This piece is sectional, somewhat like a suite; some sections are spare and playful in the manner of De Stijl; others, rich in counterpoint and harmony, are perhaps more like its Art Nouveau precursor whose warm humanity De Stijl continued. Like a suite, this piece includes versions of established musical forms: a 12-bar blues about 3 1⁄2 minutes in and a concluding ragtime melody. The composer's habitual method of pitch-symmetric tetrachordal partitions governs the piece's harmonic structure.

Fantasy No.4 (on Mondrian's ...)

Performance 13 May 2018 by Ere Lievonen on the Fokker 31-tone organ in the Kleine Zaal, Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, Amsterdam. Part of "Laboratonium 3" concert presented by the Huygens-Fokker Foundation.

180513 Laboratonium 3

Symmetrical Design No. 6c

Quick Six is a change-ringing arrangement of S3, the six permutations of three things. Here the foreground sound (FM synthesized and subjected to varying effects) realizes Quick Six on three pitch registers. The plain course of Stedman Doubles is a change-ringing arrangement of A5, the 60 even permutations of five things. Here the foreground sound's five distinct timbres realize this. A Tibetan cymbal, sampled and ring-modulated, provides a treble obbligato referring perhaps to the much larger usual subjects of change-ringing. Software used for this: Digital Performer, FM8, Reaktor, Amadeus Pro, Mathematica, Mac OS X.

Quick Six / Stedman Doubles

This piece uses the concept of change-ringing, and its sound is also reminiscent of that art. To ring changes is to present a fixed set of things in all possible orders; the effect is perhaps more hypnotic than intellectually stimulating.
Two sets of things are permuted here: five note-durations (120 changes - these come in pairs separated by rests) and four chord sequences (24 changes). Each chord sequence, comprising five triads and one tetrad, is presented decrescendo in the currently applicable durations. Each chord sequence uses all the pitch classes of a 19-tone equal-tempered scale. “Smithfield Doubles” and “Erin Minimus” are change-ringing names for the orderings of the changes.
The source sounds are synthesized by physical modelling of hammered strings.
Software used: Digital Performer, Chromaphone, Amadeus Pro, Mathematica, Mac OS X.

A Strange Country Walk: Erin Minimus / Smithfield Doubles

This is a symmetrical design of musical events characterized by time (when the event occurs), pitch, intensity, timbre, and pan position. Each such event here is part of an ten-member family determined by permuting and inverting the five parameters – that’s the sense in which the design is symmetrical. “Δ5” is one name for the abstract group of this symmetry. The sounds here are generated by modal synthesis using Reaktor Prism (Native Instruments) under control of Digital Performer (Mark of the Unicorn). The pitch scale is 61.5 cents per step.

Delta 5

This piece, dedicated to Leon Leeds, comprises various night sounds: some may be of the sea, others the product of an unquiet mind.

The pitched sounds are all based on a 31-tone scale. The slow sections generally follow Fuchsian (species) counterpoint rules with the definition of consonance extended, allowing in particular the harmonic seventh (frequency ratio 7 : 4), which the 25-step interval in this scale closely approximates. The short quick middle section features all-interval rows in subscales of 12, 10, and 14 tones.

This is a stereo sequence created by the composer and recorded directly from computer audio output in his studio.

The composer also created all the individual sounds: vocal soundbites as granular distortions of his own recorded voice; the rest as output of Reaktor software modules, some built from scratch, some as Reaktor Prism patches.

Nocturne

In the 16th and 17th centuries “Tiento” denoted a harp, vihuela, or keyboard piece typically featuring sectional structure, thematic transformation, and polarities of restrained counterpoint and florid coloratura. The present piece shares those characteristics, and some of its timbres are reminiscent of the plucked string.
Some tientos served to test an instrument’s tuning, and tuning is of interest in the present piece, which uses a Carlos gamma scale comprising equal steps of ~35 cents each. Just perfect fifths and major and minor thirds are very well approximated by 20, 11, and 9 of these steps, respectively. Perfect octaves and fourths are not well approximated in this scale.
The present realization is recorded from a Macintosh computer running Digital Performer with Native Instruments’ FM8 software synthesizer as a plug-in. The composer designed the timbres here, all of which lack octave overtones.

Tiento No. 1

The “design” here is a one-dimensional patchwork of timbral and rhythmic themes. The materials of the design are: 1) a one-pitch timbral “melody” presented by four FM synthesizer sounds designed by the composer, 2) a rhythmic accompaniment provided by two sampled percussive sounds, and 3) regularly recurring gong-like combinations of one of the melody sounds. Accents (of loudness, duration, or brightness) recur at intervals of 7 or 5 (less frequently 3 or 2) basic time units.

Design in Primes

This is a symmetrical design of musical events characterized by time (when the event occurs), duration, note density, instrument, register, pizzicato density, bow position, and pitch set. Each such event here is part of an eight-member family determined by permuting those eight parameters – that’s the sense in which the design is symmetrical. Each of the eight-member families occupies a number of measures. The pitch sets are structured according to the composer’s PSTP system. The title “Aubade” suitably implies an emotional setting for the piece. 

This piece was developed in part in BozziniLab 2016 in Vancouver.

Recording by Quator Bozzini, audio engineer Christopher Butterfield.

Aubade (Symmetrical Design No. 4)

This piano piece uses my PSTP system for the Prelude and Fugue (see “music theory“ page, this website), Schoenbergian serial technique for the Toccata. The principal partitions and primary tone row are related. The Prelude is a sort of rounded binary, the Toccata a ternary. The fugue subject, while keeping always the same contour and underlying pitch-symmetry, changes in the course of the movement from the quartal-quintal B-A-E-D to the major seventh G-E-C-B. Unlike the first two movements, the Fugue is not harmonically closed.

The sound source for this is a “performance” by myself (i.e. a hand-made MOTU DP9 sequence) on the “Steinway D Studio Recording” patch of Modartt's Pianoteq 6. Here QuickTime plays an mp3 version.

Prelude, Toccata, and Fugue

I've been writing "contemporary classical" and electronic music since 1988. Much of it partly based on pitch sets.

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