Using Two-Part Counterpoint For Non-Twelve-Tone Music.pdf

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USING TWO-PART COUNTERPOINT FOR

NON-TWELVE-TONE MUSIC

Ivor Darreg (1988)

The 20th Century is nearly over with. We have spectacular progress in all the arts--except

music, alas. I have done something about this--will you?

Stand near a downtown street-corner for a moment--everybody is in such a hurry that you

can't do that for more than a few seconds: cars and people will be rushing past, and every

so often--too often indeed--there will be a siren proclaiming another accident. It will

happen because both parties are in a hurry--almost every incident.

If you are quite downtown, you will see some joggers or actual runners hurrying down

the street with no real destination. You can't escape this even by going out in the country:

aircraft will whiz by overhead! Now contrast this with the average instruction in music

that most of will have gone through: rule after rule after rule, repeated and repeated to

intimidate us. DEAD COMPOSERS EXCLUSIVELY! Moreover: dead composers of the

19th century in central europe, not here in the USA. Nostalgia beyond belief. Why, it

amounts to Musical Necromancy--maybe Necrolatry.

Put on the radio or TV--"Golden Oldies" some stations say they are broadcasting. Well,

of course I know that doesn't mean the compositions of the Romantic Period in the 19th

century, but logically it could. In truth and in fact, much of the popular music of this

century is a reprocessed stylized permutation of the Romantic standbys all the way from

Europe in 1830 or 1850 or 1870. Dead but not buried; transported by H. G. Wells' Time

machine into 20th-century America and set down in the music textbooks and the How To

Play the Piano o Guitar or Violin or Ukelele books at your music store, or in more

dignified form, given out in conservatory and college courses throughout our fair land.

Walk into your neighborhood supermarket--look on the shelves and you will find Freeze-

Dried This and Old Country That. Well, if Atonal Twelve-Tone Serialism and similar

styles of music taught in our colleges and universities and discussed at great length in the

musical journals isn't Frozen and Dried from the Old Country, what better description

can YOU concoct for it? I dare you to come up with anything more apt. and to make

matters more annoying, the so-called avant-garde or ultramodern music many students

are taught to compose at the piano, which is the epitome of 18th-century technology,

engineering, and design, not even the 19th. Why, the very notes and clefs, accidentals,

and symbols used to print today's music whether serious/academic or popular/light, were

designed in Central Europe during the middle of the 19th century, nothing whatever to do

with today's ideals of graphic design. I might as well cut out a few and paste them in

here.

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The piano and that standard notation are holding back progress and so are most orchestral

conventional instruments--not quite all of those. The new electronic keyboards have been

imitating conventional ones so closely as to be mere clones in many cases. The new

samplers--well, that's emulation. However, this need not be that had: the cloning and

slavish emulation of old instruments is mostly the fault of the performers and their not

knowing the possibilities of these new instruments, rather than of the instruments

themselves. They simply haven't been told of what they CAN NOW DO!

Recent visits to demonstrations of synthesizers and other new instruments, discussions

with certain people in new music movements, recent demonstrations of computer music

software in action, and recent tapes from various sources, have usually exemplified built-

in constraints and limitations slavishly copied from mid-19th-century music and

instruments of that period or even earlier. In some cases these limitations can be

circumvented or defeated; in other cases they are impossible to alter. The music software

for computers is just as bad as the new hardware: and this goes for the graphics programs

which print out conventional musical notation--often they cannot do any new symbols

such as microtonal accidentals or various avant-garde expression-marks or some

composer's graphics inventions.

Maybe some of you think I am yelling and screaming about trivia--but consider the

consequences of impersonal soul-less corporations and conglomerates most of whose

business sis not music-related at all, and programmers and software houses which have

not consulted composers alive and experimenting with new music right now, and money-

managers and engineers and record companies and bankers and media experts and

manufacturers of assorted equipment who couldn't care less about any advancement or

progress or change or experiment in the art of music or its tools and means. Consider that

they, consciously or innocently and subconsciously, are telling you and me and all the

other persons that we MAY NOT COMPOSE this or that innovative melody or harmony.

(As a matter of cold hard fact: some of the new music software cannot play 5/4 meter, let

alone 7/4 or 2 notes against 3, so this built-in limitation extends to Rhythm.)

Some composers and some music-theorists have written volumes saying that nobody has

the right to compose in the 13-tone equal temperament or to use more 12 pitches at a time

out of the 1/4-coma meantone temperament, or to use any resources of a non-twelve-

tone-equal-tempered scale beyond what the rules of the ordinary textbooks permit for use

in standard Romantic or Classical piano compositions. Others claim they have tried this

or tried that and rejected it because they could not do anything worthwhile with it;

therefore you and I are also forbidden to try either.

The worst instance of this at present is the offering by some manufacturers of alternative

tunings which do not permit using more than a twelve-pitch-class subset of a scale at any

one time. When somebody is trying to perform in just intonation this because very

irritating and exasperating. I have had to wait for sixty (60) of my 72 years for non-

twelve-tone instruments and adequate recording equipment and cannot wait one minute

longer!

Another dreadful imposition upon us is the Acoustical Instruments Only Attitude--that

composers of anything, to be taken seriously, must not use electronic instruments or new

recording studio technology or samplers or effect-boxes or computers, but must stick to

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the instruments of the 19th century in Europe and never anything else--not even

saxophones or marimbas or vibes or kazoos for that matter. The idea of someone in a

modern home or apartment playing recordings, let along making their own, or playing an

electronic instrument or a guitar refretted to a new scale--why that would be a Mortal

Sin! Ironically enough, electronic instruments have aided and abetted the revival of the

clavichord and harpsichord and have acquainted millions of people with their sounds

who would never have heard them onstage.

Performers have intimidated composers all through the last century and almost killed

compositional progress. I have received letter DEMANDING that I never write a non-12-

tone-tempered note. This when I was past 50 and the writer was maybe 30! "No

performer will play it" this guy said. Now the tables are turned--most any composer can

get or borrow recording equipment to produce high-quality copies of recordings without

needing to impose on any narrowminded run-of-the-mill performers. Performers still

denounce improvising and any kind of do-it-yourselfery, and keep on demanding that

every single note be written down before it is ever heard, and they are happy if they can

keep others from composing anything that has the slightest chance of ever being heard by

other persons.

Listeners for centuries have had to attend performances often at great distances from their

homes or do without. The 19th-century in Central Europe is not the End of the Twentieth

Century in this country, so times have changed and nothing is gained by denying one-self

opportunities out of Purism. So why should I or any other composer alive today have to

pretend that only professional performers at public concert-hall can convert my musical

ideas into sound?

Now I am ready to get into our main subject: why two-part counterpoint in non-twelve-

tone scales? To make the listener have an easier, more enjoyable time with the

compositions in a scale that he or she has never heard before. For the sake of new

listeners. For people to understand and analyze the new composition and its scale--make

it simple! For a composer who decides to de-twelvulate it is just plain common sense to

begin with pieces that they can do well without a heavy investment in preparation and

from my own personal experience this is where and how to begin!

It's quicker and it's cheaper. It's more "transparent." Also, it is more appealing to certain

other musical cultures where one might find listeners or grounds for discussion; and it

permits beginning with one moving voice against a drone or very slowly-moving second

part.

Overdubbing only two tracks is much easier than overdubbing 3 or more. Playing only 2

notes at once or two voices at once is much easier than playing heavy block chords or 4-

part harmonies in a new scales. Some scales are not harmonic! How about that? THINK.

Some people have rejected the 13-tone temperament, for example, after scarcely trying it.

Others never bothered to try it at all, or snorted in haughty disdain, usually on theoretical

grounds. OK, let's begin there. 13-tone equal temperament is not harmonious. However,

if you want new melodies, they are there in great abundance, and it's all free of charge.

Consider the reason why somebody rejected 13-tone: it has no fifths, it doesn't have a

consonant triad, it deviates so far from just intonation, you have to go to the 11th and

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13th harmonics in the overtone series before you get any reasonable match. Another

argument you will hear if you dare mention 13 to the average musician is "How would

you write it down?" We can take that one up later.

Why do you have to write it down? Set an instrument to 13 and try melodies out till

something appeals to you. Turn on the tape machine and record that. Where's the

problem? Holy Jumping Catfish! Program a computer to generate random notes in 13--

this is possible with several existing kinds of software. Why use 13? Somebody will ask

you. Because it's different. We all need new experiences. My reason and somebody else's

might be "wounded Pride;" Look, man--the resources of 12-tone equal temperament are

just about exhausted--just about everything worthwhile that can be said in 12-tone has

been said already, and probably better than you or I could. It is humiliating to think that

not just us but for an entire generation or two of composers, we came in late--we get the

short end of the stick; we get the few crumbs on the table that might remain; over and

over we are humiliated by finding out that this or that brilliant inspiration has already

been used in Garstig von Esel's Symphony No. 3, or maybe Gromkoshumoff's Fourth

Rhapsody. How could it be otherwise in our lifetimes after thousands of composers have

done millions of hours at pianos and writing-desks and violins and horns? We are

punished for being born after the first decade or two of the 19th century and in the USA

instead of Europe.

So back before I was even born, at the last gasp of the 1900's, Wagnerian chromaticism

had piled complication on lushness and the orchestra had hypertrophied to huge

mammoth proportions, and the major and minor scales had been contradicted with hordes

of accidentals and modulations had run riot. Several people thought of abolishing tonality

and the seeds of serialism were planted. The popular music world lagged behind, but

eventually has caught up. Now with computers and other high-tech means, it might pass

it by. I have heard some of these possibilities, and also the way that they sound too much

like one another.

In passing, there is now an affair called new Age Music, which often is not new but

reminiscent of the 19th Century Romantics or sometimes of Debussy and the

Impressionists. Or it may be like the so-called Minimalists--rather monotonous and long-

drawn-out....maybe of a background nature. However, there is hope for it--if it can be (or

rather its composers can be) persuaded to use new scales, it could be part of the March of

Musical Progress. If it is to belong to a real New Age, it has to develop a new idiom and

manner, so why don't we offer the New Agers our new Scales and New Resources?

No, don't jump on me--I did not say that the New Agers or many of the experimental

composers were going to turn to 13-tone. Merely, some people will use it when they need

its peculiar mood or its melodic possibilties attract them.

I mentioned 13-tone first because of the CONTRAST it offers with 12. Because it is

UNTWELVE, NEW MOOD, not harmonic in the ordinary sense, a definite break, a new

experience, something to break up the hackneyed symmetrical patterns of the highly

divisible number 12--2,3,4 and 6 divide 12 evenly, creating symmetrical patterns called

the whole-tone scale, the diminished seventh chord, the augmented triad, and the tritone;

and also creating a repetition of sounds in spite of the different notations and names

given those sounds in run-of-the-mill standard ordinary twelve-tone-tempered music.

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13 is a prime number and cannot be divided evenly, so the 13-tone scale has non-

repeating patterns and unexpected turns of phrase and asymmetric combinations. This is

also true of some other scales such as 17, 19, and 31, while 23 and 29 which are other

prime numbers, may not be as important for the composer--but they are there if that is

your cup of tea.

Don't knock it till you've tried it--that means hearing actual pieces of music in 13, 14, 15,

and so on as far as convenient. In other publications I have suggested several places to

start, depending on your ambitions, resources, goals, and facilities.

Some people have scolded me because they thought I was maligning just intonation, but

that just is not true: I use it where it is the way to go. How can anybody look at my

Megalyra Family of Instruments with colored fret-lines in in just intonation, and listen to

my just intonation tapes and keep on making this false accusation?

Two-part counterpoint can be used as effectively for introducing new people to just

intonation as it can be used for getting used to a rich palette of new temperaments, equal

and unequal. Two kinds of compositions are NOT under consideration here as they way

to start using two-part counterpoint. If they were I could just refer you to them and save

paper and ink! Neither the antiquarian scholar's 16th-Century Counterpoint in its Species

and the textbook Examples nor the time-honored and esteemed Two-Part Inventions of

Johann Sebastian Bach are under consideration here. Whatever I may be, I am not the

reincarnation of Ebenezer Prout and now that the world is jam-full of those lovely

marvelous computers and sequencers and eager-beaver programmers to get Bach

performed perfectly so that you don't have to be tortured by amateur bashings of these

difficult pieces, I can go in for Progress instead of Nostalgia and Necrolatry and

Reminiscence.

Frankly, I am not enthusiastic about Serialsm, especially the only kind anybody ever

does, twelve-tone-equal-temperament played-on-the-piano serialism. Its rules are so strict

and since they can now be translated into sound via computer without much human

intervention, why should I use up the little valuable composing time that I might have

remaining at age 72, trying to do better than the computer and all the good programs that

will generate 12-tone serialism in huge quantities? Why should you?

I heard a random 12-tone-pitch selector turn out at great speed a never-ending stream of

atonal themes--a simple addition to a program could make these legitimate 12-tone rows

and now doubt that is being done all over the country, nay, the world. I heard it back

about 1977, and now anybody could do better. Sure I know: there are theoretically

Factorial-12, i.e., 479,001,600 possible 12-tone rows so there ought to be that many and

more possible different compositions made out of them, but they sound too much alike.

I am quite willing to use Atonality when it is appropriate, or I wouldn't be advocating

two-part counterpoint in such scales as 13, 16, 17, 18, and many others which can do

atonality supremely well. Serialism may have required human thinking and human action

when it was first invented or elaborated from Schoenberg's and others' atonality and still

others' work that followed the decline of the key-system and traditional harmony. But

serialism today is largely if not entirely capable of total automation. Oh, sure: some

college composer will deny that and object, but does any composition of theirs in that

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