Two composers go in... two come out
November 26, 2019 11:03 AM Subscribe
Classical music is full of collaborations, but I'm looking for examples of one specific type: a substantial piece of notated music that was an equal collaboration between two composers from the ground up.
The more recent, the better. But I'm looking for examples from any era that are all 5 of these things:
1) equal (by two composers who explicitly identified and credited each other as equal collaborators – not a primary composer who brought on a helper, and not the studio-farm traditions of film music);
2) substantial, let's say 20+ mins long;
3) notated – fixed in score form for live performers to realize (not an improvised or audio-only project);
4) entire piece was a collaboration (not 'I write one segment, you write the next,' and not 'I write a piece for one instrumentation, you orchestrate it for another'); and
5) not primarily about chance or non-chosen process (such as when Cage & Lou Harrison independently wrote lines of music with the intention of combining them).
I'll look through Wikipedia's list more closely, but it seems to be mostly pieces that miss one or more of the points above, or are more ambiguous-authorship than explicit collaboration.
Thanks for all ideas!
The more recent, the better. But I'm looking for examples from any era that are all 5 of these things:
1) equal (by two composers who explicitly identified and credited each other as equal collaborators – not a primary composer who brought on a helper, and not the studio-farm traditions of film music);
2) substantial, let's say 20+ mins long;
3) notated – fixed in score form for live performers to realize (not an improvised or audio-only project);
4) entire piece was a collaboration (not 'I write one segment, you write the next,' and not 'I write a piece for one instrumentation, you orchestrate it for another'); and
5) not primarily about chance or non-chosen process (such as when Cage & Lou Harrison independently wrote lines of music with the intention of combining them).
I'll look through Wikipedia's list more closely, but it seems to be mostly pieces that miss one or more of the points above, or are more ambiguous-authorship than explicit collaboration.
Thanks for all ideas!
Response by poster: Good question but nope, looking for an integrated whole – "let's conceive and write a picc-tbn piece together"
posted by kalapierson at 11:45 AM on November 26, 2019
posted by kalapierson at 11:45 AM on November 26, 2019
Define "classical"? I'm racking my brains and coming up blank but also wondering, as I continue to think what kind of works would qualify.
posted by less of course at 11:57 AM on November 26, 2019
posted by less of course at 11:57 AM on November 26, 2019
I guess I'm wondering what kind of process you have in mind. Do they reach consensus on every note or phrase? Or is there some amount of "ok, I'll let you handle that part" somewhere in there?
posted by nebulawindphone at 12:10 PM on November 26, 2019
posted by nebulawindphone at 12:10 PM on November 26, 2019
Response by poster: Thanks for the questions – for the process, I do mean something closer to consensus-on-every-detail than to "this element will be mine to do and this element will be yours to do, throughout the piece," but you're right, it's relatively unexplored territory!
As for "classical": For our purposes here I mean a fully notated piece for performers to realize – the work product is the score.
For example: like two people equally conceiving & writing a play together (the work product is the script), as opposed to doing an improv performance together (the work product is the performance).
I'm looking for examples of two people working out every element of a fixed piece together, from the structure to the last detail (just like a classical composer typically does when they're working alone).
posted by kalapierson at 12:10 PM on November 26, 2019
As for "classical": For our purposes here I mean a fully notated piece for performers to realize – the work product is the score.
For example: like two people equally conceiving & writing a play together (the work product is the script), as opposed to doing an improv performance together (the work product is the performance).
I'm looking for examples of two people working out every element of a fixed piece together, from the structure to the last detail (just like a classical composer typically does when they're working alone).
posted by kalapierson at 12:10 PM on November 26, 2019
This feels sort of dumb to consider classical music but it seems to meet your criteria and maybe it will be in a hundred years...Chess? Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus are both credited with the music, it's well over 20 minutes long, it is fully notated, I'm not 100% sure about item 4 but I think when songwriters collaborate, it's not likely to be "you do this one; I'll do that one"; It is not aleatory though that's kind of funny to imagine. It's obviously in a weird gray area for your question. It's not pop music, per se, but it doesn't get put on at Ojai or Mostly Mozart. I figured I'd toss it in the ring just because I really can't think of other stuff like what you're describing.
posted by less of course at 1:40 PM on November 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by less of course at 1:40 PM on November 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
Well, there is this (Grisha Krivchenia) and more generally, the Lifesongs program.
This is perhaps not right down the centerline of what you are thinking about, because clearly one collaborator is bringing pretty much all of the musical skill and knowledge, and the other is bringing something else. But they do seem to approach projects as a true collaboration between two people, and end up with a work that definitely would not have happened except for that collaboration.
FWIW I've done somewhat similar projects, though with young children, and I can say that you definitely end up with something far different than you would have just setting off on your own with no collaboration.
On the flip side, it is indeed pretty hard to think of classical works that are a collaboration in the same sense that, say, Good Omens seems to have been pretty much an equal collaboration between Gaiman and Pratchett--the type where you have two people who are both clearly capable of writing an outstanding novel all on their own, and where the work was really conceived in collaboration and everything from plot to characterization to detail writing and editing was discussed at length and passed back and forth extensively. (Though even there they each took on primary responsibility for certain sections or characters, and it's not far different from what composers like Newman & Hermann in the Egyptian or Zimmer and Howard on the Batman movies, or even the various suites and sets of variations written by collaborating composers.)
There must be some more examples somewhere of this type of truly equal collaboration, from conception to execution--if not among the most famous composers then among the thousands of others throughout history. But it is hard to think of any.
posted by flug at 2:13 PM on November 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
This is perhaps not right down the centerline of what you are thinking about, because clearly one collaborator is bringing pretty much all of the musical skill and knowledge, and the other is bringing something else. But they do seem to approach projects as a true collaboration between two people, and end up with a work that definitely would not have happened except for that collaboration.
FWIW I've done somewhat similar projects, though with young children, and I can say that you definitely end up with something far different than you would have just setting off on your own with no collaboration.
On the flip side, it is indeed pretty hard to think of classical works that are a collaboration in the same sense that, say, Good Omens seems to have been pretty much an equal collaboration between Gaiman and Pratchett--the type where you have two people who are both clearly capable of writing an outstanding novel all on their own, and where the work was really conceived in collaboration and everything from plot to characterization to detail writing and editing was discussed at length and passed back and forth extensively. (Though even there they each took on primary responsibility for certain sections or characters, and it's not far different from what composers like Newman & Hermann in the Egyptian or Zimmer and Howard on the Batman movies, or even the various suites and sets of variations written by collaborating composers.)
There must be some more examples somewhere of this type of truly equal collaboration, from conception to execution--if not among the most famous composers then among the thousands of others throughout history. But it is hard to think of any.
posted by flug at 2:13 PM on November 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
I suspect the closest you're going to come is a case where a later composer orchestrates or arranges the work of an earlier one, like Ravel's orchestration/arrangement of Mussorgsky's "Pictures At An Exhibition."
posted by daisystomper at 5:03 PM on November 26, 2019
posted by daisystomper at 5:03 PM on November 26, 2019
I'm not sure if they talk much about their process, but the Bang on a Can composers have released works as the collective. I suspect there's some trading off on sections. It's worth investigating if it fully fits your definition.
The Carbon Copy Building, Lost Objects, Shelter, and The New Yorkers are the works I'm referring to.
posted by lownote at 6:06 PM on November 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
The Carbon Copy Building, Lost Objects, Shelter, and The New Yorkers are the works I'm referring to.
posted by lownote at 6:06 PM on November 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
Related to lownote’s suggestion, Bang on a Can released an album with Gong Linna and her composer husband Lao Luo called Cloud River Mountain which may scratch this itch. (Here’s a video of them performing the work.)
posted by the fringe of the flame at 6:57 PM on November 26, 2019
posted by the fringe of the flame at 6:57 PM on November 26, 2019
'Yellow River Piano Concerto' (1969) is about as close to a collaborative classical (sort-of) composition that I can think of.
posted by ovvl at 1:26 PM on November 27, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by ovvl at 1:26 PM on November 27, 2019 [1 favorite]
Another place to look might be works like Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio, which he wrote in collaboration with Carl Davis. I expect that McCartney wrote the tunes, and Davis did the orchestration.
posted by Jasper Fnorde at 5:28 PM on November 28, 2019
posted by Jasper Fnorde at 5:28 PM on November 28, 2019
Response by poster: Definitely the BOAC collabs are interesting here (despite the questions of trading off vs. every-detail-consensus) because they know each other so closely and have so much aesthetic overlap
posted by kalapierson at 1:41 AM on December 2, 2019
posted by kalapierson at 1:41 AM on December 2, 2019
Yellow River sounds like a good candidate, all right.
Along those lines--the Yellow River Concerto was written by two composers, and based on an earlier cantata written by a third--and also the "later composer orchestrates or arranges the work of an earlier one" idea mentioned by daisystomper, there are some examples of 'recomposing' an earlier composers work that are so extensive as to qualify to some interesting degree as a collaboration.
For example, many of Franz Liszt's opera paraphrases were simply recastings of the main, most popular arias in the opera into piano form. So, just re-arranging an existing work into a different form, but nothing you would really characterize as a true collaboration.
But there are a couple of the paraphrases, most notably the Don Juan Fantasy, that rise far above that to really become a collaborative work between Mozart and Liszt.
A similar example is Pulcinella, which was recomposed by Stravinsky based on music from a commedia dell'arte written around 200 years earlier by Pergolesi and probably a slew of other composers from that era.
The point there is that neither Pergolesi et al nor Stravinski would have written anything nearly like that on their own. It's a true fusion of the composers' ideas and styles.
Same goes with Liszt and Mozart in the Don Juan Fantasy.
Even though it's not composing the music per se, the process commonly seen in classical music that reminds me most strongly of what we see in other musical genres, where a group of people do work in true collaborative fashion on a work, is in opera and ballet music. In more modern times, something like a musical is typically made much the same way.
These are works that are almost always the result of a true collaboration among a small group of artists and authors. Most typically some are working on music, some on lyrics, some on staging, choreography, etc, but in the end that all do push and pull each other significantly.
So it's not a group of composers collaborating to make a musical work, but it is a group of artists collaborating to make a multimedia work. Not quite the same as what you're looking for, but similar.
posted by flug at 3:03 PM on December 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
Along those lines--the Yellow River Concerto was written by two composers, and based on an earlier cantata written by a third--and also the "later composer orchestrates or arranges the work of an earlier one" idea mentioned by daisystomper, there are some examples of 'recomposing' an earlier composers work that are so extensive as to qualify to some interesting degree as a collaboration.
For example, many of Franz Liszt's opera paraphrases were simply recastings of the main, most popular arias in the opera into piano form. So, just re-arranging an existing work into a different form, but nothing you would really characterize as a true collaboration.
But there are a couple of the paraphrases, most notably the Don Juan Fantasy, that rise far above that to really become a collaborative work between Mozart and Liszt.
A similar example is Pulcinella, which was recomposed by Stravinsky based on music from a commedia dell'arte written around 200 years earlier by Pergolesi and probably a slew of other composers from that era.
The point there is that neither Pergolesi et al nor Stravinski would have written anything nearly like that on their own. It's a true fusion of the composers' ideas and styles.
Same goes with Liszt and Mozart in the Don Juan Fantasy.
Even though it's not composing the music per se, the process commonly seen in classical music that reminds me most strongly of what we see in other musical genres, where a group of people do work in true collaborative fashion on a work, is in opera and ballet music. In more modern times, something like a musical is typically made much the same way.
These are works that are almost always the result of a true collaboration among a small group of artists and authors. Most typically some are working on music, some on lyrics, some on staging, choreography, etc, but in the end that all do push and pull each other significantly.
So it's not a group of composers collaborating to make a musical work, but it is a group of artists collaborating to make a multimedia work. Not quite the same as what you're looking for, but similar.
posted by flug at 3:03 PM on December 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
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posted by nebulawindphone at 11:40 AM on November 26, 2019