A Portly Chord Courtesy of Berio

This chord appears at the end of Berio's 1954 piece 'Nones.'

It's quite heavy and caught my ear. Below I have included the relevant score fragment and a quickly thrown together graphic PC set analysis (it might look like I drew it in pencil crayon, but actually they are watercolour crayons I'll have you know and I would use them like that by brushing on some water if I had some thicker paper and/or more time/will power).

I am a long way from being any sort of analyst but one thing is clear from a cursory look at the thing, all pitches are present except for G (or 7 if you prefer).

B (11) is the most prevalent pitch appearing five times at the bottom end of the texture, in the contrabassoon, the tuba, the timpani, the cello and the double bass.

The woodwind PC set and the brass PC set look quite similar at first glance, I think they are transposed inversions of each other, give or take a pitch or two. The string pitches look like a subset of the same PC set (three of four pitches fit that scheme)

I'll have to look more closely at it and will probably edit this a bit later if i'm wrong about any of this (so no one will know unless you happen to check my blog in the meantime, in which case, don't tell anyone I wasn't absolutely certain from the off, I don't want to be blackballed at the Music Theory and Analysis Society of Balsall Heath, the dinner and dance evenings are just too good to miss plus there is bingo on a Sunday).

EDIT: Alright, I looked at it more closely, yes, the two sets used in the woodwind and the brass are the same set, 6-Z11 and the strings appear to contain a subset of the same. This helps provide some structure and sense to the dense chromatic harmony.

Of course much remains unanalysed, such as the precise registers (pitches not pitch classes) and the intervals used (in vertical order), but then as I said, I am not an analyst (so sue me, oh and I claim fair use of the tiny score and music fragments, please don't sue me about that)

The score fragment doesn't have the instruments or clefs listed (I should have photoshopped them in when I prepared the image, never mind) here they are...

Instruments as written in the score (top to bottom)

Woodwinds:

Ott
Fl.
Ob.
Cl.
Sax.
Fag. (bass clef)
C.Fag (bass clef)
Cor
Cor

Brass:

Trb
Trb
Trbn (bass clef)
Trbn (bass clef)
Tuba (bass clef)

Percussion

Timp (bass clef)
G.C.
Tamb.
T.T.
Vibr.
Arpa (two staves, treble and bass)

Strings:

Vni A
Vni B
Vni C
Vle (alto/viola clef)
Vc (bass clef)
Cb. (bass clef)

Quote of the Month (3) 12/2008

Page from Stockhausen's Studie II

'The generation of rhythmic material was only one side of the problem: its notation also proved a challenge. The more complex it became, the less exact the result in actual performance, so that Stockhausen was able to describe notation as dependent on "uncertainty factors" occuring within fields whose size was relative to the complexity.' 26

26. This, as Ligeti noted, had been a problem since the early twentieth century: see dRV (D), 38-40.

Source: Serial Music, Serial Aesthetics pg139 (M.J. Grant).

Takemitsu: Tree Line Analysis

Toru Takemitsu

UPDATE: The sound intermedia site is down at the moment, has been for a couple of days. If this situation persists i'll email them and ask if it's permament (hopefully not.)

I've been looking at some of Takemitsu's scores recently and was searching around on the teh internets for information on his work and came across this site.

It has lots of info/analysis about/of his composition 'Tree Line' and includes midi/sound files as examples (broken up into sections, like modes, chords, etc).

The site is hosted by Sound Intermedia, not quite sure who they are or what they do but the Takemitsu-mini-site-thingy is something of a boon, so i'm not complaining.

Quote Of The Month (2) (12/2008)

Gino Robair

'There was everything: graphic scores, scores with noteheads but no rhythms, scores with complex dense rhythmic stuff. Every day something different: a new piece every day. 9am. It would kick your ass. He'd [Braxton] come in with these scores, there'd be like three saxophones, a woman on steel pan and me on snare drum, and he'd say, Gino you play the flute part. So I played the flute part on snare drum. That's how you play his scores. At first you think it's insane, but then you realise that for him it's not about purity of orchestration, it's about density and movement. If he gives a piccolo part to a bass player it's because he doesn't want those pitches, he wants something in that time frame that's rhythmically similar, with the same kinds of shapes. The whole thing about layering, the collage aspect turned me on.'

Gino Robair: Interview with Paristransatlantic.com

Quote Of The Month (1) (12/2008)

Kosuth: One and three chairs (1965)

'Perhaps only because it's been this way for me, it seems that the strongest artists have their "why" before they have their "how". It certainly was that way for Pollack, for Reinhardt, for Judd, for Flavin. It's about having one's "why" and realizing that everyone else's "how" won't do; and the continuing search for a personal "how" that directly answers and relates to his "why".

Joseph Kosuth Art After Philosophy and After: Collected Writings 1966-1990

Quote of the Month (?)

'On the day Mick Jagger stopped by for his first visit, one of the above-mentioned splinters crammed itself into the end of my big toe on my right foot, just as I was making my way to the door.I greeted Mr Jagger, hopping on one foot. He asked why I was behaving in this manner.

I told him about the splinter and hobbled over to a chair. He followed, got on the floor in front of me, located the little wooded tormentor and removed it. We spent about an hour after that discussing European history.'

Frank Zappa: Chapter 5 'The Real Frank Zappa book.'

Not quoted anything for a while (got off to a good start early on though), here is one to be going along with (nothing profound, just lightly amusing, perhaps).

Stockhausen, Gruppen, Video, Rattle, Carewe, Harding, CBSO, Etc

Yes indeed, a video of Stockhausen's Gruppen performed by the CBSO conducted by Simon Rattle, John Carewe and Daniel Harding. I'm not sure what year this was but it was performed somewhere in Birmingham as part of the 'Towards The Millenium' project/concert/something (in the late 90s then presumably).

Not sure who owns the copyright to this or where the footage came from but it's there to be seen so get it while you can, Andrew Clements of the Guardian was disappointed back in 2001 that this performance 'never found it's way onto disc', well now it has, sort of.

Via the excellent Aulaelectroacustica blog

[if you own the copyright to this and are selling it somewhere etc then let me know and i'll remove the link, my apologies in advance]