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With a piece like the Telemann, or any other example of Baroque or classical counterpoint which takes advantage of perceptual streaming, this balance between independence and distinctiveness of voices is of course constrained by the tonal system, and distinctions are maximized only to create tonally proposal dissonances (which always resolve) and complementary figuration. At the same time, the tonal system offers a reservoir of ways to fill-in the pitch space — i.e. scales and chords — (and, in so doing, filling in the rhythmic space as well) that make analog polyphony in non-tonal environments necessarily a different beast. To my ears, a significant development in this practice occurs only with Ives (and with Brant, as a successor to Ives) in the use of simultaneous but highly contrasting streams, not note-against-note counterpoint, but style against style. I think Cage caught some of this, if accidentally, with Music of Changes, in that his source materials were already highly distinctive in character but the instrumental parts to the Concert for Piano and Orchestra, Atlas Eclipticalis and his Music for Piano series fail to become contrapuntally interesting, in part, by leaving individual notes on the page of an individual part entirely unconnected whether in a referential or a spontaneous melodic or harmonic context. Cage really resolves this, as far as I'm concerned, with his 30 Pieces for String Quartet, in which his precomposition of five different "types of music" which can appear in a part, alone or in combination, creates a reservoir of material with distinctive but non-hierarchical characters that can fill in pitch space and musical time with a capacity similar to the (hierarchical) materials of a tonal system yet without appeal to historical or novel styles as with Ives (or Brant.)
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