in the musical language of Schubert. Some of the greatest composers developed extremely
slowly before they achieved the beginning of the mature style by which they are known to our audiences.
Verdi wrote the first of his masterpieces, Rigoletto, when he was thirty-nine. Had he died at the age of
thirty-five, when Mozart did, it is doubtful if his name would appear in any music dictionary. His two
greatest operas, Othello and Falstaff, were composed between his seventieth and eightieth year.
Perhaps Verdi's example can illustrate better than any other the enormous amount
of study, hard work and experience a composer needs before he reaches the peak of his development.
