Quote:
Originally Posted by gianluca
Only a tiny handful of contemporary composers have really succeeded in integrating diatonicism or tonality into a completely new, original and personal harmonic language that is not simplistic or derivative (like the diatonicism of John Adams or Philip Glass). I can only think of Ligeti - whose later works often use simple diatonic melodic material in a dense, complex polyphonic context, creating a strange, fascinating kind of harmonic language that is neither tonal nor atonal -, and Claude Vivier - a highly underrated Canadian composer, unfortunately better known for having been murdered than for his music, which was written in a very personal, highly melodic idiom with wonderful, sophisticated spectral harmonies. And maybe some works by Wolfgang Rihm (for instance, there are some wonderful diatonic moments in Jagden und Formen).
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I very much agree with these as excellent examples as a very successful use of diatonicism (I know almost nothing by Vivier, but I love, for example Ligeti's "Lontano" and "Melodien" and very much Rihm's "Jagden und Formen"). But I think there are alot more than these.
Kagel (who is in my opinion much too often put off as an "absurd" or even "conceptual" composer) has some marvellous music, which creates melodies out of simple triads (well, that doesn't actually mean it's diatonic, but is has a similar effect), but because of the very special, beautiful sounds he uses, they become something truly unique. His piece "1898" has fascinated and influenced me quite alot in my own music.
Messiaen is by no means a contemporary composer. Nevertheless I find him a good example of how to combine diatonicism, even modality in his case, with a very unique and original sound that is entirely "your own".
And then there's music that uses alternative tunings, which can create a form of diatonicism even if all chromatic steps are used equally, if the distances between two chromatic tones aren't the same for all tones. (I love "Çoğluotobüsişletmesi" by the not very well known composer Clarence Barlow, for example. But I hate having to spell that title so much
)
I think things like this have a lot of potential still to explore.
And to the distinction between diatonicism and chromaticism the same applies at to "tonality" and "atonality": They don't have to be forcibly separate. I find something very beautiful about music where out of total chromaticism different zones of dianoticism emerge and vanish again.