Composing Recently
21 February 2007
It has been quite some time since I wrote in this. This is not because I haven’t been composing. On the contrary, I’ve actually been composing quite a bit. I’ll try to tie up what has happened in the past week.
After laying out the scaffolding for the slowing down section, I attempted to compose it at the piano, printed out on a smaller sheet. This ended up being a bad idea for several reasons, especially because I wanted to compose out a section that comprehensively deals with a quarter-tone harmonic system. My plan was to build chords on each entry point for each layer of the rhythms and I began with that plan. To tie it together in a somewhat neoclassical mode (but without the attendant irony) I thought to treat this as a development section and use the quarter-tone equivalent of a circle-of-fifths progression to propel the harmonies of the piece along, I would cycle through a circle of five-quarter tones, assigning one pitch to each accent in the slowing down polyrhythm, when I reached the end of the five-quarter cycle, I, instead of returning to the opening pitch used it as a pivot into a seven-quarter tone pitch space cycle, again at the end, before returning to the original pitch, I pivoted into an eleven-quarter-tone pitch space cycle. In all these instances before entering the new pitch space I repeated the chord that had been held. After reaching the end of the eleven-quarter-tone pitch cycle, I moved back through parts of the cycles I had already traversed – the exact details are in my sketches. Why these cycles? Well, the 5, 7 and 11 quarter-tone cycles are the only ones that will cycle through all the quarter-tones within the chromatic scale without repeating any pitches. I actually have yet to finish up the cycles.
Eventually on doing this, I realized that it would not be necessary to assign triads for each of the accent points, I could just allow the cyclic pitches to speak for themselves, extending them where the overall harmonies would be more pungent. This is where I’ve been.
Over these shifting harmonies, I applied a radically different set for the solos, for trumpet, then bass, then trombone. These solos are limited in their pitches – the trumpet uses only six, the bass is similar. So borrowing a phrase from the percussion part, I’ve redone it for the trumpet and then for some of the bass. The bass alternates low pizzicatos with high quarter-tone harmonics before bowing out with the four open strings, the trombone simply plays long tones around F – its primary pitch.
On Monday I met with my old teacher Stephen Siegel, perhaps one of America’s finest relatively unknown composers – his new String Quartet really begs to be heard. Steve is also a fabulous teacher and on hearing the piece urged me to trim down and cut out various parts, cleaning up the piece more to make it more sleek, more differentiated. I’m not sure that I agreed with all of his suggestions, but I did implement a number of them and have put a fresh eye and ear to the opening ritornello, making subtle changes that serve to really enhance the work. This took a few days.
Today was/is Ash Wednesday and I have been busy playing organ in New Jersey. Tomorrow I must really get down to serious, more serious work, as I was only able to clean some things up today. My time is fading and I need to make the most of it. There is still a good deal of music that needs to be written.
It has been quite some time since I wrote in this. This is not because I haven’t been composing. On the contrary, I’ve actually been composing quite a bit. I’ll try to tie up what has happened in the past week.
After laying out the scaffolding for the slowing down section, I attempted to compose it at the piano, printed out on a smaller sheet. This ended up being a bad idea for several reasons, especially because I wanted to compose out a section that comprehensively deals with a quarter-tone harmonic system. My plan was to build chords on each entry point for each layer of the rhythms and I began with that plan. To tie it together in a somewhat neoclassical mode (but without the attendant irony) I thought to treat this as a development section and use the quarter-tone equivalent of a circle-of-fifths progression to propel the harmonies of the piece along, I would cycle through a circle of five-quarter tones, assigning one pitch to each accent in the slowing down polyrhythm, when I reached the end of the five-quarter cycle, I, instead of returning to the opening pitch used it as a pivot into a seven-quarter tone pitch space cycle, again at the end, before returning to the original pitch, I pivoted into an eleven-quarter-tone pitch space cycle. In all these instances before entering the new pitch space I repeated the chord that had been held. After reaching the end of the eleven-quarter-tone pitch cycle, I moved back through parts of the cycles I had already traversed – the exact details are in my sketches. Why these cycles? Well, the 5, 7 and 11 quarter-tone cycles are the only ones that will cycle through all the quarter-tones within the chromatic scale without repeating any pitches. I actually have yet to finish up the cycles.
Eventually on doing this, I realized that it would not be necessary to assign triads for each of the accent points, I could just allow the cyclic pitches to speak for themselves, extending them where the overall harmonies would be more pungent. This is where I’ve been.
Over these shifting harmonies, I applied a radically different set for the solos, for trumpet, then bass, then trombone. These solos are limited in their pitches – the trumpet uses only six, the bass is similar. So borrowing a phrase from the percussion part, I’ve redone it for the trumpet and then for some of the bass. The bass alternates low pizzicatos with high quarter-tone harmonics before bowing out with the four open strings, the trombone simply plays long tones around F – its primary pitch.
On Monday I met with my old teacher Stephen Siegel, perhaps one of America’s finest relatively unknown composers – his new String Quartet really begs to be heard. Steve is also a fabulous teacher and on hearing the piece urged me to trim down and cut out various parts, cleaning up the piece more to make it more sleek, more differentiated. I’m not sure that I agreed with all of his suggestions, but I did implement a number of them and have put a fresh eye and ear to the opening ritornello, making subtle changes that serve to really enhance the work. This took a few days.
Today was/is Ash Wednesday and I have been busy playing organ in New Jersey. Tomorrow I must really get down to serious, more serious work, as I was only able to clean some things up today. My time is fading and I need to make the most of it. There is still a good deal of music that needs to be written.
Labels: composing
posted by Todd Tarantino at
11:12 AM
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