NeoKitsch is starting a new twelve tone music series. Experimenting and improvising with different idioms and instruments, the studio will compose short pieces exclusively for the NeoKitsch blog.
To start off the series, we have a short piece called “Twelve Tone Blues”. The instruments used are 2 Clarinets, 2 Violins, Bass guitar, various percussion and the Haken Continuum Fingerboard.
The piece opens with a clustered sigh of ‘blues’ melancholy and ends with a Schrott Chord.
Enjoy episode 1 of the NeoKitsch twelve tone series – “Twelve Tone Blues”
Please click on the entry below:
Definition of the Schrott Chord:
Schrott Chord – a NeoKitsch musical term meaning ‘remaining notes’. The term comes from the German word Schrott which translates as scrap, or scrap metal. When a piece of music using the Twelve Tone system appears to come to a convenient end, still however, with five or more notes remaining in the twelve note cycle, a Schrott Chord may be used in which all notes are played at once in a dramatic final twist.
ORIGIN:
Schrott’s first musical usage appeared after the NeoKitsch composer Danny Hahn watched the 1958 Swiss suspense film: Es geschah am hellichten Tag. The film, written by the Swiss novelist and playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt, featured a murderer called Schrott. At several points in the film, when Schrott arrives in a scene, he is accompanied by a loud dissonant clash from the film’s orchestral score. This type of ‘shock chord’, often thought of as a ‘Bürgerschreck’ – (german word: to shock bourgeois citizens), often cropped up in 20th century classical music, including Twelve Tone compositions. It is now a common word in the NeoKitsch studio and can be heard in phrases such as: “Let’s end with a Schrott Chord” or “Let’s give everyone a shock with a Schrott!”
