The Great Darkness: Romanticism in the Mid-20th Century
Younger Romantic composers today may not understand the virulent anti-Romanticism and opposition to tonal composition that pervaded the musical establishment
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Rachmaninoff and the Twentieth Century
During much of the last century, Romanticism and tonality were held in virtual contempt by most of the musical establishment,
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What is Romanticism?
My music fits squarely within the movement known as Romanticism. Musical Romanticism is customarily associated with the nineteenth century and
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Pieces of Eight
Most musicians are familiar with the seven-tone diatonic set, which determines the pitches for a major scale or a natural
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SEVEN: Life at Meter’s Outer Limit
I related the “Seven Plus or Minus Two” principle to pitches and harmonic centers in an earlier post to this
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Dissonance versus Atonality
Non-musicians sometimes confuse dissonance with atonality. As a tonal Romantic composer, I like to highlight the difference using an analogy
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SEVEN: The Magic Number of Harmony
In this blog’s first post, we looked at the physics behind our harmonic/melodic system. But music isn’t just a physical
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Math’s Gift to Musicians
Is music just a cultural product, or does it also have roots in nature? I contend that the tonal system
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