Hello M.G.,

I've been watching and listening to the progress of this piece over the last several days, as you submitted it in some bug reports (regarding adding notes after mid-measure clef changes). My ear was definitely hearing the augmented chords. Until you described above what you were doing, I didn't realize that the augment chords were naturally produced by the whole tone scale premise of this composition.

I think "experimenting" with constraints, such as sticking to a whole note scale, is an excellent way to develop one's composition skills. If I were to teach composition to others, that would be one of the main pedagogical techniques I would employ. Here, you have very strictly constrained yourself to the whole note scale. Such a constraint can paradoxically be very liberating. It means that you can, and should, focus on all the other elements of the music, which is exactly what you've done!

Within the constraint of the whole note scale, you have exercised much freedom in rhythms and texture. Texture in piano music is like orchestration in an orchestral piece. In piano music, texture is, to a large extent, how notes are distributed across the 88 keys, just as notes are distributed across instruments in an orchestra.

Other elements of texture that this piece uses to keep variety and interest are: octaves, rolled chords, and arpeggiation of chords at different speeds.

The whole note scale and its subsequent confinement to augmented chords come at the cost of homelessness, quite similar to the disorientation that 12-tone serialism brings to (or, rather, takes away from) harmony. This piece does convey such a feeling of "where am I, where am I going?" Such can be the consequence, if not the intention, of restricting the piece to the whole note scale (or 12-tone serialism).

If disorientation in harmony, homelessness is not the intention of the piece, then there might be ways to ground it. There are moments in which this piece seems to be to briefly settle harmonically, before it takes off again in long stretches of whole note and arpeggiated augmented chord sequences. I haven't tried to analyze what it is that offers these brief moments of harmonic groundedness, but for my ears, I found those moments satisfying-- similar to a V7-to-I resolution-- and wished for more such moments and longer such moments. I don't know if that's possible within the confines of the whole note scale. Debussy would know.

I'm quite interested in your work here, especially the idea of restricting yourself in one dimension of the music so that you might actually feel more free in the other dimensions of the music. I've often done the same thing myself. For example, I've written a suite of piano pieces, each one that confines itself to a special interval (minor and major 2nds, minor and major 3rds, augmented 4th, perfect 5th, minor and major 6ths, minor and major 7ths). Each hand is only allowed to play a the vertical interval, never (or rarely) single notes. I had a lot of fun writing these pieces and felt that I learned a lot doing so.

Cheers
-- Mark