The Pointillism of Luigi Nono (Ruijinōno no tenbyō)

          Pointillism or Punctualism is a style of musical composition whose structures are predominantly affected from tone to tone. It is unlike the music that we are used to listening to everyday, which has a certain theme or a melody being developed overtime, and divided by means of phrasing. In Punctual Music, such things are not to be treated with much attention. As I’ve said, the music’s intellect comes from the interaction of the several fragmented musical particles that occur during the duration of the piece. Much similar to Psychology’s “Knowledge Ordering” (more specifically, the known “Bottom-Up processing”), Punctualism involves observing (or in our case, listening) to the individual notes – the “micro-components”. Afterwards we listen to how these several “micro-components” interact with each other. And at the end of the piece, based on how all of these notes have interacted with each other, we can define the “macro-structure”, or the piece as a whole.

          Punctual Music is a direct opposite of linear, group-formed, or mass-formed music. It is music, which consists of separately formed particles.

          One of the best examples of Punctualist music is Luigi Nono’s “Polifonica Monodia Ritmica” scored for Woodwinds, Percussion, and Piano.

          There were rarely any “singable” or how should I say, sustaining themes in the piece, only various fragments. This explains the “separate particles” I was saying a while ago. And at first listening, one might not understand what’s really happening to the piece. One might even say to himself that “this is just an absurd sounding of random notes”. There are no diatonic relationships or any other scalar relationships between notes, which would give us a hint that this is atonality, as well as a scarce utlization and play in rhythm. If we would notice, there aren't much "runs" in the piece, neither could we listen to the rhythmically confusing tuplets. 

          Though as we listen to it again and again, we find out that there is a connection that is being formed from these several separate particles. There are also small hints that the rhythm develops over time, though there still isn't any clear reason as to how it developed (abruptly, I suppose). Also, one of the peculiarities of this piece is in it's instrumentation. Classicalists and Purists might object the idea of having an intellectual piece of music scored for Woodwinds, Piano, and Percussion (particularly, the Snare Drum) because of it's unorthodox manner and imbalance. 

What's worse, is that there is an extreme scarcity in the music's thematic identity, and no immediate sign as to how the music develops.

          This may be what we would call a radical piece of work, because of the seemingly farfetched method it utilizes to express an idea, and for the ordinary listener, the composer's "whimsical ploy in placing notes".