Musical Composition, Craft and Art #38 - On originality 

This is a really good video about one of the most important subjects for the time in which we now compose, where originality is confused with novelty...where innovation is valued over idiom.

Can't wait for the Sibelius video! His second symphony was the first symphony I ever listened to in full and my introduction to the genre, outside of snippets I had heard from other composers. Since then he has remained my favourite orchestral composer.

Thanks for another thought-provoking video, Alan. I recall your use of the example from Beethoven's 5th in your book (which I'm currently re-reading!). Looking forward to your lesson on Sibelius!

Thank you for posting this! As a budding composer myself with my own RU-vid channel and pieces, originality is something I struggle with. I’ve often been accused of sounding too much like Mozart or Beethoven. However, I blend 18th-19th century western formal and harmonic practices with African rhythms and vocal techniques and hints of heavy metal, and have had other people say I have a unique sound.

Thank you for a highly stimulating video. For me it throws up a number of issues. First, it's not always easy to recognise originality-sometimes it takes quite a subtle form that is hard to appreciate because one has not encountered such ideas before. Your example from Beethoven's 5th shows that well. Second, perhaps originality is fetishised too much. Rather than constant novelty, I believe what is really important is the sense of a composer having something to say. So, in the case of Bach and his fugues, it's not so much the language (which is relatively conservative) as the message that's important. One might come up with something original as a means of saying one's message, but novelty alone is empty, as you show with the "v-oil-lin" example. Emotional intensity, intellectual aspiration, obsession, playfulness can all be compelling things to express. So, ultimately, I would argue that it comes down to that: is one expressing something or not? And that, incidentally, is why we should not yet be worried about generative AI. Until it becomes indisputably sentient, it cannot have a creative will to express-but that is the thing that makes the best human music what it is.