Running out of music

[Wain]

Yes but with language new words and linguistic forms can be created to provide new material for poetry. Can you say the same for music? How can notes combine to create new material for music once every possible permutation of notes has already been played?

You are making a mistake here in assuming that notes are the "words" of music...they are not.  Notes are more akin to letters, but they have the additional modifier of rhythms within them as well.

Words in Western Tonal music are akin to motives.  The reason why we aren't recreating pieces from the past is because the language itself (the way motives are used, the way consonance and dissonance is treated, harmonic structure or lack thereof, and the basic compositional methodologies) changes quite regularly.

Composers are constantly experimenting with new shapes and sounds as well.

I'm talking about the mathematical fact that there is a finite number of combinations of notes.

You're neglecting rhythm, tempo, and form, all of which have infinite possible varieties...also, there is only a finite combination of notes when the piece has a specific length, and the notes have a rhythmic limit (no such thing as a rhythmic limit, there are pieces with 2048th notes in them).
Not even bothering to get into the fact that detuning is quite common, or having clarinets and violins playing quarter tones and the like.

Multiphonics, extended orchestral techniques, and most importantly SILENCE suggest that there are an infinite variety of sounds that are used in western music...we are not in any way limited to the pitches of the 12-tone equal temperament scale.  Then there's the whole instrumental timbral shifting issue to deal with as well.


As far as other scales and tuning systems go, we use them all the time.

Well, most modern music sounds pretty arbitrary to me

 If you're talking about modern orchestral works than it's likely because your ear is uneducated to its types of nuance and concept.  If you're talking about pop music, well you're about dead on there for the most part, but once again, just because nearly every song uses some I-IV-V-I harmonic structure does it make it the same song?  no, absolutely not.

To be clear, what you've essentially said is something akin to 'Because we can accurately produce all of the discernible colors in our visual spectrum painters will run out of new things to paint.'

There's a LOT more to it than that.

[Wain]

Variation in velocity and length of notes will only do so much. They won't transform one melody in to another one.

this is flat out wrong...try looking up some Webern.

unless you're suggesting theme and variation is an unacceptable method of developing a new melody...if that's the case than you need to clearly define melody for us because you're implying that ALL melodies in western tonal music are the same regardless of content.

[Wain]

So if you heard Bach's IVth played with a varied rythm, tempo or form, would you consider it a different piece of music? Or someone attempting to use someone else's work to make something new?

Bach's fourth what?

What I'm saying is that I can take a piece by a previous composer and make it completely unidentifiable by altering its rhythm, tempo, and form...it's really quite easy to do.  Pitch material has nothing to do with what makes a piece of music familiar to the ear.  This is evidenced by the fact that most of us do not have perfect pitch, yet can identify Beethoven's 5th.

Most importantly...changing the form would completely alter the piece into something remarkably different, the changing of form requires that the material be drastically altered (including the necessary deletion, addition, or restructuring of new material)...remember form determines underlying harmonic structure, shape, development, and process of a motive or melody.  Just so we don't get sidetracked, remember my point is that there are infinite varieties of form, which provides us with another of many reasons why we aren't "repeating" music from the past.

More specifically, yes, it is quite possible to change ANY piece of music into a completely different sounding piece by altering the rhythmic properties of said piece.  There are an awful LOT of serial pieces that use the same row and are not identifiably similar.

I beg your pardon?

 What I was saying here is that if you were talking about 20th century orchestral works than it's likely that the reason you feel that way is because you don't know how to "hear" them...I'm not saying whether this is the case or not, but the general public doesn't tend to enjoy a lot of pitch-collection based music purely because their ears are attuned to the standard tonal V-I idiom, and they don't know what to listen for...which in turn makes it seem kind of rambling and pointless...if not horribly noisy.

[Wain]

Quote:

    Wain wrote:
    Bach's fourth what?


Symphony.


Quote:

    Wain wrote:
    Beethoven's 5th.


Beethoven's 5th what?

I'm picking on you.  JS Bach didn't write any symphonies.  Symphonies are more relegated to the classical period.  If you're talking about sinfonia as Bach used the term, those are a different thing.  Regardless, musicologists don't use nomenclature like this in regards to Bach.  Whereas in Beethoven it is, while colloquial, assumed to mean the symphony.  I did want to make sure you weren't talking about one of the Brandenburg concertos or a Tocatta or the like however.

I can understand that. I remember when I was studying for my A Level in music one of our set pieces was The Rite of Spring. At first it sounded horribly dissonant. It does take time for your ear to tune in to it and realize that music doesn't have to be "nice" to be beautiful.

 and the Rite of Spring is still essentially tonal...it's got nothing on Webern or Ligeti or Penderecki in terms of being listen-able to the average layperson.

 :-D

Interesting...

Think about it like this...I can write a piece that begins with [10|8|6] (which many pieces do), I can take p10, place it at a low octave and hold it at a grave tempo for 6 bars of 4/4, then rest 1 measure and a 64th of a beat, play p8 at octave 6 as a grace note to p6 at octave 3.

This will absolutely not sound ANYTHING like three blind mice, even if I repeat it.
 :-)

[Wain]

Eugh, nothing ruins symphonies like being forced to pick the structure to pieces for an exam!

AGREED!!!! :-P
Music history and analysis classes drive me absolutely insane.

I will warn you that Ligeti and Penderecki typically composed in a style usually referred to as "form and process" music, there are other terms as well, but it's really messed up stuff.  They tend to work with clouds of sound as a texture.  (Ligeti is one of my favorite composers of all time, he's influenced a LOT of my orchestral work)

Ligeti's most famous work Atmospheres has over 70 staves in the score.  The 50-something strings are all individually divisi...and playing different things simultaneously.  It's used in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.  He also wrote a piece for 112 metronomes...it's utterly hilarious to listen to.

Penderecki's most famous work is Threnody for victims of Hiroshima...it's pretty amazing, he manages to create things that sound like helicopters and air-raid sirens orchestrally.

Webern was a student of Schoenberg, part of the second Viennese school, and is the quintessential king of serialism.  There's not much more to be said there, in my experience ppl tend to either like serialism or not for the most part.  He's the  first real genuine master of post-tonal composition...Schoenberg and Berg both tended to have tonal elements(or echoes thereof) in their work.

Cheers!
 :-D