Word: tonalities
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Peter Alexander wove contrasting registers and tempos into a 12-tone musical fabric. Unlike the tonal classical music of previous centuries, 12-tone music does not use a hierarchy of pitches and chords. The music configures and reconfigures arrangements of all 12 notes in a scale throughout any given piece. The result is a seemingly unpredictable array of sounds that are highly structured and self-reflexive. The piece--for violin, cello and piano--paired soft, slow sections with furious fortes. The instruments seemed to communicate with each other while establishing a fascinating harmonic tension...
What he did have (but began to lose in his early 30s) was an abundant response to the physical world, a libidinous sense of fat-nuanced paint, sure tonal structure and a narrative passion for the density of life in New York City...
Bellows studied at the New York School of Art under Robert Henri, the American realist disciple of Frans Hals and Edouard Manet. "My life begins at this point," he said of his apprenticeship to Henri. He soon developed a tough, pragmatic repertoire based on realist drawing and tonal composition. He was by far the most gifted younger member of the Ashcan School, a loose group that included John Sloan, George Luks and William Glackens. Not one of them ever painted an ash can, but they did believe, in a general way, that the artist should work from life...
...movie Patriot Games. The group merits a listen. Brennan's soprano keenings, in English and Gaelic, are variously backed by cool, Sergio Mendes-style harmonies, a bluesy sax, and a guitar's banshee wailing. But in the tune Harry's Game, Clannad goes spare and liturgical, transmuting New Age tonal banality into ageless, ethereal beauty. If you ever ascend to heaven, this is the music you'll hear in the elevator...
...Four Youths Singing, Watched by an Old Man, in which glints of white paper show through the dense tangle of pen and wash, providing the highlights within the hair. In such drawings, the balance between specific details like this and the more generalized effects -- the well-judged breadth of tonal washes that firm up the singing group, or the intricate set of quick dabs to give the bony structure of the old music teacher's face -- can still surprise you. Four hundred years after his birth, the Squinter remains as fresh as a daisy...