The coldest part of the winter seems to be over here in KC. good thing, when i moved here, it was running down to 0 and below with wind chills hitting in the -20s. not cool at all.
I'm writing more than i have in quite a while. tonight, i don't have very good words for it. I have realized, as i think i mentioned before, my style is reminiscent of Schoenberg's atonal settings, pre-serialism. Like Pierrot Lunaire. There's a lot of motivic development.
Motive...it's an interesting word. yesterday in class, my professor asked "there's a word i've been avoiding in our talks about Schoenberg...i'm sure you all have figured out which." My mind popped to "motive" just as someone said it in the front of the class. "Yes, that's right. It's such a loaded word, isn't it? we think of Beethoven, and the 5th symphony. We think of Brahms. We think of tonality. Is there another good word for this?"
my brain popped to "set" but, at the same time, i think that's loaded almost too far in the opposite sense. Schoenberg, till the end, no matter what i try to say to myself differently, still held to a lot of romantic writing. It wasn't the cold serialism of, say, Pierre Boulez or Babbitt. There's was a romantic feel to it.
It's funny. I never hesitate to say that i use "motivic invention" and i write mainly using "short motives" and then messing with them as much as possible. and my harmonic language is, often times, quite atonal. and yet, i was hesitant to say Schoenberg wrote "motivically." It's interesting, these stigmas attached to terms.
I received Korngold's "Die Tote Stadt" in the mail today from Netflix. I look forward to watching it. I was going to tonight, but the night slipped away from me, i guess. I will watch it tomorrow, then.
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