I've just had a two hour lecture on this, I had moment of lunacy halfway through where I thought I got it, but all in all I feel like I've had my head shut in a vice. Can anyone explain it?
I don't remember the details, as it's been 10 years since I've had to study this; all I know was that we got to draw on sheet music with colored pencils and I found set theory much easier to grasp than serialism for some reason...
what is it ? one sort of set theory began with schoneberg's 12-tone sequencing for compositional structure development - as in , 1-4-11-3-2-5-10-4-6-8-7 . this would be a set , a theme , of which there are subsets such as 1-3-10-8-4... created logically from the initial 'ordering' . perhaps the two lines , set and subset would be written as a harmony . you a get mathematical form that is potentially independent of the tonal conventions of major/minor , and then rhythm becomes more a sense of space and density than a metronomical pulse . i think , absorb this and then play free and intuitively with faith in intelligence : this is what set theory has become a hundred years since it's inception . intuitive and fully creative . and too , if we want to we can return to the strong pulse and it'll only be the stronger for our ableness at riding the wave of anarchy when form just 'is' .
