Different Types of Composers

yifei

Different Types of Composers

   I can see three different types of composers in musical history, each of whom creates music in a somewhat different fashion.
   The type that has fired public imagination most is that of the spontaneously inspired composer - the Franz Schubert type, in other words. All composers are inspired, of course, but this type is more spontaneously inspired. Music simply wells out of him. He can't get it down on paper fast enough. You can almost tell this type of composer by his fruitful output. In certain months, Schubert wrote a song a day. Hugo Wolf did the same.
   In a sense, men of this kind begin not so much with a musical theme as with a completed composition. They invariably work best in the shorter forms. It is much easier to improvise a song than it is to improvise a symphony. It isn't easy to be inspired in that spontaneous way for long periods at a stretch. Even Schubert was more successful in handling the shorter forms of music. The spontaneously inspired man is only one type of composer, with this own limitations.
   Beethoven belongs to the second type - the constructive type, one might call it. This type serves as an example of my theory of the creative process in music better than any other, because in this case the composer really does begin with a musical theme. In Beethoven's case there is no doubt about it, for we have the notebooks in which he put the themes down. We can see from his notebooks how he worked over his themes - how he would not let them be until they were as perfect as he could make them. Beethoven was not a spontaneously inspired composer in the Schubert sense at all. He was the type that begins with a theme; makes it a preliminary idea; and upon that composes a musical work, day after day, in painstaking fashion. Most composers since Beethoven's day belong to this second type.
   The third type of composer I can only call, for lack of a better name, the traditionalist type. Men like Palestrina and Bach belong in this category. They both are characteristic of the kind of composer who is born in a particular period of musical history, when a certain musical style is about to reach its fullest development. It is a question at such a time of creating music in a well-known and accepted style and doing it in a way that is better than anyone has done it before you.
   The traditionalist type of composer begins with a pattern rather than with a theme. The creative act with Palestrina is not the thematic conception so much as the personal treatment of a well-established pattern. And even Bach, who composed forty-eight of the most various and inspired themes in his Well Tempered Clavichord, knew in advance the general formal mold that they were to fill. It goes without saying that we are not living in a traditionalist period nowadays.
   One might add, for the sake of completeness, a fourth type of composer - the pioneer type: men like Gesualdo in the seventeenth century, Moussorgsky and Berlioz in the nineteenth, Debussy and Edgar Varese in the twentieth. It is difficult to summarize the composing methods of so diversified a group. One can safely say that their approach to composition is the opposite of the traditionalist type. They clearly oppose conventional solutions of musical problems. In many ways, their attitude is experimental - they seek to add new harmonies, new sonorities, new formal principles. The pioneer type was the characteristic one at the turn of the seventeenth century and also at the beginning of the twentieth century, but it is much less evident today.


不同类型的音乐家


   我发现音乐史上有三种不同类型的作曲家，他们各自创作的方式有不同。
   最能激发公众想象力的是自发式灵感型即弗朗兹·舒伯特型。当然所有的作曲家都需要灵感，但这一类型的更具自发的灵感，音乐简直就是喷涌而出，多得来不及记录，通过他们多产的作品你几乎可以一下就认出他们。有几个月舒伯特几乎谱成一曲，伍尔夫·雨果也是如此。
   从一定意义上说，这类作曲家不是从一个主题开始而是从一部完整的作品一气呵成。他们总是擅长短形式的作品。即兴创作一支歌曲比即兴创作一部交响曲要简单得多。要长时间连续不断的获得自发的灵感不容易，就是舒伯特也是短形式的音乐方面更为成功。自发式灵感型人只是作曲家的一种，他有他自己的局限。
   贝多芬属于第二类--可以称之为建设型。和其他类型相比，这类作曲家更适合我的音乐创作过程理论的例证，因为对这类作曲家来说，他们的确是从音乐主题开始创作的。以贝多芬为例这一点毋庸质疑，因为我们有他记下音乐主题的笔记本。我们可以从他的笔记本看出他是如何在主题上下功夫的--曲不完美誓不休。从舒伯特的意义上说，贝多芬绝对不是灵感自发型的作曲家。他是那类从主题开始、形成初步的构思再日复一日辛勤地创作一部作品的作曲家。从贝多芬开始，许多的作曲家都属于这第二类。
   由于找不到更合适的称呼，第三类作曲家姑且称他们为传统类。帕勒斯提那的创作活动与其说是主题概念不如说是对既定模式的个性化处理。即使创作了48首主题各异充满灵感的《平均律钢琴曲集》的巴赫也知道他们将遵循的一般模式。不用说今天我们不是生活在一个传统时期。
   为完整起见也许还应加上第四种作曲家--先锋型，诸如17世纪的杰苏尔多、19世纪的穆索尔斯基和柏辽兹，以及20世纪的德彪西和瓦雷兹。这样一类作曲家如此多样化的创作手法难以概括，但可以肯定的一点是他们的作曲方法与传统型针锋相对。他们鲜明地反对音乐问题的通行解决办法。许多方面他们的态度是试验的--寻求添加新的融合、新的音效、新的创作形式。先锋型在17世纪末和20世纪初期很具代表性，但是如今其特征已不太明显。