This came up back in December when one of the SEMC players asked about Down, which didn't really have dynamics in the score. "Oh, it doesn't have dynamics," I said. Because it's rock and roll music, basically. You just play it. Classically trained musicians expect to be micromanaged. Rock/jazz musicians are more comfortable with their own instincts in this regard. (OK, a lot of rock musicians are overamplified and don't really have dynamics, but you know what I mean.)
Composers of my generation, on the other hand, have had to learn this kind of thing. A lot of our lessons have been dedicated to proper use of dynamics. It has always felt disproportionately emphasized to me, partially because as a performer I feel like it's often obvious what is supposed to be loud and what isn't. But there are some larger issues at play here that, I think, are relevant beyond my personal case.
So, two influences on young American composers that could be muddling things up.
1) rock music and the age of compression.
2) training in electroacoustic music and the complexities possible here w/r/t ADSR.
In the face of #1, two dynamic levels loud/soft become standard, and the different gradations in the ppp-pp-p-mp-mf-f-ff-fff system seem unnecessary.
Whereas #2 makes the above eight notateable levels seem naively silly and insufficient to express any real dynamic nuance.
See, opposite influences. I propose, again, that this might be muddling things up. We're simultaneously used to a flatter dynamic plane (which is not necessarily a loss -- it just leads us to perceive intensity changes elsewhere) and to a landscape of infinite dynamic complexity. In view of both perspectives, quibbling over the difference between [ mp cresc. f ] and [ p cresc. f ] or just [ cresc. f ] seem ridiculous indeed.
And in both cases, the relationship of the notation to the actual sounds seems tangential at best, a case of micromanaging that is virtually guaranteed to be unsuccessful. And what about the musicians performing it, again? What is their role supposed to be? I prefer not to view them as machines and myself as a deity; they have instincts and opinions and interpretive muscles that need space to enter the process.
I also feel compelled to address the proverbial "group in Europe" who supposedly wants to play my piece, but is incapable with communicating with me for some reason, and thus requires an infallible score with precise markings such that absolutely nothing will be left to chance and they can produce for me, with no verbal exchange, a perfect recording:
• Who are these people? Why don't they have email?
• Seriously, does this group exist? I'd love a European premiere on my CV.
• If they really don't like email, can we use Facebook? Myspace? Telegraph? Smoke signals? Umm, the phone? I'll fly there? I like traveling. Why can't we communicate?
• Even if it were difficult to communicate, or for some mysterious reason ideal not to, aren't they going to have some questions about the score? Regardless of how carefully I notate it? Has there ever been a performance in which no questions emerged for which the opinion of the composer would be helpful?
• Aren't there some of those situations in which the composer, despite his/her best intentions and orchestration-manual-reading and beard-stroking and care, was wrong, and the performers' interpretive solutions better or at least more workable?
• Has this whole situation ever occurred in real life?
Finally, w/r/t the argument that someday I'm going to die and everyone will be so distraught and need to play all of my music right away and need precise documents for how to reproduce it perfectly such that my composerly luminescence can continue to live on in this bleak world:
1) That is not going to happen.
2) Even if it did, the sans-me world can get all the information it needs from the recordings I'm going to make with musicians who are not, not, hiding on another continent, refusing to communicate with me.
3) The old recordings would be better anyway. You know they would.
••••
See, maybe as composers we want to be real people in the world, real musicians who are humans, interacting with other musicians who are also humans. We don't live on Neptune. You know how everyone always complains about the problems with Facebook and people using it too much and posting boring minutiae all the time? This is the GOOD thing about living in the Facebook era: this is what the internet is for: so that group in Europe and I can find each other and send notes about musical minutiae if we want to. And just be humans together, interacting.
I have discovered that the connections I make personally and musically working in a room with other musicians, as either a composer or performer or as both, immediately transcend and dwarf any infinitesimal considerations like [mp cresc. f ] versus [ cresc. f ].
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