This whole Twitter thing has really
gotten me thinking about form. Decades
ago, I was over my head at a prestigious
conservatory. “Vell, zis isn’t veddy much at
all, iz it?” was my esteemed composition
teacher’s first volley as he surveyed the
putrid scrawl I had posed as new music at
my first lesson.
He leaned in close, “You vill write a
tema con variazioni,” he said. “Yes,
maestro,” didn’t come to mind. Sensing my
blundering, jazzbo bewilderment, he continued,
“Oh, please, I can do dat over breakfast.
It vill get you goink!”
I wasn’t familiar with the concept of
organized ideas and succinct communication
at that point. My writing was tenuous, selfconscious,
and precious. Working quickly
within a rigid form turned out to be exactly
what I needed. The structural requirements
and musical limits of a simple “Theme and
Variations” were strangely liberating.
The next week he told me: “Veddy
good! I like dis, but dis should definitely be
a Bb. You missed an opportunity.” I had
successfully squeezed out a piece, and we
were discussing details, structure, the
direction of finished ideas — not the angstridden,
turgid, and open-ended ravings of a
freshman comp student.
There’s no shame in learning to communicate
within a rigid format. A generation is
experiencing this through texting, blogging,
and Tweeting, (ironically, the Picasso
quote above exceeds Twitter’s character
limit). Beethoven and Duke Ellington alike
learned the rules before breaking them,
working within barriers before dissolving
them.
So it turns out my professor knew what
he was talking about after all (though I still
say he was wrong about that Bb). Him:
“Now you vill write a sonata!” Me: “Well,
that’s-a-not-a what I had in mind, but I’ll try,
maestro.” Him: “It’s a goot exercise. I wrote
two yesterday.”