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PostClassic

Kyle Gann on music after the fact

Another Do-It-Yourselfer

Thanks to an unencumbered and rather inspired summer, I am more than halfway through an evening-length collection of pieces for three microtonally retuned Disklaviers. I’m calling it Hyperchromatica, because a melodic reliance on intervals smaller than a quarter-tone is about the only stylistic constant. 33 pitches to the octave. Most of the pieces have polytempo structures, several are polytonal as well, which I had always wanted to try doing in just intonation. I’m unveiling the nine movements I’ve finished, which total 83 minutes. Scores, tuning, and program notes are here. Three of the pieces I had put up last year, and I finished six more recently.

– Orbital Resonance, 11:31; a meditation on planetary motions, beginning on the 65th and 66th harmonics of E-flat, and ending with the 54th, 55th, and 56th.
– Futility Row, 8:53; my sly Western noir movement, but with more subtlety of large-scale harmonic structure than I’ve yet achieved elsewhere.
– Pavane for a Dead Planet, 9:04; a thoroughly Romantic take on a Baroque form, but with some interesting intervals and rhythms.
– Star Dance, 6:40; a self-indulgent immersion in melodies of the smallest feasible steps.
– Dark Forces Signify, 8:17; this is my tribute to Black Lives Matter (matter being a difficult verb to synonymize). The bass motive is from Julius Eastman, and the simplicity sets off the hyperchromatic voice-leading well.
– The Lessing Is Miracle, 9:36; the title is an enigma found in all capitals in one of Julius’s scores, and the texture was initially inspired by one of his pieces. This one makes my wife nervous. It is odd.
– Romance Postmoderne, 8:36; a nostalgic ballad, and the first piece I wrote in this tuning.
– Liquid Mechanisms, 13:19; a big Jackson Pollock mural of various panels, the complexity of each clarified, hopefully, by internal (and nonsynchronized) repetition. Nested tuplets are a recurring motif.
– Galactic Jamboree, 7:15; the gonzo finale to the whole set.

I’m planning another five or six movements, but who knows if I’ll stop then? The size of the project serves two purposes: one to put out a two-CD set for my own vanity, the other so that, in the unlikely case anyone is ever foolhardy enough to want to stage the entire series with actual Disklaviers, it will at least be a large enough event to justify the expense and trouble. But for now I can do it all on my computer. As Lou Harrison said to John Luther Adams, “We’re the do-it-yourself composers.” I should also report, though, that living so long inside this elegant tuning keeps revealing more and more of its facets and capabilities.

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So classical music is dead, they say. Well, well. This blog will set out to consider that dubious factoid with equanimity, if not downright enthusiasm [More]

Kyle Gann's Home Page More than you ever wanted to know about me at www.kylegann.com

PostClassic Radio The radio station that goes with the blog, all postclassical music, all the time; see the playlist at kylegann.com.

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Sites to See

American Mavericks - the Minnesota Public radio program about American music (scripted by Kyle Gann with Tom Voegeli)

Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar - a cornucopia of music, interviews, information by, with, and on hundreds of intriguing composers who are not the Usual Suspects

Iridian Radio - an intelligently mellow new-music station

New Music Box - the premiere site for keeping up with what American composers are doing and thinking

The Rest Is Noise - The fine blog of critic Alex Ross

William Duckworth's Cathedral - the first interactive web composition and home page of a great postminimalist composer

Mikel Rouse's Home Page - the greatest opera composer of my generation

Eve Beglarian's Home Page- great Downtown composer

David Doty's Just Intonation site

Erling Wold's Web Site - a fine San Francisco composer of deceptively simple-seeming music, and a model web site

The Dane Rudhyar Archive - the complete site for the music, poetry, painting, and ideas of a greatly underrated composer who became America's greatest astrologer

Utopian Turtletop, John Shaw's thoughtful blog about new music and other issues

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