Champion Rower
February 13th, 2009 Posted in atonal, classical music
While Weberning around for one of her classes, G discovered this nifty little tone-row matrix generation tool:
The real point to it is as a reference for all the permutations, retrogrades and inversions you can apply to the initial tone-row you initially enter. Which isn’t any use to me really, since my days as a 12-tone composer are all lost in the haze of youth and also never existed.
Instead, I’m a fan of this applet because of its tasty music-geek aesthetic. It’s a bit mysterious, but with the promise of unlocked secrets skulking around in the background. Kind of like an Ordnance Survey map key. It also reminds me of the decoding systems for substitution ciphers which everyone played with as a kid.
Incidentally… anyone care to guess the piece that particular tone-row is from?
February 13th, 2009 at 9:20 am
Why, the Berg Violin Concerto, of course!
February 17th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
That wasn’t even slightly a challenge for you, was it? :)