[ANPPOM-Lista] John Croft: "Composition Is Not Research"

[Carlos Palombini]

John Croft
​, "Composition is Not Research"
​, ​*Tempo* 69/272
​:​ 6-11, April 2015

There are, by and large, two kinds of composers in academia today – those
who labour under the​ ​delusion that they are doing a kind of ‘research’,
and those who recognise the absurdity of this​ ​idea, but who continue to
supervise PhD students, make funding applications, and document their​
activities as if it were true. Composing, of course, might on occasion​​
​depend on research – how do I make an orchestra sound like a bell? How do
I electronically sustain a note from an instrument so that it doesn’t sound
mechanical? What is the best way to notate microtones or complex rhythms so
that they can be accurately played? But none of these is actually the
composition of music. Rameau’s harmonic theory was research, and it surely
influenced his music (and music in general),
​ but the​ *​Traité de l’harmonie*​ ​is not a musical composition​. ​The
development of the pianoforte involved research and influenced music in
profound ways, but it was not composing.​

One might argue that at least the construction of compositional systems is
research. Now, even​ ​granting this, it would remain the case that good and
bad music can be made from any system – so​ ​after all the explications of
technique, the compositionally important thing would remain​ ​unexplained
and untouched. But in reality even compositional systems are not research
in any​ ​strong sense. This is because the answer to any conceivable
‘research question’ that might be​ ​involved is known in advance. Imagine,
if you will, a research funding application from​ ​Schoenberg. Research
question: ‘can I make music in which all pitch classes are played equally​
​often?’. Answer: yes! Or one from Grisey: ‘can I make chords out of the
pitches revealed by
​ ​
spectral
​ ​
analysis?’ Answer: yes! Can I write a piece by sonifying the human genome?
Actually, yes! If the​ ​answer to your ‘research question’ is always
(trivially) ‘yes’, then there’s no research going on.

But this is in fact what grant applications, composition PhD abstracts, and
the ‘research narratives’​ ​we are required to write for the ‘Research
Excellence Framework’ (or its equivalents in an​ ​increasing number of
other countries) tend to look like. Sometimes, as if aware of the problem,
we​ ​insert an evaluative term: ‘can a coherent​ ​musical structure be
developed from sonification of the​ ​human genome?’ Without the word
‘coherent’ the answer is of course yes. So we put something in​ ​to make it
seem like the result is not a foregone conclusion. But of course it​ ​is​ a
foregone​ ​conclusion, because what one generally means by such a question
is ‘can I write convincing music​ ​with this technique?’ where the person
to be convinced is… me! Can I write music that I think is​ ​good? It turns
out I can. Now, we could of course conduct research into questions like
this: we​ ​could, for example, empirically test the perceived cohesion of
music constructed in a certain way.

But composition in that case would be the test stimulus for a music
psychology experiment, not itself research. Alternatively, we might look at
how often composers have decided to use certain techniques – but in that
case the compositions are data, again not themselves research. Furthermore,
if pre-compositional work and system building cannot be classed as
research, then it is not possible to avoid this problem by claiming that
compositions are in some sense the ‘findings’ of a research process.
Indeed, the bizarre idea that the purpose of a musical composition is to
report findings brings into stark relief the category error that is at work
here.

http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/bitstream/2438/10922/3/Fulltext.pdf

-- 
carlos palombini, ph.d. (dunelm)
professor de musicologia ufmg
professor colaborador ppgm-unirio
www.proibidao.org
ufmg.academia.edu/CarlosPalombini <http://goo.gl/KMV98I>
www.researchgate.net/profile/Carlos_Palombini2
scholar.google.com.br/citations?user=YLmXN7AAAAAJ
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