“The four-bar phrase has had a bad press in our time,” writes Charles Rosen.[1. In The Romantic Generation 258. Rosen gives a fascinating exploration of them in his book, but I want to articulate a different approach.] But for all the denigration, four-bar phrases are ubiquitous.
Continue readingMore TagTag: James Tenney
Artsy Guitar Hero
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 […]
Continue readingMore TagThe World’s Ugliest Music? Nice Try . . .
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 him to the punch nearly sixty […]
Continue readingMore TagMusic Theory for the Twenty-first Century
(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.) 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 […]
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