#8 Use “conceptional continuity”

Every composer has their idiosyncrasies and favorite tricks that turn up again and again in their work.

I for example have come to learn that I’m apparently quite fond of triplets, which is not a conscious decision, but something I noticed when listening back to a lot of the stuff I composed in the last few years.

Another example is the oeuvre by Progressive Rock artist Neal Morse. It’s been a running joke in the Prog-Rock community to comment on how similar to each other a lot of his songs sound: “Morse of the same”.

Sergei Rachmaninoff famously was obsessed with the “Dies irae” motif and used it in a lot of his works.

Frank Zappa had elevated the method of self-reference and “callbacks” to previous musical, lyrical and other artistic ideas to another level. His name for this type of “conceptional continuity” in his works was “Project/Object”.

From “The Real Frank Zappa Book“:

In the case of the Project/Object, you may find a little poodle over here, a little blow job over there, etc., etc. I am not obsessed by poodles or blow jobs, however; these words (and others of equal insignificance), along with pictorial images and melodic themes, recur throughout the albums, interviews, films, videos (and this book) for no other reason than to unify the ‘collection.’”

I find that thinking about little ways to introduce conceptional continuity into my compositions and recordings leads to additional ideas. It’s a source of inspiration when I’m not sure how to proceed. And it’s also a fun little game to give more interested listeners a few hidden nuggets they might find over time.

A few examples

I purposely built some conceptional continuity into my last few Phaneronaut albums, starting with “Miniaturen”. I recorded “Eine Vorahnung” (“a premonition”, so even the title winks at the idea of continuity of this track with something still to come), which is the first track of “Miniaturen”, when I already had started working on the follow-up, “Tape Concerto“, and I used the same very specific orchestral and electronic instrumentation for this as for the first movement of “Tape Concerto”:

“Tape Concerto” itself is connected to the following album, “The Song of the Machine“: The Coda is a fugato built around the two main melodies of “Mashin no uta”, the central piece around which “The Song of the Machine is built”:

But conceptional continuity is not limited to interconnections between my solo pieces. Here’s a quick example how an idea from one of my electronic releases is re-contextualized in an improvisation with my trio “Nekropolis ’22”:

Listen to the electric piano melody at 13:17

Now listen to the electric piano part at 3:30

There is a quick little three-note motif I stole/borrowed from John Coltrane, specifically the first part of “A love supreme”. I have been sprinkling that into improvisations for years as a homage to the Jazz giant.