Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost

[sul G]

Sorry, indulge a little idle googling - nice to find one's places of work online.....

photo of church interior:



and better photo of school:

[Cato]

Actually I wrote two little carols, both in quick dashes on consecutive days. (They are both modal, in very simple ways - the first uses a F major scale, but isn't in F, the second a C major scale, but isn't in C; both, for some reason, end with a low C# in the bass). The second one is the one I wrote for the girls, the one they sang. Here's the score of both.

(My emphasis above)

To my mental ear, in the first carol, your m/M 7th/9th bass line finds the C# as the best resolution, especially with the C/D 2nd in the bar before, providing a (kind of) Phrygian A major mode.

For the second carol, I hear a polymodality struggling with a D Dorian and an E Phrygian with A minor lurking in the background, the 16th notes beginning on D in bar 48 act as a gateway leading the ear again to an A major/Phrygian conclusion.

Do you know the book by French composer Avenir de Monfred called The New Diatonic Modal Principle of Relative Music ?  It could be of interest to you: de Monfred advocated new modal scales and polymodality as a worthy opponent to what he would have considered "dodecacophony" (i.e. he was no friend of Herr Schoenberg's).      

How that could happen I have no idea!  

[sul G]

Thanks for that very interesting post - interesting in more than one way, and I'll try to follow up the book you mention. I don't know how much you've been following this thread, but if you have then you'll know that this ambiguity of tonal centre is exactly what I'm searching for, at least in pieces like these two which use only one mode - polymodality, as you say, or simply a tonal focus which shifts easily and without drama from one centre to another. The opposite of classical modulation, in that sense. The C# in the first carol works musically and in its relationship with the text, I think, but it isn't in the mode - I have no problem with breaking my own 'rules' for musical reasons. In the second carol the C# also works for the same reasons, and it nicely lights up the final open fifth A-E, which otherwise implies A minor - but it also links the two carols together, as intended.

As regards:

It could be of interest to you: de Monfred advocated new modal scales and polymodality as a worthy opponent to what he would have considered "dodecacophony"

No, I haven't heard of de Monfred, and this sounds fascinating. I know for sure that nothing I'm doing is at all new - even the idea of intersections, unions and negations appears elsewhere (to very different effect in Xenakis, for instance), and naturally there have been all sorts of experiments with composition in vaguely similar ways (think of Debussys' Voiles, for instance, though here no relationships between the two modes are exploited). And in fact, to my mind, my modes and derived sets really only function in a way similar to the various types of harmony one might find in a tonal piece - even something with a pompous name such as an intersection has its similarities to a pivot chord in tonal music.

[Maciek]

Wow! I'm jealous that you work in such a nice building!

[Maciek]

May I invite you to repost those here?

[Cato]

Thanks for that very interesting post - interesting in more than one way, and I'll try to follow up the book you mention. I don't know how much you've been following this thread, but if you have then you'll know that this ambiguity of tonal centre is exactly what I'm searching for, at least in pieces like these two which use only one mode - polymodality, as you say, or simply a tonal focus which shifts easily and without drama from one centre to another. The opposite of classical modulation, in that sense. The C# in the first carol works musically and in its relationship with the text, I think, but it isn't in the mode - I have no problem with breaking my own 'rules' for musical reasons. In the second carol the C# also works for the same reasons, and it nicely lights up the final open fifth A-E, which otherwise implies A minor - but it also links the two carols together, as intended.

As regards:

No, I haven't heard of de Monfred, and this sounds fascinating. I know for sure that nothing I'm doing is at all new - even the idea of intersections, unions and negations appears elsewhere (to very different effect in Xenakis, for instance), and naturally there have been all sorts of experiments with composition in vaguely similar ways (think of Debussys' Voiles, for instance, though here no relationships between the two modes are exploited). And in fact, to my mind, my modes and derived sets really only function in a way similar to the various types of harmony one might find in a tonal piece - even something with a pompous name such as an intersection has its similarities to a pivot chord in tonal music.

I no longer have a copy: even Cato's vast archives have limits, especially if he wants to keep Mrs. Cato happy!   0:)  And so I have given away a good deal of my music library throughout the decades.

Anyway, I do recall that de Monfred showed examples of his own works with idiosyncratic key signatures with e.g. Bb and C# which allowed a kind of simultaneous D major/minor or A# and C# for an even more curious scale on B natural.

His works obviously never caught on, but there might be something of value for you in his polymodality theory.

One obscure CD has a small organ work of his called In Paradisum.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Organ-Club-75th-Anniversary-CD/dp/B00005Q322

[sul G]

OK, let's take the plunge

Very far from perfect, and my splicing leaves the odd click and jump. And there's lots of chat from the conductor in the parts taken from the rehearsal. And of course, the orchestra....well, you know. But you get the idea, and you'll all be able to 'listen through', I'm sure.

[sul G]

Ha! I spelled the piece's name wrong! 'Rename file', please....


EDIT - I was able to rename the file at Mediafire, even though it had been uploaded. I didn't know there was an option to do that.

[Guido]

Far more beautiful than I could have imagined - truly fantastic piece, I don't know what else to say! Really, really wonderful.

On a more quizzical/light hearted note - in some ways the completely unintelligable conductor is a rather spooky and oddly quite good and interesting addition to the Elegy!

[sul G]

Thanks you, Guido. That's very kind of you. 

I'm glad he sounds so muffled, of course - but even so you can hear the musicality in his voice; even though much of the time he's only counting out beats (mostly in Elegy, which is so slow and in which the 4/4 bar is often beat as if in 3 or 5) you can hear he's almost singing it: he really felt the music, I think.

[greg]

The Elegy was basically ruined by background noise. The Ascent, though, not so much. There's moments which are just yummy magic, like bar 44, with the triangle and xylophone background and clarinet entrance. Overall, a very enjoyable piece- I just wish it were longer. 

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Just listened. Of course, recording and performance could be better, but the music still speaks quite clearly. In Elegy I get a strong sense of something enormous wanting to take shape, call it an 'inchoate mountain', if you will... In Ascent you hear different musics all on their way towards the summit. The most thrilling moment for me occurs in bar 81, when the tenor trombone enters - here Elegy and Ascent are finally joined.

Congratulations, Luke! I do have a strong suspicion, though, that when you have the time and the inspiration, something far bigger will come of which this piece is only the both ravishing and impressive preliminary.

[sul G]

Just listened. Of course, recording and performance could be better, but the music still speaks quite clearly. In Elegy I get a strong sense of something enormous wanting to take shape, call it an 'inchoate mountain', if you will... In Ascent you hear different musics all on their way towards the summit. The most thrilling moment for me occurs in bar 81, when the tenor trombone enters - here Elegy and Ascent are finally joined.

Congratulations, Luke! I do have a strong suspicion, though, that when you have the time and the inspiration, something far bigger will come of which this piece is only the both ravishing and impressive preliminary.

Thanks for listening. Interesting point about bar 81 - something does happen here, maybe, beyond the mere notes, and it's interesting that you feel this to be a connection to Elegy.

Re something bigger - who knows? Perhaps next will be a symphony, then; I'm planning on writing 33. 

(In some respects, however short Ascent is, I do in fact feel that writing it was a true ascent for me, and that having reached that single G I might indeed be able to go on to bigger, better things.)

[karlhenning]

My listening must wait until (a) I've sung some Rutter and (b) sold some postcards of Hockney, Renoir & Monet . . . but I look forward keenly to listening this evening!

[sul G]

Just tried listening back to the file here at school and the whole thing was nastily distorted (among other things, quite a bit too high). So were other files I tried to listen to, so it's probably the school computer - but it might be best to check what you hear against the score just in case!

Greg, I hope there isn't too much background noise in Elegy - barring a few coughs and the conductor, obviously. The rumble at the beginning and elsewhere is supposed to be there - that's the bass drum; at other points the trickery I've had to resort to is fairly obvious (I'll never make a recordign engineer!) but doesn't exactly count as background noise...

[karlhenning]

Just downloaded it!  Cannot listen just yet, I test-listened to the first two-ish minutes . . . very excited!

[sul G]

  Pleased it downloaded properly!

[greg]

Greg, I hope there isn't too much background noise in Elegy - barring a few coughs and the conductor, obviously. The rumble at the beginning and elsewhere is supposed to be there - that's the bass drum; at other points the trickery I've had to resort to is fairly obvious (I'll never make a recordign engineer!) but doesn't exactly count as background noise...

What was that in the background- chipmunks?

[sul G]

Where, Greg? Are you sure you didn't have it playing at the wrong pitch, as the staff computer at my work was doing today!  The only extraneous noises I can hear apart from the conductor are a few coughs..

[Guido]

There are a few clicks which enter due to the editing process - these occur because the sound wave isn't smooth.