Comment by jdontillman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jdontillman | Hacker News Reader

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Heh-heh, "challenging" is the polite term.

12-tone serial composition is simply a technique for removing natural tonality from a composition.

I think the big issue is whether 12-tone approaches are used occasionally in a piece as an expressive tool, or as a "new way of life" where the entire composition is serial, and the listener is stuck in it. Or all of a composer's work is serial.

Which is what makes it... challenging.

It's the same with Minimalism.

But used in smaller doses, it's a powerful technique.

Here's an example, in Frank Zappa's "Brown Shoes Don't Make It" there's a little section that's a 12-tone piece, starting with the lyrics "We see in the back of the City Hall mind...". It's short, it's weird, and it works very well in context.

And in Zappa's "St. Alphonso's Pancake Breakfast", the middle instrumental section, the first 20 notes are going up and down a simple C-Major scale... (What could be more tonal?)... and then he rips into a 12-tone row. The result is downright delightful.

> for removing natural tonality from a composition

Of course, nothing stops you from using the "removing natural tonality" trick in a way that's ultimately subordinate to broader tonal goals. For instance, a small tone row fragment can be used to set surprising tonal expectations and cleanly modulate to any key - even in a completely monophonic piece with no background harmony! It's just supposed to be a horizontal composing-out of some arbitrary set of notes, but this is also what makes it work within tonality as a pivot point.

(And if the atonal fragment can be snuck in initially as a melodic "variation" of motivic material from the piece, it needn't even surprise the listener as such - until, that is, they find themselves listening in a completely different key area and have to wonder "wait, how did that twist work?")

Shostakovich did this a lot in his later work. His violin sonata starts with a long slow atonal dirge, then suddenly slinks into this little tonal waltz. It gives a “haunted music box” vibe that I absolutely love.

Zappa is a great example of deploying 20th century avant classical into compelling compositions that an audience can latch onto.

For me the best example is ‘The Bebop Tango’ from his Roxy and Elsewhere album. The core melodic theme is extremely atonal and angular, but his arrangement and his band lean into it with such conviction and panaché that it is just as compelling as any rock show.

He pokes fun at it too later on in the recording when he solicits members of the audience to get up on stage and do dance solos while George Duke directs them from his keyboard.

That album is the height of Zappa for me.

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