Sound mass
Encyclopedia
In contrast to more traditional musical textures
, sound mass composition
"minimizes the importance of individual pitches
in preference for texture
, timbre
, and dynamics
as primary shapers of gesture and impact." Developed from the modernist
tone cluster
s and spread to orchestral writing by the late 1950s and 1960s, sound-mass "obscures the boundary between sound
and noise
" (Edwards 2001, pp. 326–27).
Techniques which may create or be used with sound mass include extended technique
s such as muted brass or strings, flutter tonguing, wide vibrato, extreme ranges, and glissandos. Composers and works include Barbara Kolb
, Pauline Oliveros
' Sound Patterns for chorus (1961), Norma Beecroft
's From Dreams of Brass for chorus (1963–1964), and Nancy Van de Vate
. Beecroft "blurs individual pitches in favor of a collective timbre through the use of vocal and instrumental clusters, choral speech, narrator, and a wash of sounds from an electronic tape." (ibid)
A very early example is the opening of Jean-Féry Rebel
's ballet Les Elémens (1737–38), where chaos is represented by a gradually cumulating orchestral cluster of all seven notes of the D minor scale (Henck 2004, pp. 52–54). A later example is the third movement of Ruth Crawford Seeger
's String Quartet 1931
(Nonesuch H-71280) while more recently Phill Niblock
's multiple drone
based music serves as an example. The use of "chords approaching timbres" begins with Debussy
and Edgard Varèse
often carefully scored individual instrumental parts so that they would fuse into one ensemble timbre or sound mass (Erickson 1975, pp. 18 and 21).
Other examples include European "textural" compositions of the fifties and sixties such as Karlheinz Stockhausen
's Gruppen
for three orchestras (1955–57), and Gesang der Jünglinge
(1956), Krzysztof Penderecki
's Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima
(1959) and György Ligeti
's works featuring micropolyphony
in works like Atmosphères
(1961) and his Requiem (1963-65). Also worth mentioning are Iannis Xenakis
' orchestral works such as Metastasis (1953–54) and Pithoprakta (1955–56). Other composers with works using this technique include Tadeusz Baird
, Martin Bresnick
, Cristóbal Halffter
, Henryk Górecki
, Karel Husa
, Witold Lutosławski, Kazimierz Serocki
, and Steven Stucky
. Sound mass techniques also appear in the music of George Crumb
(Anon. n.d.).
Texture (music)
In music, texture is the way the melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic materials are combined in a composition , thus determining the overall quality of sound of a piece...
, sound mass composition
Musical composition
Musical composition can refer to an original piece of music, the structure of a musical piece, or the process of creating a new piece of music. People who practice composition are called composers.- Musical compositions :...
"minimizes the importance of individual pitches
Pitch (music)
Pitch is an auditory perceptual property that allows the ordering of sounds on a frequency-related scale.Pitches are compared as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies,...
in preference for texture
Texture (music)
In music, texture is the way the melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic materials are combined in a composition , thus determining the overall quality of sound of a piece...
, timbre
Timbre
In music, timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the...
, and dynamics
Dynamics (music)
In music, dynamics normally refers to the volume of a sound or note, but can also refer to every aspect of the execution of a given piece, either stylistic or functional . The term is also applied to the written or printed musical notation used to indicate dynamics...
as primary shapers of gesture and impact." Developed from the modernist
Modernism (music)
Modernism in music is characterized by a desire for or belief in progress and science, surrealism, anti-romanticism, political advocacy, general intellectualism, and/or a breaking with the past or common practice.- Defining musical modernism :...
tone cluster
Tone cluster
A tone cluster is a musical chord comprising at least three consecutive tones in a scale. Prototypical tone clusters are based on the chromatic scale, and are separated by semitones. For instance, three adjacent piano keys struck simultaneously produce a tone cluster...
s and spread to orchestral writing by the late 1950s and 1960s, sound-mass "obscures the boundary between sound
Sound
Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...
and noise
Noise
In common use, the word noise means any unwanted sound. In both analog and digital electronics, noise is random unwanted perturbation to a wanted signal; it is called noise as a generalisation of the acoustic noise heard when listening to a weak radio transmission with significant electrical noise...
" (Edwards 2001, pp. 326–27).
Techniques which may create or be used with sound mass include extended technique
Extended technique
Extended techniques are performance techniques used in music to describe unconventional, unorthodox, or non-traditional techniques of singing, or of playing musical instruments to obtain unusual sounds or instrumental timbres....
s such as muted brass or strings, flutter tonguing, wide vibrato, extreme ranges, and glissandos. Composers and works include Barbara Kolb
Barbara Kolb
Barbara Kolb is an American composer. Her music uses sound masses and often creates vertical structures through simultaneous rhythmic or melodic units . She was the first American woman composer to win the Prix de Rome. She received her B.M. and M.M...
, Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros is an American accordionist and composer who is a central figure in the development of post-war electronic art music....
' Sound Patterns for chorus (1961), Norma Beecroft
Norma Beecroft
Norma Marian Beecroft is a Canadian composer, producer, broadcaster, and arts administrator. A member of the Canadian League of Composers and an associate of the Canadian Music Centre, she twice won the Canada Council's Lynch-Staunton Award for composition...
's From Dreams of Brass for chorus (1963–1964), and Nancy Van de Vate
Nancy Van de Vate
Nancy Van de Vate is an American-born composer living in Austria.-Life and career:She was born in Plainfield, New Jersey and studied piano at Eastman School of Music and composition at the University of Mississippi and Florida State University. She later pursued further studies in electronic music...
. Beecroft "blurs individual pitches in favor of a collective timbre through the use of vocal and instrumental clusters, choral speech, narrator, and a wash of sounds from an electronic tape." (ibid)
A very early example is the opening of Jean-Féry Rebel
Jean-Féry Rebel
Jean-Féry Rebel was an innovative French Baroque composer and violinist.-Biography:Rebel , a son of the singer Jean Rebel, a tenor in Louis XIV's private chapel, was a child violin prodigy. He became, at the age of eight, one of his father's most famous musical offspring. Later, he was a student...
's ballet Les Elémens (1737–38), where chaos is represented by a gradually cumulating orchestral cluster of all seven notes of the D minor scale (Henck 2004, pp. 52–54). A later example is the third movement of Ruth Crawford Seeger
Ruth Crawford Seeger
Ruth Crawford Seeger , born Ruth Porter Crawford, was a modernist composer and an American folk music specialist.-Life:...
's String Quartet 1931
String Quartet (Crawford-Seeger)
Ruth Crawford's String Quartet is "regarded as one of the finest modernist works of the genre" . The composition or piece is in four untitled movements.-First Movement:The first movement is a fine example of twelve-tone study...
(Nonesuch H-71280) while more recently Phill Niblock
Phill Niblock
Phill Niblock is a composer, filmmaker, videographer, and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York with a parallel branch in Ghent, Belgium.-Biography:...
's multiple drone
Drone (music)
In music, a drone is a harmonic or monophonic effect or accompaniment where a note or chord is continuously sounded throughout most or all of a piece. The word drone is also used to refer to any part of a musical instrument that is just used to produce such an effect.-A musical effect:A drone...
based music serves as an example. The use of "chords approaching timbres" begins with Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
and Edgard Varèse
Edgard Varèse
Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse, , whose name was also spelled Edgar Varèse , was an innovative French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States....
often carefully scored individual instrumental parts so that they would fuse into one ensemble timbre or sound mass (Erickson 1975, pp. 18 and 21).
Other examples include European "textural" compositions of the fifties and sixties such as Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
's Gruppen
Gruppen (Stockhausen)
Gruppen for three orchestras is amongst the best-known compositions of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, and is Work Number 6 in the composer's catalog of works. Gruppen is "a landmark in 20th-century music . ....
for three orchestras (1955–57), and Gesang der Jünglinge
Gesang der Jünglinge
Gesang der Jünglinge is a noted electronic music work by Karlheinz Stockhausen. It was realized in 1955–56 at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk studio in Cologne and is Work Number 8 in the composer's catalog of works...
(1956), Krzysztof Penderecki
Krzysztof Penderecki
Krzysztof Penderecki , born November 23, 1933 in Dębica) is a Polish composer and conductor. His 1960 avant-garde Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima for string orchestra brought him to international attention, and this success was followed by acclaim for his choral St. Luke Passion. Both these...
's Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima
Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima
Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima is a musical composition for 52 string instruments, composed in 1960 by Krzysztof Penderecki , which took third prize at the Grzegorz Fitelberg Composers' Competition in Katowice in 1960...
(1959) and György Ligeti
György Ligeti
György Sándor Ligeti was a composer of contemporary classical music. Born in a Hungarian Jewish family in Transylvania, Romania, he briefly lived in Hungary before becoming an Austrian citizen.-Early life:...
's works featuring micropolyphony
Micropolyphony
Micropolyphony is a type of 20th century musical texture involving the use of sustained dissonant chords that shift slowly over time. According to David Cope, "a simultaneity of different lines, rhythms, and timbres"...
in works like Atmosphères
Atmosphères
Atmosphères is a piece for full orchestra, composed by György Ligeti in 1961. It is noted for eschewing conventional melody and metre in favor of dense sound textures...
(1961) and his Requiem (1963-65). Also worth mentioning are Iannis Xenakis
Iannis Xenakis
Iannis Xenakis was a Romanian-born Greek ethnic, naturalized French composer, music theorist, and architect-engineer. He is commonly recognized as one of the most important post-war avant-garde composers...
' orchestral works such as Metastasis (1953–54) and Pithoprakta (1955–56). Other composers with works using this technique include Tadeusz Baird
Tadeusz Baird
Tadeusz Baird was a Polish composer.He was born in Grodzisk Mazowiecki, to Scottish immigrant parents. He studied composition, piano and musicology in Warsaw with, among others, Kazimierz Sikorski. In 1956, with Serocki, he founded the Warsaw Autumn international contemporary music festival...
, Martin Bresnick
Martin Bresnick
Martin Bresnick is a composer of contemporary classical music, film scores and experimental music.-Education and early career:Bresnick was born and raised in the Bronx, and is a graduate of New York City's specialized High School of Music and Art. He was educated at the University of Hartford ,...
, Cristóbal Halffter
Cristóbal Halffter
Cristóbal Halffter Jiménez-Encina is a Spanish composer. He is the nephew of two other composers, Rodolfo and Ernesto Halffter.-Life:...
, Henryk Górecki
Henryk Górecki
Henryk Mikołaj Górecki was a composer of contemporary classical music. He studied at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice between 1955 and 1960. In 1968, he joined the faculty and rose to provost before resigning in 1979. Górecki became a leading figure of the Polish avant-garde during...
, Karel Husa
Karel Husa
Karel Husa is a Czech-born classical composer and conductor, winner of the 1969 Pulitzer Prize and 1993 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Music Composition...
, Witold Lutosławski, Kazimierz Serocki
Kazimierz Serocki
Kazimierz Serocki was a Polish composer and one of the founders of the Warsaw Autumn contemporary music festival.-Life:...
, and Steven Stucky
Steven Stucky
Steven Stucky is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer.Stucky was born in Hutchinson, Kansas. At age 9, he moved with his family to Abilene, Texas, where, as a teenager, he studied music in the public schools and, privately, viola with Herbert Preston, conducting with Leo Scheer, and...
. Sound mass techniques also appear in the music of George Crumb
George Crumb
George Crumb is an American composer of contemporary classical music. He is noted as an explorer of unusual timbres, alternative forms of notation, and extended instrumental and vocal techniques. Examples include seagull effect for the cello , metallic vibrato for the piano George Crumb (born...
(Anon. n.d.).
See also
- Tone clusterTone clusterA tone cluster is a musical chord comprising at least three consecutive tones in a scale. Prototypical tone clusters are based on the chromatic scale, and are separated by semitones. For instance, three adjacent piano keys struck simultaneously produce a tone cluster...
- Timbre recognition
- Timbral ListeningTimbral ListeningTimbral listening is the process of actively listening to the timbral characteristics of sound.-Concept:Timbral listening is used as an alternative to the standard western way of listening to, and interpreting music. Instead of perceiving pitch and harmony, the ear focuses on texture and colour of...
- Spectral musicSpectral musicSpectral music is a musical composition practice where compositional decisions are often informed by the analysis of sound spectra. Computer-based sound spectrum analysis using tools like DFT, FFT, and spectrograms...
Sources
- Anon. n.d. "Synopsis of Twentieth Century Styles and Composers". University of Northern Colorado website (Archive from 2 September 2005, accessed 20 October 2011).
- Composers Quartet (1973). Nonesuch H-71280.
- Edwards, J. Michele (2001). "North America since 1920" in Pendle, Karin, ed. (1991/2001). Women & Music: A History second edition. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-21422-X.
- Erickson, Robert (1975). Sound Structure in Music. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-02376-5.
- Henck, Herbert (2004). Klaviercluster: Geschichte, Theorie und Praxis einer Klanggestalt. Signale aus Köln 9. Münster: LIT Verlag. ISBN 3-8258-7560-1.