Can You Count Me In?

One of the most frustrating things about being a performer, I’ve found, is that occasionally you find yourself treading water: In spite of hours of practice, one aspect (or several) of your technique or musicianship doesn’t seem to be advancing at all. It’s infuriating. You might be making decent progress in most areas of your craft, but there are a few that just haven’t caught up, and in your most tormented, sleepless nights, you worry that they never will. Composition, in my experience, is the same way; there are a couple of intractabilities in the way I write music that have been bothering me for a long time.

Meter, for example, is the hamster-wheel I confront with each piece I work on. I don’t know that I’ve learned a single new thing about meter in the last five years, but for some reason, I still haven’t come to grips with it. Should the notated meter reflect the grain of the music clearly or be as unobtrusive a guide as possible? Should it comprise a stratum of notational information about the piece or serve as a simple framework for markers, containers? Many players and ensembles are spooked by “unnecessary” metrical complications, but there are a handful who might scoff at two hundred bars of 4/4. Obviously I’ve described a pair of extremes; is there some mediation (dialectical, if possible) between them that might be best? I’ve heard so many conflicting opinions on meter that it makes my head spin. Composing the piece in all kinds of weird meters and then re-barring the whole thing in 4 is a compromise that seems to get acceptable results in performance, but it also seems kind of half-assed—and who knows how much more nuance a more “musical” metrical scheme might coax out? Isn’t that just a waste of a valuable hierarchical parameter in the name of convenience?

I hope I’m not the only victim of such metersickness.