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Greg FoxFuneral Music (February 22, 2006)

The first chance operation based requiem?? Written in February 2006, this is the first album I made with the intention of uploading to Archive.org. This is a CD-length album of slow quiet two-note counterpoint for church organ. Here it uses a public domain soundfont of a French organ. Read details for more information. Software and notes included.


This audio is part of the collection: Open Source Audio

Artist/Composer: Greg Fox
Date: 2006-02-22
Keywords: Greg Fox; Indeterminacy; Requiem; John Cage; Computer Music; Meditation; Avant-garde; Onlineism

Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial

Notes

Funeral Music is the first album I wrote with Archive.Org in mind. What a revelation this mode of operation is!!!!!
The piece is CD-length, comprised of six movements of roughly 12 minutes each. These can be performed in any order and are based on the combining of two at a time of four 12-minute one-note melodies, such that there are themes in common and each finished movement is 12 minutes of two-note polyphony.
In a sense there's a flavour of the mediaeval idea of writing one line and then writing the others to match that but not necessarily each other. In another sense there's something of the genetic in it because what we have is always two things combined like gametes, and it's as though there are two women and two men who all breed with each other. Here is their first batch of children, one with each pair. Oh yeah actually I suppose using that analogy the men breed with the men too, so perhaps it's my tribute to "Les Mamelles de Tirésias" - it's not THAT far away, the centenary.... well of the play anyway.......

Anyhow this is incredibly sad and poetic music, designed to do two things really: on the one hand it's sincere funeral music and I'd personally like very much for it to be played at my funeral (not Robbie Williams thankyou!!! No offence to him though) and on the other hand it's proof (I hope, or strong evidence) that two-note polyphony is predisposed to harmony/consonance - after all the specific pitches and durations here were chosen literally at random.

I've included (or will have done within 24 hours of posting) the software used for this and a screenshot of the settings used, which for this piece did not change during the implementation at all.

My observation is that it's above equal probability that two notes will sound good together, and this is in a sense a study in that.

Overall though it's slow quiet organ music basically. If played publicly (at a funeral for example) then I have no objection to there being words delivered over the top.

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