Blueprints and Vignettes: Pitch-class sets, Serialism and Intervallicism, and the Integration of Systematic and Intuitive Music Making

Abstract

Blueprints and Vignettes: Pitch-class sets, Serialism and Intervallicism, and the Integration of Systematic and Intuitive Music Making examines the interaction of systematic and intuitive elements in my compositional and improvisational practice, and the outcomes of my sustained investigation of pitch-class sets, serialism and intervallicism as creative tools. This submission consists of two parts: a portfolio of compositions, improvisations and recordings, and an accompanying analytical exegesis. The works in the composition portfolio are a product of three individual projects with three distinct instrumental and aesthetic settings – solo piano, avant-garde jazz quartet and chamber duo – that have occupied my practice over the past five years. Each project also focusses on a particular type of creative methodology, in order to pose answers to several key research questions. How can improvisation generate a composition? How can a composition facilitate improvisation? Does a composition treated in an improvisatory manner maintain its identity? What techniques can be used to assure that it does, or does not? What are the harmonic and melodic possibilities of pitch-class sets, serialism and intervallicism, particularly to musicians with other improvisational or compositional backgrounds? How to these structural devices relate to conventional tonal harmony? In the exegesis I examine these questions by analyzing the creative processes behind and improvisatory products of the compositions in the portfolio, and in so doing place the works on a theoretical continuum between improvisation and composition similar to the one proposed by Nettl (1974). I discuss my adoption of comprovisation (the use of pre-performed or recorded improvisations as compositional seeds or scaffolds) as an integral part of my creative process, and the various ways I incorporate improvisation into my composed works – through techniques such as open notation, aleatory, textual instructions, chord symbols and other systems of facilitating open-ended performance. This research positions my practice at a nexus of jazz, experimental improvisation and classical modernism, and offers a resource to those interested in systematic improvisation, intuitive composition or the uses of pitch-class sets, serialism and intervallicism.