The “Muse Room” is the room in my house where I make music and my wife makes visual art. Published the first Friday of the month, each issue of Letters from the Muse Room will include news and updates about my music, as well as something that has inspired me creatively over the past month.
Dear friends,
I have some music for you this month! Last month I mentioned the new trio I started working on, for violin, cello and piano. And this month I have a clip for you!
I tried a new method for writing my first draft of this piece, something I’ve never done before — a rhythm sketch. Before I wrote any pitches, I composed the rhythms of the whole piece on three one-line staves.
I’m still not quite sure how I feel about the method — it might not be something I do again. But it did allow me to get a lot done on the piece quickly, and have a start-to-finish skeleton to work from.
Since that original rhythm sketch, I’ve started filling in some pitches. The beginning of the piece, the first of six sections, is a feature for the cello, and you can hear a MIDI demo of it at the link below!
https://www.ajharbison.com/wp-content/uploads/triodemo.mp3
I’d love to hear what you think of the clip — reply to this email and let me know!
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I was inspired last month by a piece I listened to that surprised me: Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto.
Berg is perhaps best known for being one of Arnold Schoenberg’s composition pupils; Anton Webern is the other famous one.
Together the three of them pioneered twelve-tone music, a music theory system that declared each of the twelve chromatic notes of Western music had equal importance, without a tonal “center” or home key.
Berg is interesting to me because he combined the twelve-tone system with the lyricism and familiar musical gestures of the Romantic period (c. 1830 – 1900), making for atonal music that is surprisingly accessible.
I recently listened to his Violin Concerto, not knowing what to expect — but I really, really enjoyed it. It’s a twelve-tone piece, but the twelve notes of the tone row are arranged in such a way that they form a lot of consonant and tonal-sounding chords.
The opening of the piece riffs off the four open strings of the violin (G D A E — the roots of the consonant chords in the row), using that pattern to develop the material of the tone row.
The ending also caught my attention: Even though it’s an atonal piece, it ends on a consonant chord (B-flat major with an added 6), with just a hint of the very beginning returning in the last two measures.
I encourage you to give it a try, even if you think you don’t like twelve-tone music. There are brass fanfares in the first movement that are reminiscent of the “Star Wars” score, and a great dramatic climax in the middle of the second movement.
You can listen to the piece and follow the score (with the orchestra part in a piano score) in this YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd0dMs0MTg8.
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One final thing before I sign off. I’m going to be taking a trip in October, and I’m planning to share some photos and videos from it on my Facebook page and on Instagram. If you’d like to check them out (and trust me, it’ll be fun), you can follow me at:
https://www.facebook.com/ajharbisonmusic
https://www.instagram.com/ajharbison
Thanks — I look forward to connecting with you there!
Peace,
AJ Harbison