musical structure

[Jaime Munárriz Ortiz]

I've been quite obsessed with this subject lately. I've developed some
theories, quite coincident with the ones being exposed at his list.
Background / foreground, planes, lines and dots. Geometric elements that
appear over a fuzzy landscape. Evolving clouds over rigid objects. I
think we are developing Kandinsky's system, trying to establish the
basic elements that make sound [or music].
Form, as evolution of the sonic material in time, has made me look for
old books on music theory, finding powerful and funny ideas like that
the perfect sturcture is ABA... ¿?
Reading "The study of counterpoint" by Fux and "Formalized music" by
Xenakis at the same time has been exciting and really thought provoking.
Form, as an structure developed into time, seems the articulation of
these basic elements and the frame that articulates it's relationships.
It is always present, and can be simplified with theories, but real
composing is always a more rich and complex phemomenom. Theories seem a
nice start point, but the real and dirty work of composition is always
much more strange and difficult. Ideas that looked nice on paper seem
dull and graceless when materialized. I always get on playing and
manipulating sound in unnplanned ways, and it is then when I get to an
interesting point.
As said before, this theories are a good starting point, a generative
way of thinking, but they are just the first steps for the real
work.Geometric scores have opened a new field for my work. Form
structured in oposing parts, with different tempos and signatures, has
make me jump out of continous evolving pieces. Macro and micro
structure, and it's relationship, demand attention to the material in a
very special way. All this thinking processes enrichens the composer and
it's music.Theories are good because allow us to see things from a
different perspective. Just don't stay there for too long, or you'll
just repeat the same ideas forever.

Jaime Munárriz
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