Claudio Spies: Tempi
Donald Martino · Perspectives of New Music · 1964
SINCE THE COMPOSITION under discussion is not yet commercially available, I will attempt to acquaint the reader with its more general characteristics by means of a descriptive diagram. Table I presents the macrostructure of this eighteen-minute work which is scored for oboe, oboe d'amore, english horn; clarinet, bass clarinet, horn; xylophone, celesta, harp; alto trombone, tenor trombone; violin, viola, and cello. The three-movement form, separated by cadenzas and concluded by a short coda, presents six related tempi, each of which occurs twice. This fact of recurrence immediately suggests a possible analogy between tempo and the inversional invariant property associated generally with the twelve-tone system' and specifically with the set of this piece.2 Indeed, if we compare the order of tempi (Table I) with the order of interval products (Table II), we find complete agreement. I assume that there exists some method of deriving the actual tempi