Re: Musical languistics - Mass Reply

 --- Sally Caves skrzypszy:

> No, I was talking about the man who used Sonar to make his own music.  The
> remark about Stravinsky being too "atonal" was made by my friend's mother.
> Stravinsky is a modernist composer, and didn't fit her taste for Chopin.
> That was *her* word.  Maybe she used the word "dissonant."  At any rate, she
> didn't like him.  Who was his contemporary who popularized the use of a
> twelve tone scale?  I'm blanking on his name.
Schönberg? Webern? Well, I wouldn't call them contemporaries, since they are
already dead 52 resp. 58 years. Personally, I don't care much for dodecaphonia,
although I can enjoy listen to Webern a lot (when I am in the mood for extreme
romantism, at least).

> Alright...  Maybe we need a definition of atonal, twelve tone, microtone.  I
> would appreciate it.  My musical knowledge is all self-taught.  And what I
> pick up from my musical husband.  Twelve-tone I understand.  But not
> microtone.
Well, they don't play in the same league. Twelve-tone is a composition
principle, following the idea that all twelve tones of the chromatic scale
should be treated equally by putting them into a row.
Microtones, to put it simply, are all notes that do not belong to the chromatic
scale, for example quarter-tones, third-tones, etc.

> > Have you ever listened to polyphonic vocal music from Georgia?
>
> I would like to listen to this.  Can you name some names?
Rustavi Choir, Kutaisi Ensemble... There are much more ensembles, and I have a
few of them on CD. As soon as I can find the time, I will search the Internet
for samples. You'll be the first to know :)) .

> AGREED!  Can you give me some representative composers for these terms?  I
> know Steve Reich and Philip Glass for "minimalism" (I like their work a
> lot), but what constitutes "postmodernism"?  This is such a broad term.
Indeed. Nobody seems to like the term much because of its obscurity, but it is
sometimes used simply because we lack something better. A typical example of
this is Alfred Schnittke, who himself called his style "polystylistic". I think
many contemporary Russian composers belong to this school (Sofia Gubajdulina,
Edison Denisov, Dmitri Smirnov, Elena Firsova), as long as they don't belong to
the "New Spirituality". Mauricio Kagel would also fit here.

> What about neoclassicism (is this a contemporary movement in music?).
If you ask me it has been a current in musical composition since the late 19th
century, that has never really been away. But to be honest, I can't think of
any names among younger composers right now.

> What is neotonality and who composes this (the so-called "New
> Spirituality"--it sounds like "New Age," a term I loathe)?
Simply said, neotonality is the return to extreme tonality, often with a strong
religious undercurrent. Typical examples are: Arvo Pärt, Henryk Mikolaj
Górecki, John Taverner, Gija Kancheli. It is somewhat related to minimalism,
but there are differences; in most minimal music (typical example: Reich)
rhythm plays a crucial role, while in the music of the composers I mentioned
here is often very slow and rhythmically far from exciting.

> Never heard of postserialism
Basically, composers who elaborate on the style of the serialists (Boulez,
Stockhausen, Berio, etc.) but without following their strict rules. The result
is music that is usually extremely complicated. Extreme example: Bryan
Ferneyhough.

> aleatorism.  The latter, though, I can imagine: aleatory means "random,"
> "left to chance."  I imagine this is the music I was complaining about in
> another post: the pings, the pongs, the silences, the drum rolls, the
> silences.  On the other hand, though, I like surprises in music.  Again, who
> is most representative?
John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, but also Witold Lutoslawski (who writes normal
scores with normal notes, but allows portions of improvisation).

> I've tried to do pieces where the base is in one time and the
> treble in another. :)  This was for a simple little song that I haven't
> recorded yet.
That's wonderful. Aren't you going to record it at some point?

> Like "Blue Moon," played while the protagonist in "An American Werewolf in
> London" is changing painfully into his monster!!
Indeed!

> Like the incredible,
> repetitive song that comes on during the credits to "The Mothman
> Prophesies."
Marvellous film!

> My friends hated it;  it was "inappropriate," "didn't fit the
> mood of the film"; I couldn't explain why I liked it.
Probably because it is the contrast between the scene and the music that makes
both doubly effective. I happen to know a short song by Louis Andriessen on the
text of a little girl telling about the horrors of the Vietnam war. About legs
torn out of her friends etc. And this is sung in an extremely monotonous way,
accompanied by only three chords. Wow! It gives me the willies, much more than
any "romantic" or "horror-like" music would have ever been able to achieve.

> Danny Elfman is a genius.
!!!!!

I would have written more elaborate responses, but alas! My time is over :(

Jan

=====
"Originality is the art of concealing your source." - Franklin P. Jones

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