RE: [F_minor] a somewhat off-topic question

["Houpt, Fred" <fred.houpt@rbc.com>]

Hi.  I personally do not enjoy atonal music as much as tonal music.
Having said that I also am a huge fan of Gesualdo, a composer who
excelled in placing acidic sounding, tonally crunchy collisions where
you get a huge bang up and all you can hear is atonal sounds.  In his
music, I love it.  In much of the medieval music where atonality was
common, I love it.  In modern music, for some reason, I am not such a
big fan.  Whether it's too much atonality in jazz or modern classical,
perhaps I have not paid it enough open minded attention, but I'm not a
fan.  In short, I like my atonality within specific time periods.  (I
recall now the extraordinary animalistic opening bars of Stravinsky's
"Rite of Spring" - and it's combination of tonality and atonality within
a humable phrase.  Quite an accomplishment!!!!)

I do not have perfect pitch but I can tune my kids guitars better than
they can and I can tell which of my piano strings is out of tune.  But,
I am not sure I could say out loud that that sound over there is a B
Flat.  That's perfect pitch and I am not quite there.

Cheers,

Fred Houpt
Toronto


 

-----Original Message-----
From: f_minor-bounces@email.rutgers.edu
[mailto:f_minor-bounces@email.rutgers.edu] On Behalf Of Etha Williams
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 7:55 PM
To: f_minor@email.rutgers.edu
Subject: [F_minor] a somewhat off-topic question

Two questions, actually.

1) Do you enjoy atonal and, specifically, serialist music?
2) Do you have perfect pitch?

I ask this because I mentioned to a coworker that I am working on a
12-tone composition and he expressed his surprise that I can
conceptualize and, indeed, enjoy this kind of music.For him, he
explained, music functions in terms of intervals, harmonic progressions,
etc. For me, OTOH, the specific identity of each note (I have perfect
pitch) tends to take precedence (this can actually be a bit of a
nuisance sometimes, as I occasionally will get caught up playing a
name-the-note game with myself when I really just want to listen to the
music). I then realized that of the two other people I've met who really
enjoyed serialist music, both also had perfect pitch. So did GG and
Schoenberg himself. So I am tentatively thinking that there might be a
correlation, but I'd like more data points to add to my (admittedly very
unscientific) study :).

Thanks!

Etha

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