Tag: COMPOSING AND MUSIC THEORY

General – No Note Dominates in 12 Tone Music or is More Important than the Other (that is why it is called Atonal or Pan-Tonal Music) – Avoid to Use Scales – Rely on a Tonal Centre  – He did that by Using All the Notes with Equal Frequency  – Tone Row is Sort of…

General – “Tintinnabuli” (Lat. for Bell) is a Technique, where “Custom Resonances” are Applied to a Single Note  – the Idea is Based on Different Sounding Timbres of Bells – These Resonances Do Not Derive from the Original Sound, but are Based on a Previous Defined Triad Picture – the “Tintinabulli” Composition Itself is a…

General – Repeats “Eastern Melodies” that are by Nature Closer Together (Adjacent Keys)  – Plays on Every “One” a Slightly Different Chord as an Accompany, Either through Re-Harmonisation or Chord Change – for Example Hungarian Mode = C, D, Eb, Gb, G, Ab, B, C (same as Harmonic Minor but with a Raised 4th) –…

– Did not went far away from a Tonal Centre, but he used a deliberately “Vague Harmonic Language” in order to avoid Classical Duality of Tonic and Dominant  – Debussy’s Interest for better “Timbre” by Assigning Single Lines to a Dedicated Single Instrument Not Played by any Other Instrument – He often Mixed Scales, for…

General – a Way of Combining many Individual Timbres into Large-Scale-Textures which are Shaped in Time by Changes in their Global Qualities (and Not by the Interplay of Individual Lines) – Ligeti’s “Cloud-Clusters” are Always in Movement, Blending into each Other in Different Colours, Begins with a “Nebulous” Note and Ends in “Nothing” – Ligeti’s…

General Oscillating Triads – He Later Started to Stretch Out a Simply Triad (Oscillating Triad), i.e. Usually by Oscillating the Notes within It to Give it Sense of Activity or Instability – e.g. in Shaker Loops there is D Major Triad, then a E is Added, then the F# Shifts Back in 2 to the…

General – Messiaen was Teacher for Harmony and Composition at Paris (Students Like Quincy Jones, Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, George Benjamin) – Messiaen Modes Provide a Huge Repertoire of Emotional Responses  – His “Modes of Limited Transposition” is a Set of Modes or Scales that Fit a Strict Set or Criteria Relating to Their Interval Groups…