Innovators and Synthesizers

I'm going to propose a theory: while there are undoubtedly many different kinds of composers, I want to suggest that two very important types of composers are innovators and synthesizers. Innovators are the ones we hear about a lot as writers of music history tend to focus on them. Innovators are important because they innovate! Some very strong examples of innovating composers would include Joseph Haydn, Hector Berlioz, Richard Wagner, Claude Debussy, Arnold Schoenberg and John Cage. Each innovated in different ways, of course, but they were all hugely influential because their innovations were taken up by hosts of other composers over a few generations.

Synthesizers on the other hand do not strike out into the unknown but rather perfect and bring to fulfillment ideas and structures that are already present. Strong examples of these would include J. S. Bach, Mozart and Brahms. There is very little in their music that is radically new, but a great deal that builds on and perfects already existing musical ideas. Sometimes music history writers, with an unconscious bias towards innovators, try and characterize these composers as being of that character in some way. But it is pretty clear that what they did was synthesize, combine and raise to a higher level, material that was already there. Mozart's operas are probably an exception because they really do have something rather new.

What about composers like Igor Stravinsky? He is pretty interesting because while he was a great innovator he also derived a lot from his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov and in his neo-classical phase was rather a synthesist as well. Even more interesting is the case of Beethoven. He is always described as the archetypical innovator, greatly increasing the length of the symphony, writing piano sonatas that scale the heights of expressive force and so on. Yes, this is true. But if you look at his career in more detail you notice that he kept turning back to the fundamental base of Classical style. He did not follow his contemporaries into the glitter of instrumental virtuosity and romantic yearnings but instead went back to the fundamental elements of music. His music, with few exceptions (the last movement of the Symphony No. 9 most prominently) engages at an astonishing level of profundity the essence of Classical style. I know I am simply asserting this, but the several books by Charles Rosen on this offer a wealth of illustrative examples. So while Beethoven appears at first glance to be an innovator, I think he is really more of a synthesist.

Claudio Monteverdi is another composer who seems to have traveled both roads. In his earlier life he was a synthesist of the best of Renaissance style, but later on he was one of the most important creators of the musical Baroque (and the opera).

What about someone like Shostakovich? It is interesting to look at him from this angle. His life was so dominated by political and social forces that we don't look at him very often as a pure composer. He was partly an innovator in his creation of a musical language that could function under the strictures of "socialist realism." His music is sometimes described as being conservative: the traditional forms preserved in Soviet aspic. But you could also see it as synthesizing some elements from the past modified to fit present needs. His symphonies owe something to Beethoven, Mahler, Bruckner and Sibelius, but they are, at the same time, unmistakably Russian. He also reached back further, to Bach, and wrote the best response to Bach's Well-Tempered Klavier in his own set of preludes and fugues in all the keys. Like Prokofiev he also was inspired by the humor of Haydn, though with a sardonic cast.

This is all just interpretation, of course. Most composers have an innovative side along with a synthesizing side. But one usually predominates.

Some examples: Stravinsky in a synthesizing mode with his ballet Pulcinella based on some Baroque themes:

Shostakovich's preludes and fugues after Bach:

Both these composers look at musical ideas and idioms of the past from a fresh angle, of course.