Brandon Nelson

Any passage within a piece of music, I think it may be agreed, can be classified in one of four ways: expository, transitional, developmental, or terminal. This represents a basic macrostructural analytic viewpoint. It can be valuable to hear, create, and analyze music on those terms.

However, in my view, there are many pieces in which there are really only two valid macrostructural classes: expository and developmental. For the transitional and terminal operations, it could be argued, are merely using materials from the exposition; therefore, they are actually developmental (though not at the same level of depth to be considered true developmental sections in their own right).

Now we shift our attention to the microstructural analytic and compositional methods, which hinge on what’s happening to motives at any given moment. This domain is inherently developmental in nature, though that may be debatable if the motive is just repeated verbatim. Motives can be subject to a large number of developmental operands, which may be combined. This can become a rich, abstract intellectual exercise.

From a composer’s perspective, it could be that one could simply compile a list of developmental options for motives and then apply them by some system, but that almost always ends up creatively unsatisfying (this is, of course, subjective, but tends to reflect my own experiences).

So another approach might be tried. First, isolate and categorize the domains available for development (i.e., significant change of some kind). These are a few: tonality, tempo, meter, rhythm, dynamics, density, timbre, register, texture, and, of course, the motive itself.

The motive derives its salience from two dimensions: pitch and rhythm, also combinatory. From there, it is determined which of the domains to target, and then, how. The specific operands depend in large part on the domain.

Developmental operands fall into three categories: augmentative, diminutive, and permutative. We can augment rhythms, intervals, textures, etc., just as we can diminish them. Permutative operands in some way combine the two (e.g., developing an eight note figure into a dotted-eight/sixteenth figure–it’s both augmentative and diminutive).

I end on a more philosophical note in the above regard. The eternal debate over intellectual determinacy and inspiration is moot, because I think they’re ultimately the same. Our creative intuition (i.e., inspiration) is, at some level, always present in making decisions about our compositions. That doesn’t take away from the “seriousness” or “depth” of your work. It just makes it inherently human.