Reductions

This is a serial piece for brass quintet -- serial, but not 12-tone (which can be interesting, but I find its underlying ideology even more offensive than the ugly music it tends to produce) . Instead, it uses a set of tone rows generated by a random process I developed in college. Starting from an initial state consisting of a set of values, each iteration produces a new set by randomly selecting from the elements contained in the previous step. As the same element can be selected more than once, rather than producing a mere permutation of the same elements, the process gradually eliminates elements until it eventually converges to contain a single distinct value, at which point it will remain constant. I presented an AMA paper defining this process and analyzing a specific configuration of it, focusing on calculating the mean steps to convergence. The math is pretty messy, but I thought that the process itself could be useful in music -- as each iteration produces a rearranged subset of the previous step, there is an inherent continuity. I would also point out that this process is anti-darwinian, as it gets simpler over time, exactly what would happen if evolution were the actual driving force behind life.

Now about the piece -- it's not a strict run-through of this reduction process, but uses tone rows generated by it. The initial state was the 12 notes of the chromatic scale, but I start with the result of the first iteration of the process -- I actually ran it several times until I got a starting set that I liked, so even here, random chance is at the mercy of a designer. This is one of those pieces that I'm not sure I really like, although I do like parts of it; I could probably make something better with elements from the reduction process without using serial techniques, but that isn't something I'm planning at this point -- there are several better things I'm working on now.

Note: This is not a live performance with real brass players; it uses digital samples. I'm pretty happy with the sound of the tuba, trombone and horn, but the trumpets sound weak to me. It was also hard to get the dynamics exactly how I wanted them, and I'm not interested in being a sound engineer. Maybe I'd like this piece better if I could hear a live performance of it with real instruments. Maybe not.

Fugue in G Minor

It's been a while since I posted anything, not because I've been doing nothing, but because I've been working on too many different pieces concurrently rather than finishing any of them right away. So, I took a little break to work out this old piece, a 3-voice fugue that I wrote before I knew the rules for writing fugues (actually, I still don't really know -- my only counterpoint class was in 16th century modal counterpoint, but anyway...). I cleaned it up slightly a while back, but there are probably still a few hidden parallel fifths in there somewhere along with other technical errors. Nevertheless, I think it's not completely horrible...

Adagio in D Minor

As with the previous piece posted here, this was also originally a piano piece that I thought might benefit from being transcribed for strings. It shares other similarities as well, but had no preset restrictions of material and is in three parts rather than four, so was adapted for a string trio. However, the mood of the piece suggested a pair of violas and cello rather than the usual combination of violin, viola and cello -- it turns out that the top part goes a half step below the bottom of the violin's range, but my decision was made before even considering that, and now it's hard for me to even think of this as a piano piece. Rhythmically, this piece features slow syncopation and variations of three against two configurations. As far as the name goes, I wanted to give it a more descriptive title, but everything I could think of was either too long or not enough; it is what it is.

Nocturne for String Quartet

This is another short, simple piece. Originally for piano, I thought that with a little tinkering it might be better suited for strings. It was done as an exercise in which the melody was to be strictly limited to a given set of notes: C, D, E, G, and A. I immediately rearranged these as C-G-D-A-E, which suggested to me a quartal harmonic structure. The changes to adapt it for strings were minimal, and true to the rules of the exercise, the first violin part consists of only the five given notes, with the other three instruments being more free, subject only to the harmonic scheme.

Collisions

Most of the pieces posted here so far are ones I've described as easy, and while Scherzo #2 is a little tricky, the rhythm of Once makes it a bit of a challenge, and the Allegro requires physical strength... this one is hard. I think this little nugget of insanity is less difficult to listen to than it is to play; at least, I hope it is. The title is in part a description of the "car horn"-like sound of the chords, but mainly due to the fact that the left and right hands actually run into each other and cross over in various places.

This is one of my "mathematical" compositions, not in the sense that it uses formulas as such, but in the generation of the material. It is based on a single four-note cell, starting with C, then up a half-step, up a whole step, and up another half-step. This cell (with various permutations and subsets) is used in only three transpositions, starting on C, G, and F, presented initially as the three opening chords. If you write out these three cells, you'll see that exactly one note in the chromatic scale is omitted, and exactly one note appears twice. These two notes, D and A-flat, comprise what there is of a "counter-subject", used mainly as a sort of punctuation.

Nota Brevis

This is another old piece, a short thing in the spirit of a Bach two-part invention, but more primitive -- less rigorous imitation, and modal (Aeolian) rather than strictly tonal. I'm pretty sure that the first several notes were based on either the letters in someone's name or a mathematical formula, but I don't remember which name or formula it might've been.

Waltz in D Minor

While continuing to work on some more substantial pieces, I'm also going back to some of my old ones. This is one of them, a quick little waltz -- nothing fancy, just fun. For some reason, I usually yell, "¡Olé!" at the end, which would make a whole lot more sense if it sounded the least bit Spanish.