Criticisms about work from those who dislike the artist are the bane of art
criticism - they clog the stream in the present and clutter the past.  But
when musicians or listeners question a work in good faith, then some reply
or explanation is necessary.  The artist will take pen in hand and attempt
to make clear what is, on the surface, opaque.  Not all art, not even all
great art, is difficult at first, but it is often enough the case that an
artist will find a limitation in older artistic norms or grammar that the
guideposts to understanding that have been used in the past do not function
in the new style the artist is attempting to create.  Often the most
exagerated reactions have come when an artist successfully undermines some
previous system, and his critics, far from being lost, understand quite
well what has been done.

Several listeners over many years have questioned my music on the account
of a feature which is variously called "relentlessness", "restlessness",
"drivenness" - the criticism is put by one "there is no breath drawn, no
break or pause."

In one sense this is correct - lacking common rounded intervals, standard
melodic rising and falling patterns, standard cadential structures,
sequence and response construction - it might seem that a work such as
Rime of the Ancient Mariner is one long busy section after another.  But
on closer examination, it is not so, what has happened is that the means
by which the whole is subdivided has changed, and the subdivisions are no
longer fixed.  This new freedom seems - as new freedoms often do - like
chaos.  Without previous experience or example to guide the musician, the
signs of closure are not clear.  This is not unusual, without knowledge of
correct ornamentation, Handel's music sounds incorrect, if the performers
do not understand the style well enough to play what is implied.

As an example I am going to take a relatively simple work - my Sonata in F#
for piano, divided into 4 movements, it shows many of the aspects which are
also present - in more complex form - elsewhere in my output.

In a classical work the fundemental reality is expansion and repetition.
Expansion is the process by which a phrase or a progression is increased
in length by insertion of subsidiary melodic or harmonic material.  The
phrase, divided into 2 incises, which are often in turn subdividable into
sequence and response, is expanded into the section, the section into the
period and so on.  Alternation of basic underlying material governs the
movement of the work into larger and larger movements.

Hence:

sr sr
s incise     r incise
s phrase                   r phrase
s sentence
s period

The symmetricallity that this process implies is taken to the fullest in
the classical style by Beethoven, since Haydn and Mozart often constructed
material which was amenable to extension - addition of new measures at the
basic sr level, which then rippled upward through the structure.

Closure is then a hierarchical affair, the larger the section, the more
powerful the closer required.  Beethoven's architecture often demonstrates
the power of the large scale structure against the cadential form by
repeated hammering on it, Mozart prefers more subtle ways of underlining
this, often by using cadential material as part of the melody.

This pattern did not fit well into the early 19th century's desire for more
chromatic blurring of key and more chromatic material.  Spohr attempted to
simply superimpose the two, with the result that he is, like Dittersdorf -
a minor composer with a resume of invention which in words seems to
complete with the great composers.

The various composers post- the Viennese classical period tried a variety
of ways to reconcile two different trends in music, one which is the line
from Haydn and Mozart through Beethoven and Schubert concentrated on
architectural use of harmony, the other - exemplified by Clementi, Dussek,
Weber and Field - who produced a brillinant chromatic surface.  Chopin,
Liszt, Mendelssohn and Schumann came to very similar means of doing so.

They went back to Bach.

Bach is capable of building periodic music - but his great love is the
fugue.  The fugue works by extension, by having sections which overlap.
Fugues are voiced by choosing which thread is the most important, and
making it determine the period.  Since the early 19th century composers
were ssolidly periodic in their fundemental structure - their use of
extension was primarly as a means of conjoining sections which had a
powerful harmonic break - or breaking sections which were too harmonically
similar to otherwise be separate.

This shows up in the world of German composition as an obession with the
two different "styles" of composition, and attempting to unify them.  This
perceived separation, and the importance of unifying them is seen in the
next wave of composers - Brahms and Wagner.  Both composers approached the
question of harmonic expansion through contrapunctal extension, both came
to similar harmonic conclusions.  The difference between them is really
quite simple: Brahms retained periodic structure as primary, where as
Wagner attempted to achieve a process of continuous expansion through
repetition at the small scale.

While much water has passed over the compositional bridge since them -
the basic question of frame based structures versus continuity with major
breaks for differing tableux remains.  Boulez once criticised Messiaen
saying "he does not compose, but juxtaposes".

- - -

But in addition to the techniques raised here - repetition, expansion and
extension, there is a fourth - interlocking.

Interlocking is related to periodic structure and repeticition in that it
relies on rounded units, but it related to extension in that it involves
the overlaying of different fragments offset from each other in time.
The most powerful case of interlocking in the classical style are the
occurances in Beethoven's Diabelli variations: at any moment there are
two ideas present, creating a continuous out pouring of continuity.  There
are simple means to accomplish this - simply offsetting to components of a
harmonisation of a chorale will do the trick.  But the level of complexity
is raised when there are greater distances between the sections
interlocked, by modulation, structure, texture, figuration.

- - -

In the Sonata in F# opens, after an initial chord, with a figure which
has a simple property based on interlocking.  In phase it is clearly
figuration, out of phase it is clearly melodic.  The recognition that
overlaying of two parts produces a different shape is crucial.  Each
component of the structure is a shape, and each shape is part of a set
based on its type.  A trill is the same as a figure which bounces back and
forth between two notes a fifth a part, which is the same as the shape as
the opening in its figuration mode.  Hence the presence of one of these
shapes is a unity.  Which shapes are present determines how the music is
interlocked, and the interval which separates the two notes produces the
tension of the section.

Which shape a musician chooses as dominant produces the dominant interval,
and the choice of which figures therefore determines the dominant interval
of a section, which all other intervals stand in relation based on their
distance in the set.  The ability of superimposed figures to have multiple
meanings join two sets.

Hence trill - interval - superimposed figure / superimposed as arpeggio -
arpeggio any 4 note isodirectional figure.

This liberty creates pauses or breaks in the music naturally, each shape
chosen as dominant desires space on either side to emphasize it, and the
more emphasis, the more space.  This will divide other interlocking
figures.

This produces the tactical scale, with repetitions of main figures
producing demarcations of a larger type.

The seeming organicism of the development yeilds, on inspection, to be a
series of interlocking sections.

This organicism of surface is further contradicted by juxaposition of
distance.  In the first movement we find the first example of this by the
return of figures which, played with the una corda pedal, show the distance
which have been covered by the development.

- - -

The dominant characteristic of the first movement is a series of shapes
each of which is governed by a single interval.  However the second
movement of the sonata - titled "Funeral Music for Lear" has a very
different thematic basis.  The fundemental motive should be recognisable -
the main fragmentary motive from Mahler's 5th Symphony, the first movement
in one of its varients.

By creating a series of intervals, it creates a series of figures to bring
out in turn, this produces the expression.  Since the over all texture
of the movement is more recognisably common practice, this movement is
generally less problematic for listeners.  But crucial to the structure
is the sole appearance of the dominant wavering shape set from the first
movement.

Between these two mechanisms - relation of shape through set, and
interlocking, the entirety of juxtaposed harmony is pursued.

- - -

By realising that every figure, even pedals, repeated notes and chords
are shapes, and each shape is part of a related group, the hierarchy of
distance should become clearer.  Listened to closely, the third movement's
turn towards consonance shows itself as necessary - its end is to produce
a juxatposed harmony, where the consonant harmony is interlocked with a
harmony distant from it, the resulting poly chord, left hanging at the end,
is the cadential result of the entire third movement, as powerful a closure
as possible, because it encapsulates the dominant forms of all of the
shapes in the movement.

- - -

The final movement - Chopin - can then be seen as an organic growth of
the rest of the sonata - its main shapes, while more chromatic, are still
related in their motion to the main shapes from the beginning of the work.
The sequence of intervals remains the same.  What is differs in each
movement is which shape set is dominant.  In the first it is clearly the
trill set, in the second the descending 3 note set, in the fourth the pedal
set, in the last the arpeggio set.  The arpeggio set, of course, was what
created the superimposed set in the first movement.

Hence the raw tritone in this movement, by representing the subordinate
pedal set fills a function similar to repeated chords in a Beethoven work,
establishing a break in the organic development, while simultaneously
showing that closure has not yet occured.

- - -

To attempt to reach closure: the question of pauses in my music can
only be answered by an examination of the basic shapes and the basic
interlocking of these shapes.  Pauses are determined by the dominant shape,
while in some cases there is only one choice - in others the musician is
complete free to select which shape, and is therefore free to extend any
harmony which would underline the selected shape and its associated
interval.

(Note added to the page are 3 symphonies, the cello concerto in F#, and
two more string quartets, No 3 in A and No 5 in F)

Stirling S Newberry
http://www.mp3.com/ssn