Doing it my way

I was thinking earlier about where music is going in the 21st century, and where I need to go as a composer.

The 20th century was about several movements in music: the radical atonality of Schoenberg et al, the mercurial tonality of Bartók, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, the metric chaos of Stravinsky, the jazz-crossover of Gershwin (and later Stravinsky), neoclassicism (again Stravinsky), and minimalism, the American reaction to the complexity of serialism, and Eastern music contributed devices like drones. At the same time, composers like Ives, Partch, Hába and Wyschnegradsky began to challenge the hegemony of twelve-tone equal tuning. And don't forget Cage and Stockhausen, who blurred the very lines between music and noise.

Now, avant-garde music ranges from the complexity of Ferneyhough and Adès to the simplicity of the "holy minimalists" Pärt, Tavener and Górecki. Romanticism, especially the Wagnerian-Straussian philosophy of Gesamtkunstwerk, lives on in film and video game music.

My goal is to take a middle path and incorporate complexity and simplicity, new and old, tonality and atonality. But where else should I go, besides dropping a bunch of names? I feel like the "final frontier" of music really is microtonality/xenharmonicism. I don't know of many composers who are using rows in 15, 17, 19 or 22 rows (I've done 17 and 19 so far). And I'm scoring everything for a conventional orchestra, not homemade instruments like Harry Partch produced.

Anyway, while I consider how I can bring something new to music, I'm planning on a trip to Russia (Moscow and Petersburg, naturally) in the near future, as I went to Turkey three years ago (then, as part of my study of makams as an extension of tonality). My reasons are both professional and personal. I want to see where the Five, self-taught composers like myself, rebelled against the conservatory establishment and made their innovations that influenced Debussy, Ravel and so many others, and where Tchaikovsky, a product of that establishment, wrote his greatest works.

Of course, money, health and political realities may stand in the way. But I've been planning on this trip for 25 years.

Symphony No. 2, again

Note: I've talked about this project before; I'm revisiting it because I just got over months of writer's block, and I'm back to work on it.

About that symphony again... it's really a huge suite of preludes for orchestra, 52 in all. Each one is inspired by something interesting about each of the 50 US States, plus the District of Columbia and the territory of Puerto Rico. It could be a natural landmark, a man-made structure, an historical figure or event, or in the case of Maryland, the state flag. Classical forms may be used, such as a fugue (Pennsylvania) or sonata form with repeat (Louisiana, but recapitulation is in Missouri). A number of featured solo instruments will be used; the middle 11 movements (Louisiana through Minnesota) would be like a piano concerto.

The main inspiration for the work is Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, as orchestrated by Ravel. Like that work, with the Promenade, there are recurring themes, the first presented as a hymn-type piece in the first movement, Maine. It opens with the three "Masonic chords" heard in the Magic Flute. The overall key is E flat major, but all 24 major and minor keys will be used, along with a number of atonal movements and several Arabic maqam scales using quarter tones.

I've finished, or almost finished, about 13 of the movements. They vary in length from less than two minutes for D.C. (a simple fanfare) to around ten minutes for the yet-unwritten Texas movement (a violent scherzo in D minor, à la Night on the Bare Mountain). The total length of the work should be around three hours.

What a dying composer sounds like

A case could be made for withdrawing to some place alone and listening to only Beethoven's last string quartets on loop when the world does come to an end, even if chamber music is not your thing. They were composed in 1825 and 1826; he died 26 March 1827.

He is remembered as the first Romantic, but he also became a type of proto-Modernist, even before these quartets were written. Always the game-changer, he caused many to recoil in horror when they were first heard (especially the Fugue), but later generations have come to greatly appreciate them, including Stravinsky and Adorno. Schubert personally requested No. 14 be played shortly before his death on 19 November 1828.

It's also important for tuning enthusiasts to listen to the intonation used by professional quartets; pitches should deviate a little from Pythagorean or equal temperament to produce clean-sounding chords. In classical technique, they're essentialy playing in 53 equal temperament, which approximates 5-limit just intonation better than any other practical ET.

The videos below are of performances for WXQR Radio in New York for their "Obeythoven" marathon, November 2012.

No. 12 in E flat major, Op. 127 (1825).

No. 13 in B flat major, Op. 130 (1825), with its original finale, the Große Fuge, Op. 133 (1826). The latter was his last significant finished work.

No. 14 in C sharp minor, Op. 131 (1826), the composer's personal favorite.

No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132 (1825)

No. 16 in F major, Op. 135 (1826)

My new classical-album-soundtrack routine

I've decided to try a new morning ritual. Right when I get up, I'll listen to three and study three things (using a score if available):

1. a long-form classical composition (symphony, symphonic suite, concerto, opera, ballet), usually for full orchestra, but it could be a chamber (e.g. string quartet) or solo work (e.g. piano sonata)
2. an entire non-classical album, usually jazz, progressive rock/metal or world music
3. a soundtrack of a film, TV show or video game

I'll try to hear something I've never heard before, but sometimes I'll need to revisit something. Hopefully this'll help me break this writer's block.

The Boy Who Named Himself (a short story)

This would be an example of a Bildungsroman.

One of the earliest events of the DIES IRÆ story (of Symphony No. 1) is that of Hris (written حريس in the Kitâb al-Majnûn, a mysterious and long-lost book written in Baghdad around 1250--more on that in a future blog post), a young orphaned warrior who became a philosopher and scientist, possibly the first ever.

He had forgotten the name given to him at birth, so he called himself Hris (in the modern Elven language: Ħrì, with a falling tone), meaning "the free one" in his prehistoric language (which may have been Nostratic). He lived in the Levant around the year 13000 BC. He was a young warrior, thirteen years old, the sole survivor of a tribe that was wiped out in war. He managed to flee to a distant land and dwelt in caves for three years. During his time in seclusion, he first remembered having to kill a man in battle, and chose to forever forswear violence, even towards animals, except in self-defense, as he subsisted from only gathered fruits and vegetables, mushrooms, wild honey and the milk of animals he had adopted as pets.

Having little to do other than contemplate the world, he developed his philosophy further: soon after, he came to reject the gods (that is, dead warriors, chiefs and other heroes that had been deified) of men, and serve only nature and truth, wherever it may be found. He would spend his lonely days observing and learning from nature.

At age 16, a girl was gathering berries near where Hris lived. They met, fell in love and chose to live together for life. He told her early in the relationship, "You are my equals; I must respect you as I did my mother and sister." From there, he denounced the idea that any person could own and treat any other as property. He saw all men and women as equals, and swore to oppose the tyranny and injustice too often seen in leaders. They had a number of sons and daughters, and they taught them their enlightened ways.

Sadly, Hris would meet a tragic end at the hands of a group of warriors he had tried to preach to. They captured him and his family. He was tortured and killed, but his wife and children escaped. She took the name Hrith, the feminine form of Hris, and her family returned to her husband's homeland and establish a powerful nation there. Their descendants would build a great city, which thrived from trade and peaceful relations with neighbors, until it suddenly collapsed from within around 9600 BC.

Among the things Hris is said to have invented, according to the legends: monotheism (though some would say atheism), agriculture, astronomy, writing, mathematics, music, poetry, several musical instruments and early forms of medicine, the scientific method and democracy. It is claimed that he built a harp or lyre from the bones and other remains of a son that had tragically died in childhood; he was himself a music lover, and his father believed this is how he could "live forever".

Intervals (of 31-tone) ranked by consonance/dissonance

Inspired by the ranking of consonances of the chromatic scale, as part of what is known in German as Tonverwandtschaft,"tonal relationship" (specifically, Paul Hindemith's theory):

I wanted to do my own ranking of all the degrees of the 31 pitch classes of my tuning system (by using 31 equal temperament, which is an extended meantone system that contains quarter tone-type intervals and approximates 11-limit just intonation well). However, I'm working with an irrational temperament rather than just ratios, and I want to use a more scientific understanding of consonance and dissonance than merely looking at numerators and denominators.

This is where Boston-based guitarist and music theorist Paul Erlich comes in. He came up with the idea of harmonic entropy (see also this). (Of course Boston has its own established microtonal music scene.)

Using the Scala tuning program, I calculated the entropies (dissonances) of the pitches of 31 equal. In order from lowest to highest (not counting the unison):

• 31. perfect octave
• 18. perfect fifth
• 1. semi-augmented prime / diesis ("quarter tone")
• 13. perfect fourth
• 23. major sixth
• 10. major third
• 8. minor third
• 30. semi-diminished octave
• 25. augmented sixth (~ 7th harmonic)
• 15. augmented fourth
• 21. minor sixth
• 26. minor seventh
• 7. augmented second (~ 7/6 minor third)
• 5. major second
• 27. neutral seventh
• 6. semi-augmented second
• 12. semi-diminished fourth
• 16. diminished fifth
• 19. semi-augmented fifth
• 11. diminished fourth
• 9. neutral third
• 28. major seventh
• 22. neutral sixth
• 14. semi-augmented fourth (~ 11th harmonic)
• 20. augmented fifth
• 4. neutral second
• 24. diminished seventh
• 17. semi-diminished fifth
• 3. minor second / diatonic semitone
• 29. diminished octave
• 2. augmented prime / chromatic semitone

Edit: not only is the entropy function a good determiner of dissonance, it also gives an idea of how far a pitch can deviate from what the mind thinks is, for example, a semitone, as opposed to just an out-of-tune unison. This may explain why the semi-augmented prime (in JI, about 36/35) ranks higher than the much more obvious perfect fourth (4/3).

My "Pathétique theory": composers' favorite "drama keys"

This is a theory I've been having: a composer, at least of the common-practice (and post-common-practice) type, could have a go-to key for some of his most dramatic or tragic works.

• Bach: D minor, for his famous Toccata and Fugue and a few of his concerti.
• Mozart: G minor, his 25th and 40th Symphonies, influenced by the Sturm und Drang movement in early German Romanticism.
• Beethoven: C minor. His 8th "Pathétique" and 32nd Piano Sonatas, Symphony No. 5.
• Chopin: I'm guessing C sharp minor? (Anyway, piano composers tend to like keys with more sharps or flats; they're easier to play.)
• Tchaikovsky: B minor, for Romeo and Juliet (not the D flat major love theme, obviously), that famous part of Swan Lake, his last Symphony, also nicknamed "Pathétique".

For me, it's either D minor, B minor (спасибо, Пётр Ильич) or A minor. E minor could also be one, but probably because of all the rock I've listened to; it's a natural key for guitar.

There could also be favorite keys for triumphant or romantic music. Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff seemed to like D flat major for love themes.