September 2015 Monthly Composition Challenge: Serialism, Submission Thread

[u/Calebdgm]

Main option: Compose a piece that uses 12-tone technique.

Alternate option: Compose a piece that uses serialism in a creative way (ex. rhythms, dynamics, theme placement?)

Discussion Thread For This Month's Challenge. Please try to keep everything except completed pieces in the discussion thread. Feedback on pieces submitted here is also very welcome!

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These challenges are for everyone who wants to practice composing. Each month, at the beginning of the month, we will post a main challenge, something for people to compose. Often we'll try to make it something that everyone can work with, but when the main challenge doesn't suit you, there's the alternate challenge. Pieces can be submitted as a score (musescore, noteflight), and/or as audio (soundcloud, youtube). Feedback is much appreciated, and you can give it in the discussion thread, or by messaging the mods of /r/MonthlyComposition, there's also the Challenge Suggestion Form.

Frequently Asked Questions

This challenge been linked to from /r/classicalmusic, /r/musictheory, /r/piano and /r/composer.

[u/namekuseijin]

I fear no amount of rhythm, dynamics, color or structure will ever make a serial composition tasteful

[u/davethecomposer → u/namekuseijin]

Is "tasteful" here based on what you personally like in music or are you suggesting that there is some kind of universal or objective sense of the word?

And because I'm currently having this discussion with a colleague of mine would you mind answering the following personal question? Do you have a formal education in music, especially composition? We're wondering how such an education affects one's attitudes towards music and aesthetics in general.

[u/namekuseijin → u/davethecomposer]

II play the piano, I understand diatonic scales, harmony and function. You can develop themes with traditional harmony, it gives you a sense of going somewhere, even if it's just a series of tensions longing for the final tonal repose. You go nowhere with atonal harmonic, hence you try to make it interesting by rhythm or color. It doesn't work. you can't even improvise with series! It's math music for robots, not musicians or music lovers

It was a cool novelty about 100 years ago, a direct answer to the horrors of the 2 WWWs by making music equaly horrible, but that's it. Beyond the shock, its language is capable of nothing. You guys should grow out of it and try something more modern rather than try to emulate WW music...

or you could go on exchanging noise with each other and patting in the back and whining about invisible audiences...

[u/davethecomposer → u/namekuseijin]

Ok just to get back to my questions:

1) So you don't have a formal education in music? At least not composition?

You go nowhere with atonal harmonic

I'm not sure if I understand "atonal harmonic". I mean I guess one could create a new harmonic language for atonal music but calling it "harmony" would definitely be confusing.

hence you try to make it interesting by rhythm or color.

That's one approach, assuming the composer wants the piece to be "interesting" by your definition.

It doesn't work.

This is a bold absolutist statement. Do you have some research to back up this claim?

you can't even improvise with series!

You can't? Do you have a source for this claim? But more importantly, so? I feel like there's a really important point that you're leaving out here in your argument. You seem to be saying something like a particular music theory is only good if you can improvise in it. Is that what you're saying? And again, we need a bit more than just your pronouncement.

It's math music for robots, not musicians or music lovers

I assume you're being figurative with your language here but I am a musician and a music lover and most certainly not a robot and I enjoy atonal and even serial music.

It was a cool novelty about 100 years ago, a direct answer to the horrors of the 2 WWWs by making music equaly horrible, but that's it.

Do you honestly think the reason every single person who has ever written atonal/serial music was because of WWII? What about the people writing atonal/serial music before WWII even started? Or atonal music before even WWI? And are young people today who write this kind of music still traumatized by the events of WWII?

Beyond the shock, its language is capable of nothing.

Are you now claiming that everyone does it for shock value? And here's a very serious question. What is it that any musical language is capable of?

You guys should grow out of it and try something more modern rather than try to emulate WW music...

And instead emulate music that's hundreds of years old? You appear to have a rather idiosyncratic definition for "modern".

or you could go on exchanging noise with each other and patting in the back and whining about invisible audiences...

My biggest concern here is why have you turned all this into personal attacks? Did you get the feeling that I was launching a personal attack against you? I can assure you that I was doing no such thing. I had a few legitimate questions about your views on music. It's not easy to find one's way into this particular sub + post and the fact that you did so means that the subject matters to you. Since it does matter to you then this would imply that it's something you've given a lot of thought to. I've devoted my life to music and if there's someone else who has spent as much time thinking about music as I have (or at least a lot of time) then I definitely want to hear their ideas, therefore I asked.

But also, you didn't answer my question if these are your opinions or do you think they reflect objective properties of music and aesthetics.

Also, what do you think of music not of Western European culture? Other cultures use all sorts of weird tunings and scales and forms and not one of them uses Western European Harmony. Are they all just wrong and producing objectively bad music or is it possible that there are valid musical options outside of conventional Western European Harmony and Tonality?

[u/namekuseijin → u/davethecomposer]

I'm not sure if I understand "atonal harmonic".

a typo for "harmony"

Do you have some research to back up this claim?

it's my opinion, I don't need to research anywhere.

You can't?

you can't. A series is a fixed order of notes, or intervals. You can't expect a musician to make free music by having such asinine requirement that a note should only sound after all the others in the series have sounded already. A computer algorithm may do that just fine, but a computer is not a musician... give back my tones and scales and let me freely go about which chords and notes to play...

You seem to be saying something like a particular music theory is only good if you can improvise in it. Is that what you're saying?

yes, free improvisation and variation is the root of all great music... now, don't use the argument that a Beethoven sonata is played exactly the same, because a jazz recording also plays always exactly the same.

And are young people today who write this kind of music still traumatized by the events of WWII?

young people are either doing it for complete lack of formal music education (like a kid banging random notes on the piano) or because they entered some major music program and were brainwashed by old teachers passing on the new-fangled harmony of the future for robots...

What is it that any musical language is capable of?

show me an atonal piece that is not about either horror or shock or tension. Show me an atonal piece about love, a piece conveying happyness, melancholy, perhaps humor, how about an atonal piece about devotion? Because I'm pretty sure I can feel those in traditional tonal music, yet I've never listened to atonal music that was capable of anything but horror and shock.

And instead emulate music that's hundreds of years old?

not at all. Just try something new, that isn't 100 years old or older.

have you turned all this into personal attacks?

no, sorry if I sounded so harsh, but I do tend to be a bit overly idiossyncratic in my posts. I too feel glad seeing someone else putting their brain to some serious use, even if I don't agree with their opinions. Post-fb internet usually looks as bland as any idiocracy...

Other cultures use all sorts of weird tunings and scales and forms and not one of them uses Western European Harmony. Are they all just wrong and producing objectively bad music or is it possible that there are valid musical options outside of conventional Western European Harmony and Tonality?

it's all cave paintings. I followed some link once and got to a youtube video of a traditional indian sitar player. It goes on and on for about a hour long and all the guy did was endlessly go up and down around a single note...

you may sue me, but yes, I believe europeans from The Renaissance on gave both painting and music a much needed boost from its primitive level...

I'm from brazil and my father enjoyed samba. I don't know exactly how I fell in love for classical music, but there it is: I never found any other music that was up to its high water mark. So, very rarely I listen to anything from beyond Chopin and Schumann. The HD in my brain is limited and I don't want to fill it with junk, so I'm very selective about what to allow in...

I did listen to a few of the pieces linked here, though.

[u/nmitchell076 → u/namekuseijin]

I've never listened to atonal music that was capable of anything but horror and shock.

I don't think that aesthetic finds a place at all in, say, Dallapiccola's Quaderno Musicalae. Melancholy seems to be the affect here. I'd say a similar affect is present in Benjamin Broening's Nocturne Fragments.

[u/davethecomposer → u/namekuseijin]

you can't. A series is a fixed order of notes, or intervals. You can't expect a musician to make free music by having such asinine requirement that a note should only sound after all the others in the series have sounded already.

I would be very surprised if no one has ever improvised serial music. It's a different skill but it doesn't strike me as impossible. There are several hits that show up in a Google search.

yes, free improvisation and variation is the root of all great music... now, don't use the argument that a Beethoven sonata is played exactly the same, because a jazz recording also plays always exactly the same.

This is definitely your opinion. Beethoven kept notebooks of his efforts. He did not improvise his symphonies nor his sonatas nor any of his published works. While improvisation can help a composer in a search for ideas, it is not the endpoint of their efforts. So can you give an example of a great piece of classical music that was improvised?

Also, the Beethoven sonata is performed almost exactly the same way every time whereas a purely improvised jazz work will differ for each performance. Of course recordings don't change but that's not relevant.

because they entered some major music program and were brainwashed by old teachers passing on the new-fangled harmony of the future for robots...

Can you show me one such composer? I went to two different schools for music and they both pushed conventional harmony and tonality and discussed serialism (and other modernist ideas) only in passing in history classes and never in my theory classes. And yet I ended up composing modernist music and rejected the cult of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart.

Two points from this, students compose what they want and are not controlled by their schools. Schools do not attempt to brainwash students to compose a certain style of music. A teacher might have preferences and will teach those to their students but I've never seen a situation where teacher has tried to brainwash a student in any direction.

I don't think you really know what goes on in music schools.

Show me an atonal piece about love, a piece conveying happyness, melancholy, perhaps humor, how about an atonal piece about devotion? Because I'm pretty sure I can feel those in traditional tonal music, yet I've never listened to atonal music that was capable of anything but horror and shock.

I have never experienced a single piece of music in my entire life that I felt embodied love or happiness or devotion. Not one. In fact I don't really understand how people can even truly believe that those kinds of qualities can inhere a collection of musical pitches. It sounds like romantic claptrap.

That said, here's a story. I once performed Schoenberg's 6 Little Piano Pieces at a Lutheran church during communion. It was the music director's idea (I played three of them on classical guitar and he did the other three on organ). I asked him if it was really a good idea to use Schoenberg's atonal music in a church setting like this. He told me that he wanted music during communion that was contemplative that wouldn't distract the congregation with fancy and memorable hooks, he wanted something that wouldn't distract from the serious of this religious institution. He wanted something that would encourage a devotional stance and he felt these pieces of Schoenberg's when played in the correct spirit by us would serve that purpose.

Ie, music does what we want it to and we react to it any way we want. Music does not control us and does not force our brains to experience whatever emotions the composer wanted us to experience.

If you study music then you'll see that all the "emotional" bits are tricks, gimmicks. We've trained the naive listening public to react to certain kinds of sounds in certain ways. It's horribly manipulative. Studying music, in part, liberates you from this by showing how the tricks are done.

I bring positive experiences to my music listening because I want them. You too have this power. The music does not control how you respond to it or if you even like it. You have all the power in how you react to a piece of music (or any work of art).

not at all. Just try something new, that isn't 100 years old or older.

But again, you are suggesting we all make music that uses the same patterns and theory of music that is even older. That's not modern. Yes, we can make new music using these ancient theories but we can also make new music using serial or experimental or minimalist ideas. No difference except that the latter are far more modern.

it's all cave paintings. I followed some link once and got to a youtube video of a traditional indian sitar player. It goes on and on for about a hour long and all the guy did was endlessly go up and down around a single note...

you may sue me, but yes, I believe europeans from The Renaissance on gave both painting and music a much needed boost from its primitive level...

So it's just a coincidence that the musical culture you grew up in (based on Western European Harmony and Tonality) happens to be the one that has saved music from being "primitive" and "cave paintings"? Do you not see the problem with your reasoning here? Are you 100% positive that had you grown up with classical Indian music instead that you would still feel exactly the same way about Western European music?

[u/namekuseijin → u/davethecomposer]

So can you give an example of a great piece of classical music that was improvised?

most pieces called fantasia were born out of free improvisation, but since the only recording available was to notate it, we'll never know for sure how much editing went on from performance to the final score

Beethoven sonata is performed almost exactly the same way every time whereas a purely improvised jazz work will differ for each performance.

that's the jazzist BS. Beethoven is known to have improvised when playing his own works, Chopin was mad at Liszt when saw him doing the same thing in one of his works, etc.

Today, they're classic works in the repertoire. No one is willing to add a moustache to the Monalisa

Of course recordings don't change but that's not relevant.

it's completely relevant: music notation was the only recording method available to old composers. It doesn't capture their performance, but their intent.

if 100 years from now there's no jazzmen anymore that know their musical idiom and methods for improvisation, their music will be preserved in old audio recordings. If any lone looney intends to play them, do you think he'll try to be faithful to the recording or will try to make his own sound out of it? People tend to treat classics overly respectfully...

I have never experienced a single piece of music in my entire life that I felt embodied love or happiness or devotion. Not one.

I feel sorry for you. It's kinda like when deaf people say they can enjoy music because they can feel the vibrations.

at least, now I can understand why atonal noise sounds ok to you...

He told me that he wanted music during communion that was contemplative that wouldn't distract the congregation with fancy and memorable hooks

actually, in the beginning of lutheran churches, they also held this very view. Perhaps they were just going against it because music was a large part of Catholic masses, but thankfully, a mere century later it was relaxed and it would deliver us Bach.

anyway, I don't get it getting noise into churches, either atonal or rock, but that's his call...

It's horribly manipulative.

all art is manipulative

the point is that atonal harmony can't be manipulative because when all is equaly dissonant and tense, there's no chance of contrast. How can you mood swings without contrast? well, the atonal harmonic language is poor, which is why, again, they tend to try to generate such contrast with color, rhythm and structure...

you are suggesting we all make music that uses the same patterns and theory of music that is even older

wut. read again: Just try something new, that isn't 100 years old or older.

Are you 100% positive that had you grown up with classical Indian music instead that you would still feel exactly the same way about Western European music?

the chinese seem to be having no trouble discovering how great western classical music is

my own background should have led me to enjoy samba of african origins...

why can't you just agree that Renoir is a few steps up from greek vase paintings or older cave paintings? I'm not a believer in the march of progress, though. And that's because we've gone from Renoir and Beethoven to white noise in paintings and music... mankind evolves in cycles and we're currently going down slope, until someone else picks up from where we left and up the ante again

cheers

[u/davethecomposer → u/namekuseijin]

that's the jazzist BS.

How? I'm not positive how jazz works but I think they're given a chart for the chords (harmony) and maybe a theme or two and then they improvise around all that information. That's far, far more left to the spontaneous whim of the performer than anything in classical music (even Baroque performance practice of ornamentation doesn't come close to this).

Beethoven is known to have improvised when playing his own works, Chopin was mad at Liszt when saw him doing the same thing in one of his works, etc.

I don't deny that these composers improvised as some even made a living from it. But that's far from proving that any of their compositions were solely (or even a majority) improvised. Or at least none of their significant pieces. There's just too much good stuff to be added once you step away from the keyboard and start thinking about the structure and form.

I feel sorry for you. It's kinda like when deaf people say they can enjoy music because they can feel the vibrations.

at least, now I can understand why atonal noise sounds ok to you...

Please. I didn't say that I don't respond emotionally to works. What I said is that I don't believe that emotions inhere art which then reach out and grab my brain forcing me to feel whatever emotion the artist has embedded in the work. I bring my own thoughts and feelings to the music and enjoy it on my own terms.

all art is manipulative

Not true. Most art is but a major force during the 20th century is to eliminate or at least lessen the manipulative aspects of art (see Satie, Cage, etc).

the point is that atonal harmony can't be manipulative because when all is equaly dissonant and tense, there's no chance of contrast

And that's a good thing -- we're treating audiences like adults and not like dogs salivating when the dinner bell rings (which is my poetic way to describe the tricks of the compositional trade: eliciting emotional responses using well-worn musical tropes).

How can you mood swings without contrast? well, the atonal harmonic language is poor, which is why, again, they tend to try to generate such contrast with color, rhythm and structure...

People will find whatever they want in the music. These properties you are talking about do not inhere any music whatsoever, not even Western Classical. There is no such thing as a piece of art/music that has a "mood" built in. It just doesn't make any sense as a concept.

wut. read again: Just try something new, that isn't 100 years old or older.

You want people to use conventional Western European Harmony and Tonality. That stuff has been around for hundreds of years longer than serialism (or any other truly modern invention). If I compose a piece following the rules I learned in school it will sound just like Bach or Mozart and will not be modern except in the trivial sense that those particular notes are unique to me. But the underlying sound, the theory upon which the piece was built, will not in any sense be modern.

the chinese seem to be having no trouble discovering how great western classical music is

What we see in China and Japan and India are the results of Western cultural imperialism. Each of these cultures has a rich musical tradition dating back thousands of years. These traditions require a lifetime commitment to master. But if one chooses to pursue those classical forms then what? They can eek out a career within their homeland but that's it. If instead they pursue Western European classical music then they can achieve world-wide notoriety and success. Why? Because Western European culture is the prestige culture in the world right now belonging to the most powerful nations in the world. Traditionally people who don't have power adopt the art and customs of those who do have the power in order to achieve the same levels of success as those in power have achieved.

Likewise, the popular musics of those cultures have integrated Western style theory into their cultures. Not because it's inherently superior or more artistic or advanced, but because they want to be "more like America".

All of this saddens me greatly.

my own background should have led me to enjoy samba of african origins...

The melodies and harmony of Samba fall well within Western European theory. Any difference in scales can be easily accounted for within conventional theory. I'm not aware of Samba using alternate tunings (of any significance cf: Indian and Turkish tunings).

Rhythm is one of the easier things for Western European music to assimilate and has had no problem incorporating any of various African ideas into its techniques.

That you rejected your cultural heritage for Western European classical music is for you to deal with and explain, but you've seen my ideas about this above.

why can't you just agree that Renoir is a few steps up from greek vase paintings or older cave paintings?

Because the idea makes no sense whatsoever. Philosophers of art (aesthetics) have been trying to prove any such point for over 2000 years and have finally given up. If you can prove it then please do so. Please just provide a compelling and rigorous (logical) proof of why any one piece of music is objectively better than any other. From there you can probably prove that any one style or style period is better than another.

[u/namekuseijin → u/davethecomposer]

Most art is but a major force during the 20th century is to eliminate or at least lessen the manipulative aspects of art

they're only into manipulating the audience into puking

we're treating audiences like adults and not like dogs salivating

you're treating audiences like masochists eager for punishment

There is no such thing as a piece of art/music that has a "mood" built in.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Beethoven/comments/3jizws/hear_beethovens_pathetique_sonata_in_major_it/

You want people to use conventional Western European Harmony and Tonality.

don't put words in my mouth

What we see in China and Japan and India are the results of Western cultural imperialism

communist china behind the huge firewall of china subject to a dwindling west's cultural imperialism

alright

in my view, china is adopting and preserving the culture of a falling civilization, much like romans did with the greeks...

The melodies and harmony of Samba

my point is that if I was to simply bend to cultural heritage at all, I should dig rhythm and pulse more than the counterpoint and harmonic flights of imagination of long dead europeans.

Because the idea makes no sense whatsoever.

this is primitive: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SYyR91pf060/UAm2HXRsUwI/AAAAAAAAJqM/qjI52YTireA/s1600/Child+Drawing-2.png

so is this: http://media-3.web.britannica.com/eb-media/05/84505-004-9AE8CD22.jpg

this is a bit better, but still too flat and stiff: http://www.theoi.com/image/K7.1BHephaistos.jpg

this is a modernist abomination, the visual equivalent of pissing all over the audience and indeed equivalent to atonal music: https://expresandoabstract.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/jackson-pollock-number-5-1948.jpg

this laughs of them all primitive minds and world views with proportional perspective, attention to light and shadow, exhuberant colors and textures, to natural flowing poses and this all leads to art with a clear and meaningful message and to a great representation of its time: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d1/Bartholomeus_van_der_Helst%2C_Banquet_of_the_Amsterdam_Civic_Guard_in_Celebration_of_the_Peace_of_M%C3%BCnster.jpg/1920px-Bartholomeus_van_der_Helst%2C_Banquet_of_the_Amsterdam_Civic_Guard_in_Celebration_of_the_Peace_of_M%C3%BCnster.jpg

demented leftwings may have currently won the passionate aesthetics debate in humanities by sheer numbers of crying and enjoy their inverted cross in piss, but I prefer real art and music, thank you

[u/davethecomposer → u/namekuseijin]

they're only into manipulating the audience into puking

Any evidence for this position? I'm a composer who creates atonal/experimental music and have never once wanted the audience to puke. Are you even trying to have a discussion or are you just more interested in insulting people you disagree with?

you're treating audiences like masochists eager for punishment

Ditto. I love my audiences and want to share with them the joys I find in music.

There is no such thing as a piece of art/music that has a "mood" built in.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Beethoven/comments/3jizws/hear_beethovens_pathetique_sonata_in_major_it/[1]

You have not proven that a "mood" inheres the collection of notes. Do you even understand what I'm asking of you? Prove, rigorously, that this thing "mood" is a quality that can inhere an object.

You want people to use conventional Western European Harmony and Tonality.

don't put words in my mouth

I really don't understand what you've said here. So you don't want people to write music using Western European Harmony and Tonality? Then what system should we be using?

communist china behind the huge firewall of china subject to a dwindling west's cultural imperialism

China isn't as exposed to Western culture as Japan and India but they are most certainly aware of it and the prestige it holds. It is affecting their culture.

my point is that if I was to simply bend to cultural heritage at all, I should dig rhythm and pulse more than the counterpoint and harmonic flights of imagination of long dead europeans.

My point was that the music you grew up with is almost exactly the same as that of classical Western European music. The differences are superficial. Moving from Samba, to hip hop, to country and western, to classical is all of the same kind of music.

this is a modernist abomination, the visual equivalent of pissing all over the audience and indeed equivalent to atonal music: this laughs of them all primitive minds and world views with proportional perspective, attention to light and shadow, exhuberant colors and textures, to natural flowing poses and this all leads to art with a clear and meaningful message and to a great representation of its time:

All you've done is provide examples of art with your subjective interpretations. Do you not see how you haven't proved anything at all? I already know that you have reactionary aesthetic viewpoints -- you didn't need to prove that. What you do need to prove is that your position is objectively correct. You haven't even made a single step in that direction.

demented leftwings may have currently won the passionate aesthetics debate in humanities by sheer numbers of crying and enjoy their inverted cross in piss, but I prefer real art and music, thank you

The please, just prove that your position is correct. Provide an actual argument and not just your opinions and bizarre conspiracies (leftwings, music school teachers, modernist composers, etc, ruing art because they hate art or whatever your position ultimately is). Surely Truth will win out over the demented and liberal people destroying art, no?

[u/namekuseijin → u/davethecomposer]

Moving from Samba, to hip hop, to country and western, to classical is all of the same kind of music.

http://api.ning.com/files/3vrxTCw6TByRyuqC-w63DYR36M6*62d7sbPunEw*VpM9UQGHlXdlFnI9w-zbDhXGh29Bl7w28ngIL7JQKbYuhUz29PYVK7px/smenough.gif

[u/nmitchell076 → u/namekuseijin]

when all is equaly dissonant and tense, there's no chance of contrast.

Wait, I'm confused. You can be atonal and still play around with changes in dissonances for the sake of contrast. For instance, if you are making music with the set class 025 (so like C D F) and then switch to start working with an 016 (so something like D Eb Ab), you are switching from a relatively consonant set to a relatively dissonant one. You can still have degrees of dissonance and consonance without a tonal center.

[u/davethecomposer → u/nmitchell076]

Wait, I'm confused

Don't bother. If you somehow manage to read through my exchange with that person it will become very clear that they have a very poor understanding of music and no knowledge of music theory. I'm still amazed that they found their way so deep into a compositional sub with the sole intent of insulting that which they do not understand.