Charles Villiers Stanford on how to be original, the power of instrumental music, and how to develop a great melody.
A brief overview of Charles Villiers Stanford before delving into his own words:
| Who (Identity) | Charles Villiers Stanford, an Irish composer, conductor, and music teacher, recognized for his significant contributions to classical music, particularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. |
| What (Contributions) | Stanford composed a wide range of musical works, including symphonies, operas, choral music, chamber music, and songs. He was a central figure in the British musical renaissance and played a pivotal role in shaping the development of British music. |
| When (Period of Influence) | Stanford’s influence was prominent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with his compositions and teachings leaving a lasting impact on British and European music. |
| Where (Geographic Focus) | Born in Dublin, Ireland, Stanford’s musical career primarily took place in the United Kingdom, particularly in London and Cambridge, where he held teaching positions. |
| Why (Artistic Philosophy) | Stanford’s artistic philosophy centered on combining elements of Irish and English music with classical European forms. He aimed to create a distinct British musical identity while honoring the traditions of classical composition. |
| How (Technique and Style) | Known for his melodic skill, rich harmonies, and mastery of classical forms, Stanford’s musical style is characterized by its lyrical and expressive qualities. He often incorporated folk melodies and Celtic influences into his compositions, contributing to the emergence of British nationalistic music. |
This post features excerpts from Stanford’s book: Musical Composition: A Short Treatise For Students.
Learn The Principles
The house cannot stand if it is built upon insecure foundations, and its security depends upon a knowledge of technique which involves the hardest and at times the driest drudgery. It is often disheartening, often apparently superfluous, but the enthusiasm which is not strong enough to face the irksome training and lasting enough to see it through to a finish had better be allowed to die out. In this respect the history of all arts is the same.
In painting and sculpture, it is the mastery of drawing, perspective and anatomy: in architecture, of construction: in literature and poetry, of grammar: in music, of counterpoint, harmony and form. The lack of technical knowledge in an architect may lead to loss of human life.
In the other arts it as certainly means shortness of existence to the creations of the half-equipped artist. Technique is of no use without invention, invention is of no use without technique. One is the servant, the other the master; but the mastery is gained by having complete control of the servant.
Technique
It is of the highest importance that the training of technique should be as strict as that the supervision of composition should be elastic. The application of technical criticism to inventive work is a most dangerous expedient.
If the technical equipment of the composer is complete, it is unnecessary; if it is incomplete, technical deficiencies in his composition should be criticised as such and should be kept wholly distinct from questions of taste.
A composer who has full knowledge of his technique has got to a point where he can utilise his knowledge to make experiments. It is only the composer who knows the rules of the game, and the why and wherefore of those rules, who can understand when and how to break them.
The intangible nature of musical sounds makes it more difficult for a student to appreciate the importance of strict training. A sculptor who attempted to model a figure without a complete grasp of human anatomy would be found out at once by the first medical student who saw his work.
The Structure & Design of Music
Your picture must work to a centre, and you must not get outside the attraction of the centre. You must decide on the size of your canvas, and so design your subjects as to bring them within its limits, without giving the impression of its being too large or too small for them.
The proportionate treatment of the subjects must conform at once to the size of the picture and to themselves, and there must be a central point to which the manner of the design irresistibly directs the eye. As in painting, so in music.
No matter how free the design, the proportions must be preserved if the work is to make any sensible appeal to human intelligence. A new form in music may require study and frequent hearing to understand it, but if it is logical and founded on a thorough knowledge and control of means, time will endorse it.
In the treatment of form, as in the control of invention, the only path to originality is through sincerity of expression on the lines of natural beauty. The moment originality is forced, extravagance, exaggeration and bizarrerie become inevitable.
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How To Learn To Write Music
The first step in musical composition is the ability to write one note after another, and to arrange the succession of notes in such a way as to produce an intelligible and agreeable sound. The result of this process is what is known as melody.
The first training for a student should be in the direction of developing his power of writing these successions of notes with ease and fluency; the second of combining them with other successions of notes which will result both in giving richness to the original and in providing a second subsidiary melody. The initial training should be, therefore, horizontal and not perpendicular.
Mere combinations of notes, in themselves sounding well, but without logical connection with their successors, are useless as music. The simultaneous presentation of two melodies which fit each other is at once a musical invention; and when a third and a fourth melody is added to the combinations, the result is what is called harmony.
To speak of studying harmony and counterpoint (melody or melodies in conjunction with another) is, therefore, to put the cart before the horse. It is counterpoint which develops harmony, and there is no such boundary-wall between the two studies as most students imagine.
Harmony which results from the well-written combination of melodies will always be interesting both as a whole and in its separate parts; but an exercise in harmony written before the student has practised melodic writing, will (unless he has exceptional melodic intuition) be dry even if it is technically correct. If a student begins by thinking of chords, no matter how agreeable they may be to the ear, his first attempts to write a composition will infallibly be in blocks of chords; the theme, even if it is lucky enough to run smoothly of itself, will be hampered by the inability of its companions to do the same.
Use Roots Sparingly In Bass
Cultivate ease in dealing with inversions and use roots sparingly in the bass. The perpetual insistence of root basses is one of the greatest pitfalls of the beginner; it hampers his treatment of the part, which is second only in importance to the melody, and impedes the power of free modulation, to which the study of harmony is the entrance gate.
Originality
The truest originality is, and has always been, a gradual growth and not a sudden phenomenon. Early Bach is scarcely distinguishable from Buxtehude, early Mozart from Haydn, early Beethoven from Mozart. Wagner is permeated with Weber, Brahms with Beethoven and Schubert. Their originality manifested itself as their brains developed the power of expressing themselves in a way which was personal and individual. No one dreams of calling Beethoven a plagiarist because the slow movement of his quintet for wind and piano begins like Mozart’s “Batti, batti.”
Dvordk frequently used themes which have been often heard before, but every one of them, as he handled them, were labelled with his name. Originality has far more to do with the treatment of melodies than with the invention of them. All poets and prose writers use the same vocabulary to express themselves, but it is their method of collocating words, their literary style, which shows their greater or less individuality. All painters use the same colours, but their mixing of them and their treatment and grouping of tone-values gives them their cachet.
A beginner must not think about originality. If he has it in his nature, it will come out as surely as the world goes round the sun. It must not be forced, or it will be insincere. Moreover, the quality of originality is so subtle and often so gradual in its process of evolution that a future generation will be in a better position to judge of its existence than a contemporary one. Every man is different from his fellows in feature, in physique and in temperament. Ergo, every one is to some extent original. It is only a question of degree.
Express yourself naturally, let your imagination run, do not let yourself be worried by reminiscence hunters, say what you want to say and what you feel you must say to the best of your ability, and (except in your workmanship and technical study) with the least possible effort. You cannot conceal a commonplace idea by a contortion of forced originality.
If you are going to give a new message to the world, you will do so without being conscious of it yourself. If you set out to do it consciously, you will fail because you will be trying to pose; and the man who poses is insincere. The two most vital qualities for an artist are sincerity and nobility. Without them he may gain notoriety, but will forfeit respect. With them he will take his place, be it in the lower or the higher circles of the musician’s paradise, with those who have given their best for the advancement of their art.
Simple Beginnings & Gradual Development
Music itself has grown from the simplest beginnings through their gradual development; if the student begins his career by trying to write music in the style of the later Beethoven, he will be as great a monstrosity as a pianist who attempted to play Liszt before he knew his five-finger exercises.
As the executive artist has to develop his muscles slowly and gradually without straining them, so the creative artist has to develop his brain. Any impatient interference with natural process and progress will inevitably result in disaster.
Robert Schumann in his anxiety to make himself too speedily a first-rate pianist irretrievably damaged his third finger; a young composer in a hurry can do precisely similar harm to the machine which makes his music for him, his brain.
Melody
First attempts ought to be in the direction of melodic writing for an instrument, and preferably for the violin, which can play them in the pure scale. Write a melody in intelligible sentences, which is logical and clear in tonality, and to that melody write a good bass.
Do not trouble about the intervening parts, they will come of themselves, and to any one who knows his technique, with the minimum of trouble. The musical value of this small work will depend upon the two elements which are the product of invention: the beauty of the melody and the suggestiveness of its foundation, the bass.
When a song was brought to Brahms for criticism, he invariably covered up the right hand part of the piano accompaniment before he looked at it, and primarily judged it by its melody and its bass. The rest, he said, were “trimmings”.
As to the best lines to take in developing a melody, no better advice can be given than Wagner, by the mouth of Hans Sachs, gives to Walther Stolzing in the Meistersinger. Sachs’ advice may then be summed up as follows:
– Know your rules but make them subservient to your poetical idea and melodic invention.
– Balance your phrases so that they at once contrast with and supplement each other. Make your chief melodic phrase clear, even by repetition, so that the ear may grasp what you are driving at.
– If you make an innovation, show by the way you make it that you understand the why and wherefore of it.
– Do not waste your material, and gather up your threads at the end.
– Be careful to keep your tonality clear.A melody is not necessarily in its most perfect state when it is first written down. Some of the finest tunes in the world have gone through long processes of lengthening, shortening, refining and altering in various ways before they have reached the form in which the world now knows them.
Trust to inspiration for a melody. Do not necessarily be satisfied with the form in which it first presents itself, but work at the details while preserving its balance. When your melody satisfies you, get a bass for it which is as melodious as you can make it without allowing it to overshadow the melody proper. The bass will probably be in your mind as you write the melody.
Vary the number of bars in your phrases, and be careful to balance them satisfactorily to the ear. Remember that sentences to be intelligible must have commas, semicolons, colons, and full stops, and apply this principle to your music. By doing so you will make your phrases as clear to the listener as they are, even in their cruder form, to yourself.
Found your melodies on the diatonic scale, and treat chromatics as reinforcements and decorations only, until your themes move easily in diatonic intervals.
Rhythm
If melody is the life-blood of music, rhythm is the heart-beat or pulse which drives it. There can be no life without it; if the pulse is too slow or intermittent, the sense of movement is hampered; if it is too feverish or overloaded, the music becomes fussy and restless; but the pulse must be there or vitality ceases.
The best possible studies in rhythm are the songs of Schubert, which provide an amazing series of all sorts and kinds of figure in a short space. But let it be remembered that they are all the outcome of spontaneous invention; if they had been hunted for or manufactured, sincerity would not be so patent upon every page.
Genuine rhythmical invention, like melodic, comes to the composer because it must, not because he makes it. The study of the rhythm of others must be directed rather to the way the masters use it than to the actual rhythms themselves. Manufacture will not do, but an all-round knowledge of their methods of using it will, to an inventive mind, suggest rhythms of its own creation.
Create As You Study
Write always some music in any free style, without thinking about rules, alongside your technical work.
Just, however, as no school-boy will progress without holiday or fresh air, so no budding composer can assimilate or digest all this difficult diet without amusing himself meanwhiles; and too much stress cannot be laid on the importance of encouraging him to write anything which suggests itself to him alongside his stiff studies.
Such temporary freedom keeps the engines of the brain oiled, and free compositions written while technical study is progressing are valuable tests of the ability of the writer to profit by his advancing technique.
Songwriting
To write a good song is one of the most difficult tasks which a composer can set himself. Songwriting is miniature painting. The detail must be perfect from the first note to the last, capable of being examined under the microscope, and standing the test without showing a flaw.
It demands a power, which is perhaps the hardest of all to acquire, of suggesting large and comprehensive ideas in a confined and economical space, and expressing small and dainty ideas without overloading them on the one hand or underestimating them on the other.
The wisest plan is to keep songwriting for an occasional and experimental amusement, and to eschew it as a practice until the power over writing absolute music (when the art speaks for itself by sound alone, compared to descriptive music when it illustrates words or drama) is assured.
The 3 Keys To A Great Theme
Whether the composer writes or chooses his theme he must bear in mind three essentials:
Firstly, that it should contain sufficient material to vary.
Secondly, that it should have at least one striking feature. This may be attained in many ways, either by an unusual melodic progression or modulation, or by a modification of tempo (such as the pause in the same example), or by a strong dynamic contrast, or by an unusual rhythm in the phrases of the melody itself.
Thirdly, a theme should be expressed in as simple terms as possible, at any rate for purposes of practice. An over-elaborated theme is at once a variation and robs a composer of one of his series. The tendency in a beginner is always to write a variation for a theme, and an admirable corrective is to extract from this variation its simplest form of expression — in arithmetical language, to find its least common multiple. Great care must be exercised to avoid, on the one hand, the excision of any of the important features, or, on the other, the retention of any that are unnecessary.
Abundance of suggestive material is a self-evident necessity. If there is not enough contrast in the phrases, the writer will run dry of ideas for the variations. But they should only be suggestions, which the variations may be left to elaborate.
What To Do After Mastering Technique & Form
Assuming that the composer has now thoroughly mastered technique and form, and is at home in the varied treatment of rhythmical phrases, what is his next step? To forget all about them. They will take care of themselves. They are firmly fixed in the system, and the brain, which has been so far ridden on the curb, must now be ridden on the snaffle. It is the composer’s own responsibility to take up the curb rein at any moment when he finds himself unable to surmount some technical difficulty, or when he discovers a flaw in his own equipment.
But when he once begins independent inventive work, he must put his technical rules behind him, just as a painter forgets his rules of perspective and mixes his colours unconsciously. He has been through his term of slavery and won his freedom. Neither he nor any one else will appreciate the full joys of his freedom if he is always harping back on his slavery. Freedom means life to music, but only when it is won by genuine hard work.
Copy The Masters
Too many students are afraid, from a natural desire to be original, to copy the examples which the great composers provide; but if they wish to get at the root of the methods in which their predecessors successfully worked, they must make up their minds to do so. Here, again, the parallel of the art of painting comes in, where students can get the best possible tuition from masters greater than any living by copying their pictures, and so getting at the root of their methods.
A musician has one great advantage over a painter in this branch of study; for he can take a movement by a great composer for a model, but confine his imitation to copying the shape and the trend of the modulations while using his own themes and rhythmical figures to carry out the design. The painter merely copies out another man’s complete work. The composer writes his own work on the lines of his predecessor’s model.
It is an almost cruel task to write a movement, bar by bar, modulation by modulation, figure by figure, exactly the same in all respects, save theme, as a work by another composer; but it is the only way to get at the root of the matter, and it must be faced.
Mozart can give a most effective lesson in the following way. Buy a full score (say) of the Symphony in E flat, and a good full arrangement of it for piano (four hands). Write the exact number of instruments and the keys and crooks of the clarinets, horns, trumpets and drums on lines corresponding to those of Mozart’s printed score; and then instrument the Symphony for yourself from the piano arrangement (without peeping into the original for the solution of any difficulties).
Look with an orchestral eye at passages which are changed in order to adapt them to piano technique, and reverse the process. After you have scored (say) the introductory adagio, copy the Mozart score over your own and on the same lines as your own in red ink, omitting, of course, all identical notes, and enabling you to compare the differences between his work and yours.
It is of no use to trust merely to comparison; the Mozart notes must be actually written down over your own, if this method of training is to do real good. When you have written it out, think over the differences between your work and his, and why his way is likely to sound better than yours. Repeat this process every thirty-two bars or so. When you begin you will be aghast at the differences; but as you continue and gradually absorb the style, you will be equally surprised at the rapidity with which the two scores assimilate.
Starting Small
“The greater the number of staves in the score, the fewer the number of ideas,” was an astute comment on the situation by a great conductor. The best antidote to this plethora of material is a solid grounding in writing for a small orchestra, such as sufficed for Mozart, and, in the main, for Beethoven.
A composer who can produce such colour as Wagner did in his Siegfried Idyll, with the same limited means, will find it far easier to dispose larger forces when he is called upon to command them, and his experience in controlling smaller bodies will lead gradually up to a greater ability in handling army corps. He will know his units and their capabilities, individual as well as collective, and will not strain them beyond their powers.
The exact balance between the dimensions and details of a musical work can only be hit off by long experiences and close acquaintance with accepted masterpieces.
Timbre / Tone Colour
What is colour in music? The term has really a twofold meaning. There is, firstly, colour in the sense of variety of expression, and of the timbre or quality of sound which underlies that variety in a single instrument. The other kind of colour we shall term “collective.” It is produced by combinations of the timbre of different instruments and their contrast to each other.
Colour is the dress in which we clothe the flesh and bones which constitute the living body of music. The body is for all time, and any changes which it undergoes are imperceptibly slow. The clothes are for a fraction of time, and vary with the taste and fashion of that fraction; they are simple where life is simple, and tend to become more elaborate as the craftsmanship of their manufacturers improves, and as the wealth and luxury of their wearers increase.
The beauty of melodies and of the perfect treatment of them will always live longer and accord more with the natural sympathies of man than volumes of prismatic sound devoid of pure melody or finished workmanship.
Excessively brilliant colour may temporarily blind the eye and deafen the ear to deficiencies in both, but sooner or later it will pall, and the underlying faults and failures will become more and more evident. It is always a sound test of a picture to photograph it, and of an orchestral piece to arrange it for a monochrome instrument such as the piano.
If the musical work is beautiful in melody, finished in detail, and well-balanced in design, the cold arrangement on what von Billow termed a “box of hammers” will give as much pleasure in its limited scope as a photograph or an engraving of a masterpiece of Velasquez or of Bellini. We shall miss “the top-dressing” and no more. A composition which relies primarily or solely on its orchestral colour will be intolerable when reduced to black and white.
Let Your Subconscious Work On Creative Problems
A piece of advice, which indeed applies to all musical composition, but in a special degree to songwriting, may be found useful. If you are gravelled by a difficulty, put the whole composition away and let your brain work it out by itself. The brain is an admirable cook, a “cordon bleu,” who boils and bakes and fries ideas far away from you in a distant kitchen. He does not ask you to be present while he is at work; if you wait patiently the dish will be quite ready at the right time.
“Unconscious cerebration” is the scientific term for this most beneficent property of humanity. A well-ordered brain never forgets. It will take an idea, and improve and refine it out of all knowledge; and it will, if you are in a difficulty, help you out if you do not worry it or yourself.
Transforming & Developing Themes
The construction of symphonic poems depends upon the power of transforming and developing themes and using them to give unity to what otherwise might be an amorphous mass of sound. But the transformation is not enough without the development. Mere repetition or transposition will not suffice to give interest and to avoid monotony. A perpetual series of different themes will only bewilder and give a sense of diffuseness to the listener.
History will show abundant examples of highly-gifted composers, in whom the power of invention has been so great and the power of concentration so small, that they have preferred to save themselves the labour of development by substituting new themes at every turn. In all such cases the tragic sequel has been the same; their music is forgotten, or in process of being forgotten. Superficiality is the disease which kills it.
This lack of concentration is the danger which besets the path of the writer of symphonic poems, and it can only be surmounted by the same means which give mastery to other more definite forms of composition, economy of material and the logical evolution of themes.
Over-Elaborating Less Important Moments
Every work, great and small, has its alternations of rise and fall. If every sentence of a speech is at the same level of interest, there will be no great moments of climax. There must be valleys as well as mountains, or the landscape will be a monotonous plain whether its elevation be low or high.
Every picture has its points of high light and its tracts of lower colour-values. Every line of poetry has its small and unaccentuated words, unimportant in themselves, but supplying the links between those which arrest the ear. The neglect of this economy of expression induces thickness and stodginess. Every point of interest kills its neighbour.
The Power of Instrumental Music
There can be no question that music which speaks for itself is not only the purest, but also the most all-embracing form of the art. Being intangible and indefinable, it suggests to different minds different trains of thought, and any defined programme of a movement given by one listener may be miles apart from one given by another.
Tennyson’s brilliant dictum that “Poetry is like shot-silk with many glancing colours; every reader must find his own interpretation according to his ability, and according to his sympathy with the poet,” applies in every particular to music also.
That certain impressions and certain poems or dramatic ideas do actually suggest musical ideas and forms to a composer is undoubted; but so much vaster is the art with which he deals than any part which he has in it himself, that his own ideas may develop thousands of others in the minds of those who listen to his work. This is the secret of the truth of Beethoven’s axiom that, though he always worked to a picture, he never said what that picture was.
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