The Symphonies

Piano Collection

Hello,
I have taken time off and I'm back with piano collection 18, a polymetric pieces that is more lyrical and tonal than my usual style. Marks the ending of a two year break when I felt nothing I wrote made any difference and needed to quit for a while. the basic theme of this piece, other than atonal centricity, is that it's largely 5 against 4.

Piano Collection 18: gratis mutandis

The transmogrification of string quartet 1 continues with the second movement, which, I admit, is difficult listening due to the density of texture and harsh dissonances in high harmonics strings. The melody and harmony are underneath as this pieces tears up your innards and burns your soul. 1999-2022

String Quartet #1, second movement redux

This is a polymicrotonal polytempic final draft of symphony I. there may be additional movements, making this the first movement. there are four/five tempi assigned to each section, and the tunings will be: winds = quartertones; brass = 7 limit just in C; percussion piano and harp = 12tet;, and 8th tones in the strings. I am presenting this roughly midway. The final product will follow in a few weeks.

Symphony I in polytempo and polymicrotonality. Final draft

Composed in 2013, but not entered into Finale until now, Jan. 2023, this five movement symphony was my first attempt at a polymicrotonal large scale orchestra, in a short Webernian formalistic sense. Neither atonal, nor tonal, the choirs of the orchestra are mostly polymicrotonal and not polytempo until the 4th and fifth pieces. Enjoy.

Symphony II: five short pieces for Polytempic Polymicrotonal Orchestra, First Piece

second piece of symphony II, in four tunings, 53tET, 12tET, 48 tET and brass are in overtone partials. 2013

Symphony II: Five pieces for Poly Orch, Piece 2

Symphony II: Piece 3

Symphony II: Piece 4

the twentieth installment in my piano collection. in some tuning. 2023

Piano Collection XX (in some tuning)

My first piano collection piece in four installments, from 1999. Redone in 2023

Piano Collection 1 #1

second piece in piano collection I, from 1999, and Finale input 2023. A rare moment of tonality from me. Dont expect this.

Piano1 #2

And here is piano collection I, number 3. composed in 1999 and rearranged in 2023

Piano1#3

last piece in piano collection I, from 1999, rearranged for madman in 2023

Piano1#4

This final movement brings the total symphony to @46  minutes. The fourth movement is in four tempi in counterpoint to each other: parallel, similar, oblique and contrary tempo movement. The tunings are: 17 19 12 and 22 tet. I dedicate this to my Mom in the center of the picture. 2023

Symphony III: fourth movement

Solo Clarinet in Bb

Wedding Bells Of Christofascism And Right Wing Terrorism

Peter Thoegersen -flugelhorn in Bb.m4a

Act III from The Legend of Zip Caustic. 2025

Legend of Zip caustic, Act 3, scene 1

Act IV to The Legend of Zip Caustic, a satire from the book of the same name written by Peter Thoegersen. All music composed by Peter Thoegersen. 2013-2025

Act 4 scenes 1 and 2, zip caustic

I wrote this piece in 2006, and then later input it into Finale in 2016, but the nested tuplets were too much for Finale to render as a proper midi file, so David Victor Feldman rendered it through his programming skills. It's a good approximation of the original. This piece is called Mikrokomplexmos after Bartok's pedagogical series for piano, but this small ditty just remained my only foray into this project.

piano collection 6 Mikrokomplexmos

Thay passed recently after a long fruitful life spreading joy and peace all over the world, from boycotting Vietnam war (both sides), to helping Martin Luther King jr. Thay was, next to the Dalai Lama, the pure embodiment of compassion. 

piano collection 17c: Thich Nhat Hanh: walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet

Listening, reading, Alan Watts since a teenager, I only came to understand recently what he means by an ego encased in a bag of skin.

piano collection 17e: Alan Watts

we are all the hungry ghost. we all crave. we can't admit that we crave and desire. our bellies are big and our mouth is small. 

piano collection 17f: Hungry Ghost

One day in 2017, in September, my ambulatory apparatus quit me, where I began falling down daily, like my own free rides in life's amusement park. been crippled ever since. 

Piano Collection 15a: I Can't Fucking Walk

using non binary numbers in polyrhythms and signatures as written about by Henry Cowell in 1919

Piano Collection xiii: Cowellesque Rhythms

The doctors didn't know what was wrong with my lumbar area. They said it was a herniated disk. Later it was found to be a diabetic complication that ate the nerves away from my lumbar area. Only 0.000000000000000875% of the population get this. i am very lucky. 

piano collection 15b: Herniated Disks Much Better Now.

This piano piece has piano string harmonics and tapping and other goodies. No samples for these sounds, however...so it's just plain straight vanilla piano. 

piano collection XII: kill that mother fucker

The Ewe tradition of drumming is applied to piano. Most suitably for 4 hands, but a really good pianist can pull this off alone. 

piano collection XI: Ewe Drumming on Piano

four hands turns into one line with very many fingers. more fingers than a human has. From many, the one. Down to a single line. 

piano collection X: Singularity

Bartok meets Gershwin. 1999. Yes, I started late. John Dillinger approves. 

Piano Collection 0: the beginning, 1999

Piano collection 3 is from 2007 and was finished in 2010 after a hiatus for a couple years. The piece is already a step away from piano collections 1 and 2. 

Piano collection III

Rather formal sounding beginning of an informal piece, a bit like Bach while dreaming of chasing notes that got away. 2016

Piano Collection #4 (12tet version)

An early ditty from 2002, for piano solo. The second in the piano collection series. 

Peter Thoegersen - Piano Collection II a

polymicrotonal weirdness with max msp, 2018

PolymicroEtude7

A polymicrotonal synth created in Maxmsp, in 2011, featuring many EDO tunings and found sounds around the house. 2013

Polymicrotonality Study 3

Polymicrotonal_Study_5

Maxmsp synthesis with polymicrotonality and bizarre artifacts poking through the veil of dreams

Polymicrotonal Study 6

Polymicrotonality Study IV

Imagine being in the jungles of myanmar and coming across the rare saber-toothed tiger of the jungles near the Naf River

poly etude 19

Microtonal Computer Music Etude w drums #20

This is my fourth symphony, and I am using new software that sounds better. The new software is not microtonal friendly, therefore, there will be two versions: standard and poly microtonal. This version is in 12tet and it is still highly polytempic. Each choir of the orchestra is moving separately in Fuxian contrapuntal motions, such as, contrary, parallel, similar and oblique, with respect to tempi changes in the choirs.

Another fact about this piece is that it uses many fragments of Gregorian chant from the Liber Usualis and is scattered throughout the single movement piece. The chants are of various lengths and are brief. The form could be considered a type of "variation" form; even if the chants are not literally repeated, they do act as a type of chaconne, over which the symphony plays and explores.

As of today, Sep. 4th, 2025, a finished mix is uploaded and will remain the finished midi version of this piece in 12tet using NotePerformer.

Symphony IV: melodiae perpetuae in polytempic polytonality

composed 2016. This is a three part piano composition that is centric, yet atonal

Peter Thoegersen - Piano Collection #5

In four staves, partitioned into sound spaces, 128 tet, complex

Piano Collection xiv, in 128tet

To all concerned: 
I am announcing publication of my new book, NOW AVAILABLE:
https://www.routledge.com/Maqam-Melodies-Pitches-Patterns-and-Developments-of-Music-in-the-Middle-East-and-other-Microtonal-Writings/Thoegersen/p/book/9789815129052
My book, Polytempic Polymicrotonal Music, is available on Amazon. 
https://www.routledge.com/Polytempic-Polymicrotonal-Music-The-Road-Less-Traveled/Thoegersen/p/book/9789814968294

I have a new album out through Magic&Unique Group Records on Spotify and other digital streaming platforms:
https://open.spotify.com/album/5qWHmcvyAemvVn2TJH1bio?si=OD5TmPptQ-ypr8WOI0EZKA&nd=1

https://whitecentipedenoise.com/products/peter-thoegersen-facebook-cantos-cdr-flea
My CD via Flea label has been out since April, 2021, featuring the wonderful Lore Lixenberg singing over my microtonal piano accompaniment
Hope you enjoy it!

https://www.newworldrecords.org/collections/vendors?q=Peter%20Thoegersen

From the liner notes on my CD now available on AMAZON and New World Records:
"The author of these notes has spent his life explaining radical music, and the music on this disc may be the most radical I've ever written about. Peter Thoegersen (b. 1967) is not yet a name known to the music world; not for any lack of connection to other famous musicians, but because he came to composition late, and because his artistic aims are so broad and complex that they have taken years to evolve. His aesthetic is well defined, and he is upfront about having a name for it: "Polytempic Polymicrotonal Music." That means he has musical layers simultaneously moving in different tempos, plus, even more radically, that he has different microtonal scales playing at the same time. Few composers have aimed at such fervent and heterogeneous multidimensionality. And yet, while Thoegersen's music can seem overwhelming at first, running through it is a level of charm and simplicity that belies the initial impression.

In total, these three pieces emphasize a particular side of Thoegersen's output. The image his music creates of ornately mathematical structures filled with intuitively friendly melodies maps on to the personality of the man himself: outspoken and acerbically ruthless in his musical opinions, Thoegersen is also marked by a jolly sense of humor and an inexhaustible love of cats and other animals that make him ultimately less imposing and more personable than he might seem at first. The same can be said for his music. And by going further than anyone else has gone in terms of this particularly American concept of fusing the polytempic with the polymicrotonal - extending and combining the conceptual worlds of Ives, Cowell, Nancarrow, Partch, Carter, even Frank Zappa and many others - he has created a special place for himself within American music."                                                             

-Kyle Gann (from the liner notes)

pthoege

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