Music – Page 12 – An Echo That's Reversing

Three Pieces for Orchestra

Audio exported from MuseScore:

Score exported from MuseScore:

three-pieces-for-orchestra

Audio mixed and exported from Dorico (14 May 2021):

Audio uploaded to YouTube with cover art (15 May 2021):

Cover: Andrew Kosten, Ghosts, 2015

“in this time of quarantine”
the djinn
breathe

The first one comes from a comment someone had made on Twitter that, though simple enough, felt resonant when given its own context. It stuck with me unexpectedly so I never bookmarked the source. The second is from a parable by Howard Taylor (which I referenced here a few weeks ago) regarding the cost of our responsibility to others. The last is both a hopeful and not hopeful outcome.

After obsessively listening to the New Complexity pieces, I realized that I haven’t gone far enough into the atonal world. Although much of New Complexity is tonal-ish, the extreme range was creatively inspiring and I tried to go as far as I could with that approach for “quarantine”. That section is also a stretch towards the “tapestry of sound” described by Piston for when many simultaneous voices work with drastic melodic contrast. It’s our unnerved disbelief at what we’re in right now, responding with nervous laughter. That moves on to a piece, “the djinn”, emphasizing primarily rhythmic contrast across voices. It’s the destructive, will-less bouncing of contagion. Finally to a harmonic/rhythmic consonance, but that’s ultimately bruised by what occurred previously.

(This is exported from Musescore and I’m working on the cleanup in Dorico.)

Updated 30 min later: Speaking of New Complexity, I just picked up the mail and my copy of Finnissy’s English Country-Tunes was delivered. (Pic added below.)

first page of *I’ll give my love a garland* from Finnissy’s *English Country-Tunes*

(more) complexity

I have been obsessed with this. The emotions it brings up are confusing and compelling and I still don’t quite know what it’s communicating. It’s mood is just at the edge of recognition. So, I’m doing closer listenings than before and hope to understand it better.

Orchestral Study #4, updated audio

Orchestral Study #4 (allegro), updated audio and original audio

Orchestral Study #3, updated audio

Orchestral Study #3 (adagio with melisma), updated audio and original audio

New Complexity

(I’m not sure how I encountered this. Some sort of internet spelunking but who-knows-where.)

New Complexity is a composition style that originated in the 80s, consisting of inconceivably difficult music with beautifully difficult scores. Upon first listening, I felt that it was just a rehash of mid-century serial technique, at least in expressiveness. I fell into the “I’m smart enough to understand this immediately” trap of the moderately informed. It is instead yet something different and contains more performance/conceptual art aspects that put the responsibility of process on the performer as a way to manifest the ideas in the score. It may be a pendulum swing from what has been called the “downtown” style of minimalism that appeared in the late 60s/early 70s, which was itself a pendulum swing away from the atonality of decades prior. No style completely disappears, but I am happy to see a rhythmically- and harmonically-difficult style return.