Expert: Tim - 7/28/2004

Question
hi, I have a small excerpt from a composition in mp3 format (it is tiny, 10 seconds of audio, 450kb file)

http://hansel.org/newdixx/beeleef.mp3

I aquired this 5 years ago from a CD that accompanied a music history text book, my roomate had (he was a music theory major, I was an audio engineer major) i sampled random parts of tracks on his CD without much thought for use with a computer sampler. Years later realizing how absolutely amazing the excerpt was, I have been determined to find out who wrote this, and what composition its from. It appears to be modern (sounds like use of chromatic 12 tone rows, yet still has melody) can you help me?

i asked another expert and they didnt know.
if even a push in the right direction would be appreciated.

thanks
-al


Answer
Alan
 Alan, unfortunately I do not know this piece.  I can only offer, as best I can, some general pointers.  It is definitely post 1900's.  I would say that stylistically it is very simliar to Messian.  The night/garden music from the Turangulia Symphony is very similiar.  Carl Nelson and Chalres Ives in some works also composes similiar music.  Another factor I may suggest is that this is unlikely from 1900-1930, this is because when atonal music first came to fore, Shoenberg, Webern, etc were all very straight atonal.  Only in the period slightly before (early Schoenberg "Veklarte Nacht" from 1899 for example) or after, when times and styles changed did you get more melody.  
 


best regards
Tim Cheng