Bridge

It's been fun and all but I'm not interested in continuing this discussion. Have a good one.

You might want to consider enrolling in some sort of music academy if you can - it's my understanding that the students at these types of schools have many opportunities to have their works played, either at end of year ceremonies by the school or local orchestra or just by students by on the side. This might not be the case everywhere, though.

One, two. ^ That's one of many possible ways your example can be construed because there is of course no 1:1 relationship between music and language. But "one, two" what? What are you trying to say? Perhaps you meant to say "I had one fish and now I have two," which expresses something - meaning, also known as semantics. Your two notes can be a part of a 12-tone composition, but they could also not be. There is not enough information to say for certain. Again, the nature of the music does not change depending on how you view it - it remains constant. You might also be tempted to say a single quarter note struck by a gong is in an elaborate mixed meter of alternating 15/16 and 7/8, but that is pure conjecture. Even if somebody decides to notate it that way, that doesn't actually mean that the note itself changes. Add a woodblock laying out the pulses of the respective meters and then you have a case because then, and only then, is the context established. I don't need to tell you that the semantic meaning of things depend on context. And you also miss the point because I am referring exclusively to music composed in the style of the Second Viennese School when I say "12-tone", which is the majority of serialist music. You might as well say that "tonal music is only music that has tonalized parameters based in some way on 7 notes but how are they used?" Well, there are some pretty clear traditions about how they are used that I don't need to mention. Yeah, there might be people who use the bare minimum of the 12-tone method in mysterious ways to write music that doesn't remotely resemble conventional serialism, just as there might be composers (bad composers) that use the 7 tones of the diatonic scale in arbitrary ways to create malformed music that has no meaning, but I'm not interested in discussing such fringe cases. When I say "tonality" do you immediately throw your arms up in objection because technically tonal music doesn't have any inherent instructions for its creation?

There is never any rule for anything when it comes to music, but 12-tone serialism has one widely adhered to tenet, which is the employment of tone rows which must be completed in one way or another before they are repeated. If there was any ambiguity as regards this I'm sorry, but this is what I've been referring to by the term "12-tone" this entire time. Music that uses the 12 tones of the chromatic scale in a more or less democratic fashion but isn't based on the 12-tone method I've called "atonal." Not really, because your little two note phrase there has no semantic connotations whatsoever. Just interpreting it through the lens of musical set theory doesn't change its nature. You can't for example isolate a single note in a 12-tone composition and say: "Well this Ab here might as well be the tonic of Ab major - what do we know?" and pronounce it tonal. It's the bigger picture that must be examined - does the piece have a strong tonal basis? That doesn't necessarily mean it has to be fully diatonic and based around the basic tonic-dominant connection, but if the answer is no then it is atonal. Whether it is strictly atonal or even 12-tone is unimportant, at least not something I am willing to discuss. That bit of Bartok I posted has an obvious drive toward certain tones, and not only in the folk themes. EDIT: To use another analogy because I love those so much, consider the word "amar." To love, pretty basic and found in many Romance languages in variations. However, it is spelled the exact same way in both Spanish and Portuguese (possibly more, those are the only languages I am familiar with), like that: amar, though pronounced differently. It is impossible for me to tell you what language it is from without having a complete grammatically correct sentence with a definite meaning. It can just as well belong to either. EDIT II: There is also the fact that atonality is by default an uphill battle. The fundamental principle of every pitch - the harmonic series - and the way our hearing is designed plus the cultural conditioning basically forces us to hear it tonally, even though of course tonality itself is in some ways arbitrary. There's also the fact that the C is on a downbeat and the first tone that is heard in the phrase which pretty much guarantees that we will hear it in C major if there is nothing else to refer to.

Unlike you I make no pretense of authority. My knowledge is meager and I am only an unlearned admirer of serialism, but it is my experience that there is a noticeable difference simply by virtue of the relative constraints placed on the music by the 12-tone method. This manifests itself among other things in rhythmic asymmetry and disjointedness, a more vertical approach to melody (klangferbenmelodie etc.) and a lack of central harmony. This is not necessarily something unique to strictly serial music, the free atonality of early Schoenberg and Webern for example gets pretty close to 12-tone music but one can if one is paying attention tell with relative ease which of their works are written in using the method. Conspicuous emphasis on certain notes either via repetition or strong rhythmic concepts etc. - admittedly sometimes a bit ambiguous if no restriction is made on repeats of adjacent tones. I may or may not be able to identify whether a piece is 12-tone depending on how closely it follows the stylistic traditions of the philosophy, but if a piece is composed in this style and with similar techniques to serialism but not intentionally 12-tone one might still even be justified in calling it 12-tone music - certainly atonal music which is at the heart of the issue here and not specifically serialism. I don't really know what sort of examples would satisfy you, my statement is fairly unfalsifiable, based only on my subjective experiences - intended only to illustrate that to me there is a very obvious difference between tonal and atonal music. Whether you agree or not is not my responsibility, I cannot make you listen to any examples I could potentially give the way I listen to them. Two examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPyas8hhKHM ^ Pretty tellingly 12-tone for the reasons stated above. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsd2OtqEIqM ^ Pretty tellingly not 12-tone for the opposite reasons.

OK. Temporarily, but once a key is established the music doesn't exactly decide to stick around, eh? Serialism is a texture - I haven't heard any non-serialist music that approximates it. You can subvert it however you wish but it will always sound serialist. EDIT: I doubt you will listen to me, but if you really want to convince people your position is correct it would serve you well to adopt some modesty and tact.

Atonality is nothing more than a rejection of tonality. If it is one of the chief objectives of a particular piece, it qualifies as atonal music. Although it can be an objective descriptor of the music it isn't necessarily so, and I contest the idea that it even needs to be. Let's consider a somewhat similar semantic issue: Iran's relationship to the Arab world - Iranians by all rights look and act Arabic and they share the common cultural heritage of Islam which is perhaps the most defining characteristic of an Arab country. To simplify the issue quite a bit, really the only thing that prevents Iranians from being considered Arabs is the fact that they do not speak the Arabic tongue and do not consider themselves Arabs. By the same token Bartok and Debussy, who might have written music that could on occasion be described as atonal, are not atonal composers because they say that their music is tonal and there is a quantifiable difference between their music and music that self-identifies as being atonal, for example music written in the 12-tone serialist tradition. It's not as complex as you make it out to be. EDIT: I'm not saying you should listen to the composer's say-so and regard it as absolute truth on the matter, but just because there is not a foolproof scientific way to say for certain doesn't mean that it is impossible to assess pieces on an individual level. I haven't yet heard a piece composed inadvertently within the parameters of serialism. That would be an extraordinary coincidence, so unlikely that one can regard it as negligible. The bottom line is that 12-tone music sounds only like itself and there definitely is no ambiguity. Bear in mind, serialism is only one way one can achieve atonality but chances are any other method which seeks to guarantee it is going to be pretty similar to it. P.S. Well, by all means ignore this discussion if you are so inclined - no skin off my back. I don't agree with your pettifogging over what constitutes tonality in the other thread anyway. If that's what I have in store for me I am not terribly interested in continuing either.

Pretty self-explanatory. Post whatever musical moments you find to be interesting, whether it be an interesting piece of orchestration, a moody chord and/or voicing, an expressive melody, interesting rhythm, etc. - whatever makes you giddy. Obviously a YouTube link or a sound bite is required but it would also be preferable if you could post an image excerpt from the score if possible (or a link to the score with the page or measure number included) and also a few words about why you like the moment in question. I guess I'll start out with my favorite moment from Scriabin's Poem of Ecstasy (though I actually have a somewhat sizable and ever-growing folder full of moments I find interesting that I might post gradually:) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeRkiHcRBCY&feature=player_detailpage#t=836 I love everything about this moment but the trombones are clearly the highlight. It's fascinating to me that a passage so profoundly beautiful owes its charm to the harsh tone of muted trombones playing forte and fortissimo. They are completely naked here and one can imagine a similar passage in a less balanced score being very unconvincing. Amazingly, and the conductor and players (Muti with the Philadelphia Orchestra) deserve no small praise for this, the trombones neither devour nor get devoured by the orchestra (in some other readings of this I've listened to the trombones generally sound too tinny and small.) The balance is just right and the result is truly spectacular as you will no doubt agree. The entire poem is pretty great in general, as is its sister piece Prometheus: The Poem of Fire which is arguably better. If you don't know these pieces I highly recommend going through them with the score which can be found here. I look forward to hearing and discussing a lot of interesting music with you guys. P.S. I apologize if such a thread already exists - A search yielded me nothing.

That's not exactly true is it? Atonality refers to a specific concept in music, including but not limited to the 12 tone method. It makes no difference whether the physics of sound are inescapable, that one cannot ignore the harmonic series, or that atonal music is heard by the ear as an elaborate string of modulations (I suppose it is theoretically possible to create a fully atonal piece by emphasizing absolutely nothing.) I think all of us here know what is meant by the word "atonality," therefore it means something. Now, whether the term is misleading is an entirely different matter and a more reasonable debate to have. I personally think the term omnitonality has some merits - It describes what serialist music sounds like more accurately to me though even this term is not exactly perfect. Atonal music does not vastly outnumber tonal music, in fact it is a negligible enclave in the mass of tonal music hitherto composed. If you meant to say that atonal music as a movement contains more variety and stylistic diversity, that's also not true. Atonal music has had a hundred-odd years of development so far as opposed to the potentially hundreds of thousands of years of tonal music. Let's be reasonable and take only into account the Western classical tradition from ca. the Reformation (ignoring indigenous tonal musics and the modal tradition of the Greeks etc.) We still have around 350 years of musical development, from Palestrina to Mahler! To say that all of the intervening music is not as rich in diversity as 20th century idioms would be absurd, and factually incorrect.

… and in turn you are oversimplifying. It certainly cannot be easily divided into any of these categories. Every great composer has a highly personalized aesthetic design which exhibits signs of all of these things which arguably means it falls under none of them. Only gimmicky composers can be pigeonholed in such a way - also I understand the terms you mentioned differently than you defined them, especially deconstruction which is definitely not conservative. I also disagree strongly with your broad categories as I find them arbitrary and simplistic. If I humor your definitions anyway, it's quite easy to conclude that without emotion music is pointless, and without kinesis it is stagnant. I don't understand your definition of spirituality, it seems only to denote great works that are respected. That of course has nothing to do with the music - it either is great or it isn't. It's a consequence of the work's greatness, not a characteristic or attribute. Nobody says: "I am going to write great music that is spiritual" or on the flipside: "I want to write meaningless kinetic music," at least not if they are being serious. One writes good music that is to be respected if one is capable and poor music if one is not, unless the work in question is just a pointless project you care nothing about written for monetary other extramusical reasons - I would hardly call that a legitimate musical offering.

I'm going to have to drop out of this one and let xiangyik compete instead since he actually stands a chance of winning in my opinion. I was writing the fugue on the piano and I'm not a brilliant pianist especially when it comes to contrapuntal playing so it was quite difficult to come up with anything interesting. Off to the shed I guess.

The rules are quite explicit. Four to seven minutes with ten seconds of lee-way. In other words, the piece may be no shorter than three minutes and fifty seconds and no longer than seven minutes and ten seconds. I do agree though that a four minute minimum may not be the best thing in this instance. I haven't gotten past the exposition in mine yet so I can't quite gauge how difficult it will be to get up to four minutes but I am slightly worried about that, this being my first fugue. Perhaps there could be a point deduction instead of automatic disqualification.

I struggle with counterpoint, so this should be good practice. Request entry.

I don't find this to be the case for 20th century music, where the opposite convention is followed by most if not all composers - including Stravinsky and Ravel, the masters of divisi.