THE ETUDE MAY 1920 Page 295 Musical Jerry-Building Written Expressly for THE ETUDE by F. CORDER Professor of Composition at the Royal Academ y of Music, London, England 11 JERRY-BUILDING—To build cheaply and unsubstantially as with cheap or insufficient material."—WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY Teacher.—Good morning, young lady! An d ho w did you like my last discourse? Pupil.—Well, since you ask me, I must confess that much o f it was above my head, and what I could un-derstand, I didn't like. T— Ho w was that? P.—You said that real composition begins where rhythmical tune-making ends. T.—I did. P.—Then Bizet's Carmen and Sullivan's Mikado and Schumann's Scenes of Childhood are not compositions, according to you ? T—The y are not. P.—Well, they are goo d enough fo r me. T.—I must remind you that I began by pointing out that it was not a question of their intrinsic merit, which no one would dream o f questioning, but that the term composition can only be fitly applied to music in which the joints do not show. P.—I cannot see that that matters. T— I also said that it was not a question of what one preferred, or could appreciate, but P. (hotly)—O f course, if I have no taste it is of no use my studying music T.—On the contrary, your taste is just the thing that will improve by study. D o yo u think much o f the things you wrote last year ? P. (smiling)—Well , I can't say I do, and they seemed so nice at the time, too. T.—Then why not believe that there are heights yet unsealed? P.—I don't think I care about scaling those you were describing. D o yo u call writing hymn-tunes Jerry-building? T.—Yes; it sounds unkind, perhaps, but vhat artistic skill is necessary? Yo u count up the syllables and put notes to them, long and short, but that is all. P.—I kno w that one ought to vary the cadences, but I don't always remember to do it, and I put more nice chromatic chords than you approve of T.—To exhibit your artistic skill? One day your more educated taste will perceive that diatonic harmony is more suitable and sings better. P. (incredulously)—Perhaps. D o you call writing songs Jerry-building? T.—Yes, when the words are set straight on end and the verses all separate, with perfunctory bits fo r the piano in between. I have often had it in mind to make a machine which would do the wor k every bit as well as the amateur. P.—That Victory March I wrote last year, was that Jerry-built? T.—Very much so, except fo r the Coda, which I showed yo u ho w to manage. Th e rest was all in bits, and after the first eight bars you tumbled into the sub-dominant out o f sheer helplessness. P.—But it was in Rond o form, at least. T.—That is no excuse fo r slovenly workmanship. A March doesn't want much composition, but it could do with some. P. (meditatively)—It is curious that I can always modulate to every key but the one I want to. T.—Losing hold o f one key and tumbling into an-other is unworthy to be called modulating. Ther e is only one modulation you need to learn—that to the dominant. I have shown you ho w to effect it and you hailed m y instruction with rapture, but yo u have not yet succeeded in applying it. P.—I wonder why. T.—Because you cannot yet grasp the idea of a half-close ; all your ideas come to a natural end with a full-close. P.—If they come so naturally, ho w can I help it? T.—The old complaint! If they are to be let g o as they please, where do you com e in? Whe n you forc e your ideas to do as you like, and not as they like, your music will cease to be Jerry-built and will become actual composition. P.—Shall I try to write a part-song? T.—There is scope fo r composition there, but not if you fudg e it out at the piano. P.—Wh y not ? T.—Because there will be no real part-writing. You r ear can help you to make a tune, and your fingers can help you to harmonize it, but a proper part-song must have all the parts to some extent melodic instead o f harmonic. Even the principal melodic line must not be given only to the soprano, but sometimes appear even in the bass. P.—That sounds difficult. Perhaps I had better con -tent myself with piano pieces. T.—Well and good ; only take McDowel l or Jensen as your models, rather than Grieg or Schumann. P.—Why ? T.—Because the forme r sometimes "compose " their pieces—using the term in the sense I have described— the latter scarcely ever do. P. (brightly)—O, I kno w what I wanted to say! I came across such a nice book the other day. I forget the author's name and where it was published, but it was a Manual o f Extemporization, and showed one ho w to make up whole pieces so easily that one could play them straight off as one composed them. T.—I think I kno w the wor k you mean. Th e author gives yo u a theme, and after explaining ho w phrases in a tune "rhyme," he shows you ho w to add fou r bars to complete, it, and then ho w to turn these into sixteen, and so on. But I showed you all this ages ago. Wha t you failed to g~asp was that the writer was purposely Jerry-building, or making musical doggerel, because extemporization has to be accomplished without much conscious thought; there is no time fo r it. S o long as half a sentence is invented and the other half at once made to match, all the rest o f the piece may be as cheap as you please, provided the extemporizer can retain the original fragment in his head. Wit h practice, anybody can learn to extemporize, just as they can learn to make an impromptu speech or sermon. P.—But I once heard that blind organist, Mr . , improvise in the most ravishing manner, and I have Previous Articles in This Series [EDITOK' S NOTE :—Man y o f TH E ETUD E reader s who followed Professor Corder's instructive and at the same time always entertaining articles on musical composition will be delighted to have them resumed. There are literally thousands of people who have a strong desire to construct a little musical composition —if they "only knew how to go about it." Profes-sor Corder's articles have been so plain that anyone playing third or fourth grade piano pieces who has had a good drilling in scales and keys should be able to appreciate them. In connection with this course as it has been running in THE ETUDE, we can confi-dently advise a good beginner's harmony, such as that of Preston Ware Orem. Indeed by procuring the pre-ceding and the succeeding articles in connection with self-study in the elements of harmony, many might easily learn enough to essay a few simple pieces. To the one who can compose, but who is not yet sure of his ground, Professor Corder's articles will be found invaluable. The previous articles in this series have been] : January, 1919—How to Compose. March—How to Use the Three Chords o f the Key, and to Make Cadences. April—Inversions and Part Writing . May—The Dominant Seventh. June—Ornamental Notes. July—Uncommon Chords. August—The Minor Key. September—Part Writing. December—Borrowed and Fancy Chords. January, 1920—Making Melodies and Tunes. February—Shape in Music. April—Real Composition. ofte n wished that his inspirations could be taken down by phonograph or something. T.—If they were you would be promptly disillusion-ized as to their artistic value. Your s is a very general delusion. Liszt was the most wonderfu l extemporizer ever known, and all his published works are extem-porizations written down. Th e first time you hear one you are delighted, but when you get closer to it, what do yo u find? P.—O, I know ! A s you say, it is all in bits) but wh y didn't he build better? Surely he knew ho w to ? T.—I believe he never studied the art, but he ex -temporized in public fro m as early an age as seven, and the bad habit o f Jerry-building soon gre w incur-able. Tak e any piece of his, great or small, fro m a song to a symphonic poem, and you will find always the same fault. Arrive d at the point where the resources o f composition are needed P.—Suc h as ? T.—Such as the extension of a two-bar idea by means o f sequence or of a four-bar idea by means o f a fresh continuation, with a gradual progress towards the nearest related key—he instead makes a surprising modulation to a quite distant key, with a cadenza or other break in the continuity o f his piece and then, without having done anything fresh, he usually starts again on his theme. Hence he is always disjointed, spasmodic and incoherent, despite the frequent beauty o f his ideas and the brilliant writing fo r piano or or -chestra. Th e lamentable lack o f construction, which I call "J erry-building " is more apparent in Liszt's music than in that o f any other musician of repute, and you may learn much to avoid in a study o f his works. Compare then the methods o f Chopin. Chopin was not great in the construction o f large pieces, it is use-less to blink the fact, but in his ballads, preludes and studies—even in the dance form s o f Mazurka, Valse and Polonaise, which pretend to no construction—you find the joins managed with infinite skill and ingenu-ity, the cadences are seemingly artless and regular, yet varied to the utmost. Look , fo r instance, at the well known Impromptu in A Flat. A t the eighth bar the first strain joins on to the second so neatly that the break is almost imperceptible, and in the next portion the gliding chromatic sequence quite removes any feeling of squareness by squeezing in one extra bar, while the babbling last cadence is a triumph in the art o f extension. P.—I have played that piece hundreds o f times, but I never noticed that there were nine bars instead of eight in the second strain. T.—Of course not, you were not meant to notice it. The art o f extending melody is the subtlest and most difficult branch of music. Th e feat is Accomplished by the great composers, Mozart, Beethoven and especially Haydn, with such skill that we take it fo r a natural accident—as we are intended to do—and this is com -position, as opposed to mere laying phrases side by side. P.—But why is it that when I try to do it it seems force d and unnatural? T.—Simply because your mind is not far enough on. Yo u require to kno w -much, much more o f what has been done by your predecessors—this is where girls are always foun d wanting—to have analyzed their wor k and learned their methods, not with a view to imitating them, but in order to acquire the habit o f analyzing and mercilessly criticizing all your ow n conceptions. P.—When I begin to pick an idea to pieces I soon get disgusted with it and abandon it as worthless. T.—Is that a bad thing, or do you want to inflict bad wor k upon yourself and others? P.—I suppose not, but to slaughter all my inno-cents . . ,
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