Among the various things I am caught up with these days is the preparation for a concert I have to perform on Tuesday in a famous but normal Tuscan city for a festival, at the center of which is the performance of a piece for choir and organ that won a composition competition. It has been a fixed appointment for a few years now, and every time the choir members are amazed by the poor quality of these compositions... I cannot mention names or titles, but a little while ago I started looking for the name of the competition winner (which was only recently revealed to us; the compositions were marked only by a motto) and I discovered that this person has a beautiful and long career as a musician, has been part of famous instrumental ensembles, and has even made high-sounding poetic statements.
But, to name one thing, the score we studied was full of errors, wrong accents, incorrect syllabification, impossible dynamics (like the usual soprano soloists in the middle register who should, according to him, sing forte, while the whole choir enters on the next beat in piano...). The piece is long, without thematic ideas, somewhere between Hollywood and Gen Rosso, and as often happens with these pieces, it always gives me the feeling of being an exercise, like "in a quarter of an hour I will show you how good I am at modulating to distant keys, varying the single insipid theme I have set, and signing off on my homework".
My venting is useless, obviously, but it discourages me to see that a genre like choral sacred music, which was the basis of teaching and compositional training, has become the drift for uncreative composers. I understand more and more why Part or others were successful with few means, because they at least had the decency to care for them and exploit those few means to the best of their ability. In that concert we will sing many other things, and truly the most insipid and cramped Renaissance piece we perform is incredibly more beautiful and interesting than this competition-winning composition.
From here, a tiny little warning: I like experimentation very much, but having decent results as well would be wonderful. Compare yourselves with the greats. Before writing a piece of any kind, listen to and analyze the pillars of that genre, the different styles that have characterized it, and always evaluate whether yours is better or frankly incomparable. A single page by Purcell is capable of making many modern compositional efforts look RIDICULOUS.
