Passing Tones : Meg's Reich2Radiohead Blog

Serialism is something I have always skirted around within my research and understanding of twentieth century music; I knew its basic principals but not exactly how it worked. This class opened up the serial door to me. I find this compositional method to be almost mathematical in its practices yet very logical at the same time. I am finding parallels between periods, though separate entities some characteristics are similar, especially the twentieth century and the mid Renaissance to the mid Baroque. I am studying both periods currently and I keep on making these connections. Of course the earlier periods were quite different, a common temperament was not yet solidified, complex counterpoint was more or less their 'serial music' of the time. Both periods were revolutionary and changed music forever. And i would (in a later longer argument) would like to contest that some composers of the late Renaissance and early-mid Baroque exercised an amount of complexity in their music that rivals that of the methods used by composers in the early twentieth century.

In class we were introduced to Serialism and its methods. Tone row, retrograde, inversion, and retrograde inversion. We all went off in little groups to construct our Tone Rows and their retrogrades and inversions. The twelve tone matrix website was great, that could be quite helpful if I feel like some day composing some serial music. The whole idea of not repeating a pitch before another one is used reminded me of how the isorhythms work. Both function in a circular motion of not repeating what came before it until the entire row of notes or phrase is over. Yet another connection to methods of the past. I became frustrated with figuring out the inversion of the tone row and came to find it was on the twelve tone matrix, whoops! Nonetheless I walked out of the experience rather confused but willing to tackle the subject at a later time. The other groups came up with some very interesting little compositions using their tone rows. Something I noticed was that even though each of the twelve notes might be juxtaposed differently in each composition they all made sense (aurally) and sounded as if the piece was supposed to fit that way. Serialism has really caught my interest and hopefully someday Ill be able to analyze some serial pieces in-depth.

The second part of the class was on the pioneering women in music. This made me think about how in rock music, and other genres of music for the sake of this argument, seem like there are very few major women figures. In rock especially it is the boys club, the girls are the ones in the audience screaming. When the stereotype is applied the perspective is: there are some girl bands but of course their music isn't as good or they lack something, maybe they just can't rock. I have witnessed only a few women rock musicians on the stage and I can say that the intensity is there in just a less aggressive form, and in some cases just as aggressive as the guys, so what's the difference! I have always been rather disgusted with the issue of this stereotype: the 'rock chick.' Women need to be able to hold their own in this genre, they hold their own in classical, pop, country (i dare say...), etc, why so few! Bjork, Melissa Auf der Maur, D'Arcy, Kim Gordon, the Indigo girls, Joni Mitchell, Janice Joplin, Joan Baez, Ani Difranco, Imogen Heap, the Donnas, PJ Harvey, etc. though this is a small excerpt of the list of women in rock it is limited compared to the amount of male musicians in rock music. This is one of those subjects that could possibly be discussed for months on end continuously. Its only the beginning for women in rock and other genres of music as well. With each generation there will be more and more women interested in getting involved in the rock scene.