James Tenney isn't a name commonly associated with things people remember, but he was among the most singular figures in the American avant-garde music scene of the 60's, and was at the forefront of movements as diverse as minimalism and scoring Stan Brakhage shorts. I've played a handful of his pieces and if there's anything I find attractive about his work it's that he had a predilection for tiny pieces, specifically pieces small enough to be mailed as a postcard, like this one:
Among them is the most memorable pseudo-Avant-Garde valentine I've seen yet, aside from the work of the great Baude Cordier:
Now, I can't be certain that the piece functions as a round, but it looks like every measure could sound OK on top of each other, meaning that the next voice might be able to enter at the start of any measure, though I have yet to wrangle a group of children together to test this. I do know that the inner circle is identical to the outer one and the lyrics, taken from Gertrude Stein's poem "Sacred Emily", are exquisitely banal, even more than Stein's world-champion one-dimensionaler "I Am Rose". The setting includes a neat off-set loop form where the words shift over one note each phrase repetition, a kind of rudimentary phasing. While I'd like to think that the piece is a valentine to fellow composer Philip Corner, upon hearing a recording of one possible realization it feels more like an experiment to make people's heads explode.
There's also kindergartner's doing it, most likely a result of the anti-vaccination movement.
A rose is a rose is a rose is a valentine*.
~PNK
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