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Abstract And Acknowledgments, Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

An overview of the contents of the book, plus the author’s acknowledgements.

Basic Pitch-Class Set Theory And Twelve-Tone Glossary, Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

An explanation of terms and symbols used throughout the monograph, together with an introduction to basic pitch-class set theory.

Tonal-Atonal Equilibrium: Reginald Smith Brindle’S Harmony Of Peace (1979) And El Polifemo De Oro (1956), Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

Reginald Smith Brindle once claimed that “a whole generation [of composers] dedicated their efforts in one way or another to the exploration of the field between tonality and atonality, and to the integration of serialism into a more accessible language.” But how was such integration actually to be achieved? Chapter 1 addresses this question from a music-theoretical perspective. In an attempt to explain how post-tonal harmonic progressions might “make sense,” Smith Brindle himself formulated theories of tension flow and tonal-atonal equilibrium in his 1966 textbook, Serial Composition. The former theory compares the number of consonant and/or dissonant intervals between …

Toward A Pandiatonic Serialism: Richard Rodney Bennett’S Impromptus (1968) And Sonata (1983), Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

One of the characteristic aspects of Bennett’s guitar works is his use of exclusively pandiatonic pc sets, and of his treatment of tone rows as generating complexes rather than as themes. Richard Cohn defines pandiatonicism (after Slonimsky) as “using diatonic scales without triads.” I use the term principally to refer to diatonic, non-triadic sets that are combined in (often freely) chromatic combinations. In the first of the Impromptus, the pandiatonic quality of the row’s constituent sets represents an almost incidental facet of the overall musical argument, which privileges more standard means of post-tonal motivic development. Pandiatonic sets account mostly for …

Bibliography, Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

No abstract provided.

Cover, Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

The cover features an untitled painting in cubist style by one of the composers discussed in this monograph, Reginald Smith Brindle (1917–2003). This and other paintings by Smith Brindle can be seen on the website dedicated to the composer. We are grateful to the composer's family for permission to use this image.

Symmetry, Schoenberg, And The Musical Idea: Denis Apivor’S Variations, Op. 29 (1958), Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

Perhaps guitar composers innovated in the field of twelve-tone composition because they were not really aware of what their colleagues, continental or domestic, were doing? They had latched onto an abstract, theoretical principle, detached from the rich Second-Viennese repertory that had given it life, and then developed it in their own way and for their own ends. Chapter 2 suggests that this narrative would be too reductive. It argues that the opening Poco lento from ApIvor’s Variations, Op. 29, demonstrates the composer’s sensitivity to, and detailed understanding of, the ways in which Schoenberg used intervallic symmetry as an ideal that …

Introduction, Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

While the history of the formation of a modern British guitar repertoire around the central figure of Julian Bream is known in broad brushstrokes, we lack a thoroughgoing, technical understanding of the particular idiom that Bream’s composers developed. Important in the nascent stages of the guitar’s modernist evolution, for example, was its relationship to twelve-tone serialism. Through close readings of individual works by Reginald Smith Brindle (El polifemo de oro, 1956), Denis ApIvor (Variations, 1958), Thomas Wilson (Three Pieces, 1961; Soliloquy, 1969), and Richard Rodney Bennett (Impromptus, 1968; Sonata, 1983), I map the …

Idiosyncratic Critiques Of Dodecaphony: Thomas Wilson’S Three Pieces (1961) And Soliloquy (1969), Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

Is the history of British twelve-tone guitar music a binary one, characterized by devotee practitioners and their vituperative detractors, or did some British guitar composers experiment with, but ultimately remain ambivalent about, dodecaphony? Chapter 3 argues that the solo guitar pieces of the Glaswegian composer Thomas Wilson might be thought to provide a provisional set of answers to these questions. In a nutshell: they manifest critiques of dodecaphony in the form of musical notation.

Writing at a distance from the modernist centers of British musical fashion, Wilson started to experiment with both guitar composition and twelve-tone serialism in the early …

Conclusion, Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

In this book’s conclusion, I argue that the guitar is an eminently portable object, a musical amphibian at home in all manner of styles. Smith Brindle, ApIvor, Wilson, and Bennett wrote music for the instrument that reflected this hybrid spirit: they strove for their music to “make sense,” at the same time as expanding what it meant for music to “make sense” at all. In this way, my narrow selection of repertoire might be seen to open out onto something broader: namely, a much-overlooked, pragmatic, and modest path that one might follow within the rhizomatic network that was twentieth-century modernism. …

Author Biography, Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

No abstract provided.