Pandiatonicism & Soundmass

An image of a mountain range that extends far into the distance. Hills in the foreground are covered with a thick forest of pine trees which are clearly discernable. Mountains in the distance appear bluish, with distant ridgelines appearing more and more faded, and with no individual trees discernable. The Sacramento Mountains near Alamogordo, New Mexico. While trees in the foreground are individually visible, distant wooded ridgelines look homogenous in color.
(Richard Stephen Haynes | CC BY-SA-4.0)

For works involving larger groups of performers, composers will sometimes write music which focuses on a larger group sound rather than the parts of individual voices or instruments.

Pandiatonicism

Pandiatonicism is a musical texture in which multiple melodic parts are played simultaneously without an intentional harmonic element. The melodic voices often heavily feature stepwise motion, and can work in counterpoint with one another, but are generally confined to a major diatonic tonality without the use of chromaticism.

Measures 228 through 235 of the first movement of Symphony No. 3 by Henryk Górecki. The string parts play a diatonic melody in canon, creating a pandiatonic texture.
Figure 1: Measures 228–235 of the first movement of Symphony No. 3, Op. 36, a 1976 work by Polish composer Henryk Górecki. The first ten minutes of the movement consists of a gradually growing pandiatonic canon played by the strings.

Pandiatonic texture avoids the use of chords; simultaneous melodies can occasionally create consonant harmonies, but only as the melodies align as such; mild dissonances such as diatonic seconds and sevenths happen just as often.

Planing

Occasionally, composers will reinforce a particular melodic line with voices moving in strict parallel motion, even creating a triad or another familiar chord on each melodic note.

Measures 2 through 4 of `The Cloths of Heaven` by Rebecca Clarke. The right hand of the piano part in measure three features a melodic line doubled at the diatonic third and fifth.
Figure 2: Measures 2–4 of the 1920 song The Cloths of Heaven by British-American composer Rebecca Clarke. The piano uses planing in measure 3 to reinforce the melodic line with diatonic triads.

In this case, the chords do not provide functional harmony, but serve only to support the melody. This technique, called planing, is not analyzed using harmonic tools such as Roman numeral analysis or neo-Riemannian theory, as it does not strength a tonal center beyond the key represented by the diatonic set being used.

Pandiatonicism in Jazz

In jazz idioms, pandiatonicism is often more harmonic in nature, while still generally confining notes to a diatonic set and avoiding functional harmony. The result is a more open, avant garde sound in comparison with more traditional jazz structures.

Soundmass

Composers such as Krzysztof Penderecki and György Ligeti occasionally wrote orchestral pieces in which every player was given a different, individual part. The aural result of these pieces is an overall sonic texture in which individual parts are not distiguished. This technique, called soundmass, often includes an aleatoric element, and can create an eerie, otherworldly texture.

Figure 4: The 1961 piece Atmosphères by Hungarian-Austrian composer György Ligeti, performed in 2019 by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France conducted by Alan Gilbert. Each member of the orchestra has an individual part, creating tone clusters that generate a diffuse, uncentralized sound.
Measures 67 through 71 of the third movement of Ruth Crawford Seeger's String Quartet 1931. The first three measures contain longer, discordant chords, which suddenly switch to a faster, more chaotic texture for the remaining measures.
Figure 5: Measures 67–71 of the third movement of String Quartet 1931 by American composer Ruth Crawford Seeger. Seeger was able to create a soundmass-like texture with only four players by using double- and triple-stops.

Soundmass can be found in popular music styles, where it is often created by mixing many individual tracks together.

Black MIDI

A modern application of soundmass is the arrangement of popular songs as MIDI sequences using massive numbers of notes, a genre called black MIDI. Black MIDI arrangements make use of tone clusters, rapid rhythms and glissandos, using a single timbre — usually piano — to create percussive sounds or general ambience. These pieces are usually shared as videos displaying the MIDI sequences being played in piano roll format, and will sometimes involve designing the piano roll to include graphics or animations.

Figure 6: A black MIDI arrangement of American singer/songwriter Miley Cyrus' 2013 song Wrecking Ball by American electronic musician EpreTroll. Created and performed with MIDI sequencer software, the performance features a point at around 1:25 where the animation pauses due to the large number of MIDI signals being sent and interpreted.

Pandiatonicism & Soundmass: Summary

  • Pandiatonicism is a musical texture involving multiple melodic parts which are combined without harmonic alignment.
    • A specific type of pandiatonicism is planing, where a melodic line is reinforced by parallel diatonic lines.
  • Soundmass is the use of a large number of performers to create a homogenous sound where individual lines are not discernable.
    • Black MIDI involves using soundmass in a MIDI sequence to create percussive or ambient sounds using limited timbres.

Exercises

Exercise 1: Writing a Pandiatonic Passage

Exercise 2: Arranging a Piece for Black MIDI