Searching for New Sound - Music Composition ideas

Li Po (Li Bai)（701－762）is considered one of the most important poets of the Tang Dynasty and when you study Chinese he is the most known poet, Li Po's work has influenced poets and artists across the world, including Ezra Pound, Gustav Mahler, and Patch as well. His talent was recognized by the emperor. Emperor Xuanzong gave Li Po a position at the Hanlin Academy, where he provided poetry and scholarly advice to the Emperor. However, he did not stay longer than 2 years in the position. Mainly his personality could not work with politics and his poems offended the aristocracy. In the later of his life, wars and rebellions devastate the whole country, he ended up as an alcoholic. His poems are romantic and expressive, at the same time, full of sarcasm to the injustice. Partch's parents had spent the years 1888-93 and 1895-1900 in China as Presbyterian missionaries, exposed to the Chinese culture (Gilmore,1992). Partch's mother even sang Chinese lullabies. It is funny to find ...

The heterophonic texture in Chinese music, with all instruments playing the same melody, have a great effect of combining the timbre of an individual instrument. Since each instrument has its own pattern of harmonic series. In the case of Chinese folk instruments, each instrument sounds quite special and unique. Chinese characterize the instruments into 8 categories: metal, stone, string, bamboo, gourd, clay, leather, wood. When different instruments are combined within the same melody,  This kind of oneness was further expanded to one note. In his Quattro pezzi su una nota sola ("Four Pieces on a single note", 1959) his best-known technique for having composed music based around only one pitch, altered in all manners through microtonal oscillations, harmonic allusions, and changes in timbre and dynamics. With different instruments add-in or drop-out, the timbre is constantly changing even though there is only one note. Similar to heterophony in Chinese music, instruments pla...

In Western music, we cannot hear the music by the ancient Greeks since they did not have a system to notate the music before Guido of Arezzo, the development of staff notation in the 10th century.  This also applies to Chinese music. This is an example of the oldest notation of Chinese music in the 7th century. It is a score for guqin (Chinese zither). The notation is text-based ( wenzipu ), telling the performer the playing position (relative pitch) and the playing technique word by word. However, there is no accurate tempo, rhythm, articulation, or tuning. The situation resembles the western staffless neumes. We have the direction but don't know where to start. Listen to the free-flowing rhythm of the example The performance of the score below Text-based notation of Jieshi Diao Youlan The text-based notation is complex, people simplify the notation to tablature ( Jianzipu ) for  guqin in the 10th century .  But the problem of lack of rhythm still was not addre...

No fancy harmony, counterpoint, chord progression, or modulation, just pure melody. This is the style of traditional Chinese music and Claude Vivier's music. In Vivier's Et je reverrai cette ville étrange, the ensemble always plays in unison or strict parallel motion, monophony, one single melody only. This less-is-more approach emphasis on the timbre of the instruments and the timbre combine. Listen to how different instruments combine together, trumpet, viola, piano, cello, double bass, and percussion. The instrumentation itself is wired enough. Listeners do not have harmony or counterpoint distraction.   Vivier's  Et je reverrai cette ville étrange This approach echoes the aesthetic of Chinese music. Only monophony in music is boring, so through the process of Jiahua (ornamenting the main melody), there is a great deal of interplay, rhythmic variation, and imitative figuration in the parts. The musicians rely on their innate musical sense and skill to create...