Composition

What it means

Composition designates the inventing and working out of a musical work as well as the work itself. In origin the word means putting together: from individual elements — notes, motifs, sounds, time relations — a whole is joined whose parts are related to one another.

Musical use

How composing is done has changed strongly over history. In the polyphony of the Middle Ages, the setting arose voice by voice over a given melody; the Renaissance developed the procedure of imitation, in which all the voices are formed from the same material; the Baroque worked from the bass and its figuring; the Viennese Classical period put the working-out of motifs and the construction of large forms at the centre. In the twentieth century, procedures were added that organize pitches, durations, and tone colours by specially set orders.

Common remains the connection of invention and craft. What carries a piece is seldom a single idea but the way in which material is unfolded: through repetition, variation, sequence, inversion, contrast. The study of composition — counterpoint, harmony, the theory of form — conveys these procedures; it does not replace invention but makes it executable.

Composition as a work fixed in writing is to be distinguished from improvisation, in which invention and execution coincide. The boundary is historically flexible: in many periods, improvised elaboration was a matter of course in performing a notated work.

The term goes back to the Latin componere, to put together. It designates both the process of composing and the result, the work. Since the nineteenth century, composition has been a subject of study of its own at music academies. The boundaries to improvisation, arrangement, and adaptation are fluid in many styles.

Performance practice

When working up a piece, look at what it is made of: where does material return, where does it change, where is the climax? Whoever recognizes this phrases more convincingly and memorizes faster. And occasionally try yourself to vary on a small motif — nothing explains compositional work better than one's own attempt.