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Twelve Tone Boy Groups Defined

Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2005 6:04 pm
by Dale
Music constructed according to the principle, enunciated by Hauer and Schönberg independently in the early 1920s, of 12-note composition. According to the Schönbergian principle, the 12 notes of the equal-tempered scale are arranged in a particular order, forming a series or row that serves as the basis of the composition. In Schönberg's 'Method of Composing with Twelve Notes Which are Related Only to One Another', the note-row may be used in its original form, or inverted, or retrograde, or retrograde inverted; in each of these forms it may be transposed to any pitch (each note-row may thus have 48 possible forms). All the music of the composition is constructed from this basic material; any note may be repeated, but the order must be maintained. Octave transpositions are permitted. Notes may occur in any voice and may be used chordally as well as melodically.

Twelve Tone Boy Group Music is this style of music performed by groups of young "heartthrob" male vocalists with mostly adolescent fans.

Adapted from The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music

Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2005 6:19 pm
by carrie
We had a Twelve Tone Boy Group DJ come to my daughter's 13th birthday party, three years ago now. I guess because she was just on the cusp then, not really ready to be a teenager, she still wanted Tony the balloon guy there too, but she told him to use just three basic shapes and build upside down and backwards from them to create unrecognizable things. Poor guy is so locked in the past that he kept ending up with creations that looked like weiner dogs after all, but the girls tried not to notice. They would have been up all night reading The Wasteland if I hadn't put my foot down, though. Teenagers!

Carol

Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2005 7:24 pm
by The Weekenders
I hate both of 'em.

Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2005 9:12 pm
by Chiffed
How about my all-boy sax octet playing an Alban Berg string quartet?

Some thoughts:
Berg thought of Twelve Tone rules (which are quite involved) about the same way that Wagner treats the rules of counterpoint. A much richer aesthetic.

Twelve-tone is blinkin' difficult to sing: my sight-screaming teacher used it for the 3rd year final. There's good reason for Schoenberg to write only one (unperformable) opera. Arnold musta had a special hate on for mezzo-sopranos. Maybe the boy-band version would be better.

Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2005 10:31 am
by Craig Stuntz
Chiffed wrote:Twelve-tone is blinkin' difficult to sing....
No more so than to listen to, really.

Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2005 10:42 am
by Walden
Do the Partridge Family qualify?

Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2005 10:42 am
by Cynth
My research so far, which has given me a headache----12 tone, atonal, serial, tone rows, psychoanalysis of our perceptions----- is totally unpromising. If this music is hard to sing, wouldn't that eliminate boy bands entirely? Every performer I've come up with has a Ph.D in music or something. There have been some good-looking ones though.

Well, now I'm going to investigate starting from the boy band end of it. I've always been curious about what they are exactly.

Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2005 10:44 am
by Walden
Cynth wrote:Well, now I'm going to investigate starting from the boy band end of it. I've always been curious about what they are exactly.
Think Menudo.

Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2005 11:57 am
by Chiffed
Serial music always makes me think of the sound that rice crispies make when you pour milk on them.

Boulez: Le Marteau Sans Maitre strikes me as the final death-twitches of Shoenberg's ideas, just as Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps nailed down the coffin-lid on Mozart.

I really enjoy composers who span advent of a new musical era. Beethoven into Romantic, Vivaldi into Classical, and Flook into the "ohmygod thats just too much fun!" era.

Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2005 2:12 pm
by Paul Thomas
I'm still sputtering with the abominable possibilities afforded by such cognitive dissonance -- of such violence as to be tectonic in scale!

Though indeed it's a little known fact that NSYNC was previously known as MOD12 and before that as Retrograde Inversion, a precocious young group that could, Flying Karamozov-like, improvise combinatorial set pieces upon random pitch-class suggestions from the audience. Their stage "gimmick" consisted of dressing in 19th century viennese period clothing and lighting the stage with gas lights.

The lyrics to "Bye Bye Bye" was, in it's previous incarnation, composed entirely of pitch-class numbers and set-operation terms - understandably it did not reach it's broader appeal until going tonal and dropping the 5:7 tuplets. Unfortunately I've been unable to find the original lyrics written anywhere on the web.


From a recent issue of Der Freie Satz: Jungendausgabe:
After a brief fling with stochastic jingles and neoclassic rap, they Wisely decided that to fight the banality of mass culture was futile, and guiltily rocketed to success on the pretense that they were, indeed, banal and mass-culture, dissapointing many including Elliot Carter who was just completing a 4-hour work for voices, cello, and piano comissioned jointly by the Artists formerly known as Retrograde Inversion, Ursula Oppens, and the Coca-Cola Co.

They blame their brief obscurity and long-term guilt on their former manager, who's name is never mentioned (and still unknown, despite search over hill & Dale) yet is rumored to have moved from atonal youth groups into the (relatively) lucrative and rewarding Traditional Music Communications market.

Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2005 5:21 pm
by carrie
Paul Thomas wrote:The lyrics to "Bye Bye Bye" was, in it's previous incarnation, composed entirely of pitch-class numbers and set-operation terms - understandably it did not reach it's broader appeal until going tonal and dropping the 5:7 tuplets. Unfortunately I've been unable to find the original lyrics written anywhere on the web.
Dang, wish I'd kept the video from my daughter's birthday party--I could have written the lyrics out for you. Off the top of my head, this is the best I can do: {1,4,8}+1={2,5,9}, {1,4,8}+2={3,6,10}, {4,7,11}, {5,8,0}, {6,9,1}, {7,10,2}, {8,11,3}, {9,0,4}, {10,1,5}, {11,2,6}, and {0,3,7}. Of course it was really the second verse that made the heart thump, and I can't for the life of me remember how it goes now.

Carol

Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2005 5:24 pm
by Cynth
Okay, it is not easy to find a "boy band" that can play the piano. In fact, I only found one (go ahead---see what you can find).
So, please allow me to introduce:

DAVE W.ImageSTEPHENImageDAVE R.ImageIANImage who are best known as the house band on the hugely successful Friday Night with Jonathan Ross (BBC1).
These fellows are a highly unusual "boy band" in that they are accomplished musicians, singers, dancers and actors. We shall just have to overlook that I'm afraid.

They would like to perform the lovely 12 tone piece by C. Ashworth (June 2005) which is based on
Image.

So, without further ado, please click on the photo below. I insist.

4 POOFS AND A PIANO
ImageImage


Yes, well that was nice wasn't it?

Now, uh...., there's just one thing. The 4 POOFS AND A PIANO said they would like to play this piece. Errr...we're in negotiations even as I speak, but they haven't quite played it yet. Mr. Ashworth is responsible for that little appetizer, shall we say.

I can guarantee you that when they do, however, it will be the World Premier of Twelve Tone Boy Groups Fusion.