May 28, 201411 yr Hey all, I've been browsing this site for a few days now, so I thought it was about time I introduced myself! I'm Adam a third year composition student at the University of Huddersfield, England. I play Viola, Piano and I conduct too.. My aesthetic interests lie in the avant-garde, I compose mostly goal orientated atonal music, with a specific interest in using atonality as a form of diminishing harmonic importance, to bring out textural, timbral and rhythmic elements in my work. My influences include, but are not limited to, Ligeti, Stockhausen, Xenakis, Berio, Stravinsky, Cage, Glass and Reich. Extra-musically I find the philosophies of Plato to be very important to me and post-modern literature too, specifically Bourges. There we go enough about me! I look forward to getting to know you and your work. Adam
May 28, 201411 yr Hey! Welcome to our modest but eager musical world. Please feel free to share you music as well as to comment on other composer's works. Also, there are (sometimes) energic discussions on many threads throughout the site. There are some competitions too (we're going to start one this Sunday).
May 28, 201411 yr I'm Adam a third year composition student at the University of Huddersfield, England [...] My aesthetic interests lie in the avant-garde It would be rather surprising if they didn't, lol. Welcome to our mostly-dead site, have fun
May 28, 201411 yr Author It would be rather surprising if they didn't, lol. Hahahaa, true it is Huddersfield, glad to see people know of our avant-garde prowess ;)
June 2, 201411 yr My aesthetic interests lie in the avant-garde, I compose mostly goal orientated atonal music, with a specific interest in using atonality as a form of diminishing harmonic importance, to bring out textural, timbral and rhythmic elements in my work. You can't diminish harmonic importance. All of the elements work in tandum to create the overall effect of the piece. This is my main grief with a good deal of serial music. For as amazing a musician as he is, Boulez has always bored me because his strict serialism comes across as incredibly flat. I think the composer that refuses to recognize harmonic elements does himself a great disservice. Even unpitched percussion pieces are affected by the underlying tones. If you listen to different performances of pieces such as Xenakis' Rebonds it can become clear. This piece is intrinsically nothing but texture, rhythm, and form. However, the underlying pitches of the instruments used has a great effect on how they sound together.
June 2, 201411 yr Author You can't diminish harmonic importance. All of the elements work in tandum to create the overall effect of the piece. I would agree but you can make certain elements more important. Look at minimalism and new tonality... is harmony the primary carrier of content in Reichs Piano Phase? For me no. It's the rhythms that result from such things as the phasing that the ear picks up on. Of course the ear is aware of the return to tonal harmony but it's not at the forefront of the listening experience, well not at least for me (and for a good deal of academics). Phycho-acoustic studies would generally suggest the same, that the ear prioritises the elements that seem to the brain to be most interesting. Going onto the Xenakis, yes the pitches are important of course they are but they're not at the forefront of the listening experience - that's what I mean by diminishing harmonic importance. That is not to say my music has NO harmonic control, but I control in it a way which aids other primary elements, rather than making harmony into an primary element itself. Do you know any early Feldman piano works? Perhaps look at the way he notates piano music, there are no specific pitches, simply registers and I consider his early piano works to be fascinating.
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.