Concerning most musical works, one can reasonably say that they unfold within some preexisting musical language (so "language" at least in the sense of a vocabulary governed by a syntax governed by stylistic norms).  On one hand, many conservatives contend that a common language constitutes a minimum prerequisite for "communication," and that that principle makes any fiat language (e.g. Schoenberg's twelve-tone system) fundamentally problematic; on the other, hand many radicals advocate for language-free music grounded only in visceral sensation, music that explores the lives of individual sounds with no "glue" at all.  Of course myriad intermediate positions exist as well.

This piece indeed projects a fiat language (not Schoenberg's!), but by design allows listeners to internalize the workings that language gradually.  Now the following effect may be lost on certain experts possessed of excellent universal ear training and audacious on-the-fly analytical ability: for many listeners, jumping right to the middle of the piece may make the music there seem quite "random" and difficult to parse, while listening from the beginning renders the whole work quite legible on account of how the piece naturally trains the ear to hear what's coming next.

Apsides, an atonal passacaglia for piano

Tessellations, for orchestra (1976)

Music for Marimbas and Harps

String Quartet No. 7 - Finale

Concertino for Vibraphone, Marimba, and Orchestra

There is a slender stream in my output, but extending back five decades now, of music based on scales repeating, not at the octave, but at the fifth (or fourth).  In particular, while the effect here is always "locally pentatonic," as the piece progresses it grows increasing pantonal.  By the end all the pitch classes get equal treatment.  

By a "hypercanon," I mean a canon whose theme is itself a canon, and perhaps, and so on.  

Here the  ultimate theme and patterns of canonic repetitions have been chosen very carefully so that music has an overall constant density.  Get the math wrong and the music will just grow muddy or thin out prematurely.

A pulse unifies the rhythmic surface, but it beats so fast, on the order of 50 clicks per second, that the audible rhythm will not imply it even the pulse arguably still informs the rhythm.  So just as the tonality here doesn't count as either diatonic or traditionally atonal, the rhythmic profile is neither entirely "free" nor based on a perceptible count.

Another quite different interpretation of the underlying structure is forthcoming.  Watch this space.

Sometimes the New Place to Go Sits In Between the Places You Know, for piano

A fact of nature: one and the same thing may admit both the simplest of specifications, yet also exhibit rich behavior verging on the quasi-random.  

If a 3-note chord has pitches sitting x, y and z semitones below C7, that chord occurs here at time x^3 + y^3 + z^3.

That's the whole score of the work (modulo a simple orchestration strategy).

So all the rhythmic complexity, and all the counterpoint and voice leading simply emerge from the implications of that short sentence. 

I thus invite you to listen for the structure, the generating intention.
But I invite you, equally, to listen for the phenomena, the temporal extension.  

To my ears what unfolds has something subjective, even expressive about it, even though I know it's all implicit already in that simple formula.

The Treachery of Simple Arithmetic, for 10 instruments

The second movement of the Symphony for String Orchestra (2025).

Pawel Strzelecki: 2. Ahead (Scherzo) [Symphony for String Orchestra (2025)].

Entr'acte

Recorded in 1973 by Ramón Sender Barayón, a chant celebrating the winter solstice, with lyrics by Alicia Bay Laurel and melody by Ramón Sender Barayón, performed by both of them (Alicia singing and Ramón playing a zither in a special tuning).  The sheet music is included in their book, Being of the Sun, first published in 1973 by Harper & Row.  The second English edition will be available in 2021.  This recording is track 15 from their album, Songs from Being of the Sun, available here:  https://indigo-with-stars.myshopify.com/products/songs-from-being-of-the-sun

Winter Solstice Chant

I am a registered nurse practicing primarily in psychiatry in Santa Barbara County. I am also a music journalist, composer, and photographer.

Entr'acte

Allan Cronin

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Mary Quan

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