charliep123

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According to IMDB, Barber has been used in more films than Ligeti and Penderecki combined! http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0053462/ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0509893/ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0671678/ Holy moley! I guess I don't watch movies, or know what I'm talking about.

Speaking of serialism and Stravinsky, how about his serial works? Requiem Canticles anyone? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=668QWMK-maQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxcEe2F1qEg&feature=related

The Adagio is EXTREMELY overused. You need to watch something other than a Kubrick film.

PM me. We'll talk.

:thumbsup:

Hmm, last time I checked (which was 30 seconds ago), Berlioz refers to them as instruments of "indeterminate pitch" in his book on orchestration. As does Adler, etc. You have percussion instruments of indeterminate pitch and percussion instruments of definite pitch. Seems to be that anyone writing a book understands that "unpitched" percussion are pitched. I mean, they vibrate at a certain frequencey -- hence a certain pitch.

You write incidental music to accompany something else (film, play, commercial, TV show, video game). Program music directs a narrative and doesn't have to accompany something else (Lizst's Les préludes). Think tone poem, symphonic poem, etc. Ballet music is ballet music, and opera is opera (though they contain elements of both).

Yes, but "non-pitched" percussion are pitched. They're just of "indefinite" pitch. So they don't "lack tones" (which would have made it atonal in the literal meaning of the word!), they just don't have standard pitches. How about if you apply some of Cowell's rhythmic ideas into percussion music -- then you have "rhythm harmonies" based on the harmonic series and functional tonality. Is that still atonal?!

Or Joel Thome's Time Spans -- first work to use radio signals from space. Pretty good example of "new" and "something not possible prior to the time it was created".

Thats not entirely true. Its not just because Beethoven was "a rebel who broke rules". Rock and roll grew out of folk music more than classical music. That isn't to say that there was no influence -- European art music "thinking" had an impact on early blues and jazz, for example. But rock and roll did not grow out of a couple "art music" composers sayin' "forget these violins, lets get some guitars, bro" [insert heavy metal horns hand here]. There is however, a strong cross polination of the two right now. You have "indie 'classical'" groups like BUILD, groups like The Books, and composers like Missy Mazzolli writing "rock 'n' roll in tuxedos" (as Mario Davidovsky put it). Not to mention the impact and influence classical music has had on pop music -- Varese's impact on Zappa (or Joel Thome's reimagining of Zappa music with Zappa's Universe -- check it, Thome's a genious), Penderecki's influence on Radiohead (they claim to notate all of their music as they write songs). Or the impact Stockhausen had on The Beatles (or classical music in general, lets not forget that "All You Need is Love" has a bit o' Bach in there). Classical music also gets sampled a bunch -- Prokofiev's "Montagues and Capulets" (a.k.a. "Dance of the Knights) from his Romeo and Juliet can be heard in tracks by Sia, Necrophagist, Hollenthon, Blood Axis (yup, apparently metal heads like their Prokofiev), etc., Jay-Z has sampled Morricone and Pavarotti, Ludacris, Cameron, and Evanescence all sample Mozart's Requiem. Orff has been sampled by everyone and their mothers, as has Bach. The list goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, etc.

Does that mean unpitched percussion music is atonal?

Yup. :ermm:

Eh, its not really that Webernian. I have a feeling that by saying "write Webern like texture" your teacher was trying to get you to focus more on Klangfarbenmelodie than pointalism (which is what makes Webern so amazingly effective), neither of which I really see this piece excelling at. That being said, I'm going to go ahead and question your registration. There isn't a whole lot of variety -- or at least I don't find that varitey placed effectively. For example, you start out with the chord in measure one, then the D-sharp of the flute comes in right underneath the lowest E in the chord. But then, right away, you jump up and down over 2 octaves, leaving the flute right in the middle. Basically, you keep jumping from the flute coming out of the piano (with them being very close in register) to them being far. Why not, instead, do something basic, like, they both start out very close, and then the hands of the piano move out, leaving the flute (which was once muddied by it's proximity to the piano) clear by the end? Or the hands move out then back in, revealing and then once again obscuring. While its simple, it works. Look at Schnittke's Pianissimo, for example. The overlaying structure of the work is that it's one big crescendo. Or Gubaidulina's In Croce, where the movement of register in the cello and organ basically form a giant cross (I believe its in In Croce, then again I'm a bit rusty with my Gubaidulina). Very simple structures that work extremely well. I'm not saying that you should do that, or you have to do it. But the registers you choose throughout aren't entirely convincing (for me). In short, its either too "random" or not "random" enough -- it floats in that weird ethereal plain between too much and not enough. Based on the sustain of some of the parts, the staccato in the piano seems a bit forced to me too. I think it might be more fluid if you explore some possibilites with the sostenuto pedal in conjunction with staccato, rather than only using the damper pedal. Measure 13, for example, may benifit from the arpeggiated chord being first "ghosted" and sustained via the sostenuto, then played as you've written. Some of the 16ths could possibly benifit from being tuplets instead. For example, measure 14 might be effective in the right hand with your 4 16th notes, followed by 8th note tripplets, etc. All in all, I do, as usual, enjoy the pitch language of your work. I'm just glad I finally had time to sit down with a piece of yours and comment on it, even if it is a smaller work (I swear I'll get to the quartet eventually!).

Work on your voice leading (there is a seemingly infinate amount of resources out there to help you with that). Work on some counterpoint exercises (if you haven't already). Inversions are always helpful. Bach happens to be very effective with his harmonies for all of these reasons -- that and non-harmonic tones. Also, diminished 7th chords are a very useful tool in terms of modulation as one chord (say C, E-flat, G-flat, B-double flat), is a diminished 7th in 4 keys (that C dim7 is also an A dim7, F-sharp dim7, and D-sharp dim7) when re-spelled enharmonically.