Villainous Joy! (An analysis of four chords)

There is a moment in my orchestra work Fili di Perle that always brings me a sense of villainous joy!

Towards the end there are several culminating moments with these superchords, arpeggios, aleatoric passages, and a four chord progression played fortissimo by the brass section in measure 231.

​If ever there was music that could stand in for my alter-ego/super-villain and his maniacal laughter -- this is it!

When originally scoring this, I was concerned with superimposing the other motivic ideas used throughout the piece. (These ideas actually come from an earlier work The God of Material Things and were used as a launchpad for the new orchestral work!)

I never gave much thought to how you could "label" these triads, because honestly, I don't analyze my music that deeply when composing. Usually, I sketch out ideas, explore them, stretch them into new territory, and then analyze why I chose those paths much later. Also, I'm less concerned with the theoretical "function" of a chord and more about its sound and what other chords can be used before and after. (Yes, I consider voice leading, root progression, set theory, and all the other tools I've learned, but I'm not really a theorist -- I'm an artist, and in reality I let my ears lead first and then let my brain analyze why my ears chose those sounds!)

There are a lot of interesting ways to analyze this section. For example, you could note that the root progressions (Eb, A, F#, Eb) are all tri-tone and sixth relationships and that the top notes (Bb, G, C#, Bb) are also, with the result being intervallic mirroring! Or, I could point to the existing motifs and how they are all superimposed throughout the entire work and culminate in this moment! But, we are hear to talk about these four chords and their "labels" (wouldn't want my villainous monologue to get the best of me!)

And those four chords are (roughly) Eb(#9), F+9/A, F#m(maj7), and F#o7 with extensions b9, 11, b15, 17.

Here are the original four chords, as scored for brass with some doubling.

Now, that first chord is an Eb with both a major 3rd and a minor 3rd, so we can call that minor 3rd a #9,
​making it an Eb(#9) chord

That second chord is essentially a fivenote version of a whole tone scale, but because of how it is voiced, we can say
it is F+9/A. You might argue that it is an A+7 with a #13, but does it really matter with whole tone collections ... no ...

The third chord is straight-forward, an F#m with a maj7.

And then we reach that fourth chord -- that beast -- whose pitch set is a type of blues scale; not really the hexatonic (C Eb F F# G Bb) or the nonatonic (C D Eb E F G A Bb B), but somewhere in between. Now, when I tried to find the prime form of this set, it said it is 8-z29 or 0 1 2 3 5 6 7 9, but I can't for the life of me make that work with the original set of pitches ... and decided not to beat myself up about it! (I'm the villain after all, not a goody-goody theorist!)

When stacked as thirds, the bottom four are clearly F#o7, with the remaining four near the 9th, 11th, 15th, and 17th extensions. You might be saying, "But, 15ths and 17ths aren't really extensions..." and you might be right, I don't really know! (Mu-ha-ha-ha!)

​The way its voiced originally makes it feel like a diminished chord (that melodramatic one!) and what's curious is that the F#o7  might want to resolve to G, but that G is already superimposed as a G7#9, so there's some wanting and having, bait and switch, villainous joyful cruelty to that chord...

I promise I'm not a super-villain! Just a composer (which is the next best thing perhaps!)