MapLab 8. A Small Sonata
Sonata is typically a multi-movement piece for solo piano or an instrument with piano. A shorter form with just three connected sections, the middle slower and quieter, can be called a sonatina. An inside look at how one was composed gives a guided tour in the form of a recipe to write your own sonata.…
MapLab 7. Twelve-Tone Trichords in a Ternary Trio
Schoenberg’s famous twelve-tone row technique, devised in the early 20th century, prescribed a compositional method to order choice of pitches in the dense forest of possibilities with 12 chromatic scale steps. Music composed in this manner was called “atonal,” but this Lab will create a distinctive individual tonality from a 12-tone series of four trichords.…
MapLab 6. Paint a Landscape
Many 19th cen. American landscape artists painted fascinating panoramic scenes, including Albert Bierstadt, who captured the grandeur of Western, mountainous landscapes. Much mid-20th-cen. large ensemble music “painted” with sound masses, animated and evolving instead of harmonically progressing — notably”Variations for Orchestra” (Bassett),”The Seventh Trumpet” (Erb),”Aftertones of Infinity” (Schwantner). My “Animated Landscapes” (1973) for orchestra was…
MapLab 5. Spin a Solo
Unaccompanied instrumental solos go back at least to the 18th Century, such as Bach’s violin partitas and cello suites. In the late 19th century, Debussy’s Syrinx for solo flute met the challenge of making a piece with just one wind instrument, not capable of the double-stops that complicate the rich textures of Bach’s string writing.…
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MAPPING MUSIC 