Woodwind Ensemble,Woodwind Quintet - Level 3 - Digital Download

SKU: A0.1024240

Composed by Kent Piper. Contemporary,World. 14 pages. RKPiper #4582335. Published by RKPiper (A0.1024240).

Geometria is a serial composition*.

Geometria, Latin for geometry, is an arrangement of sound shapes. Beginning with a parallelogram it moves to a square and then to a triangle. At the apex of the triangle the piece retrogrades back through the previous shapes; a mirror image in sound. The parallelogram is achieved by use of canon, the square by homophony and the triangle by staggered entrances.

There are 5 instruments and 5 notes; F, F#, A,C# and Bb. F#,Bb,C# form a major triad, F#,A,C# form a minor triad, A,Bb,C# form trichord 3-3, Bb,C#,F form trichord 3-11 and A,C#,F form trichord 3-12.

Therefore, 5 geometric shapes, 5 instruments, 5 notes, 5 plus harmonic possibilities and 5 players.

*Serial Music - the use of a sequence of notes in a definite order as a thematic basis for a composition and a source from which the musical material is derived.

Serialism was an attempt to escape tonal-centered compositions prior to the twentieth century. It began with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve tone-technique in the early 1900's, though some of his contemporaries such as Anton Webern, Alban Berg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Luigi Nono and Milton Babbit were also working to establish serialism as a form of post-tonal thinking. Other composers such as Bela Bartok, Luciano Berio, Benjamin Britten, John Cage, Aaron Copland, Olivier Messiean, Arvo Part, Dmitri Shostakovich and Igor Stravinsky used serialism only for some of their compositions.