Sunday, July 10, 2011

Twelve Tone Tennis




You can listen here, and find a PDF here.

I'm in the process of writing a summer set of duets (I'm calling them "Summer Games") for Marjorie Kransberg-Talvi and Ilkka Talvi, and thought I'd share this bit of atonal fun, which can be played on any two instruments that have the range of the violin (I'm thinking that it might sound nifty on a pair of clarinets). It's not exactly strict twelve tone music, but it does use a row.

I made it by following a matrix that I made from a 12-tone row. The pitches all come from reading the rows from left to right (I made it to the beginning of the sixth line).



I was inspired by this image:



[Arnold Schoenberg and Lucca Lehner shaking hands with Gertrud Schoenberg and Felix Khuner in 1937.]

and this video:



Why do people still write 12-tone music? Because it's fun.

3 comments:

The Wistful Pelleastrian said...

It's so nice to see Arnie with a smile on his face...

:-)

Ruth Mar said...

Thanks for visiting my blog and for pointing me to this. I play regularly with the orchestra where Ilkka Talvi is concertmaster -- small world!

Anonymous said...

Perhaps you've read it already, but - if not - you may be interested in the "oral history" (interview) of Felix Khuner on the web: Kolisch and his quartet - Khuner was the second violinist - Schoenberg, Vienna, etc. (That's a very big "etc.") It can now be found in various formats at the following "archive" site:

http://www.archive.org/stream/violinistsjourn00khunrich/violinistsjourn00khunrich_djvu.txt
With best regards from over here,
David Mendes