joe cunningham: Music

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In 1981 I quit composing. Not being a “firebrand” and seeming ploddingly slow at everything I reckoned if I was going to make a living I could not afford to pursue such a hopeless self indulgence as composition – especially considering the seemingly impossible task of actually getting pieces performed. Almost 30 years later (in the throes of intense ludism), I realized technology had given me a second chance.
Three of the four pieces in this collection (Winter, Evolu, The Monkey Song) are reincarnations of works from the late 1970s. Sienna is a new piece written in 2009. It has a connection to Winter in that they share a modal scale (or key) which has been derived by the original medieval method of annexing two half-octave scales referred to as tetrachords.
In the late seventies I discovered that the well known collection of modes (i.e. Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian and Aeolian) omitted possibilities that included two interval tritones (i.e. C, F#). Without going into more detail this essentially meant that one particular sequence of tones, related to keys and modes that have evolved in the last seven or eight hundred years, was missing from the lexicon – a neglected orphan. Both Winter and Sienna employ this missing scale sequence, albeit with a different suggested “tonic”. The additional tritone gives Winter and Sienna a sort of angular Mixolydian and Phrygian flavor respectively.