The day

Hi.... Back to tonality.

These are 4 short and simple pieces part of a cycle about different moments of a day. Two of them use hybrid chords, a sonority I love; the other are in minor mode.

Pretty nice overall. I personally found some of your chromaticism and quasi-chromaticism a little bit distracting but that's just my opinion. I can see what it was trying to do functionally. In the first one, the prime form your main left hand theme (0 2 3 5 7 9) doesn't really remain consistent with the other instances of that rhythmic theme (i.e. (0 2 4 7 9)). Maybe that was intentional, maybe it wasn't, but it was interesting to hear.

Nice stuff, as always.

1 hour ago, Monarcheon said:

In the first one, the prime form your main left hand theme (0 2 3 5 7 9) doesn't really remain consistent with the other instances of that rhythmic theme (i.e. (0 2 4 7 9)).

Sorry, I don't understand that. Are those the intervals? Although you talk about rhythm....

2 minutes ago, Luis Hernández said:

Sorry, I don't understand that. Are those the intervals? Although you talk about rhythm....

 

Hi, sorry. Prime form and normal order are two ways of analyzing melodic, harmonic, or chordal motivic relationships in polytonal or pantonal music. It's a process that begins by boiling down a theme to "in-order", compact intervalic form, then finding the most dense form of that to find a numeric number set for every motif in the piece. Generally, we find that these are consistent throughout a piece (for example, movement 8 of Pierrot Lunnaire), and we base analysis with this.

OK, I understand.

There was no intentional pattern of that kind there. Only the root, and above the other chord, avoiding the third of the root (so no major, no minor).

I use the technique you mentioned, sometimes, when the chords are complex (like Messiaen's chords, which are great).

Just now, Luis Hernández said:

OK, I understand.

There was no intentional pattern of that kind there. Only the root, and above the other chord, avoiding the third of the root (so no major, no minor).

 

Fair enough; that's simply the way I was taught to analyze neotonal music of that kind. It was how we initially realized Schoenberg's analytical intent with his pieces, so we use it to justify modern works as well.

Cheers!

Thanks. It's a tool that I have to try with some freely atonal (or neotonal) music. I mean, interesting to establish an intervalic pattern an play with it...

I take concepts  from everywhere and I think everything can be mixed. Every idea is a possible element to make music.

Besides, I'm into new modality (scales) and 20th century languages. I'm considering to attend some courses about techniques in contemporary composition... Although I study on my own, courses are always welcome.