Jess' Compositions

Started by ComposerOfAvantGarde, October 14, 2015, 01:37:37 AM

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aleazk

Seems legit. I do similar things. The only thing I would say is that your final chord seems to have just too many notes. I think it would be difficult to hear the intervallic nuances if you just play it at once... the risk is that it may end sounding close to a cluster, you don't want that. Maybe playing it arpeggiated, even as some sort of melodic line, could be the most effective way of using it. Or maybe play one half of the chord first and then the other. For example, one can hear the intervallic relations in Webern because the writing is very austere. On the other hand, sometimes in Boulez I often hear his chords as clusters because they have just too many notes.

Another thing I do is to apply similar operations to all the voices in a polyphony... in this way, you get a weave that evolves at the pace of the original melodies in the texture but which becomes richer and richer in harmony. Some sort of controlled successions of chords of the type you have here.

ComposerOfAvantGarde

Quote from: aleazk on February 18, 2018, 04:14:25 PM
Seems legit. I do similar things. The only thing I would say is that your final chord seems to have just too many notes. I think it would be difficult to hear the intervallic nuances if you just play it at once... the risk is that it may end sounding close to a cluster, you don't want that. Maybe playing it arpeggiated, even as some sort of melodic line, could be the most effective way of using it. Or maybe play one half of the chord first and then the other. For example, one can hear the intervallic relations in Webern because the writing is very austere. On the other hand, sometimes in Boulez I often hear his chords as clusters because they have just too many notes.

Another thing I do is to apply similar operations to all the voices in a polyphony... in this way, you get a weave that evolves at the pace of the original melodies in the texture but which becomes richer and richer in harmony. Some sort of controlled successions of chords of the type you have here.

Yep actually I never have all the notes playing at once. I agree that it can sound a bit too much like a cluster, but also, on the practical side of things, there is a maximum number of notes that a string quartet plus a guitar can play at any one time. Due to the physical impossibilities of having the entire chord sound at once it has indeed given me the opportunity to consider how I can split these chords up.

aleazk

Ah, haha, I should have seen the score before saying anything  $:)


Karl Henning

Quote from: jessop on February 18, 2018, 12:41:17 PM
Oh I just realised there were only two pitch classes before aggregate completion and I simply added another one in so I could generate a second chord with an intervallic relationship to the first.

And your mind was engaged in the process.
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

ComposerOfAvantGarde

Cross post alert

Quote from: jessop on February 26, 2018, 03:41:53 AM
Just saw my amazing friends Ziggy and Miles Johnston play this programme of Australian works at the Melbourne Recital Centre

Phillip Houghton
Wave Radiance

Richard Charlton
Refractions
Romanza
Spiral Eclipse

Phillip Houghton (Performed by Miles)
Stélé movement 1

Phillip Houghton (Performed by Ziggy)
God of the Northern Forest

Jessop Maticevski Shumack
Bergträume (world premiere)

Nigel Westlake
Songs from the Forest

https://www.melbournerecital.com.au/events/2018/australian-impressions/

There will also be a video uploaded of the concert later. Probably none of these composers are familiar to anyone here as they are pretty only well known in the community of classical guitarists and their fans here in Australia, but I reckon they deserve to be better known elsewhere too. The world premiere wasn't as structurally good as a composition as a piece I wrote for the duo five years ago, but they played it so so well that I think the piece came off better than I expected. I am glad to say it was the most controversial thing on the programme, with audience opinion quite divided between fans of the work and non-fans. Man, I love that kind of engagement with new music.

Karl Henning

Were you pleased with the performance of your piece?
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

ComposerOfAvantGarde

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on February 26, 2018, 05:49:09 AM
Were you pleased with the performance of your piece?

Yes I was. For a piece inspired by dreams it certainly cam across as quite surreal in performance.

Rons_talking

Quote from: jessop on February 26, 2018, 11:55:06 AM
Yes I was. For a piece inspired by dreams it certainly cam across as quite surreal in performance.

I've looked over the score and am eager to hear how it came out. I was reading your comments on harmonic structure above (but couldn't see the examples). One way to build new chords based on what you have is to use prolongation. In tonal music it might be the extension of of a secondary or tertiary harmony without abandoning  the tonic. In atonal music, you can break down an eg.  hexachord into its 3 and 4 (or 5) note subsets, then construct new chords or full-on series that will prevent the possible monotony of of a oft-repeated sonority yet still maintain structural integrity of your "tonic." Bartok often did this.  I personally dislike trying to keep a couple of pitch-classes concealed (1920s Hindemith did this). I feel like a hand is tied behind my back and let's face it, when that missing Bb and D-nat come out, it's not like the listeners will stand and cheer :)   You may know all about this already but there it is. Congrats on the performance! I can see why the reaction was divided; every work requires  a decision as to whom you're listener should be before the first notation. I write for people just like me :). You also, have a clear vision in those terms. Cheers.

ComposerOfAvantGarde

Quote from: Rons_talking on February 26, 2018, 12:51:40 PM
I've looked over the score and am eager to hear how it came out. I was reading your comments on harmonic structure above (but couldn't see the examples). One way to build new chords based on what you have is to use prolongation. In tonal music it might be the extension of of a secondary or tertiary harmony without abandoning  the tonic. In atonal music, you can break down an eg.  hexachord into its 3 and 4 (or 5) note subsets, then construct new chords or full-on series that will prevent the possible monotony of of a oft-repeated sonority yet still maintain structural integrity of your "tonic." Bartok often did this.  I personally dislike trying to keep a couple of pitch-classes concealed (1920s Hindemith did this). I feel like a hand is tied behind my back and let's face it, when that missing Bb and D-nat come out, it's not like the listeners will stand and cheer :)   You may know all about this already but there it is. Congrats on the performance! I can see why the reaction was divided; every work requires  a decision as to whom you're listener should be before the first notation. I write for people just like me :). You also, have a clear vision in those terms. Cheers.

Thanks so much, but that score you looked at was a different piece I am still working on, my friend. :)

I will definitely take your advice into consideration, though. I haven't looked at organising all 12 pitches in my composition in any particular way, but I have looked at some chord multiplication (symmetrically against itself) I described earlier and applied the idea to pitch subsets of the resultant chord. Keeping pitch-classes concealed in that way is rather boring to me as well. I think the only people who would get hard to an aggregate completion are hardcore composition students who have just discovered stuff like that.

One thing I might try to do more is turn the resultant 'big chord' from that chord multiplication process I got going earlier into a 4x4 pitch matrix and work with that melodically, generating harmony from melody in parts, as it all related back to that 'big ass chord' from before anyway.

ComposerOfAvantGarde

Quote from: jessop on February 27, 2018, 03:48:22 AM
One thing I might try to do more is turn the resultant 'big chord' from that chord multiplication process I got going earlier into a 4x4 pitch matrix and work with that melodically, generating harmony from melody in parts, as it all related back to that 'big ass chord' from before anyway.

And I have done just that in a piano trio I am currently working on, although not just one 4x4 matrix, with two of them! The second one is pretty much just the first one but flipped upside down. The lowest pitch of matrix 1 is also the highest pitch of matrix 2 and I have worked it out so that each pitch itself is fixed to a register. I only really use this as a way of controlling melodic lines for shorter sections of the overall piano trio, but I really like how it is turning out.

The trio itself is called "Es irrt der Mesnch so lang er strebt" and I have been interested in looking how different musical ideas can strive for prominence, attempting to influence the entire ensemble and subvert other musical ideas off track, sometimes successfully and sometimes unsuccessfully.

I am nearly halfway through the piece.

ComposerOfAvantGarde

One other piece I wrote recently was something for solo guitar which I've called peripeteia where I am really just looking more generally at how I can set up (perhaps quite suddenly, or perhaps you may hear it coming) a long coda which has a rather suddenly different mood to the rest of the piece, as if the music really is going through a change of circumstance.

There will almost definitely be a performance of this piece in late September in a concert hosted by the Melbourne Guitar Foundation featuring new solo works by Australian composers. They will upload the concert to youtube shortly afterwards.


Manwithaplan

Wow!  :o

I'm highly impressed by that! Flawless development and form, with the materials you used! Great transition back into the opening part near the end too!

ComposerOfAvantGarde

I've been working on ways to create much more complex rhythms within the limitations of standard western music notation. Looking at non-retrogradable stuff, additive rhythms based on adding certain amounts (as dictated by certain numerical sequences e.g Fibonacci) of a 'base' subdivision to a beat-length duration in order to smoothly move from shorter to longer durations that don't sound particularly bound by a time signature. This kind of rhythmic detail isn't present in Es irrt der Mensch so lang er strebt so I hope to implement these ideas in future works.

I am curious to know which other composers have done this.

ComposerOfAvantGarde

Quote from: α | ì Æ ñ on March 29, 2018, 10:44:11 PM
Wow!  :o

I'm highly impressed by that! Flawless development and form, with the materials you used! Great transition back into the opening part near the end too!
Thank you very much, Alien :)

ComposerOfAvantGarde

First rehearsal of 'Es irrt der Mensch so lang er strebt' was today and we have discovered the rhythms really do our head in. It's hard, and because we have uncomfortably few rehearsals before the first performance it might mean that I conduct the trio to help us keep together. Jumping from 11/16 to 2/4 to 11/16 to 7/8 unfortunately does not come naturally to these musicians! However, the first rehearsal was fantastic and we are going slowly through the whole piece, learning it together. I am learning about the piece as much as they are, to be frank.

World premiere of the trio is scheduled for the 8th of May

World premiere of a much simpler choral piece I wrote is scheduled for the 5th of May! Should be interesting to see how that goes.

Someone approached me recently to ask if I have any solo voice works (or voice plus instruments) for a concert in August or if I would like to compose one by mid July. Luckily, I am currently working on one to be sung by a good friend of mine!

ComposerOfAvantGarde

Quote from: jessop on April 13, 2018, 02:23:10 AM
World premiere of the trio is scheduled for the 8th of May

World premiere of a much simpler choral piece I wrote is scheduled for the 5th of May! Should be interesting to see how that goes.

Both happened! Although the choral piece was on the 6th of May, that was my mistake. It was written for a community choir, so it had to be singable specifically at the level the choir were comfortable, and these were very 'prim and proper' women so I felt a bit nervous writing a piece that emphasised semitone clashes, but they were able to sing it three times throughout the choral festival and it sounded quite good each time. One of the sopranos came up to me before the second and third performances of the piece (where I was present) and told me that the music and the words (written by my sister) felt very relevant to some difficult personal experiences she has had years ago and found a lot of personal meaning in that work more than any of the others. She didn't tell me what it was about her life, but I have never heard anyone say anything like that to me before but it was really fascinating to see the unintended effects that any composition can have on anyone.

The trio was performed tonight and it went very well indeed! Despite the constantly changing and often irregular/complex time signatures, the trio kept together perfectly well without needing to be conducted at all. By the final rehearsal yesterday we were simply running through the piece with only a few remarks from me on what can be improved. The concert was miles better and the audience turnout was unusually large for a student composition concert at the Conservatorium (seats filled approx. 25% to 30% capacity).

Karl Henning

Bravo!  And let us know if there are documents of the pieces we all can enjoy!  :)
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

ComposerOfAvantGarde