Stories from A Monk's Musical Musings
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The Fifth Element
A Monk's Musical Musings &bull Feb 3, 2012
No, not Leeloo, but an interlude.I enjoy it when a piece takes on a life of its own. It's genuine fun when that happens. Again, just after the previous post - in which the four elements were subject, countersubject, episode, and coda - I came up with the fifth element I was searching for, which ended up taking the form of a six measure interlude.Fugal terminology can be fuzzy with respect to definitions, and at no place is this more evident than when trying to describe the material that comes… Full Story »
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And Then There Were Three
A Monk's Musical Musings &bull Feb 1, 2012
When I wrote Imitation Study Number 1 back in 2010, it was the realization of my very first goal when I began learning counterpoint: I naively though writing in the two-part invention format would be a good place to start back in the late 80's, but it wasn't. First… Full Story »
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Surprise Developments
A Monk's Musical Musings &bull Jan 30, 2012
There are many cool and fun things about the adventure of being a composer, but one of my favorite things is how stubborn thematic material can break at any time, usually out of the blue and for no apparent reason.Back in about 2003 I came up with an epic five-measure fugue subject that… Full Story »
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Freestyle Convertible Counterpoint, Part 2
A Monk's Musical Musings &bull Jan 23, 2012
In the first post in this series, I demonstrated a method for finding all possible vertical-only and horizontal-only shifts at the thesis points for a five-measure fugue subject and its tonal answer, and in all four quadrant orientations (Original, inverted, retrograde, and inverted retrograde). As I intimated then, this is much more practical than Taneiev's theoretical treatise, it has the advantage of not relying on mathematical formulas, and it also has applicability beyond the strict style. Additionally, the method takes advantage of the copy-and-paste and playback abilities of Encore, so it's… Full Story »
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Freestyle Convertible Counterpoint, Part 1
A Monk's Musical Musings &bull Jan 17, 2012
I first read Sergi Taneiev's treatise, Convertible Counterpoint in the Strict Style, in 1987, I believe. It was a seminal moment for me, as it opened my mind up to the staggering possibilities of vertical, horizontal, and combination shifts with respect to contrapuntal combinations. I couldn't wrap my brain around the formulas, though, because like the overwhelming majority of musically minded people, I don't have any talent for math.There is a reason for this, by the way: The musical mind works in terms of sound and sight - this is why composers… Full Story »
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Fugal Science, Volume 1, Number 4
A Monk's Musical Musings &bull Jan 11, 2012
You will have to read the firstthreeinstallments in this series to get much out of this post.To review, we started out with a fugue at the octave (Two-part invention format), turned that into a fugue with a tonal answer at the fifth, and then introduced some character to finish it as a piece of music. I had to open the exposition up an octave, otherwise the answer and counter-answer would have converged on a unison. This worked fine in the four-voice string quartet version of the fugue I wrote first, but it didn't float my boat in only three. As… Full Story »
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Fugal Science, Volume 1, Number 3
A Monk's Musical Musings &bull Jan 10, 2012
To recap, the first version of this fugue was a fugue at the octave - what Bach called a two-part invention - and then, I made it a fugue with the answer at the fifth above - actually a twelfth in this guitar piece - by changing only the second five measures, and adding a new section in the subdominant. I had to add the new section to present a second statement of the answer. Otherwise, you would only hear the answer once in the exposition, which… Full Story »
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Why Sibelius Will Forever Suck Compared to Encore
A Monk's Musical Musings &bull Jan 9, 2012
Is there really anything I have to explain? The operation of the user interface is obvious just by looking: You click on the palette that has the item you want to add, and then you click on the score to add it. Nothing could be simpler. Back in 1993, it took me less than 15 minutes to figure out how to use this interface, and I only ever used the manual for a reference guide. I needed to do that for only a few weeks.By contrast, Sibelius 7 uses Tabs, so you… Full Story »
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Topics:
- Encore
- Play
- Performance
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Fugal Science, Volume 1, Number 2
A Monk's Musical Musings &bull Jan 9, 2012
As I mentioned at the end of the first post in this series, I could have turned that fugue at the octave - the two-part invention format - into a fugue at the twelfth above just by changing measures six through ten with a tonal answer and a counter-answer, but then the piece would be less than perfect, because you'd only hear the answer once… Full Story »
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Topics:
- Gain
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Fugal Science, Volume 1, Numbers 1-3
A Monk's Musical Musings &bull Jan 9, 2012
Back in 1994 when I was a Doctoral candidate at UNT, I came up with a magnificent and stately fugue subject that I composed as a four-part canon. With that subject, I composed a string quartet fugue that you can see and hear here.That subject came out so spectacularly well, that I knew I would return to it at some point and write a series of fugal works with it. Well, back in 2010 I finally reduced it to its smallest form possible, that of a two-voice fugue at the octave (Bach called these two-part inventions, feeling they weren't worthy… Full Story »
