Krenek: "Symphonic Piece", Op 86

Ernst Krenek: "Symphonic Piece for String Orchestra", Op. 86 (1939) Leopoldinum Orchestra.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• serial
• 12
• twelve
• tone
• atonal
• Schoenberg
• Berg
• Webern
• George
• Perle

[MINORSECONDXXI]

This is the first time I've commented on somebody else's video. It's your video, NewMusicXX; thank you for this emotional music!

Interesting form of serialism; instead of retrograding, inverting and transposing a row, you pick two-note bichords from it. I should discuss employing a similar techinque in some of my music with my teacher, Ken J.Ecury.

[NewMusicXX]

@MINORSECONDXXI Thanks! If you Google this work you'll find some good analytical studies with notation demonstrating what I tried to explain in the annotations.

[ADURG1]

New Music XX rules and stuff....thank you for doing what you do!  this is lovely...

[NewMusicXX]

@ADURG1 Thanks - I like this piece too.

[Aiden057]

@clarktowne Regardless of which systems or theories any composes may employ, the music that moves me most is that which sounds as if it is an expression of what the composer heard and felt at the most personal and profound level. One of the reasons I like Bartok so much is that, to my ear, he's always writing what he's really hearing and feeling. I think in this piece, Krenek is writing that way, and that's what makes this composition really work.

[clarktowne]

This is terrific writing. Krenek is underrated. Atonal music needs this kind of vivacious rhythm and deft counterpoint. Too often we are distracted by the pitch class systems and forget to boogie.

[SoulGiantKurin]

I pefer music that is very structurally free, but thats not the case always lol. I write ambient music, influenced by dreams and sounds, so its more of a soundscape. I pefer to capture the feel of the moment when I write my music. I love this piece though

[callmeBe]

@MINORSECONDXXI Oh, don't include my name in the same sentence as Cage's. I think I write music. I think he helped destroy music. (But you can mention my name in the same sentence as Krenek)! Anyway, getting back on task, Minorsecond, take a list of bichords and generate your motifs and harmonies. Great; you are using something to hold the music together in the probable absence of tonality. However, the mind keys in on repetitive rhythm far faster than ever repeating notes!

[callmeBe]

@MINORSECONDXXI You are very right in that my bias has always been towards the freely atonal, but there are very few works around that are truely serial; I mean that keep towards fairly strict useage. What the tone row is best for I would argue is helping the composer fabricate linear or horizonal lines that are motivic--that help unify the music. Because the chords and lines become harder for the ear to follow, anything that can unify the music becomes advantageous. Thanks!

[MINORSECONDXXI]

@MINORSECONDXXI (Continuation.) I will conclude this "three-comment" by saying that:

1. Cage wanted people to understand single sounds without an overall noticeable pattern. (I think however that musical emotion is still always based on intervals or combinations of them.)

2. Actually, SOME "easy on the composer" works are also necessary. Everything is necessary. You need a musical diversity.

3. I haven't yet composed anything based on Ernst Krenek's twelve-tone system.

[MINORSECONDXXI]

@MINORSECONDXXI (Continuation.) Free atonality was used by the Second Viennese School (but don't confuse their expressionistic works with their tonal and twelve-tone ones).

Anyway, callmeBe's train of thought also reminds me of John Cage and the New York Downtown School. Cage tried to make music more liberalistic by making it less structured à la Darmastadt serialism, but he didn't use his own head either. He asked questions to a devination system, the I-Ching. (Continued.)

[MINORSECONDXXI]

@callmeBe That was actually a really interesting comment! Your way of thinking reminds me of expressionistic freely atonal music. This is music that's written freely and also atonally. However, even this music contains structures too, although it's not based on a universal scheme of rules.

If music didn't use structures at all, it would be random notes. Some people might like that, and they have the right to do so, but it would be easy on the composer.

(Continued.)

[callmeBe]

@MINORSECONDXXI I don't understand. Why even bother with such? I think you are limiting your writing to somthing akin to a formula, in the end that's what you'll end up with--something that sounds like formula music (contribed and theoretic). Now, if those bichords, whatever, become a springboard from which you can willfully change and generate the sounds YOU and the music desires (not the formula), you might be on to something. Serialism NEVER writes the music . . . you do.

[TomasMikaX]

One of my favorite channels. Thank you for sharing this.