On Sunday, November 10, 2002, at 10:12 AM, Christopher BJ Smith wrote:
First off, let me say that this "songwriter/composer" distinction is not one that I normally choose to make -- it's not that important to me. But since Linda decided she *did* want to make that distinction, I was just suggesting that while there are lots of pop artists who are properly "songwriters" by the usual definition, there are also a handful who are much closer to the 19th-century idea of a composer. Let me also say that I don't believe composers are necessarily *better* than songwriters.At 12:56 AM -0500 11/10/02, Darcy James Argue wrote:On Sunday, November 10, 2002, at 12:10 AM, Linda Worsley wrote:However, Brian Wilson, Stevie Wonder, Prince, et al. ARE songwriters. I don't choose to call them composers. Hell, I don't even call Irving Berlin a "composer".Well, no, of course not. So long as we're picking nits, Irving Berlin was a songwriter in my book because he really didn't concern himself with the details of orchestration, arrangement, interpretation, etc of any of his tunes. As far has he was concerned, he was responsible for the lyrics, the melody, and the chord changes (with various degrees of help at all three stages), and that was it. He had no interest in creating the "definitive" recording of any of his works (with the orchestration *he* wanted, the arrangement *he* wanted, the recording techniques *he* wanted) -- in fact, the idea that there could even be such a thing as a "definitive" recording was probably incredibly foreign to him. Most (not all) pre-Beatles songwriters operated in this way.
I'm not sure the idea of a "definitive" recording, or even of a "definitive" performance, is important at all to the concept of "composing."
Now that we got that out of the way, the idea of "definitiveness" or "specificity" is absolutely central to composition in the 19th century. You had an explosion of notational devices designed to communicate the composer's vision more exactly -- metronome marks, articulations, a range of dynamics from pppp to ffff (and hairpins in between), bowings and fingerings, pedal markings, mute changes, emotive descriptions in the score like "mournful," "weary," etc etc etc. These were composers who knew exactly what they wanted and spent a lot of time trying to write it *all* into the score so that their intention would be clear to the conductors and the performers. Now of course this is just one approach among many to composition, but it's an approach that Linda certainly had in mind when she claimed that the ability to write it all out was central to being a "real composer." Whereas my take on that is that if you accept the 19th-century ideal as your paradigm of "composer," than what is really important is not the mundane fact that they "wrote it all out" but the reason *why* they wrote it all out -- because they had specific, definitive ideas about what their piece ought to sound like. My point is that there are direct analogies to this in the jazz and pop worlds -- composers who may or may not have written it all out but definitely knew *exactly* what they wanted their music to sound like and took steps (up to and including threats of physical violence, as you mentioned) to make sure it was played to their specifications.
Like I said, I don't mean to denigrate the art of songwriting by any means, and I don't normally bother about these distinctions. But yes, if I had to pick nits, most jazz writers don't write full-fledged compositions in the classical sense of the word. This is only natural, since their purpose from the outset is writing vehicles for improvisation. Also, the whole Tin Pan Alley songwriting tradition (that jazz inherited by default) was about writing relatively flexible blueprints that could be interpreted over and over again in various ways by various artists. It was no good writing a song that could only be sung by one person, you'd never make any money on that. (Again, there's nothing wrong with that tradition!) Anyway, other jazz writers write blueprints that get a little more specific, that make certain demands of the improviser, so they can't just play the way they always play. I'm thinking especially of Monk and Mingus here, but also Ornette Coleman, Wayne Shorter, Kenny Wheeler, etc. Then of course there's the Ellington/Gil+Miles etc tradition of writing that is geared to take advantage of the talents of specific players -- even though it might be very close to completely written out. And (Wynton Marsalis's assertions to the contrary) there have always been jazz writers who specify practically everything ("specify," note -- whether it's written on paper or not is totally beside the point), from Jelly Roll Morton right up to Ben Monder.To me a composer is someone who concerns himself will all aspects of the musical statement, from the big picture to the gritty details, whereas a songwriter is someone who is concerned with providing a (relatively open-ended) musical blueprint and is content to let other people fill in the details.Hmm. So I guess all those great jazz composers we all like were just "songwriters?"
Normally, I'm quite happy referring to everyone in this ragged assembly as a full-fledged composer and calling it a night. But occasionally it's also useful to make finer distinctions, or to call attention to the various gradations between "barely specified at all" and "you better play this exactly the way I want or I'll kick your ass."
- Darcy
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