Skip to main content

Initial thoughts

My first thought is to look to the instruments for inspiration about how to approach the piece. The ensemble is by volunteer so from year-to-year we never know what we have to work with, but this year's line-up is more bizarre than normal.


  • 3 flutes 
  • 2 clarinets (I'm hoping one can double bass-clarinet)  
  • saxophone (probably alto but I'm hoping tenor also) 
  • trumpet, cornet, euphonium
  • percussion 
  • piano
  • classical guitar
  • cello

Clearly I can't approach this with classical orchestral 'choirs' in mind; there's no string group, and a real lack of bass instruments across the board. My instinct is to divide the piece into solos, with the rest of the ensemble supporting in different ways as a group. Here's my first attempt at thinking through how to approach the ensemble.

  • piano & guitar duet.
    • I was inspired by Linda Catlin Smith's Drifter for guitar and piano. In her piece the two instruments play in a broken unison, constantly drifting in and out of time (and pitch) with each other. I liked the idea of the drifting, and also that the piano has to play extremely quietly to balance the acoustic guitar. See later post for details.
  • cello solo that will probably use techniques from my other recent string works (see Careful Plaiting of Weak Ties) focussing on string preparations that create inharmonic multiphonics. 
  • saxophone solo, probably using multiphonics: see there are neither wholes nor parts 
  • Maybe a percussion solo focussing on drawing inharmonic partials out of metal pipes, something like my Resonant Paths: 
For all of these solos I'll try to use similar material, or common pitches at least to connect things. The rest of the ensemble will be used during the solos as support (adding weight to particular points/lines/gestures, sustaining certain pitches etc.) and outside the solos as a mass of sound. I have a sound-image in mind of the flutes tumbling over each other, who knows where that will go...


It's also worth saying that I don't know most of the players, so I'll have to arrange a lot of time to work with them to write to their strengths. Most of my most important formative composition experiences came from working with musician friends, it's imperative to be able to work with players to really get inside the instruments.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Opening Section + Magic Squares

This section has no solos, it's a simple contrast of two strata: (1) descending rapid scales, and (2) sustained chords swelling and receding. Listen to the opening page (score below) here: If you cannot see the audio controls, your browser does not support the audio element Ex.1: score p.1 The pitches for both are derived from the magic square. The chords are most straightforward, they simply read the horizontals of the square as 6-note chords. The piece starts with the uppermost vertical (the main material + high G), and works its way down. E G# D F# A# G B F A C# A# D G# C E C# F B D# G F A D# G B G# C F# A# D B D# A C# F A# Ex.2: magic square, showing different transposed 5-note sequences (alternating red and blue) Here are the voicings; which I just worked on the piano intuitively by starting with the horizontal as written, then moving notes around to form triads where possible. Note also that I opted for a smoother orchestration across the t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sax & cymbals duet

The second section (bars 34–71 of the finished score v1) of the piece is an improvised duet for tenor saxophone and bowed cymbals. I've already referred to the ensemble part for this section, see here for an explanation of the system used to generate the asynchronous ensemble part from the magic square. The duet uses exclusively multiphonics on both instruments. "Multiphonics" are not chords (collections of single notes played simultaneously on different vibrating objects), rather they are multiple-sounds, metastable vibrations where more than one pitch is vibrating simultaneously on the same object so   they interfere with each other to form complex timbres of difference tones. Playing multiphonics requires practicing a specific skill to learning to balance the multiple-pitches. For saxophone, the tonal flexibility of the usual monophonic (single pitch) technique is sacrificed because the multiphonic will only stay balanced with a very specific mix of embouchure-pos...
Post a Comment
Read more

cello solo v2 - orchestration

Re-working the generated part: Before I get to orchestrating the cello solo, I decided I need to re-work the generated line. The previous line (ex.1 below) wasn't too practical, and didn't give the cellist enough leeway to work with the prepared-string to bring out the desired sounds: the whole point here is that the preparations allow for different harmonics and multiphonics to emerge, and that the tablature-style notation constrains the player's actions to limit what specific sounds emerge. Ex.1: cello solo v1 (notation explained below) In the notation (as explained in earlier post ) there's a 6-line stave to indicate not pitches but bow positions, between the preparation (bottom) and bridge (top); essentially sul-tasto to sul-pont . The part mostly only uses the right hand for playing, with the left hand occasionally used for timbre variation through interference (see b.143–145). To generate the part, I allowed the isorhythm (ex.2) to run for nine iterat...
Post a Comment
Read more