Sunday, February 8, 2009

Whole Tone/ Twelve Tone

Today's canon is another approach to solving the "interval problem" in a whole tone piece.

In the WT scale, the intervals M2, M3, tritone, m6, m7 and octave occur on every scale degree. This is a feature that manifests both melodically and harmonically, as I have pointed out before.

This time I decided to use one whole tone scale in the upper part and the other in the lower part. This creates the unusual circumstance of having different intervals available harmonically than melodically.

Now, those intervals that don't occur at all melodically are the ONLY ones available harmonically -- m2, m3, P4, P5, M6, M7 (no 8ves!). This combination of scales also makes all 12 chromatic pitches available -- 6 in each part.

So, we get the melodic effect of whole tones scales but a very different harmonic effect.

Though I still focused on consonances, harmonically, I made no effort to conform to "common practice" or traditional tonality at all. The rapid turnover of pitch classes contributes to the overall atonal Gestalt.

(click on image to enlarge)

No comments:

Post a Comment