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Are you afraid to compose simple?

Ivan M.

Senior Member
Let's say someone today composes a theme like Mozart piano concerto no 21 mvt 2 andante, and presents it to a community of professional musicians (composers, orchestras, academia, publishers etc). How do you think they would react to it? Or how would you react? Seems simple right!? And after all the music history people might expect some elaborated harmony? Would such composer be ridiculed today?



I'll start, I only value music by how it speaks to me, not by complexity
 
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Mozart's music is only "simple" as long as you don't look exactly or don't understand what's going on in the realm of details.
I don't think any living composer could get close to his level inside of that musical language.
(Imitating the style is easy, but getting all the musical consequences right is the huge challenge)
 
Mozart's music is only "simple" as long as you don't look exactly or don't understand what's going on in the realm of details.
I don't think any living composer could get close to his level inside of that musical language.
(Imitating the style is easy, but getting all the musical consequences right is the huge challenge)
That's Mozart in general, but how about the above example theme, there's nothing special about it if you look at the paper only. I don't want to focus on Mozart, but on simple but beautifull themes, and how the professional community might judge it?
 
That's Mozart in general, but how about the above example theme, there's nothing special about it if you look at the paper only. I don't want to focus on Mozart, but on simple but beautifull themes, and how the professional community might judge it?
You have to go further than the mere theme. (Writing "themes" isn't where composing in a traditional sense begins).
But as this movement goes on, there are plenty of interesting details.

p.s. and maybe you should go for a better recording. this is terrible.
 
You are asking the wrong question in my opinion. The right question is how did he get something this simple to work for all time.

You or I could try to write like this and it would not be accepted at all. All the power in music is being simple without being stupid. I always thought my music was either too complicated or too stupid. I've not being able to breach the level of Mozart or Beethoven who could write sometimes the most simple stuff and it sounds brilliant. It's the secret to the universal acceptance of music.

Mozart, Beethoven and Bach and Debussy had it all the time. Stravinsky had it some of the time. Many have had it at one time or another even within the same piece.

In school I had professors that use to scoff at this kind of music as trite and simplistic. They all died with no money and nobody ever having heard their work.
 
In school I had professors that use to scoff at this kind of music as trite and simplistic. They all died with no money and nobody ever having heard their work.
The older i get the more i'm glad that i had indeed teachers with a very deep understanding of the music they taught. Instead of speaking in such cases of "simplistic" they pointed out where the complexity lies.

Sometimes, the best approach to get an understanding what the difference between "simplistic" and "simple yet complex" is, is by looking at some really simplistic music and then comparing it...
 
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Let's say someone today composes a theme like Mozart piano concerto no 21 mvt 2 andante
You can stop your thought experiment right there.


All the power in music is being simple without being stupid. I always thought my music was either too complicated or too stupid. I've not being able to breach the level of Mozart or Beethoven who could write sometimes the most simple stuff and it sounds brilliant.
Some of the, if not the, best stuff I've read here ever.
 
You or I could try to write like this and it would not be accepted at all. All the power in music is being simple without being stupid. I always thought my music was either too complicated or too stupid.
But how do you know that? Maybe it's just fear?
 
Don't ask whether it's too simple or too complex, I agree with José it seems like the wrong question. Ask what the piece, the theme needs, to fullfill what it's expressing. Not what you 'can do'... that's like opening a box of woodworking tools and saying, "What can these tools do? Should I do simple stuff with them, or complex stuff?" Instead, if you have a vision for a one-piece coffee table, then you will know what tools to use. Mozart said his pieces mostly came to him in a mostly realized vision, but we don't need that to happen in order to discern what each theme is trying to say, and then give it what it needs. Mozart didn't add more ingredients at that point in that piece because it didn't need it.
 
Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan, listening to that music makes me feel like an utter impostor.

So what's so special about it (so that it's exempt from any thought of being bad in any context)?
The idea, how fluently the development flows. It's perfection. This is peak music.

Of course you can make it bad with context. It would probably not win a prize for the most aggressive electro-industrial track ever. But if your context is musicality, then this is it.
 
Or how would you react?
Probably: Dude, what strings library you used?? Tutorial now!

I would react the same way I'm reacting now: tears! This is masterful writing, food for the soul, no matter how simple it may be. I don't think it is but I digress. I never heard anything remotely close to this posted on vicontrol, I would love to meet talented composers like this Wolfgang dude.
 
Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan, listening to that music makes me feel like an utter impostor.


The idea, how fluently the development flows. It's perfection. This is peak music.

Of course you can make it bad with context. It would probably not win a prize for the most aggressive electro-industrial track ever. But if your context is musicality, then this is it.
I like it too, but not that much, it is beautiful, but also kinda boring, Mozart is overrated 😁
 
It's entirely possible that as a society we developed a cultural stereotype about Mozart and simply believe he is the greatest composer evah.

But a significant number of people also declare that Bach is the greatest composer who ever lived. The irony is that Bach was almost completely forgotten after his death and it took intensive "marketing" and "promotion" by a fan, Felix Mendelssohn (to use modern terminology), to create this reputation.

Mozart died an early and tragic death, and we know today what that does to reputation. Beethoven towers over everyone, but it was his nearly forgotten contemporary who gave us several hundred years of "Romantic style".

So, I think it's important to distinguish between celebrity, reputation and actual musical analysis.

And when it comes to musical analysis there is absolutely nothing wrong with saying Mozart's music is simple. It was written in a different time, based on a system of harmony that in its pure form sounds outdated today. Mozart's orchestration is also simple, considering the orchestra was only being finalized in structure in his day. The piano looked and sounded quite different. Even the sonata form was improved by the subsequent generation.

But simplicity is not a weakness, it just a fact. To me Mozart's music is probably the most sophisticated, beautiful, effortless and artful example from what we call the "Classical Era", its zenith and crowning achievement. That's based on my own experience but mainly on what I had been taught since childhood.

But back to the OP - it depends on who you ask. Music school teachers would laugh in your face if you wrote something like this today, and would suspect you're just ripping off Mozart. The modernists would not take you seriously as a composer and laugh at you behind your back.

(Edit: corrected wrong word)
 
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But simplicity is not a weakness, it just a fact. To me Mozart's music is probably the most sophisticated, beautiful, effortless and artful example from what we call the "Classical Era", its nadir and crowning achievement. That's based on my own experience but mainly on what I had been taught since childhood.
Did you mean nadir here? Or did you mean zenith?
 
But simplicity is not a weakness, it just a fact. To me Mozart's music is probably the most sophisticated, beautiful, effortless and artful example from what we call the "Classical Era", its nadir and crowning achievement. That's based on my own experience but mainly on what I had been taught since childhood.
Did you mean nadir here? Or did you mean zenith?
 
Let's say someone today composes a theme like Mozart piano concerto no 21 mvt 2 andante, and presents it to a community of professional musicians (composers, orchestras, academia, publishers etc). How do you think they would react to it? Or how would you react? Seems simple right!? And after all the music history people might expect some elaborated harmony? Would such composer be ridiculed today?



I'll start, I only value music by how it speaks to me, not by complexity

Great thread, there are a couple of responses that come to mind.

To me, this is one of the greatest examples of "elegant simplicity" in music ever. Look at the melodic structure and development, classic textbook. Elgar's Nimrod Variation strikes me the same way.

The composer of such a piece today might be mocked by musicians but much loved by the music public (remind you of a few people?).

Like so many great works of the masters, the modern attention span probably only stays around for the initial motif + about 60 seconds. Sadly, I'm not sure many folk these days have the capability, patience or will to follow the beautiful intricacies of musical development for another 5 - 25 minutes.
 
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