 
Devin Chaloux
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Date Joined Feb 2008
Total Posts : 1009
| Posted 11/8/2009 11:58 AM (GMT -5) |   | Well, technically none :)
It's serialism in today's composition-du-jour. | | Back to Top | |
BIGHIG13
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Date Joined Nov 2009
Total Posts : 67
| Posted 11/9/2009 10:51 AM (GMT -5) | | I'm inclined to disagree with you, Devin.
I understand the near limitless possibilities that serialsm affords in the realm of academia, but in terms of what the ear can comprehend, I believe that serialism has gone on for about as long as it can in the form that it presently exsists. Don't get me wrong, I love the great serialists just as much as the next composer, but I feel that we, as composers, are dwelling on one of the more recent breakthroughs in music theory.
What I try to do is use atonality as not a foundation for composition, but just as another tool in my composer's toolbox. | | Back to Top | |
TwelveTone
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Date Joined Jul 2009
Total Posts : 394
| Posted 11/9/2009 4:12 PM (GMT -5) | | He said that more to get a response than anything.
Just a friendly heads up... You'll see a lot of that kind of behavior around here, especially regarding contemporary/atonal music of any kind. People like to say one thing and turn around and act another way regarding modern music on this forum. One minute they're bashing the inaccessibility and inferiority of modern music in comparing it to Classical, Baroque, and Romantic music, and the next minute they're trying to act like they didn't just say what they did by qualifying it with, "well, not ALL modern music does this", or "well, I DO like some of Corigliano's stuff." Basically, there are a few people around here who prefer period music, and somehow they think this makes their opinions on creativity, individuality, and innovations to rhythm, harmony, and melody, etc., infallible. Hang around for a while, you'll be entertained.
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lesotho72
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Date Joined Dec 2006
Total Posts : 152
| Posted 11/9/2009 5:38 PM (GMT -5) | | I tend to like more exotic (exotic from the pov of an American who grew up eating hamburgers and watching lots of TV) harmonies. i.e. The harmonies of gamelan, some indian music, eastern music but not being too pentatonic. Of course I'm not an expert on any of these but those are the sounds that I've been most drawn to lately.
One little sidebar here -- since there are often discussions on old vs. new music, etc. I find it odd that, using 'traditional Westen harmony' is considered old fashioned yet using old fashioned modes or balinese/gamelan music -- as Colin McPhee did or Ligeti does -- esp. in some of the etudes -- is considered 'modern'. Both are equally 'old' -- why is one considered 'modern' and the other backwards looking? They are essentially borrowing from, or ripping off much from similar time frames. Just from different geographic areas. If unknown modes were used in some faraway country in 1750 and a modern composer used them today -- would those modes be more 'modern' than our bsaic Western major and minor scales? And for those who claim that Ligeti -- or say composers like Part who make use of older 'church modes' in their music or Carlos Chavez using Mexican/Indian scales -- are reimagining those modes+scales and reshaping them to their own means -- well, I don't think so.
This is certainly not bashing any type of music -- my ears enjoy Purcell, Bach, Chopin, Debussy, Bartok, Ligeti, Stockhausen, Reich, Gorecki, Lachenmann, Outkast, Slipknot, The Polie, U2 etc. etc. I just find it odd that, after hearing a piece of music, anyone would ask, 'When was it written?'
One astoundingly unique composer is Harry Partch -- he used scales with > 40 notes and built many of his own instruments. What I like most about his music is it works -- wasn't just trying to be different. It sounds good (to my ears at least). Some really cool harmonies
Hope everyone on this site gives his music a bit of a listen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6buNHKzS-Nc&feature=related
http://www.societyofcomposers.org/user/danielcarr.html | | Back to Top | |
BIGHIG13
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Date Joined Nov 2009
Total Posts : 67
| Posted 11/10/2009 9:31 AM (GMT -5) | | As far as harmony goes, I don't exactly favor one chord over another. I mostly just work in scales/modes. I take a pandiatonic/aleatoric approach to a lot of things (mostly due to my mentor's obsession with John Adams and John Cage. It looks as if I've inherited the obsession.) and so whatever happens harmonically is just a happy side effect of the notes sort of bouncing off of each other.
Could it also be our approach and attitude toward music in general that sets us apart from composers like Brahms and Haydn? I mean, for better or worse, music is viewed by the public in a completely different way now than it was 200 years ago. | | Back to Top | |
Devin Chaloux
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Date Joined Feb 2008
Total Posts : 1009
| Posted 11/10/2009 10:14 AM (GMT -5) | | Holy crap people...I'm talking about me...
Isn't this a question on what scales we're using?! | | Back to Top | |
Devin Chaloux
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Date Joined Feb 2008
Total Posts : 1009
| Posted 11/10/2009 10:17 AM (GMT -5) | | 01101 said...
He said that more to get a response than anything.
Just a friendly heads up... You'll see a lot of that kind of behavior around here, especially regarding contemporary/atonal music of any kind. People like to say one thing and turn around and act another way regarding modern music on this forum. One minute they're bashing the inaccessibility and inferiority of modern music in comparing it to Classical, Baroque, and Romantic music, and the next minute they're trying to act like they didn't just say what they did by qualifying it with, "well, not ALL modern music does this", or "well, I DO like some of Corigliano's stuff." Basically, there are a few people around here who prefer period music, and somehow they think this makes their opinions on creativity, individuality, and innovations to rhythm, harmony, and melody, etc., infallible. Hang around for a while, you'll be entertained.
Actually Steve, you need to take your head out of your ass and realize I'm not doing this for a rise. If you want me to post the piece after I'm finished...I will. | | Back to Top | |
jk
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Date Joined Feb 2009
Total Posts : 644
| Posted 11/10/2009 1:39 PM (GMT -5) | |
BIGHIG13 said...
[...]
What scales/modes are you folks wild about right now?
Me? I'll never get tired of using my tried and true whole tone scale.
Because of my "education" (read conditioning) in church music I seem te be pretty familiar with and able to think in church modes. Sometimes I take a detour to whole tone scales, mixed with anything I like (or is available at time and place - just like the low natural walls e.g. in Old England on the fields, built of scattered stones).
(back from a long time ago - I mean the piece)
Instruments: flute, piano, harpsichord
Deliberately change your mind decisively from time to time!Post Edited (jk) : 11/10/2009 11:58:02 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | |
TwelveTone
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Date Joined Jul 2009
Total Posts : 394
| Posted 11/10/2009 2:15 PM (GMT -5) | | Lol, wait, you're REALLY going to expect us to have immediately expected YOUR statement to be a legit one regarding something 12-tone you're currently writing?! LOL! Maybe you should get your own head out of your ass and realize how your opinion of modern music, ESPECIALLY twelve-tone, has come off around here in the past. Actually, you are one of the LAST people from this board that I would EVER expect to be writing a serial piece. But that's actually the best part. For all of your guys' bullshit in how you've tried to slam people for writing modern music to suit the opinions of academia, etc., here you are now, DOING IT! LOL! What the hell? You guys are a joke. The old Master's program has you by the balls, eh? Oh come on, why don't you just tell them to shove it, and go listen to Beethoven's 9th, right? Lol, you know that you are now seen as a proponent of Schoenberg in the eyes of the world, right? Are you sure you can live with that? No worries though, you can write your 12-tone at school and still come around here to play defense for your preferred version of the musical past right?
Haha, you guys are epic. What's next, Cattie's going to write a piece for 20 VCR's playing random movies and people who bang on trash cans while plants randomly fall during earthquakes and hit notes on a piano? Let me guess, you're only just NOW seeing the light about John Cage, Schoenberg, etc, etc, all those guys you hated so much less than a year ago, and whom you got so mad over rational people defending that you had to take a leave of absence from a discussion board? Haha, academia talks, doesn't it?
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BIGHIG13
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Date Joined Nov 2009
Total Posts : 67
| Posted 11/10/2009 2:35 PM (GMT -5) | | Burn, anyone? Burn?
Am I overstepping my bounds as the new guy?
Also, the VCR thing sounds like a pretty cool piece. I think I'll have them all playing Bernstein conducting Beethoven's 5th but have them go out of phase a la Steve Reich. | | Back to Top | |
jk
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Date Joined Feb 2009
Total Posts : 644
| Posted 11/10/2009 2:54 PM (GMT -5) | | |
Gentlemen, back to basics, please.
Without abandoning our trustful diatonic scale - C major offers us sufficient room to do everything god and academia have forbidden.
"1. Origin: whole tone, whole tone, semitone
2. First chromatic change: whole tone, semitone, whole tone
3. ... and the second: semitone, whole tone, whole tone
4. We may also stretch the tetrachord: whole, whole, whole
But this is about the limit - and it's all in the tetrachord of a diatonic scale.
Schoenberg on his death-bed: Explicitely three times asked for "Harmonie" (harmony)."
So, what is it? Prejudice, ignorance?
Just pick the stones at hand to make your wall (and border).
Instruments: flute, piano, harpsichord
Deliberately change your mind decisively from time to time!Post Edited (jk) : 11/11/2009 5:25:24 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | |
TwelveTone
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Date Joined Jul 2009
Total Posts : 394
| Posted 11/10/2009 7:10 PM (GMT -5) | | | |
Devin Chaloux
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Date Joined Feb 2008
Total Posts : 1009
| Posted 11/11/2009 12:00 AM (GMT -5) | | Master's...lol, nope. And is it for my program? Nope. It's for fun, I've got a good set to work with where I can incorporate some ironies that my tonal buddies will enjoy :) I would say my education isn't complete without it, but it is not required.
But yes, if you ask me, tonal music is still supreme. I finally got to listen to Mahler's 9th a few days ago...and it just solidifies my decision.
Now, not to ruffle up the newbie...but BIGHIG13...the whole tone scale is utterly boring. | | Back to Top | |
Devin Chaloux
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Date Joined Feb 2008
Total Posts : 1009
| Posted 11/11/2009 12:09 AM (GMT -5) | | And as far as just NOW seeing the light...well I'm finally in my 20th century analysis class...and I'm learning about all the different analyses and whatnot...but after taking this class, you begin to realize how nuts Schoenberg really was.
Schoenberg thought he was superior and the future of music...slighting Stravinsky's music whenever he could. Yet you look at the music today, and does it look more like Schoenberg or Stravinsky? And as much as I don't care for a majority of Stravinsky's works...he's the one that got it right.
So what, I'm composing a piece using serialism. The Dickinson pieces I'm writing includes F Mixolydian and D Phyrigian in one piece, A Ionian in another, and Octatonic subsets in another.
Also, Beethoven 9th isn't me. Not my favorite symphony by a long shot. Masterpiece and important in the history of the music...but no where in my top 10. That would be Cattie. | | Back to Top | |
BIGHIG13
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Date Joined Nov 2009
Total Posts : 67
| Posted 11/11/2009 1:38 AM (GMT -5) | | "the whole tone scale is utterly boring."
On a purely remedial level, yes it is. But, have you ever used a whole tone scale before modulating to a distant key? How about the texture that's created by a large ensemble playing every tone in that particular whole tone scale? Have you heard how rich that sounds? How about using a whole tone scale before leading into a purely atonal section? I hardly find that boring. I find that a lack of a perfect 5th keeps the listener guessing, regardless of their level of music appreciation.
"And as much as I don't care for a majority of Stravinsky's works...he's the one that got it right."
Music isn't about being right. It's about the constant pursuit of your own perfect sound. Stravinky's method of composition happens to be more sustainable that Schoenberg's, I'll give you that, but his success as a composer doesn't negate the importance of Schoenberg's work. Like it or not, atonality had to happen. Music needed atonality, just like it needed Beethoven's 9th and Tristan und Isolde. | | Back to Top | |
TwelveTone
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Date Joined Jul 2009
Total Posts : 394
| Posted 11/11/2009 6:02 AM (GMT -5) | | BIGHIG said...
Music isn't about being right. It's about the constant pursuit of your own perfect sound. Stravinky's method of composition happens to be more sustainable that Schoenberg's, I'll give you that, but his success as a composer doesn't negate the importance of Schoenberg's work. Like it or not, atonality had to happen. Music needed atonality, just like it needed Beethoven's 9th and Tristan und Isolde.
I think you're bound to get some resistance for saying that music 'needed' anything. I understand what you mean, but other people around here tend to be sticklers about requiring everything to be said in just the right way. But aside from that, I think that the composers that I love the most have found their own sound and voice, and are comfortable in their own skin. I have to agree with you 100% on finding your own perfect sound. After all, that's really the hardest part. Theory is easy, melody is easy, analysis is not that difficult. However, doing something that is musical, and YOUR OWN with all of the tools is the challenge.
On a side note, how can you not love a gorgeous piece like Voiles, which is based mostly on the whole tone scale?
Thankfully, I find things that I love about many styles and periods of music, and I think this is probably true for the average person. I think the fun part is borrowing all of your favorite qualities from all the music you love and putting them together to create your own imaginary sound world. The guys who can do it with anything are the real musicians. I can hear a simple major scale and be completely moved by it if the composer knows how to be creative with the harmony and phrasing, and if they can really make it speak. There has never been a style, period, or genre that I know of which didn't have its ambassadors who really defined themselves with competency and expression. I think Chen Yi's flute concerto is one of the greatest pieces I've ever heard, and I mean comparing that to all of history. That piece is from our time, written in 1997. This is a piece with extreme dissonances at times, yet also containing THE most complex, yet utterly organic melodic phrasing that I have ever heard or studied in a score. I'm talking about stuff that sounded so amazingly expressive when I first heard it, thinking it was simpler than what it really was. You have those great listening experiences, then you study the actual score and you are really introduced into the incredible imaginations and EARS that some people out there really do possess.
Then, at the same time I really think that Prokofiev's piano concertos do the same thing. To me, they come close to sitting at the top of everything that had preceded them in the 'Classical' style. Granted, this is due largely in part to the fact that I get off on the harmony that Prokofiev used, which composers like Mozart and Haydn didn't go for, so perhaps that's not an unbiased position. But simply put, no other Classical pieces before them can touch those (for me) regarding the very musical use of complex chromatic/tonal harmony and melody. And yes, they might be considered neo-Classical pieces, but to my ears the rhythmic phrasing and overall construction they use is just a very complex and beautiful extension of where Beethoven or Mozart would have gone. That music is just as natural to me as any other Haydn string quartet, etc.
Those are two distinctly different styles of music which speak for themselves. It doesn't matter the period, or whether or not you used the whole tone scale.
Although, I certainly do prefer it when the whole tone scale is used. ;>)
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BIGHIG13
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Date Joined Nov 2009
Total Posts : 67
| Posted 11/11/2009 9:03 AM (GMT -5) | | "Although, I certainly do prefer it when the whole tone scale is used. ;>)"
No argument there. A simple scale: yes. A world of possibilities: a great big yes. | | Back to Top | |
Devin Chaloux
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Date Joined Feb 2008
Total Posts : 1009
| Posted 11/11/2009 10:39 AM (GMT -5) | | | Well it depends on how you use the whole tone scale or whether you're using subsets. But subsets could just as easily be from another scale without being from the whole tone scale. By itself, the scale is boring. | | Back to Top | |
BIGHIG13
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Total Posts : 67
| Posted 11/11/2009 1:18 PM (GMT -5) | | | And some would say the same about church modes, but look what Arvo Part did with them. | | Back to Top | |
Devin Chaloux
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Date Joined Feb 2008
Total Posts : 1009
| Posted 11/12/2009 10:56 AM (GMT -5) | | | Well now that I've really dug into church modes and writing my own 16 century counterpoint, it's pretty complicated and interesting. Pretty cool stuff Lassus did back in the day. | | Back to Top | |
jk
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Date Joined Feb 2009
Total Posts : 644
| Posted 11/12/2009 12:44 PM (GMT -5) | | |
Knud Jeppesen - Counterpoint: The Polyphonic Vocal Style of the Sixteenth Century is an excellent textbook, broadly acknowledged at music schools and univeristies.
Browsing through my songbook in church I've been reading all those funny words like Dorian, Phrygian, Hypo-Myxolydian before entering primary school - strange. Always curious what those words would mean. Not much later finding out the relationship with their modern counterparts - Major & Minor. And much, much later the Gipsy and melodic increasing & decreasing scales and the whole tone scale.
Only recently I stumbled on the Pyper/Badings-scale: strictly whole, whole, semitone (repetitive) - not a survivor because of its boreness.
Edit: Excuse me, {whole, semitone} repetitive
Instruments: flute, piano, harpsichord
Deliberately change your mind decisively from time to time!Post Edited (jk) : 11/12/2009 11:12:03 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | | 33 posts in this thread.
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