I’ve written in the past about James Tenney’s Meta-Hodos, on this blog and for school.
(Fast summary: According to Tenney, just as we usually divide time into years, months, days, and so on, music can be divided hierarchically. This hierarchies arise in music because of musical differences from moment to moment (and phrase to phrase, section to section, etc.). The shapes of these differences — and the similarities that bind sections together — are how form emerges.)
Today I found a great piece that demonstrates this kind of thinking: Psappha by Iannis Xenakis. The most obvious of the hierarchies is created by the different percussion sounds, but you can also hear groupings emerge due to the different rate of events and the pauses between them.
For the truly nerdy, you can go read my paper and delve more into how this works.
Otherwise, you can just enjoy the cool sounds of an artsy Guitar Hero (ht: Josh Harris).
. . . prompted by discovering I had a recording of Schumann’s Piano Concerto, op. 54, on my computer. So, in chronological order:
1. Robert Schumann — Piano Concerto, op. 54 (1845)
I love the first movement of this concerto. Growing up, the public library a series of videos about the orchestra featuring the Schleswig-Holsetein Festival Orchestra and Sir Georg Solti with Dudley Moore as narrator. Turns out Dudley Moore is also a fine amateur pianist. He played the solo part of this concerto in those videos, which is where I first really got to know it.
As it turns out, most of the rest of my favorites were written in a roughly 10-year span:
2. Erich Korngold — Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (1923)
I don’t know how I found this piece first, but I love so much about it: the harmony, the viscerality of it, the way the vigorous sections are contrasted with ethereal ones, and how it all flows together in one continuous movement.
4 and 5. Maurice Ravel — Piano Concerto in G (1931) and Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (1930)
Ravel’s two concerti are the holy grail of concerto writing for me. They’re very contrasting works. The Left-Hand Concerto is dark and profound whereas the Concerto in G is light and winsome. The Concerto in G also contains 9 of some of the most beautiful minutes of music ever in the Adagio Assai.
6. Sergei Rachmaninov — Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (1934)
I heard lots of Rachmaninov ever since I was a kid, but out of all of the concerti, this one is my favorite (followed by 3 and 4 in that order). I love the variety of moods and colors. As with the Ravel and Korngold concertos for the left hand, Rachmaninov does a great job pulling along the narrative without a movement break. [Note—For the video below, I found a really good remastering of Rachmaninov himself at the piano.]
And, finally,
7. Dmitri Shostakovich — Piano Concerto no. 2 (1957)
In some ways, I hear this concerto as companion piece to the Ravel Concerto in G. They have a similar arch to them except that the Shostakovich is darker and more visceral. [In the same spirit as the Rachmaninov above, I’ve included the composer’s own rendition below, though you’ll have to follow the links in the comments to movements 2 and 3 for this one.]
So, yeah, “no Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, or Brahms”? Nope. And no apologies — but you can write your own list, if you like . . .
“Sharpen Your Quills!” by Rob Deemer, NewMusicBox. After an introductory blurb about how composers use notation software in their composition process, you then get easily more than a dozen responses on who uses what software and how. A good number of composers have had strong opinions on what tools you should/should not use (piano, notation software, your instrument, etc.), but to my mind, prohibitions on certain tools are more a pedagogical exercise than a practical concern. Thus, I loved reading about the process of all these composers and how it intersected their use of notation programs. The variety of their experiences affirmed the idea that different creators will use tools their own way—that there’s no one right way for the act of composing just as there is no one right way for the style of composition. (By the way, the composers whose process sounded most similar to my own were Kevin Puts and David Little.)
“Crossing the Atlantic: A Primer on Euro-American Musical Relations” by Evan Johnson, NewMusicBox. I’m across the Atlantic right now at an international music festival, and it’s interesting to note the differences among my colleagues, too, regardless of their original nationality. One thing this festival has shown me, underscored by Johnson’s article, is that I’m really an American in my sensibilities. (As a side note, it’s been refreshing attending daily colloquiums led by Chris Theofanidis and seeing his understanding of and warmth towards a wide variety of music. In a discipline that has had a recent history of turf battles and parsimoniousness, his generosity is something I aspire to.)
Neil’s Carillonairum. Okay, so this isn’t so much an article, but did you know Neil Thornock has an entire page of carillon (bell tower) music, his and others? (Do you even know who Neil Thornock is? If not, you should. I lovea lotofhis music.) It’s a cool sound and really different.
The Centennial Carillon tower at BYU. (Yes, it always looks that pretty.)
I like to have “reference” music while composing. It usually has nothing to do with the music I’m writing. In fact, I’m actually not quite show what relationship it has to what I end up writing, except that I like having some consistency to what I listen to. Here’re some highlights from the playlist for the quartet I’m working on, including a surprisingly good recording of the Finale of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra.
By the way, this quartet I’m working on has to be done by tomorrow. So if you’ll excuse me . . .
So Dr. Scott Rickard thinks he’s composed the world’s ugliest music using fancy math. I’m not convinced, but you can hear for yourself: the piece, written for piano, starts at 7’48.
Rickard is not the only one to use fancy math to write music. Most notably, Iannis Xenakis beat himto the punch nearly sixty years ago. Nor is it the only piece to rely on chaos to make itself unpredictable. Alvin Lucier’s “Music on a Long Thin Wire” does that pretty well, too. In both Xenakis and Lucier, there’s an elemental beauty I find attractive (even though I wouldn’t want to listen solely to their work), and Rickard’s new work, I would argue, fits in that vein—that is, making music out of non-musical processes.
Concerning Rickard’s “pattern-free” claim, that’s certainly true if you’re looking for motives, but Mr. Rickard clearly hasn’t read Meta-Hodos (in addition, at 6’12, to misrepresenting Schoenberg’s motivation in creating the twelve-tone method. Fail.). Try as he might, he can’t de-musical-ize music. As Tenney explains, because Rickard’s materials are differentiated, relationships inevitably emerge. The most simple of these inadvertent relationships is agogic accent. While the piano piece has no definitive melodic cadences, it does have clear clusters of events, the boundaries of which are determined by the longest note in a local area. To my ears, it sounds like a series of elided phrases. Another set of relationships emerges because of the clear differentiation of registers. Particularly at the extremes of register, you hear a sense of interrupted continuity. The notes group themselves because they sound similar with respect to pitch-height. To put it simply, “random notes” can never sound random.
That said, even though I hear musical patterns within the texture, I don’t think these relationships are nearly as important as the overall sweep of the piece—in the same way that, although you can segment a performance of “Music on a Long Thin Wire,” the segmentation of it isn’t really the point. In fact, I would say that Rickard was actually quite successful in creating a work in the “acoustical positivist” vein. In both the Lucier and the Rickard, the sum texture, incorporating all internal variation, is the music. What makes such works beautiful is that even though they are, in effect, static objects, you don’t experience them statically. Only on reflection do you realize, “Wait, this is all of a whole.” There’s a serenity to such music that’s quite similar to listening to a stream or the wind (a comparison that, if I remember correctly, Lucier himself makes).
Now, if you really want to write an ugly piece of music, your best bet is to go the route of tedium. The careful use of repetition gives you a far better foundation with which to defy expectations and create a perpetual sense of anticlimax. Throw in some bad voice-leading and gratuitous dissonance, and you’re on your way. Incidentally, another group of scientists did something like this, although they approached the effect on a tangent.
Also incidentally, I really need to go to bed. So good night.
(I wrote this blog post during the SOPA/PIPA internet blackout, and, WordPress being out, I couldn’t post it till later. Along with millions of others, I oppose those bills.)
The main exposition of James Tenney’s theory occurs in Meta-Hodos. The title is as daunting as the prose is dense, but the ideas it contains are deeply insightful.
On Tuesday, I presented a paper at BYU’s composition seminar about James Tenney and the theoretical system he developed. Without getting into its specifics (which manage to be both simple and complicated), suffice it to say that Tenney presents a highly flexible analytical system that enables its users to gain insight in practically any style of music. After describing its workings to the seminar, someone raised the criticism that the system is mostly descriptive and didn’t reflect what the composers were thinking, two criteria he hoped to see in a “music theory for the twenty-first century,” which claim I made for Tenney’s theory.
While I can see the value of his second point (after all, it is one of the major aims of musicology), I disagree with the first and maintain that Tenney’s theory is the kind of thing that twenty-first century musicians need. When I look at the way that I and many of my contemporaries listen to music, some things stand out. We listen to, and love without shame, a wide range of music that is eclectic not only because of its diverse sounds but also because of its varied reception among different social spheres. In other words, when we listen to music, what its creator intended and its circumstances of creation are largely irrelevant: everything gets thrown together into a decontextualized mix, the only common thread of which—electronic recording—further decontextualizes the pre-twentieth-century repertoire.
We really don’t experience music the way Beethoven intended. Beethoven didn’t compose a microphone part or a post-production mix for the Eroica. Even our acoustic performances will be different because our ears live in a foreign world. Beethoven’s performers couldn’t even imagine Coldplay, Miles Davis, or Claude Debussy, let alone the sounds of airplanes and refrigerators. While Beethoven’s intent is nice to know, that’s a job for musicologists and HIP-sters, not composers and theorists. Composers and theorists are responsible to address their needs of their age rather than the concerns of ages past.
Which leads me to the first criticism, of Tenney’s theory being merely descriptive. I question the very premise of this criticism: namely the distinction between description and evaluation. The use of any descriptive lens is itself an evaluation, declaring what is and isn’t worth examining. After that choice, the evaluation is limited based on what the model can describe. Theories can only effectively evaluative material within the descriptive framework they establish.
From a twenty-first century perspective, the failure of most analytical systems is that their descriptive focus comes laden with stylistic assumptions. For instance, traditional common-practice theory does a great job of describing and evaluate part-writing in that style, but grows progressively useless the more sound- or rhythm-based a repertoire is.
In contrast, Tenney’s theory enables you to look at music relative to itself rather than imposing outside criteria. It has equal power to reveal the organizing factors in Beethoven, Boulez, and the Beatles. Such eclecticism is the reality of our cultural situation. Because Tenney’s theory reflects this and enables us to make sense of our times’ stylistic catholicism, it warrants the moniker I gave it, as the music theory for the twenty-first century.
(For those interested in learning more, I’ve uploaded my term paper about it, which is probably the best place to start, considering the density of the primary sources.)
. . . and for something completely different, here, as promised, is the audio for Myths and Legends. Good job again to Jared, Kory, and the BYU Chamber Orchestra!
Jared and the orchestra did really well and gave a performance that was filled with life and energy. In addition, it was a great concert all around, with pieces by C.P.E. Bach, Stravinsky, and Haydn. Afterward, I got to have a picture with some key players in the premiere.
Thanks as well to everyone who came! While I was excited to hear the piece, I even more excited to share this moment with you.
Stephen Jones (my teacher), me, Jared Starr (soloist), Kory Katseanes (conductor)
Less than a week after the successful premiere of my Clarinet Sonata (Kudos to Jaren Hinckley and Jed Moss! It was an electrifying performance!), A Field Guide to Natural History just received its Utah premiere this past week as part of BYU’s Group for New Music concerts. For those who weren’t there or who want to relive the experience, you now can in image . . .
An editor would use a red pencil as a baton. (Photo courtesy: Steve Ricks)
. . . and in sound:
Many thanks to the performers, Eric Hansen, Ray Smith, Scott Holden, and Ron Brough (whose head is hidden behind a music stand) and, of course, to the Barlow Endowment for making the night possible! As with the Clarinet Sonata, it was another great performance.
In other news, the BYU Chamber Orchestra recently began rehearsals of my still nameless violin concerto. Name suggestions are most welcome.
