Appalachian music, + Schonberg, Copeland,

Also, you can hear the early emergence of 12 tone scaling in Mozart, and Beethoven…

The tone row chosen as the basis of the piece is called the prime series (P). Untransposed, it is notated as P0. Given the twelve pitch classes of the chromatic scale, there are (12!) (factorial, i.e. 479,001,600) unique tone rows.

Appearances of P can be transformed from the original in three basic ways:

transposition up or down, giving Pχ.
reversal in time, giving the retrograde (R)
reversal in pitch, giving the inversion (I): I(χ) = 12 - Pχ.
The various transformations can be combined. These give rise to a set-complex of forty-eight forms of the set, 12 transpositions of the four basic forms: P, R, I, RI. The combination of the retrograde and inversion transformations is known as the retrograde inversion (RI).

RI is: RI of P, R of I, and I of R.
R is: R of P, RI of I, and I of RI.
I is: I of P, RI of R, and R of RI.
P is: R of R, I of I, and RI of RI.

A very basic, schematic of layering, now.

And I admire the crispness, the beauty in the order of Schoenberg’s compositions. Others have taken his system, and redefined it, further.

BUT, it would seem there is a need to combine the atonality, (such as it is, because the atonal becomes tonal under this system) with the evolved feel, and warmth, of an Ives. The combinations are infinite.

And don’t ask me why, but nothing says Schoenberg like Southern Culture on the Skids.

Countrypolitan is great album, give it a listen.

Same with Schoenberg Suite for piano, op.25, by Glenn Gould.

I’ve been listening to “the Alcott’s” from the Concord, Mass, piano sonata, number two, and I was surprised to hear the typical V-I chord phrasing, despite the atonality.

I’m comparing that, to say, Philip Glass, and his more austere phrasing, not sure what to think.

Ives music now strikes me as downright pretty…

I’m trying to transpose a version of “the Alcott’s,” just a personal exercise, but I keep getting this urge to augment the basic V IV I phrasing, I suppose more a reflection of our period of time, chord progressions NOT now predictable…

I read a blog entry where Ives referred to his music as being Proustian, it should provoke a memory, or BE a memory, perhaps I see it also as a reaction to the great forces of technological modernization at work in the early 20 th century, a clash of atoms in conjunction with the transcendentalists, Emerson, Alcott, Thoreau, and Hawthorne.

Mixed with fear.

Either way, it works.

Also, the song “Always the Sun” by the Stranglers, uses the same riff, found in “the Alcott’s”.

I wonder if they ripped it off?

Thieves….