RECYCLED PROCEEDURES STRIKE BACK!
I did write a little piece of music tonight - 24 measures for violin and cello and lasting all of 58 seconds. While digging through a file folder looking for something else, I discovered an unrealized strategy for a composition dated 7-17-1987. Here is the text in full, written on the back of a scrap of computer paper:
no title yet 170787
_472_ roll of dice from Ax Your Tax
my guess 462
Actually, looking at this now, I realize this sketch was used as part of the Dymphna piece "Ax Your Tax". "Ax Your Tax" was a board game that came with 3 sets of dice - "4-7-2" is the first roll, and I probably rolled the second set to achieve the changing number of "6" which I recorded as "my guess" - I don't know why. I have other materials relating to this piece in the form of cut up file folders that have patterns of blacked in and empty dots on them; I can't recall how we used these either. "Ax Your Tax" was never entered into the temporary Uncle Dave catalogue, but if it were it would come in at around Number 397.
Anyway, I used the throw to create a motive for the new piece, called (for now) 472/462. These numbers are represented as degrees in the scale and the tonic is not stated, so if you were in C major it would spell F-B-D. I used the 472 in the violin and 462 in the cello, moving around diatonically and chromatically, breaking out of the pattern at transitions and turnarounds. To achieve the conclusion I added the two numbers and came up with the number 9-3-4. This time I did include the tonic, as it was for the end of the piece. All of the rhythms used are simple, strict quarter- and half-note values.
The feeling of the piece is basically off-diatonic, and the dissonances are rather pungent. This was deliberate, as I was reading today about the Old Hall Manscript, a 15th century English source of Medieval Polyphonic sacred music. There is a lot of dissonance in this source, but it was very carefully copied and probably doesn't carry very many transcription errors. I suspect that, just as some people favor limburger cheese, King Henry V (for whom the Old Hall was compiled) favored strong discords in his music. There is an anonymous Gloria (No. 4) where the concluding chord, including the proper direction of the plainsong in the tenor reads F, C, D, F. Manfred Bukofzer, in "Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music" (1950), suggests that this may be corrected to F, D, D, F, but admits that "the resulting cadence is very uncommon." Indeed, studying the passage the original of F, C, D, F is more natural sounding, even though there is a parallel fifth in the bass and naturally the gnarly second between the middle voice and tenor.
These were the sorts of things I was thinking about when I wrote my piece, which is very nice, but too short.
This all brings me back to school - "Your assignment is to write a 2-voice canon in one of the church modes. You may use any mode except Locrian, and if you use Locrian I will give you an F." Of course the smart asses in the class brought in Locrian Canons, and got Fs. I was smart - I composed my canon in Lydian and got an "A". Then I proffered the Locrian canon I had also written in addition to the Lydian one. The teacher marked it with an "F", but of course, that was not the grade he entered into the book.
I don't know why the composition profs get a knot in their tails about Locrian mode, except that it's so plagal that they figure you'll never have need to use it. Locrian, in "C", spells B- C- D- E- F- G- A- B or half-step, 2 whole-steps, half-step, 3 whole-steps. I think it takes a lot a skill to write something good in Locrian, as the half-steps being where they are, at the first and fourth degrees, always tends to want to pull the tune in such a way that the prime wants to move up to the second degree, or the sub-dominant to the dominant. Then, duhhh, you've got the major scale and it's not Locrian. Most of the student Locrian canons I've seen just sound like music diatonic music with the finalis ending on the, uh... wrong note.
But pure Locrian has it's own mysterious, neutral quality - a mode that moves around nebulously, never really finding it's way. There have been many times when I have heard something in my head that I have written down only to discover that it's in Locrian. Hindemith seems to have been well acquianted with it, and I think Kurt Weill understood it also, although if he used it I couldn't put my finger on a specific example.
This piece I just wrote has "that Locrian feeling", but it's too chromatic to be pure.
Uncle Dave Lewis