“Some have a wish for music to be primarily an antidote to existential loneliness. When music fills this role, it’s lovely, but the idea that this is music’s primary function is so limiting as to be just bathetic. Music is a powerful, temporal art, and it needs to fulfill all the functions of art—to challenge, to celebrate, to excite intellectually and spiritually. To draw an ineffectual line called ‘tonality’ in the sand, and demand that none shall pass, will not work.”

This is from an excellent article on New Music Box by Alan Fletcher, president of the Aspen Music Festival. It’s a good read who’s argument for why we need all kinds of music are not “bathetic.” It also goes into some of the myths that surround new music.

A composer at New Music Box is facing the titling dilema. Title the work? or use the generic “Untitled” for a piece. This was my response:

A piece without a name would be like a child without a name. How could you possibly refer to it, introduce it to anyone without a name? Even an abstract title like 5 Songs or Cycle of 7 Songs is better than Untitled because it at least lets people know a little fact about your piece. These structure/instrumentation titles are the equivalent for Untitled in a song cycle, but I would urge you to give the piece a proper name.

As concert musicians we cannot really get away with the lazy Untitled for a number of reasons. First of all, in the visual arts realm people usually only see the title after they have examined the painting, so the work is the introduction to itself. Here I am, it says. Then wanting to know more about the artist’s own ideas about the work, I turn to find the title. Even then, I am usually supremely dissapointed to find it labeled Untitled. I suddenly am left with the feeling that the artist didn’t care enough about the work to complete it. A title is part of the work.

In concert music, you will rarely have the opportunity for the music to introduce itself. The concert posters, the programs, news releases, etc. will be the first introduction to the piece, not the music itself. A title doesn’t have to please everyone, but it should evoke something about the piece that will hook the listener’s attention and make them anticipate it. Would you anticipate a piece more if it was entitled Sonata No. 1 or Short Ride in a Fast Machine? Song Cycle #5 or Quartet for the End of Time? Hybrids like this last example are great. They tell you what kind of piece it is and evoke a definite feeling. Samuel Barber’s Hermit Songs is another example of this.

The audience is not the only group of people you’ve got to “sell” your work to emotionally. When I go through the stacks of art songs at the local university library (I am a singer as well as a composer), my eyes gloss over when reviewing the hundreds of cycles titled things like 6 songs and the like. There is no memory hook and nothing to make me even open the score. If that title indicates the level of creativity the composer wields, why should I bother? You have to get the singer interested from the title if you hope that they will perform your piece, it is your only introduction to them. Singers tend to think of themselves as artists, you must woo them. Singers who focus on art songs tend to like poetry as well, so be poetic.

Lastly, when registering your works with a performing rights organization (ASCAP/BMI), it is just good business to give your work a distinct label, rather than Untitled #1, #2, #3 or so on.

After listening to the advice of others, go with your own gut instinct. You should resonate with the title. Don’t let others cajole you into doing it their way. I have an electroacoustic piece that I entitle “Frogbot in Love.” I love this title, but I had an acquaintance who loved the piece but despised my title. I refuse to change it. That is what the piece is about to me and anything else would be false advertising.

M Ryan Taylor

Salty Cricket Composers Collective

Such ideas are poppycock, though. Composers and have always embraced new technologies in order to create and refine music. The piano of the nineteenth century was a great refinement over the piano of the eighteenth century. Beethoven embraced the metronome as a wonderful tool to exactly express tempo. Electronic instruments and computer driven synthesizers are simply the natural evolution of our humanistic needs to create music and art in new, interesting, and culturally relevant ways.

You see, the history of technology and music is not only about hardware. It encompasses the relationship of technology to society and culture as a whole. As technology has changed, so has the artistic output of our culture. Electronic and computer technologies have proved a ready solution to certain musical problems. The challenges of creating new timbres (posed by Varese as early as 1915), textural music (such as the works of Penderecki) and stochastic music (Xenakis) have met a wonderful ally in electronic music technology. Thus new technologies are no different in function than the old. They are simply tools to create new art that is relevant for us in our day.

- John Newman

The Salty Cricket Composers Collective