Misc. Notes for March, 2013

Some of Debussy's characteristics:

1) The predominance of suspended harmonies that he liked to lengthen
2) The resonance of seventh and ninth chords approached without preparation or left without consonant ending
3) A frequent use of the whole-tone scale and of its series of tritones
4) Frequent musical suspensions and appaggiaturas/ornamental notes
5) Avoided resolutions
6) Ambiguous modulations

Some of Messiaen's characteristics (also shared by Debussy):

1) The concept of pure sound in itself as an important creative element
2) The love for successive major ninths
3) A slow harmonic movement created by the use of the modes of limited transposition that produces a static effect
4) Asymmetrical phrase groupings
5) The use of silences
6) A love for poetry

~

Why is "convincing" such an oft-used complimentary term by listeners of concert (baroque, classical, romantic, etc.) music?

~

Interesting how the idea of nationalistic music has basically died out, or is now grouped with highly constrictive regimes. What form would unaggressive nationalistic (incompatible?) music take in the year 2013? What would it mean? And who would its composers be? Is John Adams' "On the Transmigration of Souls" a nationalistic piece of music?

~

A quote by Bartók: "I never created new theories in advance, I hated such ideas. I had, of course, a very definite feeling about certain directions to take, but at the time of the work I did not care about the designations which would apply to those directions or to their sources. This attitude does not mean that I composed without [...] set plans and without sufficient control. The plans were concerned with the spirit of the new work and with technical problems (for instance, formal structure involved by the spirit of the work), all more or less instinctively felt, but I never was concerned with general theories to be applied to the works I was going to write. Now that the greatest part of my work has already been written, certain general tendencies appear -- general formulas from which theories can be deduced. But even now I would prefer to try new ways and means instead of deducing theories."

~

If we accept the definition of instrumental music as "a class of non-verbal languages that use sound to produce narratives (compositions) that are indistinctly symbolic, and therefore do not reference specific material objects or actions," then how do we approach the idea of revulsion as the creative core in a piece of music? How do we benefit from "ugly" music? How do we understand a piece such as Penderecki's "Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima"?