Concerto for Pen and Paper

Have you ever experienced a moment you wish you could hold onto forever?

I will surmise a “yes”.

You are not alone. Millions of Americans experience something worth cherishing every day. A portion of these individuals successfully capture this moment and successfully freeze time within it.

“How?” you ask.

The right-brained folds are waving their arms, stretching their tendons to share their epiphany. The logical left-brains idly peer at me, an eyebrow crooked saying, “The answer’s in the title.”

That’s right: ART! Art successfully captures a moment and even conveys the picture to others.

Now, there are many forms of art; I will focus on the two I understand best: music and writing.

What do the following have in common with the other?

-Brahms and Bradbury -Schubert and Shakespeare -Defoe and Debussy.

Other than clever alliteration, each of these created at least one widely-recognized composition; the first of each pair created musical compositions and the latter of each created literary compositions. These six individuals fall under the classification of “artist”. The process of creating artwork, or composition, is a fairly straightforward, whether it’s musical or literary. Procedural uniformity does not, however, deter from the task’s complexity.

In musical composition, my level of understanding does not match my familiarity with literary composition. However, applying my basic understanding of the art drew some universal connections to writing that I found rather interesting.

1. A writer begins a piece of work when they receive an idea: a piece of dialogue, a scrap of scenery, or an image of a character. A musician begins a piece of work when they discover a pleasant chord progression or just the right combination with their right hand on a piano.

2. Depending on the character, the dialogue, or the scene, an author quickly realizes the genre to which their piece belongs (e.g. Fantasy, SciFi, FanFic – yes, that counts nowadays – Auto/Biographical, Romance). Likewise, a composer realizes the key signature of a piece as the chord progression continues.

3. The main voice of any piece of writing is the Point of View. A writer must select the narrator early in the writing process. Will the protagonist (main character) narrate in “I” and “me” (first person) or will an unseen narrator tell the events and thoughts of the protagonist (third person limited) and the other characters of the story (third person omniscient)? I won’t add second person to this queue, as it is silly and awkward to format an entire novel with it (referring to oneself as “you”, such as talking to oneself: You hear a noise outside.) POV decision settles the projected voice within the piece. The decision of Time Signature works the same way for music; this fraction-resembling image instructs the beats per measure over which note represents a full beat (e.g. 2/4 means the dividers of music contain two beats each in a time signature that gives the quarter note – hence the “quad/quarter” reference in the number 4 – the prestige of being the beat value.) Confused yet? To be concise, the time signature sets the cadence to the piece, therefore creating its voice and writing structure.

4. Another important aspect of any writing piece is pace. An action-driven pace will have knife fights, car chases, dynamic twists, pounding fists, and drilling-point sentence structure. However, a character-driven pace will take use a relaxed pace to document personal growth and day-to-day uses of objects: knives will cut bread, not people; cars will drive, not chase; there will be few twists, but they won’t be that dramatic until the final turning point; fists will clench in passion, not anger; the sentence structure will flow into long, languid phrases of description and normal dialogue. The pace is crucial to development; an action novel will not diagnose a freelancing spy with cystic fibrosis. Nor will a cancer patient in a personal growth novel engage in a shooting spree out the sliding door of an unmarked van on a mission to kidnap the prime minister. In music, the tempo will set the defining pace: the tempos of Sousa marches center on 120 beats per minute (bpm), not 70. Likewise, “Moonlight Sonata”, a rather pensive composition, carries the tempo marking “Adagio” which falls within the range of mid-sixties to mid-seventies bpm. Finding the right pace ensures the strength of a piece.

5. This bullet point will take far less time and brain power to read. Both forms of composition rely on mood identification to convey … well, mood!

6. This step is usually achieved after the piece is complete and sitting in the happy, tired, and relieved artist’s hands: length. Several titles classify written work by length: short story, novelette, novella, novels. I don’t know if there are any names for compositional lengths in music; if there are, I do not know them. Whereas a series is to multiple, successive literature, movements are to multiple, successive musical pieces. While you may be unable to read every part of a series in one sitting, musical movements continue with only brief interruption: generally not even long enough for audience applause – that is, unless you have an unaware audience member just waiting to feel their hands praise the worthy performers. However, that’s not considered applause; that’s just awkward noise from an embarrassed lone-clapper. But I digress.

7. This last point demonstrates that I am not a linear-thinker. This point is one of the preliminary considerations in a piece of composition: audience. No, I’m not still talking about the Lone-Clapper. “Audience” pertains to those reading a piece of literature. An author must determine if they write to children, teens, adults, or a specified interest, such as military, medical, or scientific. The musical composer must decide the level of proficiency they write for: will the piece be repertoire for a beginning band? High school? College? Professional? What about orchestration? Will it be a piece for a band (instrument that need air to make sound and percussion) or an orchestra (select band and stringed instruments)? Will the composer write for a soloist or a small group such as a duet (2), a trio (3), or a quartet (4) on up? Or will the piece cater to ensembles – small groups of musicians usually containing about one player on each part? Or will the performer not use an instrument at all but, instead, their voice? Will this performer be a soloist or part of a choir? Where is the proficiency? The pairings and questions are not endless, but for the sake of my fingers and your brain, we’ll say they are. The concentration on reader and performer controls word and theme choice in writing and note and rhythm choice in composers; this either expands or constricts a creation’s ability and constructs little barriers in the process of formation.

No matter the form, once the idea forms inside the mind of an artist, it becomes a burning passion to the finish line. Just knowing that you’ve uncovered one corner of a treasure drives the artist into a frenzy to unlock the masterpiece buried in their mind. Until the completion of the piece, and subsequent unleashing upon the world, the artist is unstoppable.

Both the writer and the composer have a story to tell. These two may share the same inspiration and may envision the same story; they just use different means of expression.

While I may describe a lively field of wheat and wildflowers under a blue sky with cotton-ball clouds in descriptive terms, a composition student may choose a flute solo filled with paired legato-staccato eighth notes and trills. Just the same, a canvas artist may choose a painterly style to make the wind whipping through wheat stalks seem tangible and visible, whereas a graphic designer may create a young model with wildflowers for a dress, sunlight and wind for skin, and wheat for hair.

Same inspiration.

Same depiction.

Same procedure.

Yet, the unique touch of an individual’s expression.