Essay Sample on What Is the Relationship Between Composers/songwriters and Performers

Musical composers make music. They are also referred to as songwriters. A composer, thus, is a musician who authors music of any form as per his/her specialization, such as vocal music, electronic music, and instrumental music, alongside music that combines various other forms. In such a case, a composer can create music of any music genre, such as blues, musical theatre, classical music, jazz, popular music, or even folk music (Boss, Osborn, Pack, & Rodgers, 2013). It can be established that composers do express their works through written musical scores by the use of musical notation. It can also be established that most of the musical composers are the skilled music performers. Music makers need to have the skills of music composition for success to be observed in their careers.

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During musical composition, music makers learn composition by memorizing the small fragments of music, alongside learning the methods of changing and combining such fragments in particular ways. The processes of changing musical pieces force the composers to understand the art of composition deeply. The music creators also need to understand the motivation behind the composition (Boss et al., 2013). One of them includes the need to compose music that will clearly express the composer alongside his emotions such that other people will get to understand. In such a case, the composers aim at communicating more about themselves to the outside world, that can be reflected and related by people going or have gone through the same situations, and get to be consoled in the long run as such a situation indicates the nature of life. Also, the composers can create music mostly for themselves, yet they can also be interested in other things such as televisions, video games, as well as film (Boss et al. 2013). There can also be the motivation of creating music, where the composer would want to put down what is heard inside one's head, from where one will then create hot songs, much longer work, or even functional pieces of music. Finally, the composers can be making music intending to understand the working of music, yet one's creations and theory can be sketchy, hence providing a platform of continuous learning and improvement (Carter & Kite-Powell, 2012). Therefore, the goals of different musical composers can vary, but at the end, all the composers have a common purpose of expressing themselves, making others get joyful through music, alongside just creating music as an expression of talent.

Musical composers do and need to understand that learning music composition takes some time. It is because of many elements of musical composition that need to get understood and put into practical during composition (Carter & Kite-Powell, 2012). It starts with the background knowledge on music, followed by a focus on particular skills of composition over time, such as writing notes correctly, in progress to writing symphony, hence leading to progress in terms of music composition. Most of the music composers do prefer the act of clustering, where they concentrate in certain cities. It is from there that they will be motivating one another, as they also compete, the result of which is the fine art of musical composition (King-Dorset, 2019). The composers, in such circumstances, also undergo pieces of training. It can be established that professional classical music composers usually have some background in so far as classical music is concerned, during their childhood and teenage, where they acted as either singer in choir, players in orchestra of youth, or even as performers using some solo instruments such as violin, piano, or pipe organ (Boss et al. 2013). Thus, being teens, their aspirations of being music composers can take it on during their secondary school education, and even in post-secondary studies in different formal settings of training, such as in colleges, universities, or even conservatories. They will then be provided with the lessons alongside amateur choral and orchestral singing experiences for music composition. In universities, the students are offered various ranges of composition programs, such as Master of Music degrees, bachelor's degrees in music, and even Doctor of Musical Arts degrees (Phillips, 2014). Also, there are different training programs including classical summer camps, as well as festivals that provide the students with the opportunities to get coached by seasoned music composers.

For the undergraduate studies undergone by music composing students, they will get trained by studies Bachelor's degrees in music composition, a four-year program including lessons on music composition, amateur choral/orchestral experience, as well as series of courses in music history, the music theory, alongside liberal arts courses such as English literature courses. In such training programs, the music composers who are still students are given more, holistic, and well-rounded education on the art of music composition. In most cases, composition students are required to complete significant songs or pieces before they can graduate. Composers hold B.Mus. in composition (King-Dorset, 2019). For Masters's studies by music composers, they take Master of music degrees (M.Mus.), in composition that consists of various private lessons with their composition professors, the ensemble experience, as well as graduate courses in areas of music theory and history. They also take concerts that feature the pieces form the composition students. They can also proceed to Doctoral studies, where they aspire to become track professors. They will then take Doctor of Musical Arts in musicology and music theory. Such studies provide the opportunity for the composers to advance their studies to the highest artistic as well as pedagogical levels (Phillips, 2014). Their admissions are highly selective to sieve the most qualifies and experienced professors in music composition. The students need to provide their examples of composition works, some of which can include audio or video recordings of their performances. Their experiences will shape their knowledge of music history, ear dictation, alongside music theory. For perfection, composition students will be required to prepare significant compositions as they are guided by composition professors (Boss et al. 2013). The composers can also opt to study the performances of instruments or voice or even music theory as they develop composition skills for use in their composition careers.

There is a relationship that exists between musical composers and performers. The musical notations created by the composers serve as the directions for the performers. Also, many possibilities concern the level in which the performer will determine the final forms of work rendered for performance by the composers. It can be observed in the case of conventional Western pieces of instrumental music, where the chords, melodies, as well as basslines get written in musical notation by the composers (Carter & Kite-Powell, 2012). In such a case, the performers have degrees of latitude in the addition of artistic interpretation to such compositions, using such the means such as varying phrasing and articulation, deciding the duration of making fermatas or pauses, and even deciding whether to make use of expressive effects including portamento or vibrato: for the case of bowed ad stringed musical instruments, brass instruments, and woodwinds (King-Dorset, 2019). For the instrumental performer or even singer, the process in which there is the decision of how music can be performed, involving the work that had been composed previously, is referred to as interpretation (Phillips, 2014). Thus, the interpretation of the same work by various performers can vary quite widely, in such terms as tempos, being chosen alongside the phrasing or playing styles of musical melodies. The composers and songwriters presenting their work are interpreting, like the ones who perform such music to other people/audiences (Carter & Kite-Powell, 2012). Performance practice concerns the standardized body of various techniques and choices that are present at given places in time, with interpretation relating to the individual choices of the musical performers in their respective capacities.

It can be established that musical composition has typically one author, such might not always be the case (King-Dorset, 2019). There can be various composers of music, that occur in popular music where a band can collaborate in writing a song, or even in musical theatre where one composer can write different songs, and orchestration of accompaniment parts as well as the writing of overtures done by an orchestrator, where a third party can then write the words. For actions by performers, a song can get composed using images, words, or even computer programs that explain how the musician or singer has to create musical sounds (Boss et al. 2013). Hence, the songs will have graphic notations, text compositions, alongside the computer programs with the ability to select sounds for various musical pieces (Carter & Kite-Powell, 2012). Under such categories, there is music that makes heavy use of chance and randomness and is termed as aleatoric music. They are related to contemporary composers who are active in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Concerning music composers and performers, there exist some individual variations of different nature and means, depending on the culture of music in the area alongside the period when the music is written. An example can be observed in the music that was composed in the Baroque era, with slow tempos. They got written in slow tempos with bare outlines, where there were expectations that their performers would ultimately add some improvised ornaments to melody lines in the process of performance. However, more recently, there has been a decrease in the freedom bestowed to the performers regarding how they should perform the songs that have been written (Phillips, 2014). It is primarily due to an increase in the use by composers of the much more detailed scoring by the forms of articulation and dynamics, such that the composers are increasingly becoming more explicit, in a uniform manner, on how they would want their music to be interpreted in the end by the performers. However, such limitations vary with composers. Due to the emerging trends of composers getting increasingly specific as well as detailed in their instructions towards performers, there is a culture that has finally developed in which the faithfulness to the written intentions of composers is highly valued. Thus, such musical culture is associated with the high esteem, whereby the performers hold the leading composers.

The performance movement that is informed historically has managed to revive the possibilities of performers in elaborating more serious ways of the music as provided in the score., more especially for the cases of music from an early classical period as well as Baroque music (Phillips, 2014). Such a movement can be considered as a way for the creation of much greater faithfulness towards the original works that get composed as time goes by, which also expects the performers to improvise. In various genres, aside from classical music, the performers have more freedom such that. For instance, in the event, the performer of Western pop music creates some cover for an earlier song, there result in some little expectations of the emergence of exact rendition of the original piece, alongside the fact that there shall result in an exact faithfulness that is necessarily much valued (King-Dorset, 2019).