| The Creation: Audio Tour |
Page 1 of 4 Guided Tour of Brickle'sThe Creation, A Townley Mystery Play (first 5 days) Contextuality and radical contextuality 20th Century music achieved an unprecedented degree of contextuality. This means that each work of music makes and follows its own rules that are unique to that particular work. Radically contextual music eschewed references to other music and conventional forms. Contextual architecture likewise eschewed things like columns, arches, karyatids, pilasters, etc. Contextual music eschewed things like established harmonic formulas like the V-I cadence. This is the thing that classical symphonies do ten times at the end. Here's a little example. (After opening and hearing the mp3, hit the back button to get back to here.) a V-I cadence You've heard a zillion of these. There are also church cadences or "plagal cadences". These are the chords that go with "a-men" at the end of a hymn. Instead of V-I, it's IV-I. You could also think of it as V-I Backwards. G-C is V-I (a perfect cadence) C-G is IV-I (a plagal cadence) Here's an example of a plagal cadence by Brahms. It's arpeggiated--the chords are broken like a harp, but I hope it's still clear. (Think an "a-men" over the last two chords.) Plagal Cadence The church cadence is an archaism, usually used deliberately as an archaism whether by Brahms or by Duke Ellington. It sounds old-fashioned. It sounds a bit less definite than a V-I. The plagal cadence, along with many other pre-tonal (modal) harmonic formulas was superceded by V-I when tonal harmony was codified in the Baroque period. Radically contextual music avoids all such traditional harmonic moves. Here's an example-the opening of Milton Babbitt's solo guitar piece, Sheer Pluck: A discussion of a radically contextual work would involve many excerpts and how they relate to one another. There would not be a discussion of these excerpts' relation to musical things from long ago, although there may be cases of analogous relationships in earlier music. I use the term "radical contextuality" for music like Babbitt's that carefully leaves old traditions behind. Music that uses traditional moves can still be highly contextual. These contextual aspects can sometimes be roughly analagous to the proceedings in a work of a radical contextualist. The music of Beethoven and Brahms is highly contextual. Each work explores and sets into motion unique ideas about how to proceed. Brickle was a student of Babbitt and admired Babbitt's ability to teach us new ways to hear, new things to love in music. But Brickle's recent music, especially The Creation, admits old music into its contextual framework. Brickle's music is no longer radically contextual, but it's still rigorously contextual. It would not be acceptable for Brickle to lift things from the past and stitch them together into some kind of collage. |
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