On The Argument for Tonality

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been preparing for an upcoming concert I’m performing in on the 16th. The work I’m premiering with pianist Scott Brazieal is a new duo for guitar and piano titled Roundabout and is of the post-minimalist idiom. One thing I noticed about this piece (and several other recent works of mine) is that my language has been gravitating towards certain pitch centers. While I love consonance, I also love dissonance. I feel that both are equally beautiful and have immense value in a composer’s tool box. Some would say that this would be a natural move for me to make, and that it’s only natural for someone to gravitate towards consonance since it is pleasant, and aesthetically pleasing whereas dissonance is unappealing, inaccessible, noisy and not what audiences want to hear.

Hmm..

I strive to make my work as access able as possible, and I strongly feel that any sound you can imagine can be incorporated provided you have the right context. This includes the most jarring and piercing dissonances in juxtaposition with simple triads and major or minor scales. One common argument I’ve heard for the reinstatement of tonality as a common practice is that the major triad is a reoccurring part of nature. The 2nd through 5th partials of the harmonic series spells out a major triad, and thus is the grounding for this argument. The problem with this argument is that it disregards the rest of the harmonic series and their amazingly beautiful dissonances that define the timbre of the pitch.

Dissonance and consonance are of equal merit and equal beauty.

The amount of dissonant intervals in the harmonic series in proportion to consonant ones are staggeringly high. In fact, I would go so far as to argue that the very dissonances that some are so opposed to are the very things that color their beloved triads. Beauty is born out of “ugly sounds”. A trumpet sounds like a trumpet because certain overtones in the harmonic series are more prevalent than others. The same can be said of any sound conceivable.

Consonance is born out of dissonance, and dissonance complements consonance.

Time and all that it implies

I have recently started a few summer projects, and one of them is a fantasy piece for orchestra that is centered on the idea of time travel. One challenge I find myself facing is the idea of expressing the idea of traveling back in time through music. The funny thing is that it’s an idea that should shows us going backward, but we wouldn’t know that if it were not for the forward progression of time.

Music is nothing without the passage of time… that’s very obvious. We only know of the passage of time because of what happens in it. There have always been expressive musical devices that allow us to bend and stop the clock. We have ritarando, fermatas, rubato… all of these interpretive techniques are ways of being expressive while bending tempo and time.

Ives began to mess with our temporal perceptions by music that contained multiple tempos. Elliot Carter went in his own direction with metric modulation, and writing rhythms that gave the illusion of multiple tempos. All of this, to me, are interesting and illuminating takes on simultaneous temporal realms.

Can we illustrate different moments of time simultaneously in music? Can we warp and bend time like the gravity of celestial bodies?

It would be an interesting challenge to further develop the ideas of Ives and Carter and others to progress and even challenge the very foundation of what makes music a unique medium. Time itself could very well become a new expressive dimension to consciously bend and shape.

Quick plug…

Double premier coming up!

On June 4th the Portland State University women’s choir is singing a new vocal piece of mine, Solace of a Dream (as an octet). On that same program, a new piano piece of mine, Variations on Constellations is also being premiered. The whole shinding goes down in Cramer hall room 453 at 8pm and is free to all.

On June 9th, badass of the bass Fletcher Nemeth and crew will premier a new bass trio of mine, Druid Chant on his senior recital. 7pm at the Old Church on SW 11th and Clay, FREE.

Be there or be rhombus!

Quotation

Quotation is tricky business in the music field.

When you write a paper and use a quote, you naturally have to cite your source. When you quote in music, you have to cite your source and/or change whatever you may be quoting to be either unrecognizable or change it enough to be mutated into something less recognizable.

When I wrote the music for my recital, I included a number of quotations from music composed by my boss and music department chair, Bryan Johanson. Bryan was in attendance during the concert, and was kind enough to mark up and make notes on copies of the scores I provided him. My intention in quoting him was that of flattery, since (whether he realizes it or not) he has had a significant impact on my compositional philosophy and process. Unfortunately, my intentions backfired. Perhaps I was too literal in my quotations, or he simply felt I was getting too far onto his turf, but when I met with him to see what he had to say, most of what we talked about was how I could be potentially perceived as a thief, and he wondered how much of my music was truly original and how much was lifted.

I know in my heart that I am not a plagiarizer.

I know that when I quote (which is seldom) that my intentions are either of complimenting the composer or of providing a new context and perception on the fragment; a deconstruction of the original idea in the postmodern sense. None of the pieces that I quoted Bryan in will ever be published, and I have no illusions of trying to pass them off as original… I merely wanted to pay homage to his influence. I guess I should go back and re-write those few bars.

For those who quote in music… make your citations known, or distort them to the point of being unrecognizable… but still make your citations known. Or just don’t quote.

Notations

I was at Powell’s today perusing the music section (standard procedure), and much to my surprise there was an experimental piece on the shelf. This was particularly exciting because their selection of scores usually ends at around the turn of the century… usually with Ravel or Debussy or Rachmaninoff.

The piece I found was Vectors II for orchestra by a guy I never heard of named Roland Kayn. The thing that got me thinking was that I began to compare some of the notations and textures this piece conveys (as far as I could decipher… the legend was all in German!) with some of the new stuff that I see posted on the American Music Center or elsewhere. Somewhere after all this experimentation, we decided to switch away from these new symbols and continue (for the most part) with our standard notational system. With the exception of graphic scores that sometimes accompany electronic music, we still use note heads and flags and five staff lines.

The 60′s was a glorious time for musical experimentation. Penderecki’s music was ground breaking for the textures and sounds he came up with, and he could only achieve those with his own inventive notations.

Have we dropped the ball when it comes to articulating new ideas? New sound worlds are being opened up all the time with the growing catalogs of electronic music, but how many people actually try to write down the sounds? How many people are leaving all their thoughts within their machine and not on their shelf?

I am a strong believer in the music looking like it should sound… not only with articulations and adjectives, but the actual graphic element. Not only does it make even the most abstract music more accessible, but it challenges the composer to redefine their language again and again until what they have to say can be said in such a way that there is no doubt. The future of music lies in it’s ability to redefine itself.

Bassssss

I’ve been offered an interesting commission recently by bass extraordinaire Fletcher Nemeth. He’s looking for a bass trio for his recital, and frankely, I think this will be an exciting project.

I’ve never written for three basses, no less a solo piece or with accompaniment… but that doesn’t matter. The acoustic stand bass has some interesting an unique sonorities, and in Fletcher’s hands it can go well beyond that.

Despite being at the bottom of most scores, the bass’ role has always been uniquely fundamental… from continuo groups to jazz combos. It’s like a faithful and loving and protecting grizzly bear that can appreciate the sweet love of honey, but also swipe your ass off if you try to rob it of it’s cubs, er.. notes. I guess.

More to come as the story develops.

Shameless Self-Promotion

In case I haven’t mentioned this to you in person, or if you’ve seen this poster, you should come to my senior composition recital!

Reed Reimer’s junior recital will be taking place before mine, and the whole shindig kicks off at 7pm.

BE THERE OR BE RHOMBUS!