Ramble On

Got down to making some firm decisions on a new work I’m composing for wind ensemble.  To avoid rewriting a summary, here’s an email I just sent the conductor of the ensemble planning to premiere it next spring.

The form and generative/governing concepts are fairly clear to me now.  It is all inspired by the Blue Ridge Mountains and the folk music traditions of the southern Appalachians. . . .  I have transcribed a recording of “Wayfaring Stranger” made in Beech Mountain by Horton Barker, as exactly as possible.  The oddities of that recording (asymmetrical meters, accidental/incidental microtonality) will generate some of the music.  I also plan on using that transcription later in the piece.

I also want to incorporate some abstractions on Appalachian instrumental music, especially variations on traditional banjo and fiddle conventions.  I want to emphasize, however, that I do not want to compose a “bluegrass” piece for band, just abstracting and reworking some hallmarks of that music–like fiddle portamentos and clawhammer banjo rhythmic gestures.

These ideas are perhaps tangential, however, to the main thrust of the piece.  I am fascinated with the timbral possibilities of the wind ensemble and plan to exploit timbre and texture, sometimes to the obscuring of melody and rhythm.  I am planning to include a fair amount of improvisation in order to achieve the kind of intricate textures and independent playing that I want (3 to 5 notes in a box, or melodic fragments played independently of the tempo, etc.).  The harmonic interest will come from a conflict between E min. pentatonic and the octatonic scale C, Db, Eb, etc.  At the end, I plan on using timbre and wide separation in pitch space to help these two harmonic worlds merge naturally.

To help bring together all these inspirations floating around in my head, I got a sketch pad and went to work.  I sketched a few shapes intuitively, with no thought of any concrete ideas.  The top portion of the sketch, which I decided to make my guide for percussion timbres, textural density and volume, is clearly mountainous.  The right side, especially, reminds me of the Blue Ridge Mountains with ribbons of fog below and stars above.

I’ve sketched out pieces before, but this is more graphic than I usually do.  There are, of course, some words and, on the left, some notes on staves, but it’s mostly visual.  There is also a lot of empty space.  I kind of know what’s going to come there, and didn’t feel the need to fill up all the available space.  I found this very useful to me (I’m a visual person) to organize my ideas.  It makes perfect sense to me–the visual representing the aural.  I realize it doesn’t for many people, but I’ve always found it very easy to compose a sculpture or a painting…  makes me wonder why I don’t do it more often.

Of course, the visual doesn’t mean the same aural for everyone (and vice versa).  I’ve often thought it would be a good exercise to give several composers the same sketch and have them write a piece from it.. just to see all the different outcomes.

After sketching, I notated a more detailed version of the first minute.  It’s convenient that the first minute is so sparse.  Of course there will be a lot of details to work out for the final version, but it will come faster than the more dense textures that come later–and fast is good right now (I want to do a string quartet as soon as this piece is finished).  As the initial sparse clusters/tectonically-slow melody give way to a churning rhythmic section that begins the buildup to the climax, there needs to be a bridge or a transitional section.  For now, I have several 3-5 note motives that can be rhythmicized in many different ways.  These will be building blocks that I could use as improvisatory cells or work out and notate exactly.  They will begin in isolation, then combined into duets and trios, etc.  Either way, it’s too much for today.  I thought about going on to the rhythmic section that will come next, but I want it to evolve organically from the transition, so I need to do that first.  I might start working on the chorale, though, later this evening.

The
mind may be used
either to ig-
nore ambient
sounds, pitches oth-
er then the eight-
y-eight, dura-
tions which are not
counted, timbres which
are unmusi-
cal or distaste-
ful, and in gen-
eral to con-
trol and under-
stand an avail-
able exper-
ience. Or the
mind may give up
its desire to
improve on cre-
ation and func-
tion as a faith-
ful receiver
of experi-
ence.

From Gioseffo Zarlino, Istitutioni harmoniche (1558)

…The Pythagoreans in particular believed that the world was composed musically, and that the heavens caused harmony in their revolutions, and that our soul is formed according to the same laws, and that it is awakened and its powers vivified by songs and instrumental music.

The ancient Greeks (and the Renaissance writers like Zarlino who brought the ancients to the… early modernists) believed that the movement of heavenly bodies was just like the movement of musical tones and harmonies.  This was called musica universalis or music of the universe (as opposed to music of the body–singing–and instrumental music).  I’ve always been moved by this idea and wondered what these sounds would be–not just harmonically, but timbally as well (Just to clarify, you can’t really HEAR musica universalis.  In addition to it having always been more metaphorical, sound doesn’t exist in the vacuum of space.  Don’t tell George Lucas.).  I don’t know if I’ve been unduly influenced by Star Trek IV, but when I close my eyes and see Jupiter whoosh past Saturn, I hear whale song.

Many cultures and religions place special meaning on certain numbers, but I don’t know of any that do the same with ratios.  I think if we’re talking about harmony of the spheres, then we need to get to the ratios of the movements of the planets.  I can’t really get into it here, but I would really like to explore these harmonies sometime.

Over the past week I’ve enjoyed reading about the mythical beginnings of music.  The Greeks said Pythagoras first heard music in hammers striking anvils.  The Jews and Christians said it was Jubal in a similar story.  I prefer J.R.R. Tolkien’s version from The Silmarillion, and I’ll leave it in parting since it reminds me of the Pythagoreans.

In the beginning Eru, the One, who in the Elvish tongue is named Ilúvatar, made the Ainur of his thought; and they made a great Music before him. In this Music the World was begun; for Ilúvatar made visible the song of the Ainur, and they beheld it as a light in the darkness. And many among them became enamoured of its beauty, and of its history which they saw beginning and unfolding as in a vision. Therefore Ilúvatar gave to their vision Being, and set it amid the Void, and the Secret Fire was sent to burn at the heart of the World; and it was called Eä.

Here is Niceta of Remesiana (On the Benefit of Psalmody, 4th century C.E.) after discussing church music at length (joyful noise, yada yada yada).  He ends this way:

Those, however, who are not able to blend and adapt themselves to the others, ought better to sing in a subdued voice than to create a great clamor; and thus they fulfill their liturgical obligation and avoid disrupting the singing community.  For it is not given to all to possess a supple and pleasant voice.

So, who should and should not sing (or perform musically) in church?  What about congregational singing?  And remember, in your comments please try not to offend the singing community.

Johannes Tinctoris in Proportionale musices (1474) talking about ancient Greece.

…nor was anyone ignorant of music considered an educated man.

Yeah, I know that sounds pretty inflammatory, especially coming from someone who kind of enjoys theory.  I’m just going to quote a couple of passages from James McKinnon, musicologist and editor of The Early Christian Period and the Latin Middle Ages, and briefly comment.

Musica in Late Antiquity was not so much the everyday product of singing and playing that we call music today as it was the academic enterprise that we call music theory.  Moreover, the music theory of the time was considerably more abstract than the effort that goes by that name in recent times; certainly nineteenth-century harmonic practice.  In Late Antiquity the subject was permeated with Neoplatonic thinking, where ideas were considered to be real and where external manifestations of any sort–what we call reality–were mere shadows of those ideas.  In this context the theoretical constructs themselves were the musical reality:  good theory was the product of sophisticated mathematical calculation and the ingenioius manipulation of tonal symmetries.

And a couple pages later

…[Medieval music theorists] and their successors developed a body of music theory that not only described their musical practice in a consistent and systematic way, but set Western music on its peculiarly rational course….  [This rational course] permitted the eventual composition of great architectonic musical structures like those of the later eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries, but it may have forced Western music to sacrifice much of the rhythmic and tonal nuance that characterizes the musics of certain other high cultures.

It’s fascinating to me that not much has changed in over a thousand years.  First, the field of music theory is quite abstract today–so according to McKinnon, I guess I can only imagine how abstract it was in the first millenium C.E.  Intellectual compartmentalization (McKinnon’s term) is not only a hallmark of music theory, but of theoretical studies in any field within the Western intellectual context.

And that brings me to my second comment.  Can we link the whole of Western thought from the Greeks to World War I and beyond to Modernism?  Modernism is so inextricably linked with Western thought that the terms are nearly synonymous.  Despite the past century’s reactions against Modernism (eg. Postmodernism) and globalization, I suspect that Modernsism is so entrenched in Western minds that it will remain the default intellectual paradigm for decades (centuries?).  (Here’s a link to a chart contrasting Modernism with Postmodernism.  Some problems, especially oversimplifications, but a goot place to start)

The good news is that Postmodernism with its outward-looking, inclusive nature is already influencing the abstraction of music theory.  Nowadays one can easily find theoretical articles on music from around the world, including tuning systems, rhythms, and other musical elements not supported by Western theory and notation, as well as clear, practical applications of theorectical concepts that aid performers.

Music is a science of melos and of those things contingent to melos.  Some define it as follows:  “the theoretical and practical art of perfect and instrumental melos”; and others thus:  “an art of the seemly in sounds and motions.”  But we define it more fully and in accordance with our thesis:  “knowledge of the seemly in bodies and motions.”
-Aristides Quintilianus, On Music (1.4), ca. 300 C.E.

These days I am studying every day for my upcoming placement exams at UNT this August.  I’m going through all the online chapter outlines from the Norton history books and also reading Strunk’s Source Readings.  I had considered using this blog to summarize my studies every day, but decided that would get really dull.  However, from time to time I will discuss things that I am studying based on a very important criterion:  what I think is interesting.  Look for the catergory “Placement Exam Study.”

Here’s something I thought was funny from Aristotle’s Politics:

And let us add that [flute]-music happens to possess the additional property telling against its use in education that playing it prevents the employment of speech.

George Crumb might disagree!  In his Vox Balaenae (1971) he instructs the flutist to “sing-flute,” or sing while playing.  (Although in fairness to Aristotle, he was referring to the Greek wind instrument the aulos, many of which were double-reeded (like the oboe) and would have made aulos-singing very difficult.)

And the quote of the day, from the same source:

…[B]oys must have some occupation, and one must think Archytas’s rattle a good invention, which people give to children in order that while occupied with this they may not break any of the furniture, for young things cannot keep still.

Megan and I were talking last night about opera. She hates it (though she did really enjoy the one opera we’ve seen together–a BYU production of Le Nozze di Figaro). She doesn’t like that style of singing. It’s not an uncommon viewpoint among those of my generation and even the one before me. Seems that most people my age (who aren’t musicians) don’t like the high notes, the vibrato, the resonance of operatic (bel canto) singing. It is a little distracting for people who grew up with folk-derived music, with its more intimate, speechlike quality.

My theory has always been that the rise of recorded music, with microphones and amplification, made the bel canto style obsolete. Bel canto (”beautiful singing” in Italian) was developed during the 17th century in Italy around the same time as opera grew out of more and more elaborate and complex art songs called madrigals.  The rise in popularity of opera led to larger venues that required louder voices (which were also needed to sing over the expanding orchestras).  The need for loud, powerful voices in large concert halls with large orchestras only increased with the demands of Romantic composers like Wagner and Mahler.

“Hey mister! I don’t mean to be tellin’ tales out of school, but there’s a feller in there that’ll pay you ten dollars if you sing into his can.”

-Oh Brother Where Art Thou

The microphone let anyone sing and be heard over instruments in a large hall without formal training (required by bel canto).  By the 1940s the most popular vocalists were crooners singing with the big bands.  A generation later amplified singing had acquired a diversity that made bel canto seem inflexible and outdated.  Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, Smokey Robinson, Little Richard all had unique styles.  Who among us can tell the Three Tenors aparts by listening? Just kidding… a little.

All this brings me to something I read this morning in book called The Beatles as Musicians: The Quarry Men through Rubber Soul (Walter Everett, Oxford University Press, 2001).  Here’s part of the excerpt from page 71.

…the solo singers of that time [the 1950s], spearheaded by Presley, make their expression as physical and individual as possible.  What was at the time frequently condemned as the product of a lack of training (in a fiercely fought generation-defined battle of tastes) might conversely be appreciated as a new interest in expressive ornamentation, comparable to the situation created by the introduction of the Nuove Musiche at the turn of the seventeenth century.

What was condemned for lack of training, rock and roll, has become so common a generation later, that bel canto is foreign and difficult to comprehend (even when sung in English).  Ironically, perhaps we’ve traded a condemnation of a lack of training for a condemnation of the pretentiousness of training.

Forgot what we were talking about….

Megan: It reminds me of that Norah Jones song.

Me: “Don’t Know Why”?

Megan: No, “Cold, Cold Heart.”

Me: That’s a Hank Williams song.

Megan: Well, now it’s a Norah Jones song.

Link to the Hank Williams version.