The work of three theoreticians, Arnold Schoenberg, Henrich Schenker, and Joseph Schillinger have dominated the thinking of aspiring composers.  Schoenberg’s twelve-tone methodology inspired composers of abstract concert music while Schillinger’s work in rhythm-based musical theory was studied and adopted by George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, and their contemporaries.  Schenker’s work reduces all compositions to basic chords, and has significant resonances in the harmonization of early rock and roll.  My work is a collection of the gestures which suggest each theorist’s essence.  Each of the three untitled movements is an essay from the point of view of each of the three theorists.  Each movement, and particularly the third, exposes my own personal belief that the single most important change in the perception of music created throughout this century is the general shift from melody-dominated texture to rhythmically-defined texture.  This shift, which was heralded by Stravinsky in the Rite of Spring, affects every aspect of how we compose, practice, perform, listen to, write about, and perceive music.  An aural history of the phenomena can be had by observing the change in melody in popular song from 1935 to the present, or, if you will, from the song Deep Purple to Pinball Wizard.

Libby Larsen, 1990

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