maittamaitta

The 20th century, thank heavens, was a time of decline for greatness and mystified genius. We could again witness such unparallelled craftsmanship such as Stravinsky's or Berio's. Or Ligeti's or Lutoslawski's. As for contemporary music being unmusical -- if you really want to be the kind of person to label the stuff you like as real, true music and label the stuff that doesn't fit in your taste as "unmusical" then go ahead, be my guest, be that person. I sure as hell wouldn't want to. I mean it is quite a coincidence that you've been been blessed with the power of recognizing true art, where as we lesser beings dwelve in this "artsy crap", being the pretentious losers that we obviously are. edit: i'm starting to get the feeling that i'm just not "young" enough for this board... i'll personally ban myself for getting caught in a flame war of this sort. g'nite.

Yeah, Adorno and Leibowitz both considered Sibelius's music generally as crap. :D

Exactly, but the point i was trying to make, was that actually i think S was in many ways a rather modern composer, the architecture of 7 being a great example of his courage to look further than "sonata-blocks" (-- which cannot be said of a Sch

From all of the interesting, daring, pieces I.X. ever wrote, this one seems to be the one to find its way in to my cd player recurrently. It is a piece for a large orchestra -- see this link for details -- but in my opinion, rather straightforward in its oorchestration (atleast compared to many other modern works for orchestra). The orchestral groups are handled separately, and rather traditionally, if i might add. The reason i think i like this piece so much is that it is rather simple to listen to. There are patterns emerging, and being broken in to pieces, forming new patterns, bearing certain resemblance to earlier patterns and so on. The patterns themselves, many of them simple pulses and/or polyrhythms, are rather straightforward, but undergo interesting processes, which bring about complex structures, but as parts of a continuum, that has an intuitive appeal. The writing itself is energetic and rich, and yet dramatic. I think this is one of the most interesting Xenakis -pieces dramatically. Unfortunately i couldn't find a decent legal soundsample, nor would a short sampling do any justice to the work, but it should be easily found from various sources. A short soundsample can -- however -- be found here.

Being the modernist prick i am, Sibelius 7 is still perhaps THE orchestral work for me, the one that always gets my full attention, from which there are new aspects to be found every time, and the one that gets a tear in my eye. :D Actually, i think 7 was very bold in its own way -- i love the thematic structure, with each orchestral group having their own theme. (Well, sort of.) It definitely isn't a regressive piece, that's for sure.

To me, the most interesting goal is trying to incorporate different harmonic constructions and methods in the same piece, either sequentially or simultaneously, and trying to maintain the integrity and coherence. As for your question, I find it funny that as a novice composer, I'm already stuck with a certain palette of chords and chord-building principles, which I find unpleasant to transcend. It might be that I'm just lacking in technique.

rip. great composer.

I think i'm at least a contender in the biggest noob category. :)

Bartok's concerto for orchestra is a real masterpiece, from beginning to end. I think it has influenced the whole orchestral repertoire of the 20th century -- i think it is the "grandfather" of many other orchestral concertos, for one thing. (Do you? :))

I'd really love to turn this question around and ask: What's so scary/different about contemporary/modern music anyway? Most of it makes perfect sense rhythmically and harmonically. And where's the gap anyway? Bart

When I was younger, I couldn't really even begin to listen to stuff like Mozart. It was just light years from where I was emotionally. It sounded so museanic and bourgeoise, something really old and elitistic. And really two dimensional emotionally. Either you'd be like OH, HOW MERRY or like BOOHOO. :D Contemporary music, on the other hand, sounded ambivalent, complex, interesting. It sounded right for me, as a person living in the 20th/21st century. The emotional content was so much more interesting and deep. Now, I've listened to contemporary music a lot, and I've noticed I'm hearing a lot of stuff in it, that many peolpe seemingly can't find. I've had fun arguments with people who claim that there is no harmony in X's or Y's piece, when I hear not only harmony, but hierarchical harmony. I find beauty, integrity, innovation in contemporary music. It doesn't sound just "dissonant" to me -- it sounds rich, crisp, beautiful. (And for the record, I've started to understand (and appreciate) also what the music of classical and romantic eras was all about. :))

Is there a possibility of hearing/reading this piece? The links seem to be dead at the moment.

Good work! I loved the veiled tonality of the pieces, it reminded me of some modern tango composers.

Good (t)r(h)ead. I usually begin with something that urges me to do some composing. Might be a chord change, might be just a set of intervals, or an interesting chamber ensemble. Or a poem I want to compose. The last work I started was about playing around with some Elliott Carterish techniques (or at least creative misunderstandings). I chose a three layer model, or a three voice counterpoint, if you may, with a distinct tempo character and a set of intervals for each voice. Then I came up with a simple chaconne of symmetric 12-tone chords, and a tempo for it, so that it's independent of the three voices or layers. Next, I started thinking about instrumentation and structure. I'm always nervous about structure, because I find it very difficult to contain all of my ideas, and often end up with so many development possibilities, that the piece ends up swelling like dough, and never gets finished. So I want to decide as much as I can on the structure -- sometimes even a second to second plan of the dramaturgy of the music (this is the part where I can freak out with fibonacci numbers). It usually gets changed along the way, but I like to have some constraints to get me going creatively, instead of just repeating stuff I've already done or heard. In this case, I had to figure out the rhythm of the harmony, how to create suspension with accelerations etc., and what kind of dynamics each section would contain. As for instrumentation, I chose to use two strings for the first voice, two woodwinds for the second, and a lone piano for the third. So the three-part polyphony ends up being a counterpoint of counterpoints of sorts, almost-a-triple-duo, if you may, with each voice/layer profiled with a distinctive set of intervals, own tempo, and instrumentation, and perhaps spatial distribution. That ought to enable me to use rather dense textures and still keep things under control. Next comes the process of combining the interval material of each voice with the chaconne I came up with, to see how they mix up, what kinds of situations I'm going to get myself in. Tweaking some details. Although I have to admit, that this piece isn't about harmony anymore. It's about textures, mostly. And having fun. Lots of it. One thing I must do before I start putting more stuff on paper is coming up with a limited set of textures -- something to cut down the amount of possible situations. So far it seems that the piece isn't turning out very Carterish, as the introduction starts with unpitched and quiet long notes colliding with one another. The question of notation is still a bit open, but I'm hoping to keep it as conventional as possible.

Tumababa: I could argue, maittamaitta, that the reason we have the pitch system we have now is that said system is an approximation of the harmonic series. I could also argue that as the harmonic series is about as old as time itself, it is the most fundamental component of music. I must admit I'm ignorant in the area of world music, but I would be willing to bet that even cultures that have 41 notes per octave still have the harmonic series embedded in there somewhere. Of course -- our 12-tone pitch system is very practical. But when compared to the "real thing", the approximation does sound awfully pale. Derek: disclaimer: not trying to contradict you here, this is purely my personal viewpoint. And, I'm an amateur, so take everything I say with a grain of salt: Now that is a disclaimer I could write on every one of my posts. :) So you think that just by vertically combining harmonic tones, this is how we achieve new color in music? (by inserting microtones, etc.) Personally, I think the analogy is something like painting. We have a set of colors, and we can mix those colors. The more of those colors you mix, the "browner" you get. In music, the "browner" is more dissonant. Therefore, where does actual variety come from? (not to imply that harmony isn't important of course.. my point is going to be that it is not AS important) Rhythm and phrasing. To me, this is how you arrange and mix colors in music. You can make an elaborate painting out of just three colors. And, you can make an elaborate painting out of color combinations, and darker "browner" or blacker colors. It is how it is arranged in a dimension...in painting, space, in music, time, that really produces new colors I believe. Rather, I was referring to the physical foundation -- the overtone series. The major triad is the brightest element in the palette (now that I give my analogy more thinking, it does have serious ontological problems... :whistling:), and the minor triad is its inversion. Of course it is possible to make a masterpiece with prime colours -- by working with syntax, ie. the art of combining things to make a structure (what is exactly what classical tonal music is about). It's just that for example much of popular music doesn't rely that much on the syntax, but indeed relies heavily on the triads -- and this goes for a lot of big budget film scores also (now that were at it). While we're at it, I think spectralism, Murail, Grisey, Saariaho, that lot, (ie. generating harmonies out of harmonic series) was one of the healthiest things to happen to new music. Along with Webern, Berio and Lutoslawski, that has been one of the great innovations of 20th-century in thinking about the "color" (chord) itself -- its structure. Put it a different way, say we did use some new tuning system and played a mozart piece in it using the new scale system. It would sound weird harmonically, but you'd still hear the same rhythmic and melodic interest present in the mozart piece. I honestly think we should spare poor old Amadeus from that treatment... And to put it a final way (from my personal perspective) often I have listened to some piece or other (usually something that uses our same old 12 tone system with major and minor triads throughout the piece) and thought "wow, this part has such a fresh and new atmosphere to it!" Then I picked it out on the piano and found it was exactly the same harmonic progression X that I'd seen many times before. Therefore, what was producing the new atmosphere? The "when." So, in sum, I think that viewing music from a purely harmonic perspective when searching for something original may not be the most productive approach. Instead we should look into rhythm and melody, where the possibilities have been and always will be infinite. The harmonic progression described as (abstracted) chords doesn't in itself really define much of what's going on in much of classical music. I mean there might be the same chords in a progression from a Mendelssohn piece and in a piece by an average rock band, but the counterpoint makes a difference. (And I've really know clue why I even bothered to mention that on a forum for (mostly classical) composers, but anyway.) And don't get me started on rhythm! I've just spent the whole day tring to make an Elliott Carter pastiche (and my brains hurt)! :D And rhythm does indeed seem to get a whole new dimension when harmony is added to the game. Now, I'm not much of a composer, I'll admit that much. But I've tried to keep a broad mind, and to listen to a wide range of stuff. And I've given some thought on the whole "originality" -issue. (And for the record, I didn't get there. I'm thinking that I should probably first succeed in writing a piece that someone else than my girlfriend would be interested in playing. :toothygrin:) I thought I might contribute something instead of just criticizing others. I've tried to solve the problem of "meaningful but original new music" using two different strategies. The first was getting to know psychoacoustics. Which was cool. All of a sudden music theory makes a lot more sense to me. Unfortunately this didn't work out for me, or at least didn't bring so much new stuff to the table. Let's face it -- psychoacoustics can offer only little new after several hundred years of counterpoint and voice-leading, if we're dealing with the perception of harmony. As a plan B, I started familiarizing myself with folkmusic all over the world. Think about it -- all this great, innovative, diverse stuff, that just spontaneously happened -- now that's what I call evidence for the empirical mind. There's your spectral music in Central Asia. There's your polyrhythmic textures in Central Africa. There's perplexing time signatures in the Balkan. And there's free pulsating rhythm all over Asia. What else is there, that has been thought differently than we've used to think? Now some might call this imperialism/exoticism/orientalism, but it is a fact, that there is a lot of music out there, that sounds like nothing most of people ever heard, and which has grown as organically as music can. I've learned a lot. And yeah, I know, tl/dr.

Yes, indeed a modern masterpiece. Though I'd say the work is very much a tonal piece -- just not minor/major -tonal. ;)

I think there is no reason to assume that the amount of unused possible "techniques" would be significantly smaller than it was a hundred years ago. :) And more importantly, many of the innovations of 1900-century are not being used. Most music is still "well-tempered", for one thing, which is a dogma i'd like to see questioned more often. There is nothing "natural" in the division of octave in to 12 semitones, and yet anything else seems to get an awkward reception or even gets labeled as deliberate attention seeking. Musicians and music-lovers seem a rather conservative lot. Most music still is being composed with major and minor triads, which in my opinion is like sticking to prime colors in painting. Now that i think of it, it'd be real fun to compose a piece that used many different tuning systems (paradigmatically and syntagmatically). And sorry, if my comment on the serialism-metaphor was a bit harsh. It bore no malice towards anyone. I for one simply think that serialism still has a lot to offer -- for me, at least, and i still like to listen to many "serialists" -- and yet it gets more rubbish thrown at it than your average junkyard. :)

Good answer, thanks. Ravel is of course a most inspiring example of using parallel motion.

It is a tempting idea to think that technique and aestethics are not intertwined, but as both are cultural constructions, and more precisely, microcultural constructions, i'd say that they create one another in interaction with one another, inside a certain audience, and can not be separated. (Techniques are what people write about composers, not what composers spend their lives doing.) In relation to the rather uninspired comment on serialism above, i happened to remembered, that some living composers have mentioned a need to "analyse their own style to the detail" -- to see whether or not they can formalize their own voice, ie. create algorithms out of their own composing strategies. I think that is an interesting challenge for those interested in the rationale behind composing, and could help in finding an unique voice (regardless of possible success, or lack thereof, in the exercise mentioned above). (motto for the post: i believe lutoslawski was quoted saying: "there is no such thing as a pre-established musical logic -- it must be crafted from the beginning every time.")

What do you consider as the pros and cons of using full parallel motion in harmony (or just two voice counterpoint)? As a temporary effect, of course, not as the main voice leading principle of a whole piece. I find myself often using partial parallel motion, with one interval moving against other(s) in parallel motion, or using chords moving in parallel in mirror writing against each other (-- at this point i wish it was easier to post examples). I think it sounds great as an exclamation mark of sorts, but then again, parallel motion is not something you'd get praised for in the composition class. :)

I thought Sequenza XIV was for the cello?

As i've always enjoyed op.3 more than the Lyric Suite, i guess i should take your advice. :)

I hope you include in clarity the possibility of multiple textures sounding simultaneously. I think it is better to use multiple staves when your music is multistratal. But then again i'd encourage you to listen to the people who get their stuff played more. ;) And don't forget -- Herma by Iannis Xenakis did get played and recorded eventually. ;D

I'd really suggest checking out new music written for voices -- especially stuff by Luciano Berio and Gyorgy Ligeti. edit: AND most importantly, be aware of the rhythm of the text. Spoken language has an inherent rhythm in it, which can be very inspirational, and which can really help you get past thinking in 2s, 4s and 8s rhythmically.

That comment just cracks me up. :toothygrin: A composer wiser than i once said that "if you haven't done anything truly new, how can you say you've done anything?" -- which i consider a good question. That somehow sums up my views on most of the film music out there. :D Still, I think the wisest advice here is Qcc's. When you're still a student, you really shouldn't expect too much of yourself too early. When you are in a process of learning, composing unoriginal music is better than not composing music at all. Actually, even composing bad music is better than not composing at all.