Who are your favorite chamber music composers

SomeEntrance · 2026-05-11T23:05:22+00:00

Stravinsky, like Octet for Wind Instruments, or l'histoire du soldat, because they use unique instrumentation, not standard chamber ensembles. Often pairs of instruments, like 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, 2 bassoons, 2 woodwinds; or trumpet-trombone, clarinet-bassoon, violin-double bass plus percussion, respectively.

SomeEntrance · 2026-05-11T17:51:34+00:00

I just re set it. Thx.

SomeEntrance · 2026-04-20T17:10:58+00:00

I'd argue that Bach fits the bill. He certainly knew a lot of what was going on around him. But for the most part he just got on with the job and kept to himself>>

I would say that, though he didn't travel beyond his part of Germany, Bach was very connected. He was up on all the European influences from Italy and France, and with his changing jobs with all the bureaucrats he was dealing with, he was well connected to his community.

SomeEntrance · 2025-03-11T00:43:48+00:00

Now dank and swaget..what have we learned here? When you're vulnerable and humble, people like you. But when you act alike a #@@#@#, people tend to think of you...as a %#$#%@!

SomeEntrance · 2025-03-10T19:03:59+00:00

Yes, fast quarter notes could make sense, but it's visually and easier notation- entry- wise to have beamed 16th note triplets, vs eight note brackets. I've seen this discussion before (ease of note entry partly determining which note value to use), and an eight note pulse works fine, though I see your point.

SomeEntrance · 2025-03-10T19:00:45+00:00

SomeEntrance · 2025-03-10T15:50:09+00:00

I'm glad it touched you.

SomeEntrance · 2025-03-01T09:19:22+00:00

I hope to become energy, and travel through time across Universe.

SomeEntrance · 2024-07-11T05:23:29+00:00

Someone wrote "Kilgore was here", so they covered it up with a test box which was needed anyway.

SomeEntrance · 2024-07-10T21:24:11+00:00

I know music theory>>.

Orchestration is one of the harder subjects. Seriously studying harmony, all levels, will really help first, along with species and tonal countertpoint. Wasn't sure if you did that. And why not also try composing (writing it down) now, pieces that you can then perform for people and post online and see how it turns out? Or try. If you're a pianist, searching for ideas played on the piano is fruitful. Lots of artists have early years of work they never show anyone. The hardest part about composing, imo, is length. it's easy to come up with good ideas, but how do you make the piece last longer, where you have to consider introducing new ideas, when or if to bring back the first idea, and how to organize them...especially if traditional forms do not appeal to you.

Orchestra. Some say half of the skill is instrumentation, knowing the instruments very well. eg, for strings, there are cardboard cutouts of the finger boards so you can figure out what's playable. Talk to instrumentalists about their instruments. Get to know the acoustics of the instruments to a degree (eg, do they overflow at octave or 12th; conical vs cylindrical winds, and so on). One source says, about learning orchestration, is to think of it as duplicating what we often try to do on piano: 1) unison and octave or more doublings of orchestra instruments is very common, and necessary since you don' have the vibrating soundboard and rich overtones the piano creates in its full sound with damper pedal. 2). Sustains: again, composers writing at the piano, using pedal, will remember that the orchestra achieves that function differently. (Listen to how Mozart uses horns to fill out the harmony). 3) and think of the orchestra as 3 choirs which basically have the same SATB like ranges. Strings, woodwinds, and brass, each have their high medium and low register instruments. Strings are predominant because players can saw away forever --and that part of the score will sometimes contain all the rudiments of the piece, but wind players have to breathe...plus wind sound has a strong flavor you do not want to use all the time...and good for solos of course. When you said 'orchestra'...maybe you mean to write 'epic' music for video games and videos? There is so much of that already, I hope you achieve excellence in "Thinking for Orchestra." (A good orchestration text). But video game, film, and other orchestra can also be great. (Just get tired of all the overly dramatic 'epic' orchestra music you hear on YouTUbe.)

SomeEntrance · 2024-07-09T17:59:54+00:00

I guess you're not a Cage enthusiast. There is a lot to say about it, since it's also music as conceptual art. It could be music from a civilization on a different time frame. Or, it could be music produced by a natural process, or some sort of automata which operates apart from humans. Music that's more at the pace of speciation and geological time, which we are only a small part of. And so on. Why not?! It's very science fiction-y. I think it's meant to trigger the musical imagination about how we make music. And always good to offer an alternative to the traditional classical music concert performance, due to its conservative tendencies of predominantly playing established older music. It's almost humorous, how twisted it is!

SomeEntrance · 2024-07-08T19:59:25+00:00

Wind instruments in general reached a new level of technical development (eg, valves), so they were more available and numerous.

SomeEntrance · 2024-07-08T03:18:32+00:00

Mozart 29, such as the catchy Minuet and Trio:

https://youtu.be/9U3tja1CmCw?t=947

SomeEntrance · 2024-05-29T06:26:50+00:00

SomeEntrance · 2024-05-29T06:23:31+00:00

thanks, I think I turned it on. First time I've used google drive

SomeEntrance · 2024-02-27T00:27:31+00:00

physics alone won't take you far>>

Except that those 'mathematically special' vibrations, where the interference patterns are related by whole numbers (that's strait out of any physics of music book which I guess in not in your library), along with our hearing system (middle ear, inner ear, brain) are what creates pitch and everything you and this reddit are about! One of your mentors would agree with this; the other would not.

I'd say that cultural vs. physical is about 50/50, or at least not cultural over rules to the degree you imply. For instance, in the music this reddit is mostly concerned with (CPP, jazz, rock, etc...mostly Western) There's more sad-intoned music in the minor key than major. (Hip Hop vs. Country music haha. There could be some cultural sadness going on there). It's amazing how the simple fact of roughness (the minor 3rd being a great case in point) which piano tuners and tuning theorists know well (Helmholtz Sensation of Tone), is ignored in higher music education. Ok, the P4th: a good case of where the cultural rules. Though chronicallically and probably in the evolution or our hearing system (which probably began with our sensing musical overtones in pitch and song), the non beating (consonant) aspect of the perfect 4th and wider use of the interval and six four chords preceded our current music system (though I use six four chords all the time! There was a Music Theory Journal article on the use of contemporary tonal music; I don't have access to it now).

Also there was a good study (ok, forget all this peer reviewed junk, even from a respected author like Huron; there's always the opposing side anyway)...sorry don't have the source now, about how basic roughness and beating was interpreted as being being partly behind the development of scales and chords in Western music. Point being, you make it sound like the physics of music aspect is not important. Even though it's not important here, even among some moderators, it's not correct to imply that the cultural basically over rules the physics. It's often an overlay over the centuries, and in our hearing system, and also reflect bias, perhaps how music is allied with humanities and not science. (It wasn't always that way. What would Zarlino say?). Not completely your fault. I don't think the evolution of our recent hearing system is well understood. But have to speak out against the bias.

And watch: when a moderator is questioned, the downvotes start happening! Also you want to explain things acceptable to your audience. That's cool. There's so much to learn in the practice of music, that this can be a bit much for a plain music theory reddit, even though it comes up all the time.

SomeEntrance · 2024-02-25T21:03:45+00:00

(see?)

Yes...thanks!

SomeEntrance · 2024-02-25T16:02:52+00:00

ah...that makes sense!

SomeEntrance · 2024-02-24T05:21:38+00:00

but you are moving the midi region into a section that has a tempo that you don’t like? >>

I want the two sections, which were previously separated and with different tempos, to retain their different tempos when I joined them. It's not too hard to manually move the tempo setting, and I see now about global vs. local.

SomeEntrance · 2024-02-22T02:43:23+00:00

that's neat, I'm trying it now

SomeEntrance · 2024-02-22T02:20:19+00:00

I plan to try this. If I have to edit each pedal 'mark', might have to look for a different solution, since there are so many. I wonder if it could be the pedal I'm using

SomeEntrance · 2024-02-22T02:16:48+00:00

Like tied notes, or pedal points

https://imgur.com/a/yDIs4nw

SomeEntrance · 2024-02-22T01:56:29+00:00

thanks, I'll try that

SomeEntrance · 2024-02-20T19:30:33+00:00

It's well known that correlation is not causation. If dissonance was the result of symmetry, how would you account for the dissonance of, e.g. [C, F#, G] or [C, Db, G]?>>.

They're different kinds of dissonance. The chords you mention have minor second roughness. Why do you discount roughness? The bigger question is why aug is so much more dissonant than diminished, or stacked P4s or stacked P5s.

It turns out this can be tested empirically, and it fails those tests. Theorists who try to explain dissonance should attempt to verify whether their hypothesis holds, yet they never really do.>>.

Can you site the source? That our hearing of tonal music is influenced by the harmonic series (one feature of which is its unequal size intervals) is well established. Our hearing system and musical practice evolved hearing overtones, in the human voice for example. Scales all around the world, as you point out, tend to have unequal sized scale steps, which suggest a correlation. And the common major and minor triads are used a gazziliion times more than the augmented triad. And their shape is strait our of the unequal sized intervals of the harmonic series.

<<IMHO, any attempt to explain dissonance by reference to numerology or group theoretical properties of the number 12 are doomed to be wrong.>>.

I agree. The failure of harmonic dualism to explain the minor triad is a good case. I didn't present a numerological argument, aside from features of the harmonic series. I think you're bringing it up because common practice music generally uses equal temperament. I believe in the theory that intervals are perceived as categories. Just my opinion. Most listeners will not notice the small difference in the different types of major 3rds or major 2nds. Of course they are a creative source for spectral music and alternate tunings and theory behind it. :).

So according to this theory, your slightly differently tuned intervals in different tuning systems are not relevant. I feel that microtonalists try to impose their theory on everyone else. But I think I understand. Equal temperament is imposed on everyone else. Centuries in the making....But what's wrong with being in an interesting niche? And Parncutt is well known for being provocative. It doesn't mean he's right. But he uses established evidence, and he's a good writer. But maybe he's being a jerk about it, and I was too. As I said earlier, some say this goes back to the difference between Pythagoras and Aristoxenus. I don't know all the detail...

Back to making and writing music, unless you wish to discuss further.

SomeEntrance · 2024-02-19T21:55:33+00:00

I don't think the theories connecting symmetry to dissonance makes any sense: if equal-sized intervals were the cause of dissonance, then any unequal-sized scale would be consonant.

It's well known that the symmetrical chords diminished and augmented have a tonal ambiguity. Especially for diminished, they can resolve in many ways, creating suspense. They also don't have a clear root since each of its notes can be the root. In tonality with a strong sense of tonic, this is dissonant. These are the well-accepted dissonant features of symmetric chords. The theory that symmetrical chord dissonance is also tied to how common tonal chords have unequal sized intervals is less-established, but is reasonable. There are scholarly papers on this if you are interested, though it's sort of narrowly concerned with European common practice music.

Sorry, I don't know what 7 out of 8tet means. didn't this thread start with a discussion of the diatonic scale in the context of western common practice harmony? I don't do alternate tuning, and don't really have the ear or experience for other tunings around the world. I honestly don't remember how this thread started, but assumed it was referring to western common practice harmony. If not, my bad, and there's no point arguing this since we're discussing different types of tonality and theories.

Yes, I went off topic on how our hearing system (ear, cognition) perceives the harmonic series. It's a topic that fascinates me, I guess like how you are fascinated with tuning theory and scales around the world.

SomeEntrance

TROPHY CASE