Hi Will,

That's an interesting thought. It might be a bit like those L-system trees with
flowers and leaves, like the ones you can make with my Virtual Flower program:
http://www.robertinventor.com/software/virtualflower/index.htm

The fractalness would come from the way a movement is structured
overall, with various levels of construction, and the themes would be
like the flowers and leaves bringing out that structure at the final level
of the fractal layer - well except the fractal structure if considered
rhythmically
to some extent may extend to within a theme as well.

I think that many tunes have a rhythmic fracticality and a good example
would come from dance music. Example, because my relatives play
them all the time, I hear a lot of scottish folk music - fiddle tunes
etc - and they are often very fractal in structure with each bar
usually in two halves which answer each other, then
bars group in twos as "call and answer" rhythmically,
those then fall in to four bar units with the two halves answering each
other, and the four bar units often make up an eight bar section of the tune
in a similar fashion. The tune may repeat that eight bar section twice,
followed by another eight bar section similarly constructed
that concludes the tune.

In the call and answer, there is a build up of melodic tension during the
call part, that is then released during the answer, but not completely,
until it is all finally released at the end of the last answer at the slowest
level.

I find you often get that in tunes, to the extent that if you
have a seven bar tune, especially if it is repeated a couple of times,
it can sound intersting and "unusual", I think because it breaks the
usual fractal structure we are used to hearing in tunes.

L-systems:.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-system

Robert


> To what degree would anybody consider Mozart's 41st symphony
fractal? It's constructed from very few microscopically small
musical units. Could one say that the level of fractal intensity is
a standard measure of excellence in Western Common Practice music?


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