Let’s Talk About Musical Form

Proglover wrote:

First off lets get something straight right off the bat.....having ALOT of ideas, does not in anyway, mean or suggest that your music is any greater. Infact a piece of music with TOO MANY ideas is indeed a sign of weakness as far as formal structure is concerned.

As every generalization this one is absurd, the number of ideas used for a composition doesn't imply it's weak, the strenght or weakness of the composition depends in how well can the author deal with ideas, a mediocre songwriter could have troubles with one or two ideas, a talented composer can deal with one, two or twenty ideas if he/she knows how to balance those ideas.

A lot of XIX and XX Century classical composers like Rachmaninoff or Ginastera's works were like an explosion of ideas with no connection for the casual listener.

Take Mily Alexeyevich Balakirev for example, he blended influences of Chopin, Schumann, Berlioz and/or Liszt and mixed them with the Folkloric classical influence of his idol Mikhail Glinka to recreate the Rusisian Tales and Folklore in a new and brilliiant style that brooke with anything done before.

So the quality of the music doesn't depends of the number of ideas in the mind of the composer but in his capacity to work with an undetermined number of ideas depending on his skills.

Now overall I find Genesis' music to be extremely structured and very well written. However Supper's Ready is not one of those pieces. In this respect YES were greater than Genesis, because YES were capable of maintaining a 20 plus minute piece with complete structural unity.

Have you ever listened the original version of Pictures at an Exhibition, The Nutcracker Suite or Carmina Burana? Well all are a confusion of ideas, sounds and musical influences with almost no logical connection, but still all are considered masterpieces.

Supper's Ready is a very cohesive work, but with different sounds and moments, the general idea is a satire about the British society dressed up with Religious connotations. What's the point of making a multi part epic if there's not a difference between part a, b and c? Better do a 40 minutes epic like Thick as a Brick instead of creating divisions that don't exist.

Despite this comment I couldn't  love Close to the Edge more than I do, but I don't see the reason to divide it into imaginary parts that really don't exist, and to be honest I coouldn't care less.

Iván