Parsing Milton Babbitt's Philomel: Observations and Suggestions in Rhythmic Restructuring with Questions for Further Research (original) (raw)
Related papers
2020
The Use of Registral Spacing and Rhythmic Density as Musical Trajectories in a Portfolio of Original Compositions is a doctoral research in composition that focuses on the construction of a musical trajectory of a composition by using the transmutation of its registral spacing and rhythmic density. The thesis consists of two parts: a portfolio of original compositions and an academic commentary. The portfolio comprises compositions for a vocalist with various mediums, small ensemble (up to six performers), solo instrument with electronics, small ensemble with electronics, and gestural devices with electronics. The academic commentary covers the initial ideas regarding expression and abstraction in arts and music which laid the foundation for the study of this research on the organisation of musical spaces in a composition to achieve an alternative musical trajectory that does not rely on the use of thematic/motivic development. It discusses the notion of non-linearity in some compos...
Technical Rhythms and Harmonies
Reprising Craftsmanship, 2021
The present chapter looks into an expressive perspective of technique. It starts by discussing some pertinent issues to frame the overall discussion. The notion of reprise developed in previous chapters will be extended into the realm of technique, connecting rhythm and effective action in eurhythmy, a feature of technical activity’s life cycles. In their expressive dimension, musical instruments are impregnated –in their making, sounding and even presence– with mythical and practical values. Additionally, more or less intangible (in music) and more or less tangible (in luthiery) form giving processes are constantly actualized by reprise dynamics. This will help specifying how technical (e)motions are linked to expressivity. Since the value of a technical form giving cannot be fully foreseen by people behind it when these (e)motions (and objects) are produced, the eurhythmy that characterizes skilful action refuses to be limited to one particular sphere of valuation.
Circularity in Rhythmic Representation and Composition
Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, 2020
Cycle is a software tool for musical composition and improvisation that represents events along a circular timeline. In doing so, it breaks from the linear representational conventions of European Art music and modern Digital Audio Workstations. A user specifies time points on different layers, each of which corresponds to a particular sound. The layers are superimposed on a single circle, which allows a unique visual perspective on the relationships between musical voices given their geometric positions. Positions in-between quantizations are possible, which encourages experimentation with expressive timing and machine rhythms. User-selected transformations affect groups of notes, layers, and the pattern as a whole. Past and future states are also represented, synthesizing linear and cyclical notions of time. This paper will contemplate philosophical questions raised by circular rhythmic notation and will reflect on the ways in which the representational novelties and editing funct...
2021
For a video presentation of the conclusions of the work see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN4fU4laue4 Three times in the history of Western Music - at the end of the 14th century, the end of the 16th century, and the beginning of the 20th century – has there been a flowering in the development of non-dyadic rational rhythmic hierarchies. Only in the last of these occurrences has this development persisted continuously to the present; each time before, rhythmic complexity collapsed into a system dominated by dyadic- and/or triadic-rational rhythmic hierarchies. By the 17th century, even triadic-rational rhythmic hierarchies had totally disappeared from musical discourse to be supplanted by our modern system of dyadic-rational time signatures. Even into the 21st century, dyadic-rational time signatures remain predominant, despite work by composers like Henry Cowell and Conlon Nancarrow, which suggested the possibility of a rhythmic paradigm shift during the early- and mid-20th century. Despite the persistent hold of dyadic-rational time signatures, developments in prescriptive rhythmic complexity during the 20th century have continued to the present, persisting over multiple generations of composers and forming distinct schools of musical discourse popular in contemporary classical music today. Among these composers are not only Charles Ives, Henry Cowell, and Conlon Nancarrow, but also Thomas Ades, Brian Ferneyhough, Michael Gordon, Karen Khachaturian, Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, and Jonathan Dawe among others. Within their oeuvre, each of these composers have encountered the need for a broader exploration, development, and notation of rhythmic structure beyond our current dyadic-rational system, allowing in their music pan-rational time signatures, irrational time-signatures, and/or dense and/or indivisible rhythmic hierarchies – all of these levels of rhythmic prescription either not seen since the 16th century or altogether never before seen in Western music. Given the present state of our system of music notation and rhythmic prescription within it, what are we doing and what can we do now in the 21st century with the rhythmic tools developed in the past one hundred years? By thoroughly understanding the history of prescriptive rhythmic experimentation in Western Music, we can possibly better understand why certain systems of rhythmic notation have persisted while others have been forgotten; through such better understanding of the history of rhythmic notation we might fashion a notational system today that overcomes our present limitations in rhythmic prescription better than previous failed models. To this end, I will trace the historical development of systems of rhythmic hierarchy from Medieval to Modern music, focusing on music with exceptional prescriptive, precise, mathematically defined rhythmic structures, excluding aleatoric and spatially based rhythmic notation. In doing this, we will gain a historical contextualization of the rise of pan-rational systems of rhythmic notation. Following this, we will survey a variety of modern compositional methods that expand standard prescriptive rhythmic notation, beginning with Charles Ives and Henry Cowell and ending with living composers like Thomas Ades and Michael Gordon. Last, this dissertation will address my own compositional work in the context of pan-rational systems of rhythmic hierarchies and propose a new addition to the lexicon of rhythmic notation that will emancipate the composer from traditional dyadically-rational rhythmic notation.