Ralph Vaughan Williams on originality

"Why should music be 'original'? The object of art is to stretch out
to the ultimate realities through the medium of beauty. The duty of
the composer is to find the mot juste. It does not matter if this word
has been said a thousand times before as long as it is the right thing
to say at that moment. If it is not the right thing to say, however
unheard of it may be, it is of no artistic value. Music which is
unoriginal is so, not simply because it has been said before, but
because the composer has not taken the trouble to make sure that this
was the right thing to say at the right moment."

Vaughan Williams became one of the great symphonists of the twentieth
century not by seeking originality, but simply by being himself and
finding his own mot juste. I'm pondering this because I'm
contemplating putting up a page of unoriginal music on my web site.
That way people can see what a true conservative composer is like, and
discover that any idea they may hold that I--who compose things in
tunings never before used, using methods never before tried--am not
original, is a delusion. My concern is not with becoming more
original, since I am already quite, quite sufficently original. It is
with finding my own mot juste.

The tuning connection for all this? I'm thinking of showing that
meantone music is still being composed in the 21st century, and that a
lot of it is good. It's just not original. Some of it I really like
and moreover have fun retuning into meantone. There are talented
composers out there who write in meantone and never heard of it.

I would suggest you just do what you want to do, Gene, and damn the
torpedoers... That which interests *you* the most is, logically
enough, going to have the most interest, eventually, for others...

J. Pehrson

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <gwsmith@s...> wrote:
>
> "Why should music be 'original'? The object of art is to stretch out
> to the ultimate realities through the medium of beauty. The duty of
> the composer is to find the mot juste. It does not matter if this
word
> has been said a thousand times before as long as it is the right
thing
> to say at that moment. If it is not the right thing to say, however
> unheard of it may be, it is of no artistic value. Music which is
> unoriginal is so, not simply because it has been said before, but
> because the composer has not taken the trouble to make sure that
this
> was the right thing to say at the right moment."
>
> Vaughan Williams became one of the great symphonists of the
twentieth
> century not by seeking originality, but simply by being himself and
> finding his own mot juste. I'm pondering this because I'm
> contemplating putting up a page of unoriginal music on my web site.
> That way people can see what a true conservative composer is like,
and
> discover that any idea they may hold that I--who compose things in
> tunings never before used, using methods never before tried--am not
> original, is a delusion. My concern is not with becoming more
> original, since I am already quite, quite sufficently original. It
is
> with finding my own mot juste.
>
> The tuning connection for all this? I'm thinking of showing that
> meantone music is still being composed in the 21st century, and
that a
> lot of it is good. It's just not original. Some of it I really like
> and moreover have fun retuning into meantone. There are talented
> composers out there who write in meantone and never heard of it.

Gene,

Thanks you for this wonderful quote!

There's another "tuning connection" to it: the problem of
originality is one that eventually confronts every composer
and every performer who seeks a more-than-karaoke
imitation.

Regards,
Yahya

-----Original Message-----
________________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 05 Apr 2005 08:15:21 -0000
From: "Gene Ward Smith"
Subject: Ralph Vaughan Williams on originality

"Why should music be 'original'? The object of art is to stretch out
to the ultimate realities through the medium of beauty. The duty of
the composer is to find the mot juste. It does not matter if this word
has been said a thousand times before as long as it is the right thing
to say at that moment. If it is not the right thing to say, however
unheard of it may be, it is of no artistic value. Music which is
unoriginal is so, not simply because it has been said before, but
because the composer has not taken the trouble to make sure that this
was the right thing to say at the right moment."

Vaughan Williams became one of the great symphonists of the twentieth
century not by seeking originality, but simply by being himself and
finding his own mot juste.
....

The tuning connection for all this?
...

________________________________________________________________________

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--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Joseph Pehrson" <jpehrson@r...> wrote:

> I would suggest you just do what you want to do, Gene, and damn the
> torpedoers... That which interests *you* the most is, logically
> enough, going to have the most interest, eventually, for others...

Thanks, Joe. I will anyway, in fact I'm too untutored to be as
unoriginal as I might like.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Yahya Abdal-Aziz" <yahya@m...> wrote:

> There's another "tuning connection" to it: the problem of
> originality is one that eventually confronts every composer
> and every performer who seeks a more-than-karaoke
> imitation.

Thanks, Yahya. What you say makes a lot of sense, I'm just not sure it
is true. After evolving some distinctive methods of composition, it
seems to me that mostly what comes out of the process doesn't sound
quite like what anyone else is doing, so I don't feel originality ends
up being a problem. My biggest concern is to achieve a satisfactory
level of unoriginality by means of traditional formal structures.

Anyway, compositions are cooking again, after I gave up for a while,
so we shall see.

On 6/4/05 10:13 am, "Gene Ward Smith" <gwsmith@svpal.org> wrote:

> There's another "tuning connection" to it: the problem of
>> originality is one that eventually confronts every composer
>> and every performer who seeks a more-than-karaoke
>> imitation.
>
> Thanks, Yahya. What you say makes a lot of sense, I'm just not sure it
> is true.

I agree.

a composer has to find their own path.

how close or far away that is from anyone else's path is impossible to
judge.

a romantic JI composer is in a lot of respects more "original" than a
cutting-edge composer who has never considered tuning..

steve parker.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <gwsmith@s...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Joseph Pehrson" <jpehrson@r...> wrote:
>
> > I would suggest you just do what you want to do, Gene, and damn the
> > torpedoers... That which interests *you* the most is, logically
> > enough, going to have the most interest, eventually, for others...
>
> Thanks, Joe. I will anyway, in fact I'm too untutored to be as
> unoriginal as I might like.

***That's a funny statement... :)

JP