There’s a good — and to me, timely — story in today’s New York Times.  It’s called “Essay in D: The Critic’s Cogitation About Titles” by Allan Kozinn, and it’s about composers’ titles and the baggage that goes with them.

As Kozinn points out, “Through much of classical music’s history, the titles of secular instrumental works were usually just formal descriptions (symphony, quartet, concerto), and when titles were affixed (“Moonlight,” for example) they were usually a publisher’s idea. Publishers understood that titles, and the imagery they evoked, could help move copies; composers were in it for the art.” I’m going to blame my own personal conflict with titles on the fact that I’m self-published, so while I’d like to just be “in it for the art,” I also have a mortgage to pay, and the publisher side tells me that calling everything “Fantasy #7 for Band” is not doing to help.

Sometimes for me, titles come first. “Turbine” is an example where the title (suggested by AEJ) led to the form (also suggested by AEJ), and it helped a lot while writing the piece to not simply be writing something 100% abstract. In the case of the current piece, “Asphalt Cocktail,” the title was “donated” to me by Jonathan Newman, after several years of begging for it, and that fact has added a lot of pressure to deliver on what the title promises. I don’t remember ever having this much trouble with a piece, primarily because the title froze me up.

Other times, the title comes after the piece is finished. Although I think it fits extremely well and the piece really does sound like the title, “Kingfishers Catch Fire” is an example of that. (AEJ picked the title after hearing the piece.) The titles of the middle movements of my Sax Concerto indicate the scoring for that movement, so those titles of course came first.  Another after-the-fact title is “Redline Tango,” half of which is stolen from Steve Bryant. (Speaking of titles, if there’s somebody who can use a poetic, evocative title effectively, without making me cringe in the slightest, it’s Steve.)

Good composers definitely misstep on titles now and again. Even John Adams is no exception. “Short Ride in a Fast Machine” : fantastic title. “My Father Knew Charles Ives” : a little pompous. Well lah-dee-dah to you, John Adams. You don’t see me writing a piece called “My Father Knew Grover Washington Jr.” do you?

My most-hated titles are the ones that just don’t fit — especially when somebody else uses that title, meaning I can’t have it. There’s “Espresso,” a piece that premiered in 2004. When I heard the title, I thought “this is going to be a crazy, non-stop, hyper piece.” Instead, it was dark and sludgy and bitter — the elements of espresso that are less-fun.  Or “Grind,” I title I rather wish I could have used, but one that was used a few years ago on a piece that didn’t sound nearly grindy enough to me. There’s a band piece called “Sparkle” that gets a lot of play, and it’s a good piece — but it ain’t sparkly.  If you’re going to call a piece “Sparkle,” you need to sparkle my pants off and make me do jazz-hands at the end.

Thoughts? Favorite titles? Worst?