Score perfect harmony . . .
QUESTION How does a composer of a symphony write each instrument’s part in the score?
By the late 18th century, music had evolved from liturgical chant to operas and great symphonies where more than 100 instruments played together.
When J. S. Bach was composing, music was often written without detailing which instruments should play the various parts. A fugue could be played by any combination of instruments, assuming they were able to play within a given musical range.
Composers began to specify settings for instruments. this added complexity to composition: the combination of instruments was considered and the dynamics and ornamentations were represented in scores.
While each composer had a unique process of composition, it invariably involved the production of a musical sketch. Much like in painting, this was the bones upon which a more complex composition could be hung.
Composers would lay out a melody on a piano or harpsichord and then build up layers of instrumentation on paper using their understanding of harmony, balance and timbre.
Brahms burned his sketches once a work was completed. On the other hand, Beethoven would struggle with an idea, putting down fragments of sketches in notebooks, only to realise the full form of the music years later.
Mozart was famed for being able to compose an entire piece of music in his head and then write it down fully formed — though this was not always the case. Unlike Beethoven’s messy scrawl, he produced beautiful, semi-formed sketches on which to construct his work.
D. B. Lewis, Goring-on-Thames, Oxon.
QUESTION Has anyone won a big prize from a lottery ticket given to them as a gift?
In 2018, Preston north end full back Kevin O’Connor was given the present of a lottery ticket for the Irish Christmas Millionaire Raffle by his uncle.
When it was announced that the winning ticket has been sold locally, but the prize had not been claimed, his parents urged him to check his numbers. he’d forgotten where he’d put it, but, thankfully, his girlfriend had kept it safe. When he checked it, he realised he had won the €1 million jackpot.
O’Connor’s uncle and godfather, Peadar Murphy, had bought the winning raffle ticket in Flanagan’s supermarket in Castlebridge, Co. Wexford.
Despite recommending scratch cards and lottery tickets as gifts, the national Lottery cautions: ‘Giving tickets as gifts is a great idea if it is completely understood that once you have handed the ticket to your chosen recipient that any winnings derived from that ticket belong to them and them alone.
‘If they choose not to give you any of the winnings, then that is their prerogative. A gift is a gift.’
Marjorie Holme, Lyme Regis, Dorset.
QUESTION Did Anthony Burgess dislike his novel A Clockwork Orange?
ANTHONY BURGESS regretted writing A Clockwork Orange, claiming it was ‘too didactic to be artistic’, too easily misunderstood and he was nauseated by the violence it could be seen to glorify. he came to repudiate the novel he had ‘knocked off for money in three weeks’.
Many great writers have been known to dislike at least some of their books.
Franz Kafka loathed his masterpiece the trial and at the end of his life pleaded with his friend Max Brod to burn his unpublished manuscripts. Brod refused.
Peter Benchley hated the phobia of sharks generated by his blockbuster novel Jaws and devoted his later years to protecting endangered species.
the James Bond story told from a female perspective, the Spy Who Loved Me, was not popular with critics and Ian Fleming tried to suppress it.
A. A. Milne was upset that he was better known for Winnie-the-Pooh than his numerous works for adults.
Arthur Conan Doyle rued the fact Sherlock holmes became more famous than he was, to such an extent that he tried to kill off his creation. Fortunately, the public wanted him saved.
For a variety of reasons, it seems many writers come to view their greatest creations as Frankenstein’s monsters.
Ian MacDonald, Billericay, Essex. Anthony Burgess dedicated much time and effort in his later years to denigrating A Clockwork Orange.
the story centres on Alex DeLarge and his band of ‘droogs’, who spend their evenings committing crimes. After being betrayed, Alex is incarcerated and forcibly conditioned to be physically ill in violent and sexual situations.
Its 21 chapters match the age of human maturity. By the end, Alex is growing out of his taste for violence and looking forward to a future as a family man.
however, this final redemptive chapter was cut from the U.S. edition. the 1971 Stanley Kubrick film adaptation, based on this version, gained notoriety when cited as the inspiration for unrelated, horrific violent crime and murders.
Burgess renounced his novel after seeing the film. he said the 21st chapter gave the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change.
In a recently discovered poem, A Sonnet For the emery Collegiate Institute, Burgess gleefully insults A Clockwork Orange and advises students to read the classics instead: ‘ Advice: don’t read A Clockwork Orange — it’s a foul farrago Of made-up words that bite and bash and bleed. I’ve written better books… So have other men, indeed. Read Hamlet, Shelley, Keats, Doctor Zhivago.’
Emilie Lamplough, Trowbridge, Wilts.
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