mahler2009

This piece is really a masterpiece in my opinion, which achieves both structural rigor and sensuous timbral imagination. It's a marvelous creation of the late, mature Boulez, an antidote to those who view him as an avatar of avant-garde academicism (sorry for the alliteration, I couldn't help it). This is the Boulez who was formed by the thinking of Mallarme and Paul Klee: a real theorist of musical color, whose best music effortlessly fluctuates between delicate restraint and violent explosion. Sur Incises also has a kind of intimacy and sensitivity to resonance: his chosen instrumentation functions as a "deconstruction" of the piano timbre, not in order to invalidate it, but in order to more fully reveal what lies beneath its surface. So there's almost a connection to spectralism. Any other Pierre Boulez fans out there?

While don’t like to use too many labels, I would say I personally gravitate towards music that has a rich use of rather coloristic harmony, with a strong feel for natural resonance, strong formal logic and internal coherence, as well as a sense of direction. I think of music often in terms of space: my ideal music opens up spaces and dimensions that the listener may not have foreseen, while remaining colorful and somewhat transparent. My biggest inspirations musically are probably Messiaen, Beethoven, Wagner, Debussy, and Scriabin (not to mention Grisey, Saariaho, and late Boulez). Because of my interest in tonal space and acoustics, I like to utilize geometrical lattices of tonal space, and much of my musical understanding is shaped by them. I think that’s good advice: keep building technique, but also attempt to compose the music you want to compose on the side. I’m excited to undertake this journey of developing my personal voice, thanks for the encouragement! And I do tend to be quite critical of my own compositional attempts: but the great thing about posting for others to evaluate is they’ll provide constructive criticism, and real feedback for improvement. That’s something I can’t do on my own!

Hey everyone, thanks for your thoughtful and prompt advice! I’m glad to be a part of YC after following it for over a year 😃 I’m completely self-taught in music theory, and I’ve been studying piano for over four years. I feel like I’ve spent a lot of time reading music theory books (Schoenberg, Messiaen, Hindemith), and far too little time actually completing exercises and sketching ideas. Nothing can replace actual composing! But my technique still has a long way to go. As soon as I’ve composed something I’m half-satisfied with, I’ll make sure to post it on YC! Thanks Vince! I agree with you on that: traditional tonality is much easier to handle for a composer in an early stage. But could it be an option to sketch ideas in more adventurous styles alongside my harmony studies, even if they’re not great, so I don’t lose sight of my personal voice (not to mention my motivation: diatonic tonality really doesn’t excite me to be honest)?

I’m a 16-year-old trying to become a composer, and I’m pretty much new to this forum! I really want to express myself in more modernist idioms, but I’m still developing my technique. Right now I’m working on a traditional harmony course, and I’m at the point of cadences and simple modulations. I’ve composed several tonal pieces, including a mazurka, a sonata movement, and a late-romantic waltz. I guess my question is whether I should compose many more “traditionally tonal” pieces before moving to the idioms that excite me more? If so, when is the point when I can move to non-functional harmony? Or can I just study traditional harmony on the side, but try to compose more modern-sounding music? I have already been doing this to a certain extent (my late-romantic waltz). Thanks for any suggestions! —Matthew

Woah that's pretty insane 😦

Such a masterpiece, Henry! I definitely savored the beautiful harmonies in the chant section, and the fugato passages, as I'm a bit of a counterpoint buff. At first I was worried about the coherence of the movement as a whole, but I can tell that you put in a lot of hard work in to develop existing material in a convincing way. I also like the accumulation of historical techniques from organum to fugue to more dissonant (quartal?) harmony, spanning and summing up many centuries of music history. All my compliments, and know that I sincerely admire your work!