Incorporation of old elements into new music.

What I'm talking about is NOT neoclassicism a la Stravinsky or Hindemith: what I'm talking about is studying old music and assimilating elements of it (whether those be formal, stylistic, etc.). I have a love for baroque music especially, but I often find myself listening to it and studying scores, trying to glean things out of them, and going "so what do I do with this now?" What are some things you have done in this direction?

Oh I have done a LOT in that direction. I regularly utilize classical forms (rondo, sonata-allegro, minuet, etc.) in my more modern music. I also have a great fondness for contrapuntal technique and regularly use it in virtually all of my works. I also tend to take a more classicist approach to organizing my melodic material. I love experimenting with stuff like this - it's challenging at times.

Ok Voce here is one example. The Bach Chacconne. As I studied the piece I noticed a cyclical pattern to how he'd bring certain textures back but varied (eg the chordal progressions, the arpeggiation of them, the acceleration of note values and deceleration, how he saves the triplets for the last 1/4). And I thought for my viola piece as we were to base it on a chaconne, I decided to use a progression I had come up with but with various changing constellations of the chords (eg inversions and anticipations of the next chord). However, I let go of the progression once I had my gestures (eg one to three figures to form a semi-phrase or phrase) but always kept in mind how Bach cycles his textures, so I thought of cycling certain bow techniques along with bringing back gestures that were quite varied.

Another one was was Metamorphosis - the descending bass line both Bach and Dupre used in their chorale preludes based on In Dulce Jubilio. For example in Bach's he has the chord go right into a dominant chord on the first beat - and cadencing on the wrong chords for a few measures until we get to the tonic. It is as if he were depicting musically the birth of Jesus in an imperfect world. Also, Bach uses these loose improvisatory like figures between soundings of the chorale tune so it gave me the idea of introducing arpeggios and slowly introducing fragments of the choral tune before restating the chorale tune as a whole. When I did introduce the choral tune I took Dupre's cue - he really reharmonized it so uniquely without distracting from the tune in his chorale prelude. So I actually used the first two chords as departure points for my reharmonization. On a sidenote, our model was the Bartok 2 piano percussion Sonata which was helpful in seeing/hearing what works with the ensemble and gave a nice starting point, but it did not really have an impact on the specific nature of the piece I wrote.

I hope these examples work. I find there is no one set formula. Rather you pick and choose to come up with a conception and then determine what things from Bach or another composer you would employ in your piece.

Take a look at Whitacre's "Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine." He wrote most of it in the style of Renaissance music, with tons of Picardy thirds and chain suspensions. But he puts his own twists on things, keeping a lot of more contemporary dissonances, too. As a result, it's arguably his most difficult piece. Check it out:

These are the words:

Voce,

Why don't you do the exact opposite?

Because old music has already been written. That's the definition of "old music". :P

We are composers, not transcribers.

...well most of us. I am actually an arranger and transcriber. lol.

There's hardly anything new to be done anyway if you ask me, but old + new = new, the order doesn't matter. Is Gorecki's 3rd a Symphony using new techniques or a modern piece using an old approach?

Well, Baroque music leaves quite some space for new things. The harmonic language was quite limited - iminished and dominant 7th chords were used a lot but the piece always stayed in a related key most of the time. Formally there weren't a lot of options: binary or ternary (dance) forms, fugues, canons etc. in comparison to what composers were doing later on. If a baroque piece in sonata form is feasible is open to discussion although I doubt it.

There are also atonal fugues. One important thing to notice is that a lot of counterpoint builds upon the concept of dissonances and their resolution, thus convincing atonal contrapuntal works are very hard to pull off.

Also Peter, serialism uses "old" terms like inversion, retrograde etc, but is still regarded as relatively modern.

Serialism is over 100 years old. Forget dat old poo.

Honestly, my opinion is that by creating it today, no matter how indebted or even thieving, it's going to be different and modern.

What I'm talking about is NOT neoclassicism a la Stravinsky or Hindemith: what I'm talking about is studying old music and assimilating elements of it (whether those be formal, stylistic, etc.). I have a love for baroque music especially, but I often find myself listening to it and studying scores, trying to glean things out of them, and going "so what do I do with this now?" What are some things you have done in this direction?

I don't get it. Your definition sounds to me as something that could describe Stravinskian and Hindemithical neoclassicism. Can you elaborate on what you mean exactly? More precise, what do you mean by "incorporation" as in the topic title, and "assimilating" ? Is it like the Schintke quotations of Lassus and Beethoven (and shos) in the 3rd string quartet? Or again, someting different? I don't get it... :dunno: