Ceri McCoy | Musician/band
Ceri McCoy
Reviews
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17.01.2022 Happy Sunday! https://soundcloud.com/ceri_mccoy/wise-that
16.01.2022 I used a tone row to disguise the fact that this orchestral soundtrack, is a blues! https://youtu.be/29ozBPtqonQ
12.01.2022 Polarity Theory I first read the book 'A Theory of Harmony' by Ernst Levy in either 1998 or 1999. I agree that it's elegant, but as Levy states in his book, hi...s ideas are the result of a long line of theorists whom Levy states support 'Polarity Theory' - which I have called either the 'Negative Zone' or 'Negative Harmony' since about 1981 (a term that has recently gained a lot of popularity in the last few years). Levy calls these musicians who somewhat support this concept 'Polarity Theorists'. These ideas actually go back a lot further than Levy, explicitly at least hundreds of years back, and implicitly thousands of year. Levy lists some theorists who influenced him. This was recognized from very early times, at least as far back as the ancient Greeks (in a form recognizable by modern cats) and by the Egyptians, Mesopotamians and ancient Chinese (in more explicitly non-harmonic forms). Here is a partial list of theorists connected to these idea (musician/theorists are marked with an asterisk, but the musicians were 'extremely important', and they demonstrated these principles in sound): *Marchetto da Padova (1274[?]-1326[?]) composer and author of ‘Lucidarium' *Heinreich Glareanus (1488 1563, also called Glarean) *Nicola Vicentino (1511-1576) composer and author of ‘Ancient Music Adapted To Modern Practice’ *Gioseffo Zarlino (1517-1590) Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594) *Johannes Lippius (1585-1612, German Music Theory In The Early 17th Century: The Treatises Of Johannes Lippius, by Benito V. Rivera) Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) *Anton Reicha (1770-1836) Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770-1827) *François-Joseph Fétis (1784-1871) *Moritz Hauptmann (1792-1868) *Albert Von Thimus (1806-1878) Frédéric François Chopin (1810-1849) Franz Liszt (1811-1886) *Hugo Riemann (1849-1919) *Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933) (wrote extensively on polarity, but his work is difficult to find) Bela Bartok (1881-1945) *Marcel Dupré (18861971, great organist of the French improvisation school who wrote ‘Complete Course in Organ Improvisation: Vols I and II’) *Walter Harburger (1888-1967) - there is a dissertation called 'Metalogik: The Music Theory of Walter Harburger’ by Ralph Martin *Hans Kayser (1891-1964) Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) (born Nov 16, 2 days before Levy) *Ernst Levy (1895-1991) (born Nov 18, 2 days after Hindemith) *Howard Hanson (1896-1981) *Hans Erhard Lauer (1899-1979, I have only found an article written by Lauer in a book called ‘Cosmic Music’ translated by Joscelyn Godwin) Duke Ellington (1899-1974) *Harry Partch (1901-1974) *Marius Schneider (1903-1982) *Alain Danielou (1907-1994, wrote several interesting books, one is Music And The Power Of Sound: The Influence Of Tuning And Interval On Consciousness) Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) Art Tatum (1909-1956) Don Byas (1912-1972) Thelonious Monk (1917-1982) *Howard Boatwright (1918-1999) (student of Hindemith) *Ernest McClain (1918-2014) *Rudolf Haase (1920-2013) Charlie Parker (1920-1955) Von Freeman (1923-2012) *Carl Dahlhaus (1928-1989) John Coltrane (1926-1967) Sonny Rollins (1930-present) Per Nørgård (1932-present) *Easley Blackwood (1933-present) *Heiner Ruland (1934-present, wrote 'Expanding Tonal Awareness: A Musical Exploration of the Evolution of Consciousness - from Ancient Tone Systems to New Tonalities - Guided by the Monochord’) *William Allaudin Mathieu (1937-present?), wrote an excellent book called 'Harmonic Experience: Tonal Harmony from Its Natural Origins to Its Modern Expression' In Europe there were musical theorists who tried to call attention to this, but they were pretty much ignored. Musicians as far back as Gioseffo Zarlino, and Johannes Lippius, and moving forward to some theorists (with various understanding) Francois-Joseph Fetis, Moritz Hauptmann, Albert Von Thimus, Walter Harburger, Hugo Riemann, Sigfrid Karg-Elert, Hans Kayser, Ernst Levy, Ernest McClain, Hans Lauer, Heiner Ruland, William Allaudin Mathieu, etc. And there are lots of modern musician/theorists after Levy; such as Carl Friedrich Weitzmann, Richard Cohn, David Lewin, David Kopp, etc. In between the ancient Greeks (Aristoxenus of Tarentum, Ptolemy, Aristides Quintilianus, etc.) and people like Guido of Arezzo, some of the people in the Islamic world kept alive this knowledge, such as Ikhwan Al-Safa (The Brethren of Purity), when Europe was in it’s so-called Dark Ages. And there were a bunch of keyboard musicians in the 200 years before Bach. I've talked with the great Danish composer Per Nørgård about this tradition. He did not know about Ernst Levy directly, but he was very familiar with the tradition of polarity cats that Levy comes out of (Hugo Riemann, etc., 'Polarity' is the word that Levy uses, most people today say 'Dualist', and I'm the one that created the term 'Negative Harmony'). And Nørgård found a very creative way of using these concepts in his music. There is a Italian-Franco-Germanic tradition of this polarity thinking (see my list of theorists & musicians), and Nørgård is familiar with and studied many of them. This is not just in music, it overlaps with astronomy/astrology, mathematics, physics, etc. But it's good that these things are at least being discussed more, as I have not seen many people even begin to talk about this subject. If only rhythm were discussed as much as tonal music theory, then our understanding of world music would be all the richer for it. Back when I first discovered Levy (late 1990s) I could not find anyone who had ever heard of him. I would mention him in workshops when I referenced polarity and people were like "huh?" What attracted me to Levy was that I felt that his ideas explained some things that I already knew more succinctly. Even before discovering Levy, I was into many different kinds of polarity ideas, starting with some of my own invention, and later realizing that I was re-discovering things that others had done already in different ways. For me, the real deal is how a person uses this information, because it's really just a curiosity, and just another nomenclature for similar things, until you get into the implications of using the information, particularly (in my case) dealing with spontaneous composition. I first learned about this from a sound perspective (not a theoretical perspective), from a completely different tradition of 'spontaneous composer-players', Von Freeman, Bird, Trane, Rollins, Monk, Bud, Duke, etc. Specifically, it was through the work of master musicians like Chicago Saxophonist Von Freeman (just one example) that I was introduced to these sounds, long before I knew anything about Ernst Levy or polarity. Regarding Monk, the compositions I studied in depth are Ruby My Dear, Round Midnight and Off Minor, and this stuff is in all of them. As well as in Duke/Strayhorn, and in songs like Stablemates, Along Came Betty, etc. But the real deal is in the spontaneous statements, the improvisations, which is a totally different story. I discuss this more in the comments to this blog: http://www.polishookstudio.com//the-patterns-of-barry-harr This post is in part a response to a post by Arnold Hammerschlag.
08.01.2022 Turn the beat around!
