Jan ’24. some thoughts on rondo, a year later.

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abject departures require breathy, taciturn movements. it is required of a creator to lie to himself, in order to express themself most honestly. theory is an abbreviation for what was, or rather what was ___ enough times to be called ____. form under theory usually derives as descriptive rather than prescriptive; the tight structure of a rondo, in its established sequence from an A to a B to a C and so on feels to me prescriptive, but what it prescribes is usually not so easily delineated.

rondo began as the first concrete statement of my divorce from harmony, though it only proved how inherent a harmony is, once a harmony can be considered as more than just a vertical summation of pitches.

in a usual 5 part rondo, the identity is superficially stated as merely a 5 or 7-part sequence, but this hides the stronger distinction underneath (which gives the actual ‘sense’ of rondo-ness, should rondo-ness exist) of what actually qualifies as a rondo- a series of distinctions or separations of one sequence to the next. for convenience, we label distinction by its tonic-ness, which is convenient for tonal purposes. what happens when i write a rondo without a tonic, the usual signifier in formal distinction? from the outside, my answer to the question of how my rondo qualifies as a rondo is, it doesn’t. but if we wanted to, we could justify anything as anything treating theory as a solely rhizomatic descriptor.

a rondo most typically occurs as 5 parts or 7 parts, but if we really cared to we could write an infinite rondo, that consists of constant distinctions of sequences that last infinitesimally smaller than the previous for proper part-distinction. take this sheet below as a reference.

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A, shown as tonic here, is the most faithful recreation of the original idea of tonic, which in Greek means a stretching, tightening, taut string, a tight string that has an infinitesimal amount of divisions, each existing as one singular element (tonic applied as a concept of one rather than a key).

should each A and B/C last 1 second, A’ and C would last 1/2 of a second, and A’’ and B’ 1/2 of the length of A’ and C, and A’’’ and C’ as half of the length of A’’ and B’ respectively, and so on.

the purpose of an infinite rondo is to show that theory in its prescriptive sense is fundamentally absurd, that the tonic as a tight string can represent anything and everything, that an entire rondo could be expanded by self-treating the entire rondo as an A itself while prescribing endless variations of itself as endless primes that can be taut into endless strings.

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what is the tonic in my rondo?

in its inception, rondo began as a caricature of form and of jazz, as the entire content of the bass clarinet is derived from an Eric Dolphy solo in Liège, Belgium, where the piece was premiered in May of 2022.

looking back at this preliminary sketch makes it difficult for me to make a distinction between an “A” and a “B”, except for the role of electronics as density. in fact, in a normal tonic relationship, the distance between the tonic and the next non-tonic is objectively measured and calculable, just as the switch from densities pictured above (ensemble to just clarinet and electronics). these airy distinctions formed the bases of ensemble as tonic and non-ensemble as non-tonic. alternatively, mass as tonic and an anti-mass as the non-tonic.

(tonic, breath, mass, endless, unmeasured….)

(less dense, less tonic…)

the obsessive need for labeling ultimately purports itself as the foundational principle of academia; whether something is spectral, whether it has form, whether it has no form at all (though impossible), whether it’s tonal, atonal, etc…

when we consider that our intrinsic binary logics are not the best descriptors of the functions and reasons for things; when we realize that all questions are best answered on spectrums; when we come to the conclusion that the existence of a spectrum negates the existence of everything— for if everything lies on the spectrum between point A and its antipodal not-A, then why should everything between be treated as if it was either 100% A or 100% not-A? why should anything be treated then if it exists at any point at all?

a more fitting for sketch for rondo was found in the same document as above, and I find its shapelessness more fitting for a descriptor of what it is.

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what point to begin at? what reason to start with that point? a grid? linearity? where is the tonic?

it was my not-caring which prevented me from prescribing myself with how it should have sounded. and, it sounded nice in spite of itself. the score is not music. a form is not music.