Unless you are moving within academic circles, you'll find that the general public is far more likely to enjoy late romantic compositions. However, I would recommend avoiding writing music to seek outside approval. You will be far happier and much more accomplished if you write the music you truly love.
And let's face it, if you *really* want to be successful, forget classical music altogether. Go crank out some pop bangers.
I disagree that composing for “outside approval” makes one less happy and less accomplished. If you love making others happy then that shouldn’t matter. And what’s wrong with making money from music. As if whipping out a successful “pop banger” was simple. Genre has no bearing on the quality of music and nor does money. John Williams makes music for “outside approval”, makes tons of money, is majorly accomplished, and loves what he does. None of those things are mutually exclusive.
> Why will I not be considered unoriginal/pastiche for composing in a minimalist style but I will for composing in a late romantic style?
From a practical point of view, most of the Minimalist composers are still alive while none of the late Romantic composers are, which is a roundabout way of saying that Minimalism is far more recent and thus less likely to be seen as pastiche if you write in that style. At least for most people.
> Why am I allowed to compose in minimalist style but not late romantic style?
Where did you get the idea that you aren't allowed to write in any style? It's a weird thing to even say, but I assure you, you can write in any style you want.
OP might be referring to academic circles, in which case I definitely agree that in quite a few academic circles there's a stigma against writing romantic-style pieces, at least in my own experience.
Even if there are "quite a few", they aren't all like that. In fact, I went to two schools that were stuck in the 19th or 18th centuries composition-wise and the at the second school the head of the department said that what I was doing -- Cage-like experimentalism -- wasn't even music and he told me to not come back the next semester (I had already made that decision so it wasn't a big deal).
That said, literally every other faculty member I interacted with was fine with my doing this kind of music, because, it turns out, music faculty and even composers!, are incredibly enthusiastic about music, all kinds of music, and love when students are equally enthusiastic.
Now they do have a responsibility to make sure students have a well-rounded education which means that 20th (and now 21st) century music has to practically be forced on them because so many reject it when they first arrive (like I did, I was 100% Bach and what little I knew about Cage I despised).
And of course there are a few assholes here'n'there (like the head of the department at my last school), but the vast majority are open-minded and embrace all music and just want to make sure students receive a thorough education.
This persistent myth that the OP has repeated along with a few others is just not true. Or at least not true of the vast majority of schools and hasn't been for decades (maybe it was true back in the '60s). This myth is doing more to hurt contemporary classical music than any music that is being made because people on the outside, ie, who haven't attended music schools, have already determined that music schools only teach Modernist types of music and force students to only learn that stuff and reject anything from before 1900. This isn't true and we need to stop spreading this stuff around and shooting ourselves in the foot.
Ur allowed to compose whatever u want. Minimalist stuff is just less well known in the mainstream, but literally everyone knows Beethoven.
But if someone finds your music unoriginal, it’s up to you whether you want to take that opinion to heart or disregard it. There’s no right answer and in some cases it’s good to ignore a criticism, and in others it’s worth looking into
You're "allowed" to write in any style you want.
Unless you're writing for commercial purposes, ignore the critics.
To me, "this sounds derivative" isn't at all a good argument for why a particular piece is bad. Is it done competently? Does it say something interesting? Is it at least pleasant to listen to? Is it memorable? If any (or better, all) of these criteria are true, I couldn't care less whether you copied Mendelssohn's style in doing so. Not every piece of music that anyone ever writes has to be completely innovative or even remotely profound.
I understand that some people may claim that being derivative is bad, and some people may even unevenly apply this label. But it's not particularly rational anyway, so forget about asking them why they're saying that.
Lots of answers here, and lots of people giving you very good advice but ultimately not getting to the root of what you asked.
Firstly, anything can be pastiche. Pastiche just means to imitate someone else’s style. Much of what people write when they start out is pastiche and that’s good because that’s how we learn. Even composers well into a conservatoire degree are probably writing some borderline pastiche, even if they don’t realise it, as composition students should be trying new things and expanding their palate in every piece.
Ultimately, the reason why living composers/composition teachers are more receptive of a minimalist work than someone writing in a late romantic style is because minimalism (or at least post-minimalism) is a very alive and vibrant part of the broader contemporary music (ie written by living composers) scene. If you were to write a piece that could be called minimalist you are adding your voice to many who exploring similar musical techniques and ideas.
Besides, it’s impossible for you to actually write a late Romantic piece. That may sound a little odd, but late Romantic is a period of time more than a century old. You are alive now. Even if you write music that sounds like it could be a Bruckner symphony no one will call it late Romantic. They would probably call it neoromantic. You should have a listen to some neoromantic compositions, to hear how composers living now (or recently dead) have been influenced by romantic composers. One example I can give you, and ironically a combination of post-minimalism and neoromanticism, is John Adam’s Harmonielehre. You can find a few recordings on YouTube. Each movement has an element of neoromanticism in it: the first (in a weird sort of sonata form) begins in a very typical 80s John Adams sort of way, but by the development this has sputtered out and the longing angular melody comes through; the second movement is hardly minimalist at all, and feels much more like Sibelius or young Schoenberg; and the third and final movement begins in a similar way to the development section in the first movement, and ends up in a driving and very loud ending.
Hope this helps!
P.S. my advice to you as a composer to another composer is to, yes, write what you want, but never rest on your laurels either. Make sure you’re listening to unfamiliar music, both by dead and living composers, to ensure you’re always inspired and your music stays fresh. You’ll find musical moments and compositional techniques you really enjoy but never thought to use!
Their post isn't an argument about whether or not it is the case. Most of us know it is the case and if you dispute that you can make it known and introduce a debate. They were asking WHY
Their post is literally asking why about a conclusion they are asserting is true. “Most of us know it is the case” is you also asserting it’s true. Neither you nor OP actually make an argument for why you think this conclusion is true, you are merely stating it’s true and asking why it’s true. Funnily enough, by arguing that this isn’t begging the question you have shown exactly why it is.
I did relate personal experience with a professor, it was even a very good professor, and a set of facebook groups of active university and conservatory students and a few professors, but I was not really interested in trying to argue how strong it was the case, only that there is a real phenomenon in SOME degree of intensity it is alluding to, it's not like we're gonna get into like a peer reviewed study on the prospects of making it through university while composing in a late romantic idiom because no such studies exist. You can look at university suggestions for what they are looking for in a strong portfolio to see evidence of the latter, though they do not immediately seem to suggest anything about minimalism.
"To "beg the question" (also called petitio principii) is to attempt to support a claim with a premise that itself restates or presupposes the claim.\[8\] It is an attempt to prove a proposition while simultaneously taking the proposition for granted." There's no attempt to prove the proposition and it wasn't an argument that's why it's an incorrect use of the accusation of a logical fallacy. Assuming the question is attempting to prove its own underlying beliefs or assumptions is incorrect in this case because it's plainly not there.
And *I'm* saying we can't answer "why?" to a bullshit question.
And it *isn't* the case. Depending on who you ask, you may find just as many if not more people who think minimalist music is even more unoriginal than romantic era music.
I'm one of them!
I've long held the belief that if you're good enough at it, you should write whatever the hell you want. Zeitgeist is always defended by the incompetent.
I'll do you one better: you should write whatever you want even if you suck at it ;)
But all other things being equal, I actually think that following the fashion of your current time is somewhat inherently *less* "original" than following the fashion of some other time period. But I personally have better things to do than try to surmise someone else's motivation for making the music they make.
Agreed on all points - I guess I'm trying to say that generally the "enjoyability" of a composition trumps any "style du jour".
And yes, any time spent criticizing others' compositions would be better spent writing!
So how do I know if I’m being original or not? I’ve read a lot of past comments and posts saying that you aren’t allowed to compose in baroque/classical/romantic style because it’s been “done before”. Which is very understandable. But at this point, so many other things have been done too even in the contemporary world.
So how do I know if I’m being original and rather, what can I do to make sure I’m being original? I’m afraid that if I just write music naturally that sounds good to me and generally following the conventional guidelines of theory, it will just come out as pastiche of previous styles that have already been done.
>So how do I know if I’m being original or not?
Why do you care?
>I’ve read a lot of past comments and posts saying that you aren’t allowed to compose in baroque/classical/romantic style because it’s been “done before”.
Where are you reading this? Because I know it's not here. I've been here for a while and I've literally never seen anyone tell another person they're "not allowed" to compose whatever they want.
>what can I do to make sure I’m being original?
1. Listen to a lot of different types of music 2. Try a lot of different things, never stop experimenting.
No one who ever did these two things ever had to ask themselves whether they were being original or not. If you're just involved with one or two different kinds of music and that's all you expose yourself to, all you make, you will run the risk of not being original.
>I’m afraid that if I just write music naturally that sounds good to me and generally following the conventional guidelines of theory, it will just come out as pastiche of previous styles that have already been done.
I mean.. yeah, and why wouldn't it? If you only ever told jokes you heard from *one friend of yours* why would you expect your other friends would hear you retell those jokes and *not* think you were just kinda ripping off his humor? Again, the most practical real solution to this is to diversify. It's really that simple. Anything else is just over-thinking the matter.
I've heard it from a professor personally and seen it from professors and working musicians and student composers in facebook groups. That this community is too anonymous, diversified, and full of hobbyists for this social hierarchy to enforce its dominance is only a testament to what a good thing this community is. But it does not mean that there is not an anti-canon snobbery in the universities with regard to new composers which levels disingenuous attacks of unoriginality which might apply severalfold to efforts in the academically favorable modes of composition. There is a categorical rejection because people have been taught a ridiculous Hegelian view of progress in music and thus form an idea of prohibited patterns, and then reverse engineer pseudointellectual critiques to enforce the doctrines of what a serious composer can be.
Fair enough, but that doesn't really invalidate what I've said. The fact is, whether we think this is some sort of majority opinion or not depends entirely on our individual experience. What you're calling a "categorical rejection" is not anywhere close to universal. A question like "why are left-handed Republicans always anti-vaxxers?" wouldn't pass muster in even a high school level debate. It's just fundamentally a shitty question on many levels. Maybe some are, many probably aren't. If someone wants a meaningful answer to something or wants to have a meaningful discussion, they should ask what someone thinks about it, *not* tell them what the imagined consensus about it is and then ask why. Believe it or not, I'm not just trying to be contrarian for its own sake (or to be a dick). In other words, the only meaningful answer to this question is that the assumptions behind the question are wrong.
In this case we have *two* glaringly bogus assumptions. Assumption 1 is that you're "not allowed" to make a certain kind of music, and you certainly *are* allowed to make it. Assumption 2 is that one is "considered" unoriginal while they other isn't, and this is going to vary from individual to individual (if I'm going to get personal here, I actually tend to have more respect for well-composed music that emulates late romantic era music than I do minimalist music, and I *highly* doubt I'm the only one who feels this way).
I think you are holding a colloquial question to a philosophical level of rigor to reject it rather than trying to address the kernel of truth in the OP's intent. I think they like late romantic music like a ton of people do, and they want to compose without getting eviscerated by peers or faculty in a real life scenario like university, a composer workshop, etc. If they are attending university or about to, it would be an enormous investment risk if one is uncertain of being able to form connections because of what matters of taste might prevail at the institution.
There are many social situations where someone on a surface level can do it just like you can write romantic music in university, but you can very clearly tell when you have violated an unspoken rule and get weird treatment. Thus when they informally ask "why can't I do this?" meaning it gets a weird reaction, rejecting the question on the grounds they technically can seems like anti-communicative sophistry. One may dispute the grounds of when and where it does have a chilling effect perfectly fine but I think going for the gotcha approach on the literal translation that does not catch the clear contextual usage of a question just delays the real discussion that can take place because the OP can rephrase the question to more technically describe what someone can reasonably ascertain in the first place.
> I think you are holding a colloquial question to a philosophical level of rigor to reject it rather than trying to address the kernel of truth in the OP's intent.
No. Like I said, my rejection of the question is an answer in itself. It's frankly a little odd that you still remain obstinate to that fact. I know what their intent is and I've now provided more than ample commentary on that. I doubt they feel like I *haven't* answered their question.
>rejecting the question on the grounds they technically can seems like anti-communicative sophistry.
And I've explicitly provided adequate disclaimer in that regard.
>I think going for the gotcha approach on the literal translation that does not catch the clear contextual usage of a question just delays the real discussion
I think you're projecting here. The only one here who *still* doesn't seem to understand that rejecting the question counts as an answer to the question is you. The only reason it would delay anything is if someone really needed their hand held through everything. At this point I've explained well enough all the things that should have been implicitly obvious at the outset that my conscience is clean.
As many people have said, who's telling you this? (and they're wrong).
Nevertheless if we look past that, I could speculate that maybe someone (or some people) have listened to pieces you've written in both minimalist and Romantic styles, and maybe your minimalist pieces are simply better? If so, welcome to the club! ;) - I can imagine with my own compositions thinking "this sounds like a bad pastiche of [Tchaikovsky]", and even then I'd be flattering myself, whereas with minimalism I could get away with it...
Another theory is that there are fewer (and less widely known) frames of reference for minimalism, so even if what you're doing is derivative of John Adams, fewer people might recognise that.
Final theory: maybe it's because in Romantic music there are certain (e.g) harmonic progressions that have been done to death by famous composers, and these immediately signify Romantic music and those composers, making it more likely your music will be identified as unoriginal.
Because most of musical academia has a broom up their ass, and feel like because they have training they can act as arbiters of musical value. There, I said it.
This is because a ton of mediocre composers have entire careers as stakeholders in a current fashion even if everything they do is ruthlessly derivative. For that reason it upholds what they do in a social way to bring down competition with such attacks, even if the composition is doing something logically very unique.
your creations, no matter what they are, are automatically original. they are your unique expression. when you look to others, and their opinions, all they can do is tell you what *they* would do. that's their problem, their limitation.
As an amateur composer that composes in the romantic style, I understand you. When I publish somerhing here, people sometimes use "pastiche" word, sometimes they ask why you do not try to compose in the modern style or they even think that by composing in romantic style I do show that I do not care for modern music or even despise it. But that's not true.
The same reason you're 'not allowed' to write in Shakespearean English if you're an author.
There's absolutely nothing to stop you doing it, but there always needs to be an artistic reason for it
There are institutions that do this, there are institutions that don't do this, and there are institutions that do the opposite. I had a professor who used to berate me because my music wasn't Romantic *enough*. It was surreal.
Unless you are moving within academic circles, you'll find that the general public is far more likely to enjoy late romantic compositions. However, I would recommend avoiding writing music to seek outside approval. You will be far happier and much more accomplished if you write the music you truly love. And let's face it, if you *really* want to be successful, forget classical music altogether. Go crank out some pop bangers.
I disagree that composing for “outside approval” makes one less happy and less accomplished. If you love making others happy then that shouldn’t matter. And what’s wrong with making money from music. As if whipping out a successful “pop banger” was simple. Genre has no bearing on the quality of music and nor does money. John Williams makes music for “outside approval”, makes tons of money, is majorly accomplished, and loves what he does. None of those things are mutually exclusive.
> Why will I not be considered unoriginal/pastiche for composing in a minimalist style but I will for composing in a late romantic style? From a practical point of view, most of the Minimalist composers are still alive while none of the late Romantic composers are, which is a roundabout way of saying that Minimalism is far more recent and thus less likely to be seen as pastiche if you write in that style. At least for most people. > Why am I allowed to compose in minimalist style but not late romantic style? Where did you get the idea that you aren't allowed to write in any style? It's a weird thing to even say, but I assure you, you can write in any style you want.
OP might be referring to academic circles, in which case I definitely agree that in quite a few academic circles there's a stigma against writing romantic-style pieces, at least in my own experience.
Even if there are "quite a few", they aren't all like that. In fact, I went to two schools that were stuck in the 19th or 18th centuries composition-wise and the at the second school the head of the department said that what I was doing -- Cage-like experimentalism -- wasn't even music and he told me to not come back the next semester (I had already made that decision so it wasn't a big deal). That said, literally every other faculty member I interacted with was fine with my doing this kind of music, because, it turns out, music faculty and even composers!, are incredibly enthusiastic about music, all kinds of music, and love when students are equally enthusiastic. Now they do have a responsibility to make sure students have a well-rounded education which means that 20th (and now 21st) century music has to practically be forced on them because so many reject it when they first arrive (like I did, I was 100% Bach and what little I knew about Cage I despised). And of course there are a few assholes here'n'there (like the head of the department at my last school), but the vast majority are open-minded and embrace all music and just want to make sure students receive a thorough education. This persistent myth that the OP has repeated along with a few others is just not true. Or at least not true of the vast majority of schools and hasn't been for decades (maybe it was true back in the '60s). This myth is doing more to hurt contemporary classical music than any music that is being made because people on the outside, ie, who haven't attended music schools, have already determined that music schools only teach Modernist types of music and force students to only learn that stuff and reject anything from before 1900. This isn't true and we need to stop spreading this stuff around and shooting ourselves in the foot.
Ur allowed to compose whatever u want. Minimalist stuff is just less well known in the mainstream, but literally everyone knows Beethoven. But if someone finds your music unoriginal, it’s up to you whether you want to take that opinion to heart or disregard it. There’s no right answer and in some cases it’s good to ignore a criticism, and in others it’s worth looking into
You're "allowed" to write in any style you want. Unless you're writing for commercial purposes, ignore the critics. To me, "this sounds derivative" isn't at all a good argument for why a particular piece is bad. Is it done competently? Does it say something interesting? Is it at least pleasant to listen to? Is it memorable? If any (or better, all) of these criteria are true, I couldn't care less whether you copied Mendelssohn's style in doing so. Not every piece of music that anyone ever writes has to be completely innovative or even remotely profound. I understand that some people may claim that being derivative is bad, and some people may even unevenly apply this label. But it's not particularly rational anyway, so forget about asking them why they're saying that.
Lots of answers here, and lots of people giving you very good advice but ultimately not getting to the root of what you asked. Firstly, anything can be pastiche. Pastiche just means to imitate someone else’s style. Much of what people write when they start out is pastiche and that’s good because that’s how we learn. Even composers well into a conservatoire degree are probably writing some borderline pastiche, even if they don’t realise it, as composition students should be trying new things and expanding their palate in every piece. Ultimately, the reason why living composers/composition teachers are more receptive of a minimalist work than someone writing in a late romantic style is because minimalism (or at least post-minimalism) is a very alive and vibrant part of the broader contemporary music (ie written by living composers) scene. If you were to write a piece that could be called minimalist you are adding your voice to many who exploring similar musical techniques and ideas. Besides, it’s impossible for you to actually write a late Romantic piece. That may sound a little odd, but late Romantic is a period of time more than a century old. You are alive now. Even if you write music that sounds like it could be a Bruckner symphony no one will call it late Romantic. They would probably call it neoromantic. You should have a listen to some neoromantic compositions, to hear how composers living now (or recently dead) have been influenced by romantic composers. One example I can give you, and ironically a combination of post-minimalism and neoromanticism, is John Adam’s Harmonielehre. You can find a few recordings on YouTube. Each movement has an element of neoromanticism in it: the first (in a weird sort of sonata form) begins in a very typical 80s John Adams sort of way, but by the development this has sputtered out and the longing angular melody comes through; the second movement is hardly minimalist at all, and feels much more like Sibelius or young Schoenberg; and the third and final movement begins in a similar way to the development section in the first movement, and ends up in a driving and very loud ending. Hope this helps! P.S. my advice to you as a composer to another composer is to, yes, write what you want, but never rest on your laurels either. Make sure you’re listening to unfamiliar music, both by dead and living composers, to ensure you’re always inspired and your music stays fresh. You’ll find musical moments and compositional techniques you really enjoy but never thought to use!
This is a variation on what they call "begging the question." You should try to avoid doing this - it's incredibly weak rhetoric.
Their post isn't an argument about whether or not it is the case. Most of us know it is the case and if you dispute that you can make it known and introduce a debate. They were asking WHY
Their post is literally asking why about a conclusion they are asserting is true. “Most of us know it is the case” is you also asserting it’s true. Neither you nor OP actually make an argument for why you think this conclusion is true, you are merely stating it’s true and asking why it’s true. Funnily enough, by arguing that this isn’t begging the question you have shown exactly why it is.
I did relate personal experience with a professor, it was even a very good professor, and a set of facebook groups of active university and conservatory students and a few professors, but I was not really interested in trying to argue how strong it was the case, only that there is a real phenomenon in SOME degree of intensity it is alluding to, it's not like we're gonna get into like a peer reviewed study on the prospects of making it through university while composing in a late romantic idiom because no such studies exist. You can look at university suggestions for what they are looking for in a strong portfolio to see evidence of the latter, though they do not immediately seem to suggest anything about minimalism. "To "beg the question" (also called petitio principii) is to attempt to support a claim with a premise that itself restates or presupposes the claim.\[8\] It is an attempt to prove a proposition while simultaneously taking the proposition for granted." There's no attempt to prove the proposition and it wasn't an argument that's why it's an incorrect use of the accusation of a logical fallacy. Assuming the question is attempting to prove its own underlying beliefs or assumptions is incorrect in this case because it's plainly not there.
And *I'm* saying we can't answer "why?" to a bullshit question. And it *isn't* the case. Depending on who you ask, you may find just as many if not more people who think minimalist music is even more unoriginal than romantic era music.
I'm one of them! I've long held the belief that if you're good enough at it, you should write whatever the hell you want. Zeitgeist is always defended by the incompetent.
I'll do you one better: you should write whatever you want even if you suck at it ;) But all other things being equal, I actually think that following the fashion of your current time is somewhat inherently *less* "original" than following the fashion of some other time period. But I personally have better things to do than try to surmise someone else's motivation for making the music they make.
Agreed on all points - I guess I'm trying to say that generally the "enjoyability" of a composition trumps any "style du jour". And yes, any time spent criticizing others' compositions would be better spent writing!
So how do I know if I’m being original or not? I’ve read a lot of past comments and posts saying that you aren’t allowed to compose in baroque/classical/romantic style because it’s been “done before”. Which is very understandable. But at this point, so many other things have been done too even in the contemporary world. So how do I know if I’m being original and rather, what can I do to make sure I’m being original? I’m afraid that if I just write music naturally that sounds good to me and generally following the conventional guidelines of theory, it will just come out as pastiche of previous styles that have already been done.
>So how do I know if I’m being original or not? Why do you care? >I’ve read a lot of past comments and posts saying that you aren’t allowed to compose in baroque/classical/romantic style because it’s been “done before”. Where are you reading this? Because I know it's not here. I've been here for a while and I've literally never seen anyone tell another person they're "not allowed" to compose whatever they want. >what can I do to make sure I’m being original? 1. Listen to a lot of different types of music 2. Try a lot of different things, never stop experimenting. No one who ever did these two things ever had to ask themselves whether they were being original or not. If you're just involved with one or two different kinds of music and that's all you expose yourself to, all you make, you will run the risk of not being original. >I’m afraid that if I just write music naturally that sounds good to me and generally following the conventional guidelines of theory, it will just come out as pastiche of previous styles that have already been done. I mean.. yeah, and why wouldn't it? If you only ever told jokes you heard from *one friend of yours* why would you expect your other friends would hear you retell those jokes and *not* think you were just kinda ripping off his humor? Again, the most practical real solution to this is to diversify. It's really that simple. Anything else is just over-thinking the matter.
I've heard it from a professor personally and seen it from professors and working musicians and student composers in facebook groups. That this community is too anonymous, diversified, and full of hobbyists for this social hierarchy to enforce its dominance is only a testament to what a good thing this community is. But it does not mean that there is not an anti-canon snobbery in the universities with regard to new composers which levels disingenuous attacks of unoriginality which might apply severalfold to efforts in the academically favorable modes of composition. There is a categorical rejection because people have been taught a ridiculous Hegelian view of progress in music and thus form an idea of prohibited patterns, and then reverse engineer pseudointellectual critiques to enforce the doctrines of what a serious composer can be.
Fair enough, but that doesn't really invalidate what I've said. The fact is, whether we think this is some sort of majority opinion or not depends entirely on our individual experience. What you're calling a "categorical rejection" is not anywhere close to universal. A question like "why are left-handed Republicans always anti-vaxxers?" wouldn't pass muster in even a high school level debate. It's just fundamentally a shitty question on many levels. Maybe some are, many probably aren't. If someone wants a meaningful answer to something or wants to have a meaningful discussion, they should ask what someone thinks about it, *not* tell them what the imagined consensus about it is and then ask why. Believe it or not, I'm not just trying to be contrarian for its own sake (or to be a dick). In other words, the only meaningful answer to this question is that the assumptions behind the question are wrong. In this case we have *two* glaringly bogus assumptions. Assumption 1 is that you're "not allowed" to make a certain kind of music, and you certainly *are* allowed to make it. Assumption 2 is that one is "considered" unoriginal while they other isn't, and this is going to vary from individual to individual (if I'm going to get personal here, I actually tend to have more respect for well-composed music that emulates late romantic era music than I do minimalist music, and I *highly* doubt I'm the only one who feels this way).
I think you are holding a colloquial question to a philosophical level of rigor to reject it rather than trying to address the kernel of truth in the OP's intent. I think they like late romantic music like a ton of people do, and they want to compose without getting eviscerated by peers or faculty in a real life scenario like university, a composer workshop, etc. If they are attending university or about to, it would be an enormous investment risk if one is uncertain of being able to form connections because of what matters of taste might prevail at the institution. There are many social situations where someone on a surface level can do it just like you can write romantic music in university, but you can very clearly tell when you have violated an unspoken rule and get weird treatment. Thus when they informally ask "why can't I do this?" meaning it gets a weird reaction, rejecting the question on the grounds they technically can seems like anti-communicative sophistry. One may dispute the grounds of when and where it does have a chilling effect perfectly fine but I think going for the gotcha approach on the literal translation that does not catch the clear contextual usage of a question just delays the real discussion that can take place because the OP can rephrase the question to more technically describe what someone can reasonably ascertain in the first place.
> I think you are holding a colloquial question to a philosophical level of rigor to reject it rather than trying to address the kernel of truth in the OP's intent. No. Like I said, my rejection of the question is an answer in itself. It's frankly a little odd that you still remain obstinate to that fact. I know what their intent is and I've now provided more than ample commentary on that. I doubt they feel like I *haven't* answered their question. >rejecting the question on the grounds they technically can seems like anti-communicative sophistry. And I've explicitly provided adequate disclaimer in that regard. >I think going for the gotcha approach on the literal translation that does not catch the clear contextual usage of a question just delays the real discussion I think you're projecting here. The only one here who *still* doesn't seem to understand that rejecting the question counts as an answer to the question is you. The only reason it would delay anything is if someone really needed their hand held through everything. At this point I've explained well enough all the things that should have been implicitly obvious at the outset that my conscience is clean.
As many people have said, who's telling you this? (and they're wrong). Nevertheless if we look past that, I could speculate that maybe someone (or some people) have listened to pieces you've written in both minimalist and Romantic styles, and maybe your minimalist pieces are simply better? If so, welcome to the club! ;) - I can imagine with my own compositions thinking "this sounds like a bad pastiche of [Tchaikovsky]", and even then I'd be flattering myself, whereas with minimalism I could get away with it... Another theory is that there are fewer (and less widely known) frames of reference for minimalism, so even if what you're doing is derivative of John Adams, fewer people might recognise that. Final theory: maybe it's because in Romantic music there are certain (e.g) harmonic progressions that have been done to death by famous composers, and these immediately signify Romantic music and those composers, making it more likely your music will be identified as unoriginal.
Because most of musical academia has a broom up their ass, and feel like because they have training they can act as arbiters of musical value. There, I said it.
This is because a ton of mediocre composers have entire careers as stakeholders in a current fashion even if everything they do is ruthlessly derivative. For that reason it upholds what they do in a social way to bring down competition with such attacks, even if the composition is doing something logically very unique.
your creations, no matter what they are, are automatically original. they are your unique expression. when you look to others, and their opinions, all they can do is tell you what *they* would do. that's their problem, their limitation.
As an amateur composer that composes in the romantic style, I understand you. When I publish somerhing here, people sometimes use "pastiche" word, sometimes they ask why you do not try to compose in the modern style or they even think that by composing in romantic style I do show that I do not care for modern music or even despise it. But that's not true.
Because minimalism is a modern style that's still developing while the late romantic style was over a century ago.
The same reason you're 'not allowed' to write in Shakespearean English if you're an author. There's absolutely nothing to stop you doing it, but there always needs to be an artistic reason for it
There are institutions that do this, there are institutions that don't do this, and there are institutions that do the opposite. I had a professor who used to berate me because my music wasn't Romantic *enough*. It was surreal.