JSBACHlover wrote:
YOUTube "Milton Babbit Philomel"
Say, I have some music I wrote that I'd love to share but it's in a WAV file format. How can I upload it to YOUTube? (Or is it too complicated to explain?)
Philomel is my favorite electronic work.
I'm currently working on extending some of Babbitt's ideas in my own work. In my composition thesis, I used integral serialism in such a way that deemphasized the pitch row, putting it more on par with other musical elements. My serial composition method is by no means complete or exhaustive, but it's an attempt at finding new ways of organizing musical elements into a serialized work.
I've almost finished an atonal ambient music project that I've been working on for a few years now. The first three parts use tone rows in a free-form, mostly improvisatory manner. The fourth and final part uses a single numerical row to unify elements of pitch, time-point, and timbre. The difference between this piece and my master's thesis is that pitch-rows, time-point rows, and timbre rows are independent rather than methodically linked together. I'm working on some composition ideas for the future that involve using unique rows for each musical element. I haven't written music like this since 2003, so I'm carefully planning a big composition project over the course of 2015 that will bring back the model I used for composing my thesis. While I'm working out the kinks, I'll compose some tunes more like the one I'm finishing up now.
Anyway, I love Babbitt's use of time-point to serialize rhythm elements. Babbitt proposed using the same row for time-point, pitch-class, and timbre. I prefer to take a step further and use independent rows for wider variation. My thesis was inspired by Webern's Symphonie and made use of invariance. By using the same row for time-point and allowing invariance in all aspects of the composition, I found that my material sounded like an endless chromatic scale the more notes that were played closer together. By using independent rows for other parameters than pitch class, this problem can be avoided.
Can't wait to post "Space Music #4." Hopefully it'll be finished by the end of November if not sooner. It does my heart good to know there are people who know and appreciate Babbitt and his work.