"There are no two points so distant from one another that they cannot be connected by a single straight line -- and an infinite number of curves."
Composer Lawrence Dillon has produced an extensive body of work, from brief solo pieces to a full-length opera. Three disks of his music are due out in 2010 on the Bridge, Albany and Naxos labels. In the past year, he has had commissions from the Emerson String Quartet, the Cassatt String Quartet, the Mansfield Symphony, the Boise Philharmonic, the Salt Lake City Symphony, the Ravinia Festival, the Daedalus String Quartet, the Kenan Institute for the Arts, the University of Utah and the Idyllwild Symphony Orchestra.
Although he lost 50% of his hearing in a childhood illness, Dillon began composing as soon as he started piano lessons at the age of seven. In 1985, he became the youngest composer to earn a doctorate at The Juilliard School, and was shortly thereafter appointed to the Juilliard faculty. Dillon is now Composer in Residence at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where he has served as Music Director of the Contemporary Ensemble, Assistant Dean of Performance, and Interim Dean of the School of Music. He was the Featured American Composer in the February 2006 issue of Chamber Music magazine.
Any tone can succeed any other tone, any tone can sound simultaneously with any other tone or tones, and any group of tones can be followed by any other group of tones, just as any degree of tension or nuance can occur in any medium under any kind of stress or duration. Successful projection will depend upon the contextual and formal conditions that prevail, and upon the skill and the soul of the composer.
This lovely paragraph immediately establishes the approach used throughout the book. Instead of dictating unsupported rules as though they were chiseled on Sinai, the book catalogues a range of possibilities, weighing each technique’s merits and potentials as a creative resource.
If we extend this approach to all music theory, we end up with a model for practical application. To give an example: the bad way to discuss parallel fifths is to simply say that they are against the rules and leave it at that. The good way is to demonstrate, through musical examples and acoustical principles, how parallel fifths can enrich sonority, but with a cost to textural balance (ie, equality among voices). So, if a student is looking to create a balanced, interweaving texture, s/he should avoid parallel fifths. If, on the other hand, s/he wants thick, sonorous lines, s/he is encouraged to pile on the P5s.
Once you have established that principle, turn to 16th-century counterpoint or 18th-century harmony, explain that we are using those styles to practice creating clean, balanced textures of interweaving parts -- then ask whether we should use parallel fifths or avoid them.
Not only will the students get the right answer every time, they will know why it is the right answer -- and they will have a reason to care about the distinction.
posted by Lawrence Dillon
7:19 AM
