Cluster (Musica) – Wikipedia

And notes cluster , or more often simply cluster , is a musical agreement that includes at least three adjacent notes on a scale. Prototypical clusters are based on the chromatic scale and are separated by semitons. For example, three adjacent keys of a piano (such as do, do♯ and re) pressed simultaneously produce a cluster. Variants of the cluster include agreements including adjacent notes separate diatonically, pentatonicly or microtonically. In the piano, these clusters often involve the simultaneous pressure of white or black nai keys.

The early twentieth century saw the clusters of elevated notes with central roles in the pioneering works of the artists Ragtime Jelly Roll Morton and Scott Joplin. In 1910, two avant -garde composers and pianists, Leo Ornstein and Henry Cowell, were recognized as the first important explorers of the technique. During the same period, Charles Ives employed them in different compositions that were not publicly performed until the late 1920s or ’30. Composers like Béla Bartók and, later, Lou Harrison and Karlheinz Stockhausen became the proponents of the clusters, who are present in the work of many composers of the 20th and twentieth centuries. The clusters play a significant role also in the work of “free jazz” musicians such as Cecil Taylor and Matthew Shipp.

In most western music, the clusters tend to be perceived as dissonant. They can be performed in almost all the individual tools on which it is possible to play three or more known simultaneously, as well as by most groups of tools or voices. The keyboard tools are particularly suitable for the execution of Cluster because it is relatively easy to play more known simultaneously on them.

The prototypical clusters are agreements of three or more notes adjacent on a chromatic scale, that is, three or more classes of frequencies separate each only by a semitone. Also agreements of three adjacent notes according to a diatonic or pentatonic scale are, strictly speaking, clusters of notes. However, these agreements involve intervals between the nearby notes higher than a semitone. This can be easily seen on a keyboard, where the note of each button is separated from the next semitone (viewing the black keys as extended to the edge of the keyboard): the diatonic scale, reproducible for example on the white keys, contains only two intervals of semitons; The remaining are whole tones. In western musical traditions, the pentatonic scale, reproducible for example on the black keys, is built from larger intervals than a semitone. The commentators therefore tend to identify agreements of diatonic and pentatonic adjacent notes as “clusters” only when they consist of four or more subsequent notes on the scale. In western classical music, all clusters can be classified as “secondary” agreements, that is, built by second minor (semitone) intervals, second greater (two semitons) and, in the case of pentatonic clusters, even second increased (three semitons). Adjacent micro -micotonal frequencies agreements are also chords constitute clusters.

In the clusters, the notes are all played simultaneously, distinguishing them from ornamental figures involving vineies and the like. Their effect also tends to be different: where ornamentation is used to attract attention to harmony or on the relationship between harmony and melody, the clusters are mostly used as sounds with meaning in their own right. While, by definition, the notes that form a cluster must play at the same time, it is not necessary that everyone must start play at the same time. For example, in Epitaph for Moonlight (1968) by R. Murray Schafer, a cluster is built by dividing each section of the choir (soprano / tall / tenor / bass) into four parts. Each of the sixteen parts enters separately, humming a note of a semi -lower lower than the previous one, until all 16 are contributing to the cluster.

The clusters were generally considered as dissonant musical plots and sometimes simply defined as such. As noted by Alan Belkin, however, the instrumental stamp can have a significant impact on their effects: “The clusters are quite aggressive on the organ, but they soften enormously when played by the arches (perhaps because they are mild, continuous fluctuations of tone in the second provide some internal mobility). “In his first work published on the subject, Henry Cowell observed that a cluster is” more pleasant “and” acceptable for the ear if his external limits form a consonant interval “. Cowell explains, “the natural spacing of the so -called dissonances is of second intervals, as in the series of harmonics, rather than seventh and ninth … the groups made up of seconds can play euphonic, especially if played together with notes of the fundamental agreement taken from the lower part of the same series of harmonics; this merges them together and explains them to the ear “. The clusters were also compared to noise. As Mauricio Kagel says, “the clusters were generally used as a sort of anti-harmony, as a transition between sound and noise”. The clusters therefore also lend themselves to percussive use. Historically, sometimes they were discussed with a pinch of contempt. A textbook from 1969 defines the cluster of notes as “a lump of extra-dermonic notes”.

In his piece of 1917 The Tides of Manaunaun , Cowell introduced a new notation for the clusters on the piano and other keyboard tools. In this notation, only the notes at the details of the cluster are represented, connected by a single line or by a pair of lines. This notation then developed in the solid bar style as illustrated alongside. The first agreement, which extends for two octaves from king ₂ a rep ₄ , is a diatonic cluster (formed by the white keys), indicated with the betro -under the line. The second is a pentatonic cluster (formed by the black keys), indicated with the bemolle; A dies would be needed if the notes at the extremes of the cluster were indicated with diesis. A chromatic cluster, formed by the white and black keys together, is indicated according to this method with a full bar without any additional sign. In composing the large and dense clusters, in his work by organ, Volumes In the early 1960s, György Ligeti, using graphic notation, blocked in entire sections of the keyboard ^{[ not clear ]} .

The execution of the clusters on keyboards is normally considered an “extensive technique”: the large clusters require unusual ways that often involve punch, the palm of the hand or the forearm. Thelonious Monk and Karlheinz Stockhausen performed the clusters with their elbows; Stockhausen has developed a method for playing clusters glissandi with special gloves. Don Pullen played the glissands of Cluster by moving the back of the hands on the keyboard. Sometimes objects of various sizes are used, as in the Concord Sonata (1904-19) by Charles Ives; These can be weighed down to perform long -lasting clusters. Many of Lou Harrison’s scores require the use of a so -called “eighth bar”, built specifically to facilitate the execution of the fastest clusters of clusters.

Before 1900 [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

The first example of Cluster in a western musical composition identified so far is in the cheerful movement of Battural at 10 For Heinrich Biber’s arches (1673), which uses several diatonic clusters. An orchestral diatonic cluster also occurs in the representation of chaos in opening the ballet The Elemens by Jean-Féry Rebel of 1737-38. In the next century and a half, some other occurrences can be encountered, for no more than a fleeting instance of the form, such as in the two final jokes of the “Loure” from the French suite n. 5 of J.S. Bach:

or the collisions that result from the interaction of multiple lines “blocked together in delays” in Bach’s musical offer:

In the sonatas for keyboard by Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757), we find a more bold and idiosyncratic use of the clusters. In the following passage of the Sonata K119 (late 1970s), Scarlatti uses dissonances for many jokes:

Ralph Kirkpatrick states that these agreements “are not clusters in the sense that they are arbitrary blocks of dissonance, nor are they necessarily fortuitous fillings of diatonic intervals or simultaneous sounds of nearby notes; they are logical expressions of the harmonious language of scarlet and organic manifestations of its tonal structure “. Frederick Neumann describes the Sonata K175 (1750) as “full of the famous clusters of Scarlatti”.

A dramatic use of a “virtual” cluster is found in Franz Schubert’s Led Erlkönig (1815-21). A terrified child calls his father when he sees an Erl King (King of the Elves) appearance. The dissonant intonation of the dominant agreement with ninth minor (do ^{7 ♭ 9} ) is particularly effective in underlining the drama and a sense of threat.

By writing about this passage, Taruskin (2010, p.149) comments on the “unprecedented level of dissonance at the boy’s ugly. The voice has the ninth, placed above, and the left hand has the seventh, placed below. The result is A virtual “cluster”. The harmonious logic of these progressions, within the compositional rules that have been taught in Schubert, can certainly be shown. This logic, however, is not what it strongly attracts the imagination of the listener; Rather it is the calculated impression of an outlet “.

There is also the Piano Piece Solo The battle of Manassas , written in 1861 by “Blind Tom” Bethune and published in 1866. The score instructs the pianist to represent the cannon fire at various points hitting “with the palm of the hand as much known as possible, and with all the possible force, in the low register of the plan”. In 1887, Giuseppe Verdi became the first prominent composer of the western tradition to write an unmistakable chromatic cluster: the stormy music with which the Otello Start includes a cluster at the organ (do, do♯, re) which also has the longest duration of any other famous musical plot. In any case, it was only in the second decade of the twentieth century that the clusters played a role recognized in western classical music.

In the classical music of the early 1900s [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

“Around 1910”, writes Harold C. Schonberg, “Percy Grainer was creating overflow with the quasi-crusters in work like his Gumsuckers March. “In 1911 what seems to be the first classic composition to scrupulously integrate real clusters in 1911: Tintamarre (the clang of the bells) , of the Canadian composer J. Humfrey Angener (1862-1913).

Within a few years, the radical composer and pianist Leo Ornstein became one of the most famous figures of classical music on both banks of the Atlantic for his avant -garde performances. In 1914 Ornstein made his debut with different compositions for piano only: Wild Men’s Dance (also known as Wild dance , About 1913-14), Impressions of the Thames ( about 1913-14) and Impressions of Notre Dame ( about 1913-14) were the first works to thoroughly explore the clusters that have never been heard by a relevant audience. There Wild Men’s Dance , in particular, is made up almost entirely of Cluster. In 1918, the critic Charles L. Buchanan described Ornstein’s innovation: “[he] gives us masses of harsh, harsh dissonances, agreements that include eight to a dozen notes made up of semitones piled up one on the other”.

The clusters began to appear more frequently also in European music. The use that Isaac Albéniz made of it in Iberia (1905-8) may have influenced Gabriel Fauré’s subsequent piano writing. Joseph Horowitz suggested that the “dissonant star clusters” in his third and fourth book were particularly interesting for Olivier Messiaen, whom he called Iberia “The wonder of the piano”. Thomas de Hartmann’s soundtrack for the Wassily Kandinsky theatrical show, The yellow sound (1909), it takes a chromatic cluster in two culminating points. The four pieces of Alban Berg for clarinet and piano (1913) require clusters together with other extensive techniques. The prelude to Piano by Claude Debussy “La Catédrale Engloutie” makes an exceptional use of the clusters to evoke the sound of “bell rinses – with so many seconds more additions that we could call this pan -diatonic harmony”:

In his prelude to Piano of 1913 “General Lavine – Excentric”, one of the first pieces to be influenced by the popular American popular styles (the cakewalk) Debussy presents abrasive clusters at the conclusion of the following passage:

In his arrangement for the 1915 solo piano of his Six ancient epigraphs (1914), Debussy includes clusters on the fifth song:

Finally, there is a classic example of use of clusters in a light song from the 60s, due to the arranger of the song Ennio Morricone. The song is flavor of salt by Gino Paoli.

In the traditional gagaku Japanese, the music of the imperial court, a cluster performed on one shō (a type of mouth organ) is generally used as a harmonic matrix. Yoritsune Matsudaira, active since the late 1920s in the early 2000s, has merged the harmonies and shades of gagaku with the western techniques of the avant -garde. Much of his work is based on the ten formations of traditional clusters of the shō . The Pacific Circle by Lou Harrison, which mixes oriental and western instruments and styles, reflects the approach gagaku : the clusters supported in the organ emit the sound and function of the shō . It shō He also inspired Benjamin Britten to create the instrumental plot of his dramatic parable of 1964, Curlew River . Its sound pervades the chluster agreements, typically supported, played on a chamber organ. The traditional Korean court and aristocratic music employ simultaneous ornaments on multiple tools, creating dissonant clusters; This technique is reflected in the work of the Korean-German composer of the twentieth century, Isang Yun.

Different tools in anxia of Eastern Asia, including the shō , have been modeled on sheng , an ancient Chinese popular instrument subsequently incorporated into more formal musical contexts. WubaduheSheng , one of the traditional formations of agreements played on sheng , involves a group of three steps. Malaysian folk musicians use an indigenous mouth organ that, like it shō And it sheng , produces clusters. The characteristic musical form played on Bin-Baga , a type of harp of the people of the Central India’s Popyan, was described as a “rhythmic obstinate on a cluster of notes”.