Posted by Guy Shahar on January 16, 2025 at 3:19pm
What is your experience of receiving criticism as a composer and how has it changed over time.I’m still near the start of my journey, and have had some amazingly valuable pointers and advice from posting my music on forums and asking for feedback. But I’ve also had a load of abuse from a few people, who feel that if you post something you’ve created, you’re fair game for vitriol. This can have a very negative effect.How have you managed to get the feedback you need while avoiding the abuse? Or do you just choose to either keep your music to yourself or to put up with the abuse?It would be really interesting to hear your experiences for my own benefit, but also, I want to make a video about dealing with criticism as a composer soon, and this conversation could help with that too.
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Guy Shahar > David LillyJanuary 24, 2025 at 9:25am
Great that you document the feedback - sometimes it can make sense many months later when initially it goes over our heads. Great also that you're aware of other personality types and ways of experiencing feedback - it's not an obvious or common thing to do, especially if you're lucky enough to have a thick skin.
I was all ready to run with the music theory angle that this thread had turned, but now I see that it has turned back to the topic. I think what I might do is combine them in a way ...
I have often been criticized for my music sounding to some ears as atonal. I try to look at criticizm by where it is coming from. I submitted my piano concerto to a major competition and reached the finals. I chose to have the reviewer give me comments. He HATED it. He said it wasn't really a concerto, and there were way too many semitones in it., among other denigrating things. (The preliminary rounds were judged by others.) Needless to say, I didn't win or even place. Then, I looked up who he was. He was basically a music theater pianist who composed. Logically, for him music has to be tonal and traditional. Mine wasn't. In fact, he missed the point of it. It was never billed as a piano concerto. It was an orchestra piece with a featured obligato piano part. And to be picky, in my modern tonal system, it was tonal, like most of my music. It was both tonal and very dissonant.
In my system.
Sometimes it sounds more tonal than others, yet my system has a logic to it that conforms to the Tonic - Predominant - Dominant - Tonic ideal, at least in function, if not tonal center. I won't go into the theory of it in detail, but you will hear tonal centers, and there will be the motivational functions of tonal structures. It's just that my music is based on 6-note chords (usually). If you click on the Music tab above and look at my playlist, there are only 2 works there that don't use my systematic composition. (String quartets 1 & 3) The second string quartet is probably the most dissonant of them, but it does use the system. The third quartet was meant as a joke for a competition that wanted a piece in sonata form in C, which it technically is, but I did everything I could to obscure it, and you would be hard-pressed to hear it.
Everything else in my playlist conforms to my system. The most tonal sounding piece (Symphony No 4) not only conforms to my system but is also 12-tone - not rigorous, but it still is.
In a nutshell, my system takes the concepts of traditional theory, but applies it to complementary 6-note sets (with a nominal ordering, like 12-tone). I then classify the transpositions by their deviation from the P0 set. Complete deviation, or 4 tones different are a dominant, 3 different are predominant, and 0 or 2 different are tonic functions. I developed this system by accident. I was writing set-based music and noticed that some sets worked better with others, usually related to how many pitches they shared.
That is where theory comes in. Knowing theory inside and out enabled me to create a new system using modern "chords" that conformed to the concepts of traditional theory, employing other theoretical elements like rows to enhance what I was doing. If you were to study them, Symphony No 4 and Seventh Trumpeter of the Apocalypse were derived from exactly the same material. The difference is how I used it. The Symphony employs more linear concepts (rows, etc.), while the concerto uses entire my functional (vertical) set approach. Both sound quite tonal.
Some people think that is such an artificial approach, but how does it differ from Bach? Bach didn't just randomly choose his notes. He worked within a specifically defined system and stretched its rules to the breaking point, sometimes beyond. Even if Fux hadn't codified those rules yet, they were basically an outgrowth of what every composer was taught then. Like Bach, I compose in a predefined system, one that functions much the same as his. I find that much easier than composing everything by ear. If it works in my system, then I know it will work. I don't have to sit at a piano and plunk out notes. With the luxury of modern technology, I now let the software play it back for me, but I don't rely on it in the beginning. Most of the pieces on my playlist were composed before music software had adequate playback - the first 4 string quartets.
Some listeners completely dismiss my approach as artificial. Others say they don't understand it. Some even say they love it, but they don't know why. My non-musical cousin recently described my 1996 violin concerto as great film music (possibly implying horror film, but I'll take that). Speaking of that piece, when it was performed in 1997, a cellist in the orchestra who hated new music, told me that to my face - It's so atonal, he said - but I told him to wait until we had finished rehearsing it. It's actually in D. After the performance, he apologized to me, and said he liked it.
I think, as far as criticism is concerned, it is important to know where the person is coming from, and if you can, give them a starting point to understanding your music. I, personally, don't really see the point in writing non-systematic tonal music, which seems to be the rage with young composers. I just find it boring. I want to hear something new. Yes, it can be tonal, but why does it have to be all major and minor harmonies or bland seventh chords? That's very popular now among American audiences because it's pretty. I don't feel the need to be pretty, although a lot of my trumpet concerto is pretty without pandering to major and minor tonalities. Give me something new, or a new twist on the old.
That said, every criticism is valid, even if it is harsh. I always try to find the kernal of truth in it. Sometimes, though, the kernal is that the reviewer/listener just doesn't like or understand your kind of music, and sometimes they have an agenda, which is totally unrelated to you.
Sometimes it is almost too good. I'll leave you with a critique by a judge of my string quartet no 5, which was the winning piece in that competition:
About String Quartet No 5: Impudent, sassy, cocky, smart, bold. This is a brilliant work that makes the listener reconsider what a string quartet can be. The 19 miniatures are perfectly ordered and show the power that variations can hold. For all the boldness there is a certain restraint, a resistance to show off effects until they must be heard as part of the texture.
Replies
Great that you document the feedback - sometimes it can make sense many months later when initially it goes over our heads. Great also that you're aware of other personality types and ways of experiencing feedback - it's not an obvious or common thing to do, especially if you're lucky enough to have a thick skin.
I was all ready to run with the music theory angle that this thread had turned, but now I see that it has turned back to the topic. I think what I might do is combine them in a way ...
I have often been criticized for my music sounding to some ears as atonal. I try to look at criticizm by where it is coming from. I submitted my piano concerto to a major competition and reached the finals. I chose to have the reviewer give me comments. He HATED it. He said it wasn't really a concerto, and there were way too many semitones in it., among other denigrating things. (The preliminary rounds were judged by others.) Needless to say, I didn't win or even place. Then, I looked up who he was. He was basically a music theater pianist who composed. Logically, for him music has to be tonal and traditional. Mine wasn't. In fact, he missed the point of it. It was never billed as a piano concerto. It was an orchestra piece with a featured obligato piano part. And to be picky, in my modern tonal system, it was tonal, like most of my music. It was both tonal and very dissonant.
In my system.
Sometimes it sounds more tonal than others, yet my system has a logic to it that conforms to the Tonic - Predominant - Dominant - Tonic ideal, at least in function, if not tonal center. I won't go into the theory of it in detail, but you will hear tonal centers, and there will be the motivational functions of tonal structures. It's just that my music is based on 6-note chords (usually). If you click on the Music tab above and look at my playlist, there are only 2 works there that don't use my systematic composition. (String quartets 1 & 3) The second string quartet is probably the most dissonant of them, but it does use the system. The third quartet was meant as a joke for a competition that wanted a piece in sonata form in C, which it technically is, but I did everything I could to obscure it, and you would be hard-pressed to hear it.
Everything else in my playlist conforms to my system. The most tonal sounding piece (Symphony No 4) not only conforms to my system but is also 12-tone - not rigorous, but it still is.
In a nutshell, my system takes the concepts of traditional theory, but applies it to complementary 6-note sets (with a nominal ordering, like 12-tone). I then classify the transpositions by their deviation from the P0 set. Complete deviation, or 4 tones different are a dominant, 3 different are predominant, and 0 or 2 different are tonic functions. I developed this system by accident. I was writing set-based music and noticed that some sets worked better with others, usually related to how many pitches they shared.
That is where theory comes in. Knowing theory inside and out enabled me to create a new system using modern "chords" that conformed to the concepts of traditional theory, employing other theoretical elements like rows to enhance what I was doing. If you were to study them, Symphony No 4 and Seventh Trumpeter of the Apocalypse were derived from exactly the same material. The difference is how I used it. The Symphony employs more linear concepts (rows, etc.), while the concerto uses entire my functional (vertical) set approach. Both sound quite tonal.
Some people think that is such an artificial approach, but how does it differ from Bach? Bach didn't just randomly choose his notes. He worked within a specifically defined system and stretched its rules to the breaking point, sometimes beyond. Even if Fux hadn't codified those rules yet, they were basically an outgrowth of what every composer was taught then. Like Bach, I compose in a predefined system, one that functions much the same as his. I find that much easier than composing everything by ear. If it works in my system, then I know it will work. I don't have to sit at a piano and plunk out notes. With the luxury of modern technology, I now let the software play it back for me, but I don't rely on it in the beginning. Most of the pieces on my playlist were composed before music software had adequate playback - the first 4 string quartets.
Some listeners completely dismiss my approach as artificial. Others say they don't understand it. Some even say they love it, but they don't know why. My non-musical cousin recently described my 1996 violin concerto as great film music (possibly implying horror film, but I'll take that). Speaking of that piece, when it was performed in 1997, a cellist in the orchestra who hated new music, told me that to my face - It's so atonal, he said - but I told him to wait until we had finished rehearsing it. It's actually in D. After the performance, he apologized to me, and said he liked it.
I think, as far as criticism is concerned, it is important to know where the person is coming from, and if you can, give them a starting point to understanding your music. I, personally, don't really see the point in writing non-systematic tonal music, which seems to be the rage with young composers. I just find it boring. I want to hear something new. Yes, it can be tonal, but why does it have to be all major and minor harmonies or bland seventh chords? That's very popular now among American audiences because it's pretty. I don't feel the need to be pretty, although a lot of my trumpet concerto is pretty without pandering to major and minor tonalities. Give me something new, or a new twist on the old.
That said, every criticism is valid, even if it is harsh. I always try to find the kernal of truth in it. Sometimes, though, the kernal is that the reviewer/listener just doesn't like or understand your kind of music, and sometimes they have an agenda, which is totally unrelated to you.
Sometimes it is almost too good. I'll leave you with a critique by a judge of my string quartet no 5, which was the winning piece in that competition:
About String Quartet No 5: Impudent, sassy, cocky, smart, bold. This is a brilliant work that makes the listener reconsider what a string quartet can be. The 19 miniatures are perfectly ordered and show the power that variations can hold. For all the boldness there is a certain restraint, a resistance to show off effects until they must be heard as part of the texture.
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