Invention 1 (dodecaphonic)

- Invention 2: http://forum.youngcomposers.com/t27503/invention-2-the-shift-dodecaphonic/An exercise in dodecaphony-ism. I've added the score with the numbers and rows. Pedal markings and dynamics are indications, because I have not payed an enormous amount of attention to them.Comments are very much appreciated :D. It should be possible to play this, sorry for small hands though.Invention 1 (dodecaphonic)

Invention 1 (dodecaphonic)

Hi Roy,

I know nothing about dodecaphonyness, so i take your ancient rules for granted. I still think its a very interesting piece though. The concept of the various voices and the relation between them is something I haven't heard before, so I had to listen to it a couple of times to get used to it, But i think I like it. I'm still missing some dynamics, like you pointed out already, but overall I think its a striking piece that brings its message over well. Hope to hear more from you!

Gr,

Vla

I'm sorry, but I simply have absolutely no idea what to say about the piece :dunno: It's rather odd, and...mathematical-sounding, as though it was calculated. Interesting...

Thanks for sharing with us :)

It's rather ...mathematical-sounding, as though it was calculated.

Welcome to 12-tone music. :P As far as I can tell, Roy's done everything right with this piece. I'm no expert, though, I've only had brief instruction on the workings of 12-tone: completed 1 matrix, analyzed a few works, listened to a handful of pieces, talked about it for two hours.

Not my favorite type of music. In fact, I'll be honest and say I don't like strict atonal pieces. But this was pretty interesting. What I might have liked a bit more of was a rhythmic motif that went away and then came back intermittently, kind of as an aural glue for me to latch onto. Fugues have the same problem: in a work with a free form and no lyrics, how do you develop motives to death in a work without it being a plate of one long strand of spaghetti?

Answer: Re-expositions (or whatever you want to call them). Bring the subject back every now and then. I'll submit to you that in this case, the rhythm would serve that purpose. I wanted so badly to hear the first "dee da dum..." by itself at least once or twice in there.

Cool! That musta been fun to write.

I am not too fond of atonality either. Even so this was fun to write. I hope it will trigger my feeling for development and form a bit more. I'm pretty sure I am going to write some more of these. And I'll keep in mind to let the first dee da dum return (those two 'arpeggiated' sounding parts near the end do resemble that dee da dum part, but then with the second note an octave lower). I will take it as a challenge to write something in this style that does kind of speak to the general public (ie tonal listeners, including me). Thanks for the comments

I am writing a second one at the moment. If anyone has some thoughts upon this piece, please let me know so I can still incorporate it in the new composition

I thoroughly enjoy this. I have to agree with Peter above, everything looks very nicely done with this. I started exploring serialism myself at the beginning of the year. I learned quite a lot from it and hope you have as well. It's always a good thing to explore new sonorities and so forth. Have you thought about serializing other aspects of your music?

I liked this piece. I particularly liked the "heavier" parts, e.g. the one beginning at 0:48.

I thought the ending was really good too, from 1:02 onwards.

:happy:

It sounds much better than any serial piece I heard elsewhere. Serial music is weird. I can enjoy almost all other kinds of modern music, but not 12-tone, for some reason.

But good job.

This was really nice, but you broke some rules, not that it maters in terms of the quality of the piece. In the second half of the second measure, you start another statement of the prime row, when the first prime is half finished. The only time you can have multiple rows going at once, is if they're Combinatorial, so as to maintain the maximum equal emphasis on all tones, or "atonality"--the entire point of the 12-tone method. It's seem that you freely overlap rows in the piece, creating a few moments where tones are over-emphasized, like the unison B-natural on beat 3 of measure 13, and the first two measure definitely emphasis a tonic of A (the progression could be functionally notated like Aaug Emaj-b5 Aaug, which is a modified I V I). The row in generally has a very whole tone scale sound, and there are little dominant tonic progressions like the first one all over the place. This would be fine, if you weren't trying to make an atonal piece, which is the usual purpose of the 12-tone system. There are of course exception this, like in Berg, who used the technique to create tonal music--but it is working against the design.

This is more a problem with your labels which makes it them little confusing: why did you label the notes in reference to C when the prime form doesn't start on C (or end on C for that matter)? The common terminology is "prime form" for the transposed row, and then the amount of semi-tones it was transposed for transposed forms of the row.

For the notation: it's common to put courtesy accidentals on every note to make it easy to read. This can be a problem like in measure 6, where you have an Ab at the beginning of the measure and an unmarked A, an octave higher, on beat 3: the player might not be sure whether it's supposed to be A or Ab. It's hard enough playing 12-tone music, when add stuff like this, people get frustrated. Also, for the choice of whether to do sharp or flat, there are several options, one of which you choose--which is to choose one, and only use one type of accidental to make it easier to read, which is fine. This may sound counter-intuitive and contradictory, but I like to spell all the notes as if the piece were tonal. This is because players are used to reading tonal patterns, and the notes are usually related to each other in a voice-leading sense which comes from tonality, so it makes it easier for the person looking at the music to understand the flow of the line and the direction of the voice-leading. But that's just my choice, what you did is fine as well, except for courtesy accidentals.

Now, I really like this piece. The whole-tone scale stuff makes it have a sort of, strange, floating sound. And motivic unity makes it all sound very ordered, and it was an exciting moment at 29 when the quarter notes and the double eight figuration happened at the same time. I really hope you continue utilize 12-tone technique, because I think it can create some wonderful music, and is a wonderful tool to achieve certain things. And unfortunately, as evidenced by some of the comments in this thread, it's not at all popular these days, and almost no one is writing in a serial or post-serial style, which I find unfortunate.

Jawoodruff: Im not going to serialize other aspects of the music as well (for now). I like to utilize the little means left to make it sound more 'tonal' in a way (or at least more comfortable to listen to, from a tonal point of view that is).

Thank you last life! That helped me very much. The terminology was primarily for my own convenience, but I will change it.

That Combinatorial thing is indeed a good thing to keep in mind. I will avoid it from now on. Courtesy accidentals: Duh! Why didn't I think of that... :hmmm: it actually did but I forgot about it again before putting it up here. I am not trying to create atonal music for the sake of atonal music; I'd actually like it if some parts sound almost tonal.

Atonal music isn't my forte so I can't really analyse if this follows the 'rules' but to me it sounded great. I think that may be because whether intentional or not there is some tonality implied that gives the piece a really out there on the edge of tonality feel. I find this much easier to listen to than most of the twelve tone pieces I've heard. Good stuff!

You should only create atonal music if you like the of equal tonal emphasis. To create it "just to create it" would be bad, I think/agree, you should only be writing atonal music if you like the sound of atonal music. Music is about sounds. However it is good to be in control of how tonal/atonal a given moment is in a piece of music, that way you can use it for expressive purposes.

I rather liked this. I recently started to write twelvetone music, but like last life said, I try to stay within a sortof tonal context like Berg. Since you too want a 'tonal' sound I am really interested in what is to come :D

very nice)

would be great, if smbd listens to my last composition and leaves comments hones:

Thanks! And a strange call for attention at the same time Anyhow, I must come back at my other comment. I have serialised (many) other aspects of the music in a second Invention I wrote ( http://forum.youngcomposers.com/t27503/invention-2-the-shift-dodecaphonic/ ).

And jrcramer, I am sorry to maybe disappoint you but I have strayed away from tonality with that new piece, but I think it might be in a way easier to listen to than this piece - I for one think it is better (but, maybe, just maybe, I am a bit biased?).