For AOI 3 (Absolute Music), the Grade 12 DP Music students are learning about experimental and avant garde composition techniques popularized during the 20th century. Instead of focusing on the traditional ideas of tonality and melody, many composers began to look outside of the expected conventions of music writing and turned to Mathematics. Arnold Schoenberg developed the 12 Tone system of composition that creates musical matrices instead of tonal melodic lines. Iannis Xenakis used Cube Theory to compose different patterns and symmetries. And John Cage relied on chance and I Ching to compose, letting “fate” decide the order and pattern of his composition instead of chord progressions and understandable rhythms. While Music has always contained Math, the relationship was not always highlighted so until the experimental works of these composers. But, without the harmonies and patterns of tonal music, are these compositions simply Math that makes sound?
