Posts

Showing posts with the label Finale

Techniques of Polytempic Polymicrotonal Composition: Divisions of the Whole Note, part V

Image
 More on the Divisions of the Whole Note, in a Cowellian Sense " Decimal Rhythms " While in Champaign back in 2007, I was given a notebook. Since I had nothing but time on my hands, I began ruminating about the divisions of the whole note. Borrowing (as the best of us do) from Cowell , I wrote out a schema for a 'newer' approach to non-duple-based rhythms . I wrote this:           Figure 1. A figuration of Decimal Rhythms Figure 1 is a common-time bar of decimal rhythms: one third-note , at 33.3% of a whole note; one twelfth-note , at 1/3 of a third note of 11.1%; an eleventh-note , at 1/11th of a whole note, at 9%; a seventh-note , at 14.3%; and three tenth notes , obviously at 10% x 3 = 30% of a whole note. These add up to approximately. 97.7% of a whole note, or the 4/4 measure, is indicated. An outline of the Figure 1 decimal rhythmic measure is shown below in Figure 2.     Figure 2. An outline of the decimal measure is hidden   ...

Techniques of Polytempic Polymicrotonal Composition: fluid vs static tempi, part IV.i

More on Contrapuntal Tempi...  Polytempo as Static vs. Dynamic and Fluid Tempo has throughout Western musical history been thought of as a single-formed containment system for music, perhaps except the isorhythms of the Middle Ages, which actually had nothing to do with tempo, but marked the beginning of the awareness of the potential of several strands of musical thought working simultaneously, as in color and talea , that could conceivably be a thought-form precursor to polytempo . Additionally, and unrelatedly, many motets were written with differing text languages, also not related directly to polytempo, but actually more to polymicrotonality ; the different languages presented in polytextual works offered different vowels, phones, phonemes, and glottals--imperceptible at the time, but today would actually count as polymicrotonal by closer examination. It is here that I must declare that, for me, polytempic polymicrotonality is really nothing more than an attitude; an aesth...