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Old Oct 1, 2012, 04:52 PM
Xenofan 29A Xenofan 29A is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rhythmroo View Post
These remind me of Berg's lyric suite a bit.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rhythmroo
This is more like post-WWII avant garde.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rhythmroo
This one reminds me of the Shadow Hearts insanity themes, like some of the more extreme kinds of electronic music out there.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Rhythmroo
Bonus vids
Here's some Bartok for warm fuzzy feelings.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNw_2auj1RQ
It's a really insane chromatic canon, right? I've seen the score. Great piece.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rhythmroo
And some Stravinsky for pleasurable listening
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clcXXYLWSeQp
Oh you jest. Of Stravinsky's late period works (I'm a fan of anything Stravinsky), I'm particularly fond of Threni (which has yet to receive as good a recording as it deserves) and these:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImuHgaS6TC0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQQ90PqlFWA

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rhythmroo
For anyone who wants to practice their listening skills for kicks:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnl9Wo3UexU


See if you can pick up a theme and run with it. It's like trying to pick out a conversation across the middle of a noisy room.
Ives was great. Probably my favorite American composer (among classical composers at least).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Datschge
So it can be (always is?) melodic but the melodic development is kind of non-obvious? Those "Impulsive Mind" tracks sound interesting, very melodic and not at all awkward (purely random notes often sound awkward to me), kind of like an upbeat set up with a creepy twist.
Atonality is associated with density and unpredictability, but that's not necessary. To be called atonal, music simply needs to avoid establishing a key center. And randomness has nothing to do with it. On the one hand, Schoenberg, Webern, and Boulez are notorious for their meticulous sense of order (which has led to criticisms like Ravel's "That is not of music, but of the laboratory"), and on the other you can bang around randomly on a keyboard, and it might come out sounding tonal just because you're emphasizing the white keys, and your ear will hear it tending towards C major or A minor (actually A aeolian).

In the case of the "Impulsive Mind" tracks, they start off with a relatively regular-sounding harmony, but nothing that follows grounds it as tonal center, and you could end the track just about anywhere without it seeming arbitrary, as it inevitably would in a tonal composition. As for "melodic", people generally hear things as melodic if they move primarily by step (up and down the scale) or by "perfect" fourths, fifths, and octaves. Sevenths or intervals larger than an octave are always striking in effect, but if used frequently, they can be hard to follow, especially in a dense polyphonic texture.
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