Looking for scores from young composers

[jsawruk 0]

I am doing some independent research about the stylistic tendicies of composers of my generation. If anyone would like to help me, you can help by sending me scores of your music. You may send as many or as few as you like. I will only use them for research: they will not be performed, published, recorded, sold, etc.

Requirements:

- Composer must be aged 15 - 25 years old as of 1 January 2006

- The score must have been written after 1 January 2001

- Composer must have studied western music composition at a school in the

United States or Canada, although the composer can be from any country

- Scores must be in one of the following formats: SIB, MUS/ETF, MusicXML, or

PDF. Audio recording optional.

- All styles will be considered: concert, jazz, popular, electronic,

avant-garde, etc.

- Scores must not have been writing for a film or other footage. Repeat: NO

FILM MUSIC. My research is about trends in non-film musics.

Please email me if you would like to help me with my research:

lobachevski@hotmail.com

If I end up writing this as a research paper, I will let you know. If I decide to use score excerpts in the paper, composers will be contacted for copyright clearance beforehand.

[Henry B 50]

I did a short score to a production of The Yellow Boat when I was fourteen. That's a play, not a film, but I guess the concept of scoring to action is the same. Plus, the score looks horribly amateur in that I wrote it with a sampler in mind, not an orchestra. I guess that's a disqualification on several levels.

[jsawruk 0]

No, theatre is fine, just not film (or TV or videogames).

Film composers have a different mindset than non-film composers, and writing for film is different than writing for other concert halls or CDs. I cant really explain the difference, but I will say this: What I have found to applies to all non-film composers or the concert works of film composers that I know. I don't believe what I have found applies at all to film scoring because the trends in the two areas are usually completely different.

[Composer_Fan 2]

- Composer must have studied western music composition at a school in the United States or Canada, although the composer can be from any country

Well...... I start college in the fall and I'm majoring in Music Composition. But I haven't had any prior study in western music composition. Would you still be interested in the piece I wrote for my college audition?

~Tyler, who is a composer-in-training.

[jsawruk 0]

That will be acceptible, so long as it's western music. I am interested only in people whose natural tendencies are toward western music (but who later learn to incorporate other elements). So, as long as it's not a raga or gamelan or bayashi, then please send. This doesn't mean it can't use tabla or koto or shackuhachi though... just as long as it makes sense to western ears.

What school will you be attending?

[Composer_Fan 2]

^I'm going to Palm Beach Atlantic University in south Florida. It's a smaller, not-as-well-known school, but I like it. I'll email you a piece or two that I wrote. And they're definitely Western, because I certainly haven't studied those nifty Oriental instruments you mentioned, lol.

[jsawruk 0]

Update: I have now decided to open this up to film scores. However, all film scores submitted must be cleared marked as such because I wish to run statistics on just concert work, stats on just film scores, and then combined stats.

[Luke Skywalker 1,795]

No, theatre is fine, just not film (or TV or videogames).  

Lets say, Classic and Opera/Theatre?

Shorter that saying no movies, no TV, no Videogames

[jsawruk 0]

No, it's now open to all scores, but they must be clearly marked so as I can differentiate between music written for film and other media and music written for the concert hall (incl. opera, ballet, etc.). Multimedia compositions that involve film as part of a concert hall performance will be considered as concert hall music UNLESS the film presented during the performance and the music accompanying it are identical to how it would be presented as a film without the live orchestra.

Film scores (or pieces thereof) performed in a concert venue will still be considered as film scores.

Examples:

- Shore's LOTR Symphony - will be considered as a film score because it is a concert arrangement of a film score, and not exclusively written for the concert hall

- Reich's The Cave - will be considered a concert work even though it makes use of film elements during its concert performance

- DJ Spooky's Rebirth of a Nation (is that the title?) - will be considered a concert work, even though it contains a film that has an original soundtrack, the film has been altered and that original soundtrack is used nowhere in the performance, hence the new soundtrack which he supplies is considered a concert work because the new soundtrack requires live performance as he cuts the soundtrack and the footage in realtime performance. However, had he just written a new soundtrack over the existing footage, it would be considered a film score and not a concert work.

All songs used in films will be considered concert works regardless.

All studio produced music that cannot be performed live (at least easily) will also be considered concert music.

Foley/SFX are not considered film music unless they are explicitly musique concrete and serves a musical purpose rather than a physical one.

Why the dichotomy?

Film Music has a completely different history than non-film music. There is very little cross-over in their pedigrees. Obviously, the first film composers were concert composers, and there have been cross-overs, but none have been truly successful in both areas except for maybe Prokofiev. Therefore, I need to track the influences of the young composers of today. If they explicitly write film music, I suspect that their influences and ideologies regarding music in general will be vastly different than those who explicitly write concert music. I also feel that those who write both film and concert music will have further different ideas regarding music.

Predictions:

- composers who write only film will not be influenced much by 20th century classical music, especially after 1945.

- composers who write only concert music will not be influenced much by film scoring UNLESS they write jazz concert music, in which case there will be some influence from the likes of Mancini, but I do not suspect that they would draw much from the literature of Thomas Newman. Similarly, they are more likely to draw their influences from modern concert music, especially minimalism and post-minimalism especially.

- composers who write film AND concert music in roughly equal proportion will have the widest range of influences, of which I suspect will draw primarily from post-romanticism and post-minimalism (in accordance with current observations). This group of composers will also be the most influenced by music outside of the classical repetoire and will integrate disparate musical ideas into their pieces, drawing from popular, ethnic, and experimental traditions.

Current observations:

- No composer has been observed to write film music exclusively.

- Composers who only write concert music draw primarily from the romantic and neo-romantic traditions, often citing the composers Beethoven, Stravinksy, and Schubert among their favorites. Stylistic analysis indeed reveals similarity to Schubert and Prokofiev in their writings. They reject serialism and most experimentalism, which to them includes minimalism. Some, however, embrace post-minimalism while others do not.

- Composers who write both draw primarily from the literature of film music, drawing heavily on Williams, Goldsmith, and Herrmann. However, they often include contemporary techniques into their music. This group of composers is more extravagant than their concert hall counterparts, who are more reserved in their musical choices. Favorite composers of concert music, however, strangely match that of their concert music counterparts. The reason for the difference is the use of non-traditional elements in a tonal context in film music allowed this group to embrace them, while the other group heard non-traditional elements on in experimental contexts, which lead the concert composers to reject them because they associate them with experimentalism.

- There are also socioeconomic factors which have yet to be investigated, although it appears that none of the composers that I have interviewed thus far are politically in the far left, although some are in the far right, which suggests a more conservative shift in ideologies in retaliation against the previous generation that was more liberally shifted. This does not, however, mean that all the composers I interviewed are conservative; rather it means that none of the composers I interviewed strictly adhere to the tenets of true Marxism. Also, all of the composers I have interviewed were in the middle economic class respective to their nation, but their position within this class spanned the entire range of middle class. It is unknown whether impoverished or aristocratic composers fit within the above observations.

- It is also unknown to which countries these observations apply. The observed affects definitely exist within the United States and Canada. Preliminary results indicate that some people in the British Isles might also fit these observations, but it may be because of their exposure OR common heritage to their American counterparts. Nations without a Western music tradition are not considered at all. I am trying to determine the current ideology of Western music, so it does not make sense then to include non-Western musics in this discussion; only so much as a composer raised in the Western music tradition does or does not utilize traditions outside of the Western culture. Preliminary indications show that Australian composers do fit the same mold as their American and Western European counterparts.

Hope this answers some questions, but I much rather hope that it raises questions.