Customer Reviews

Techniques of the Contemporary Composer

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This book attempts to introduce most of the important techniques of modern music since 1945. This is a tall order. The years from 1945 to about 1975 were years of explosive development of new musical languages, perhaps more explosive and diverse than at any other time in musical history. What impresses most about this book is how well Cope outlines most of these techniques and how non-dogmatic and practical his approach really is.

I have to strongly disagree with one of the reviewers below. This book is certainly not in depth...and Cope's fund of techniques tend to favor the modernist and stop about 1975 or so,,,but honestly, most innovation in compositional technique did stop about 1975. Music written since that time has tended to develop one or more of these techniques, but not really break new ground. (Even in electronic music, the new ground broken has been primarily technical, innovative in instruments and computer usage, but not really innovative in basic langauge.

None of the sections in this book gets an exhaustive cover. If you find yourself interested in twleve-tone or serial composition, you may need to aquire other books...if your interest is peaked by aleatoric procedures, other books will be needed. The purpose of this book is not to be exhaustive, but to whet the appetite of the younger composer. I am no longer a young composer, and yet I found some techniques that, while not new to me, I had never previously considered in any serious way. (The chapter on Pitch Class Sets was excellent. I had never thought seriously about these as compositional techniques, more as methods of analysis. I found the chapter to be rich and to spur many ideas for both my compositions and my improvisational group work.)

There are some problems with the book. The section on Algorythmic Composition and Computer music is highly outdated. This is arguably the one area of music where significant innovation has taken place in the past 25 years. To leave out any mention of MIDI and digital synthesis...as well as serious discussion on fractals and interactive music, is not good. Perhaps a further revision of the book will try to keep up with this fast growing area of music.

Also, the final chapter on integration and eclecticism left me disappointed. As the academic stnagle-hold of high modernism fades, styles continue to diversify, and the old debates about tonal or pan-tonal music fade into a murmur, it is becoming obvious that the techniques described in the book are just that, techniques. They are probably not the basis for a complete personal style. Style develops when composers artfully combine many of these techniques, used imaginatively. As such, the integration chapter should be the most relevant. Instead, it feels perfunctory...each level of integration is described in a paragraph or two, and these levels aren't sufficiently differentiated to really mean anything.

Still, on the whole, the book is a useful overview and would make a good text for an introductory composition course. Any composer, regardless of his or her final vision, should have a working knowledge of all of these techniques. You may not use them ultimately, but without a practical understanding of them, your craft will only remain half formed.

This book is geared for a younger composer who hasn't had experience in writing in a contemporary style, or is unfamiliar with some techniques such as pitch-sets. It is practical, and it gives some exercises at the end of each chapter to give some hands-on experience with these techniques. Sure, there may not be anything groundbreaking here, but if you're unfamiliar with contemporary techniques, take a good look at this book.

A good book that contains general information about composition techniques. I wish it was slightly more detailed. Nonetheless, it is a great book to have if your are a composer. I often find myself looking through this book when I get a case of writer's block.

I didn't like it. This book takes a rather 'coffee table' approach to the topic, and is very basic. I found nothing I had not seen before, and nothing to inspire new composition. Basicly, it takes each simple compositional idea, breifly explains it, and moves on. Since the ideas are rather straighforward to begin with, this isn't much use.

Any musician in contact with the latest music styles and even relatively old electronic toys (such as the sequencer), will find this book rather useless - especially the chapters on algorithmic and electronic music. The stuff here is really old hat!

I was looking for inspirational new composition techniques. Didn't find it here. Still, if you won't listen to any music that wasn't written for full orchestra, beleive that all real music has to be written out with pen and paper and are looking for a simple overveiw of some 'new fangled tricks' that people have tried in the last hundred years to kick start their writing process, you may find something here of use.