The musical characteristics of 'tone lakes'

By Jørgen Mortensen

From about the end of the 1980s, 'tone lakes' have constituted an important structure in Per Nørgård's music. Among the first works that use the 'tone lakes' can be mentioned the violin concerto Helle Nacht and the string quartet Tintinnabulary, which use 'the 12', Symphony No. 5, which uses 'the 36' (though admittedly in an early, 'incorrect' version), Night Symphonies, which used 'the 324' - alongside freely composed sections.

No a musical structure is by no means the same as a composition, which is the imaginative use of a musical structure. On the other hand, however, a musical can be said to be more or less 'seductive' in itself.
In order to give an impression of what we could call the 'raw material', before the composer gets to work on it, I have created a digital version of 'the 972' (the beginning).

One particular quality of this 'raw material' that has especially struck me is the fact that it exhibits tonal fluctuation - the 'tone lakes' are not unequivocally tonal, but nor are they completely atonal. Any handful of notes taken at random would now and then exhibit a tonality, but nothing like to the same extent as the 'tone lakes' (see my reply to a review in DMT 1993 Vol. ...........).

The 'tone lakes' - with their many inner connections and symmetries - are also fascinating interesting in terms of musical analysis.

For a full treatment of this subject, see Jørgen Mortensen: Per Nørgårds Tonesøer, (Per Nørgård's Tone Lakes), VM 1992.
What does a 'tone lake' sound like?