Stile is Everything
BUT HOW TO DEVELOP YOURS? (1)
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez
Style is a central theme in art and expressivity. It is the way to reveal yourself, the unique signature that distinguishes your work from someone else’s.
The question ‘How do I develop my style’ vital to creativity, especially now. Individualism dominates culture and the need to build an original expressive identity is core to the creative and professional life of the artist.
I believe the question has two possible answers, each stemming from two perspectives depending on how we view style. If style for us is a practical way to express ideas, emotions, and ourselves (which I’d assume is what every artist does in one way or another), there is plenty we can do to shape our craft, enhance the content of our work, refine our taste, and deliver original, authentic, better art. From this perspective, the way we develop our style is not too different from the way we discover what we like the most – the techniques, crafts and expressive tools that can move our soul.
The other perspective comes from the idea that style is something unique and profound about us, something that is difficult to identify and impossible to directly train or develop. In plain contradiction with the previous approach, here style emerges naturally and cannot be shaped by either academic training or imitation of someone else’s work. From this perspective, an artist uses art as a vehicle for his/her personality to emerge, as freely as possible.
As we shall see, the contradiction between the two approaches mostly resolves in the creative process. But it is real and deserves examination.
To find more answers to the question of how to develop style, we have to look in more detail at:
What we really mean by style
The idea that style can be discovered
The view that style is innate
What is style?
Even before considering its role in music and art, we experience style in our social interactions. We constantly encounter it in the people we meet and we project ours in the way we look, talk, move, the choices we make and the things we like. Individual qualities such as taste, personality, sensitivity and style are key factors in the determination of identity. Style is possibly the most particular trait of an individual: while not everyone has a clear distinct style, those who have are easier to recognize. Their individuality stands out.
Style is an expressive quality (as it informs the expression of the self) and it is highly regarded in our culture because, by characterizing each person’s own identity, it facilitates the distinction between individuals. It triggers instinctive reactions of either attraction or repulsion, often without our awareness. In its broadest sense, style is multidimensional. Some traits are conscious while other unconscious; it is affected by culture, history, by collective and individual sensitivities. It is also multisensorial: it manifests in speech, writing, clothing, posture, creativity, art, ideas, social behaviours. Some believe it is an inner ‘secret’ of personality, mostly inexplicable; other are willing to analyse and measure it.
Over and above subjective appeal, we generally like it when someone’s style is original and inimitable. In our social interactions we appreciate those who behave in a genuine and authentic way. Even more son in Art, where authenticity (the quality of being, original, honest, unique, inimitable, true to self) is possibly the leading currency.
Artworks are forms emerging from our creativity: as such they contain our individual qualities (personal, psychological, intellectual, emotional, expressive). The more authentic the creative process, the more qualities will emerge through Art, Style constantly informs the creative process in the same way personality informs our identity: we are not always aware of it.
It is interesting to see how much we appreciate signs of authenticity emerging from an artifact, as if the artist’s true personality was encoded in the work, ready to encounter us. To identify a style is to locate a personality, an individual, enigmatically hidden behind an artistic object. This is because style is the way by which an artist transforms his/her personality into art. At times we recognize the artist just by identifying their style, a skill we are often proud of.
When Art is authentic the same stylistic trait can emerge in different works without losing its originality. Art history and music history are often taught by referring to phases in the lives of artists characterised by a particular style (‘Picasso’s Blue period’, ‘the late Beethoven works’ or ‘the early Miles Davis recordings’) that informed more than one single work.
An artist might in fact use the same technique or stylistic device in different works and still be original, as in the case of modal harmonies in Debussy or repetitive patterns in Reich. Sometimes we consider it a trick, an imitation, a sign of cheating and lack of authenticity. Stravinsky famously referred to Vivaldi as someone who did not write 500 concertos but wrote the same concerto 500 times. Generally speaking, the use of the same stylistic device in different works might be a sign of the artist’s personality unconsciously peeking in, or their conscious aim to create meta-links across works, and by so doing (quoting themselves), to indirectly hint at under-the-surface meanings to their listeners, or to just sign their work, as painters do in the corners of their paintings.
With this picture of style in mind, we can now look in more detail at the two possible perspective that can help us developing it:
Style as a discovery process
Style as innate aspect of personality
Style as a discovery process
Picasso’s unique, revolutionary style is an example of artistic originality and immense character. We tend to forget that he was already an exceptional painter in his childhood, mastering academic realism by age 15.
But if we are wondering how come his art was so different, we could assume that he knew existing art well, too well perhaps. The creative world that surrounded him might have become, as some point, too limited. He engaged in a relentless search: new solutions, new perspectives came out of mastering known ideas. Many, if not most great artists in history might have followed a similar trajectory.
Learning an existing style seems logical: but why would it be necessary or even helpful if we are looking ultimately to develop a different style? Shouldn’t we be focusing on the things that we want to say rather than what has already been said? In other words, does not style come from …within? Yes and no.
In the past, artists had their own views on the matter: Bach and his contemporaries believed that God would be the ultimate ‘certifier’ of authenticity. In recent times artists questioned the idea of authenticity itself (in Pop Art for example).
The Surrealists painters believed in the value of searching inwardly for authenticity and developed a practical solution: they would self-induce a state of trance aiming at freeing the unconscious self. In doing so the natural tendency of the mind to ‘filter’ thoughts would be reduced allowing unstrained visions to emerge. The artist would be able to tap into deeper thoughts and feelings, opening the door to higher degrees of creative freedom and authenticity.
Instrumental or vocal improvisation often adopts a similar strategy. It is not unusual during a jazz concert to witness performers go into a sort of ‘trance’. It is caused (or achieved) by high levels of mental concentration, almost a meditative state, aiming at aligning body and mind -individually and collectively- through the listening experience.
Rather than an un-conscious state we might call it a hyper-conscious state. The line between conscious and unconscious choice-making blurs during a performance; when free-jazz performers speak about ‘letting the music happen’ they are possibly referring to that.
(I would argue that a similar framework could be applied to most compelling music performances regardless their genre: even in classical music, where all the notes are fixed on the score and there seem to be a much smaller room for extemporary decisions on the part of players. In this context improvised music offers a more intuitive model of a performance that combines conscious and unconscious decision-making).
If there is anything that Bach, the Surrealists, Picasso, and free-jazz musicians have in common, it is being similarly motivated by the creation of art that is new, different. Knowing what is out there is pre-requisite for creating art that is different from it.
They all engage in a relentless search for an original strategy that ‘works’ (according to the aesthetic canons and cultural values of their time and place) and the search is always essentially practical. Religious inspiration, technical mastery, reaching states of trance, are a few examples of strategies that guide the artists in their journey through authenticity, as well as practical ways to conduct the creative process.
A good musician is open to any strategy that helps making better music. It might sound reduntant but making music is the way to make better music. And from a creative perspective the composer, the songwriter, the instrumentalist, and even the interpreter are all on the same side of the equation: they gather all the expressive tools they can to convey their artistic message, loud and clear. We must make music.
It is best to start with music that exists already and -very important- that you like (you must really like it because you’ll have to endure the frustrating, time consuming, at times painful process of learning it).
Learning how to render a piece of music through our own hands allows us to discover all the technical and expressive details the piece is made of, including those we most appreciate it for.
Mastering a piece of music (any, from Elvis to Rachmaninov) is the best way to learn what part of a musical performance you are most interested in, what strategies, aesthetics, ingredients, you are most attracted to. Is it expressivity? Or instrumental possibilities? Are you into lush harmonies or evocative melodies? Is it the audience engagement, or the improvisation part?
Whatever it is, you’ll see why performing music created by others is a key factor in discovering and developing your style.
The key to mastering any style, especially in the early stages, is to discover and play (through studying and performing) with as many tools as you can. Until they become yours, and then there you are, developing your own style.
As you widen your repertoire and improve your practical skills, the list of topics you discover grows. Soon enough you will realise how you might need a better grasp on harmony, rhythm, musical notation, instrumental technique, or a more refined approach over timing and soloing, modality and polyphony, or guidelines for how to set words on music, or a better understanding of how certain sounds are produced or even recorded: each topic needs patient study and practice.
My composition teacher often reminded students that to master a technique or genre of music (whether it is counterpoint, a piano etude, an orchestral work, or a funk groove) one must ‘dive into the style’, meaning grow as much familiarity as possible with the language and codes of a particular musical world.
I think this is true regardless of whether you are a composer, a song-writer, an instrumentalist, or a singer. Today I recommend that my students become as expert as they can in the music they like. Search, search, and then search more.
Whether you are a composer or a performer, your craft needs to be constantly challenged by the beautiful ideas you find in the art you love. Knowing intimately all there is to know about a piece of music, to the point we can recreate it in our own hands, seems the most down to earth strategy we can adopt to learn music. It certainly is the most meaningful and profound way to experience it.
The second part of this article is available here.
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