No Suspension of Work

I’m calling the second movement of the Viola Sonata “Suspension Bridge,” a title which makes me feel rather structural . . . and yet “suspension” (even apart from its Common Practice implications of a certain sort of rhythmically prepared non-chord-tone) seems to me to demand that I create a music which floats more effortlessly than the term structure might suggest.

The movement’s necessary calm notwithstanding, I see the pitch-world still as (gently) dissonant. I settled on a symmetrical ‘scale’ with no perfect octave. How does that work? you may ask. There is a perfect 15^th (or should I say, 15^ma?) and from either end the series of intervals is the same, but in the center, no perfect octave.

The scale spelled with C as the “root”:

C - D - E - G - A# - B - C# - D - F - Ab - Bb - C

So, because of the ‘non-octave’ in the center, it is a scale with built-in dissonance, we might say. Yet, it starts (and ends) with the simplicity of (four notes from) the pentatonic scale.

I’ve also built a periodic rhythmic pattern which takes 73 measures of 3/2 to play out.

Work continues apace . . . .