Monday 11 February 2013

Research Point: Variable Metre


Variable Metre

Boris Blacher was a 20th Century composer, born in China in 1903 and is today regarded as one of the most influential musical figures of his time.  After finishing school he moved to Germany and studied composition with Friedrich Ernst Koch before becoming a well-respected teacher of music.   His career was interrupted by the National Socialist Party and he was forced to leave teaching after his music was deemed ‘degenerate’ by the Nazi party.  Blacher believed that there was a mathematical link to composing music.  Throughout his career he conducted many experiments exploring the mathematical nature of rhythm, but most famous was probably his study of variable metre seen in his Piano Concerto No.2 (1952).    

Blacher’s experiments with ‘variable metre’ were inspired by Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), an Austrian composer credited with devising the twelve-tone composition technique (‘note-rows’).  This technique involved ensuring that all 12 notes of the chromatic scale appeared in a non-repetitive way, but an equal number of times, within a piece.  Schoenberg’s ideas lead Blacher to begin studying the possibility of shifting the attention from harmony to rhythm, incorporating Schoenberg’s mathematical theory of  ‘note rows’ into his own composition.  Along with these ‘note-row’s’, Blacher devised a system of contracting and expanding measures within a piece using a variety of changing time signatures to completely alter the mood and structure of the piece.  

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