About Changes: Sixty-Four Studies for Six Harps
James Tenney · University of Illinois Press eBooks · 2017
In his 1987 essay Changes: Sixty-Four Studies for Six Harps , James Tenney explains his intentions in this work with respect to harmony. First, he wanted to investigate the new harmonic resources that have become available through the concept of “harmonic space” much more thoroughly than he had in any earlier work. Second, he wanted to study these harmonic resources within a formal context that would clearly demonstrate certain theoretical ideas and compositional methods already developed in his computer music of the early 1960s. Tenney also discusses harmonic procedures that to determine a set of available pitch classes before the actual pitches are selected, along with the hierarchical (or holarchical), recursive character of the program for segments and clangs.