Warning! This is a music theory nerd posting! Proceed with caution!
Three years ago, I blogged about the relationship between an active composer, and the various academics who spend their lives analyzing and contextualizing their works. (See “Theory and Composition (and vise versa),” Sept. 8, 2023.) What’s fun is, I’ve spent almost 10 years periodically wearing both those hats. I started out studying music theory, added courses in musicology and music history, and — somewhere in the middle — started my current focus on actually writing. This fall, I finally got around to taking Kevn Holm-Hudsen’s “Analysis and Style Survey,” a graduate-level general survey of theory and musical styles for students wanting to qualify for advanced studies. I’ve been given a unique opportunity to do what I described in my 2023 blog posting — actually apply some of the “academic-speak” of music theory and style to what I’ve been doing in my own works.
Tonality.
The Circle of 3rds. I’ve frequently kidded theorists at UK that the emphasis on the circle of 5ths in tonal relationships was simply not interesting to me, preferring other intervallic relationships (3rds, mostly). It turns out that such key changes have a name — chromatic mediant relationships. Dr. H-H mentions that such an approach is extremely common in movie scores, where there are dramatic reasons for making key changes that are striking to the ear. But, of course, to satisfy my mathematical/logical mind, I extend such through a “circle” of my own making. Although you’ll find much in my work that reflects traditional tonality, things like “cadence” and “sequence” reflect, for me, relationships that are only distantly related to the circle of 5ths. Of course, since my ear is the ultimate abitur of such things, even my mathematical ideas often take a back seat. But often they don’t!
Tone clusters. Yeah, I tend to use that moniker more often than “chords,” since I really avoid normal triads, especially major and minor ones. But the 20th century produced lots of composition examples where the clusters have no tonal purpose at all, from bunches of tight single-step-related pitches to an arm mashing a large number of keys on a piano at once. This approach is called “Secundal,” reflecting the fact that single steps (half or whole) are at play. The word “tone clusters” usually refers to such, and has a long history in music that is truly atonal, or at least in passages with an atonal purpose. What’s funny is, if one looks at other triadic chord structures (quartal – based on 4ths, or quintal, based on 5ths), the results produce many step-wise chordal tones if one changes the octave placement of chord members. But I’ll retain my “tone cluster” designation, as incorrect as it might be, since that better reflects my chord construction process than the possible ways traditional theory might. When building a chord, I tend to add pitches through ear-driven trial-and-error. The results might very well be theoretically quartal, but I can’t say I care.
Form and style
Historical forms. People tend to get self-righteous when you use a title, or reference a style, with a long and glorious historical tradition. I’m afraid I’ve gotten pretty good at embracing my willful ignorance of the structural traditions associated with a specific historically-referenced title. Like above, it comes from a specific way in which I am inspired and write. As an example, the “gigue” from my “Je danse, J’apprends” suite of dances actually started out in my mind as a traditional British and American jig. I listened to a lot of jigs online, took the rhythmic feel, the simple melodic approach, then made lots of variations and distortions. Ultimately I re-named it “Gigue” to better match the fact that the entire suite, and much of the dances themselves, were more mainland-Europe-focused. This is, of course, a risky business. since an historic title carries some weight listeners bring into their listening. But, assuming my composition simply is what it is, the only alternative would be for me to select a completely new and unrelated title, and then let the theorists discover that I’ve used some historical influences. But what fun is there in that?
Musical forms. There are several historical forms which have become so common as to become a part of the pallet a composer usually uses to build the structure of larger works. The assumption is that the parts reflecting such exist as an idea separate from the form’s historical origins. I can list dozens of such, from simple ABA to extended sonata-allegro form common to 19th and 20th Century symphony first movements. As an example: although a rondo has a long and glorious historical tradition, any piece with an ABACA structure (or one of several variants) is a rondo, even if none of the music inside those sections has anything to do with its history. (The popular song is often described as a rondo — the A is the chorus. Dr. H-H even presented one of his pop song compositions as an example.) But two things have happened to me in this regard. 1) Again, I start there, and I don’t feel any obligation to stay true to the form. 2) I’m painfully aware that most listeners in this day and age are not students of musical form, nor is their attention span up to the skills required to recognize and appreciate such things. As a result, fewer and fewer of my instrumental works reflect a complex form. I’ve tended to find non-musical inspirations (see “The Coast” or “The Great Barrier Reef” as two). Since there will be some form, AB or ABA often is sufficient. One can infer that I lean towards shorter works for many of the same reasons.
I think that’s enough for today. I may add to it later.
