CSM 02: Works by Edwards, Vine, Pearce, & Brophy
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Item Open Access Gerard Brophy: Hydra (1981)(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1981) Composer: Gerard Brophy; Hare, David"Hydra was written for the percussion ensemble Synergy. In an earlier version of the work composed in 1980, Hydra had provided an accompaniment to a mimed theatre piece for the Entr'acte Theatre Company. The work is dedicated to two of its members, Pierre Thibaudeau and Elisabeth Burke. Their production took as its theme the four elements: earth, air, water and fire. In ancient and medieval cosmology these four elements were thought to be the four vital constituentsoftheuniverse. The title Hydra is possibly a reference to the third of the elements, water. Yet the word has other specific meanings including a persistent evil, and a water serpent. Formally, Hydra consists of three quite distinct portions. The firt section, which is predominantly loud, extendes to bar 127. Its end is marked by long silence. The section that follows is mostly slow and quiet and without the vigorous motor rhythms and energy of the initial section. Towards the end of the second part, a section of aleatoric writing occurs in which the players are given some scope for improvisation around specified pitches and in predetermined instrumental groupings. The short concluding section returns to the more aggressive character of the opening. To a large extent, the deployment of percussion instruments aligns with the various sections mentioned above. In the first section, skin drums (bongos and tom-toms) predominate, whilst in the second part, tuned and untuned percussion is used. The sonority of this section is characterised by sustained tremolandi on the marimba, which are played by two of the three percussionists. The final section returns to untuned instruments and, at the end, features woodblocks. Many of the work's musical ideas are characterised by particular instrumental sounds; for example, the marimba is given soft, harmonic textures and the skin drums typically play with loud, brief attacks. The establishment of connections, between form and instrumental choice and between instrumental use and specific musical ideas, is to some extent reminiscent of Varese's writing for percussion in Ionisation. In that work, one of the primary determinants of form is the use of families of percussion instruments (for example, skin or wooden instruments). It is -reasonable to sup~ pose that in both Hydra and Ionisation this concept of sonority as an aspect of form relates to the problems of writing for percussion instruments. With pitched sounds removed from the centre of attention the element of timbre often becomes paramount in percussion works. Hydra features a number of striking and dramatic gestures. This dramatic quality is, at least in part, a result of the work's theatrical origins. The quality of drama in the work is suggested by features such as the sudden alternation of loud sounds with silence and by the rhetorical nature of the ideas in the work. It opens and ends, for example, with a single, loud, short attack on untuned percussion, followed by an extended silence. This idea reappears quite frequently. Yet such strongly marked ideas are not solely theatrical in origin. The influence of a composer such as Xenakis is to some extent apparent. Xenakis's 1975 solo percussion piece Psappha is a work which employs aggressive motor rhythms and isolated loud figures and in many ways has set a standard for more recent percussion works. The rhetorical and ritualised qualities of some neo-romantic works (for example, the music of Busotti or Serocki) are also suggested in Hydra. Nevertheless, these features are also present in the nature of mime (for which the music was originally written), where physical actions sometimes need to be overstated to be clearly communicated. Likewise, mime is often shaped through the use of tableaux, such blocks or panels of activity finding a clear parallel in the structure of Hydra. Hydra was commissioned by the Sydney CorporealMime Theatre with the assistance of the Theatre Board of the Australia Council." -- Andrew SchultzItem Open Access Carl Vine: Defying Gravity (1987)(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1987) Composer: Carl Vine; Hare, David"A recent example of Carl Vine's virtuosic writing for chamber ensemble, Defying Gravity was commissioned with assistance from the Music Board of the Australia Council by the Sydney percussion group Synergy for the first of their 1987 concerts on 20 March in the Broad walk Studio of the Sydney Opera House. As can be seen in the layout diagram reprinted from the score (Figure 7), each of the four Synergy percussionists forms a separate unit comprising three tuned tomtoms and an anvil, two of the players have a single timpano, two a bass drum; all but player 1 have a suspended finger cymbal. Players 1, 2 and 3 move to the centrally placed marimba dming the middle section of the piece and back to their original position for the final section. (In performance it was found necessary to use two marimbas.) Vine's fascination with percussion is evident in earlier chamber works such as Sinfonia (1982), Miniature Ill (1983) and Elegy (1985). For this work, Vine further developed a process of rhythmic polyphony he had employed when writing for a single player: I have always marvelled at the co-ordination and finesse required for even a simple drum roll, while a skilful performance on multiple percussion instruments defies the laws of both probability and physics. In writing for a single percussionist I have always concentrated on producing independent rhythmic lines across several different instruments. In Defying Gravity I wanted to extend this approach so that these lines would appear not only within each part but also across the ensemble as a whole. In live performance, much of the polyphony among the players is visible, and spatial effects such as the division of a rising series of pitches across the ensemble form an important part of the overall effect. For those listening to a recording, it will be helpful to know that pitch relationships between the four units of percussion are a central and unifying part of the compositional process, with a movement from higher pitched instruments (player 1) to lower (player 4). Figure 8 reproduces the composer's instructions on tuning. One might indeed contemplate infinite possibilities: four players with three tom-toms each (high, medium_ and low), four low resonating drums contrasting with the high metallic ping of anvils and the shimmer of finger cymbals stru r with metal beaters, not to mention a variety of stick strokes and the use of the fingertips (see Figure 9). The structure of the piece may be described very simply as a ternary form (ABA). To quote again from the composer's program note: The choice of instrumentation in Defying Gravity helped to determine both the content and structure of the work. The first section uses only tuned tom-toms, which are joined by timpani and anvils in the third and final section. Marimba, entering in the centre of the work, brings with it a new sound world that it eventually dominates as one by one the players explore the delights of this South American invention. The variety of rhythms, textures and tone colours in the first section is remarkable. At first the tom-toms are struck quietly with the fingertips: the combination of shifting metres, repeated rhythmic figures and pointillistic accents across the twelve pitches creates a hypnotic and ritualistic effect. A sudden burst of sticks struck together leads to an extended section where stickwork and fingerwork combine and a number of ostinati arise around which freer rhythmic motifs swirl. After a brief return to the opening material, a clockwork- like ostinato winds the piece up, so to speak: the dynamic level increases steadily, the use of sticks (both on the skins and on the shells of the drums) increasingly dominates and the first section ends in an exuberant display of quasi-rock drumming. Among the comparatively random sounds which follow the climax of the first section is the new sound of he finger cymbal struck by a metal beater. This is, in fact, the beginning of a new accompanying figure for players 2, 3 and 4, while player 1 moves to the marimba to begin the central part of the piece. This accompaniment is so delicate that it retains its profile even after players 2 and 3 have joined player 1 in the stylistic explorations of the marimba music, though eventually the richly polyphonic writing for the three players becomes so dominant that player 4 falls silent. The marimba music is characterised by flowing semiquaver triplets and rapid tremolo chords and it is a massive tremolo chord that marks the end of the middle section, a~ player 4 re-enters the pjece with a forceful drnmming solo that serves as a bridge to the recapitulation of the opening section. The third section contains much that is familiar, though often transformed, and much that is new, notably the anvils and a greater use of beaters. The tempo is quick, and startling contrasts in dynamics and abrupt breaks in the texture bring the work to a satisfying end." -- Brett JohnsonItem Open Access Ross Edwards: Reflections (1985)(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1985) Composer: Ross Edwards; Hare, David"Reflections for piano and percussion is the most recent of a series of works which Edwards refers to as his sacred music. Whereas its predecessors, Shadow DZone (1977), The Tower of Remoteness (1978), Kumari (1980) and Etymalong (1984) demonstrate an increasing concern with compositional austerity. Reflections uses a much more expansive palette of sonorities. This is not to suggest that it is out of character with its companion pieces. Indeed the qualities of its gestures and their unique repetitive organisation are unmistakable trademarks of the series. Nonetheless it is surprising that Reflections should follow chronologically from Etymalong which is an extreme example of reducing the musical material of a piece to just a few characteristic motivic gestures. Reflections, by contrast, involves a complex interplay of a considerably greater number of sonorities, especially since the two pieces are of comparable length. New material is introduced consistently throughout the piece, and it is only at its very end that there is any obvious reiteration of previously stated material. The patterns of repetition and variation of the material in this short section are typical ofEdwards's structural approach in the sacred music. Less typical in Reflections is the overall pattern of repetition and variation. As stated above a considerable number of new motives is introduced as the piece progresses, but there is little reiteration of material until the last fifth of the work. Still less typical is the piano solo (bars 75-78) which evokes a strong sense of stylistic coherence, but without the repetition of a single musical idea. This seems alien to the fundamental concept of Edward's sacred music idiom which depends for its trance-like effect upon the insistent repetition of short motivic gestures. The different motives of Reflections, though numerous, have a similarity of construction which creates a feeling of stylistic cohesion. Apart from similar intervallic constructions there is a persistent pattern of motives or sections of motives which involve three closely spaced attack. Some xamples of thi trend are given in Figure 6: the three relevant attacks in each case are numbered. There are further examples of motives with three closely spaced attacks in Reflections but, apart from the piano solo referred to above, almost all musical ideas in the work consist of some small number of closely spaced attacks which are subjected to repetitive treatments along the same lines as previously described for the opening of the work. The intervallic construction of the various motives also contributes to the stylistic uniformity of the work. Most chords involve one or more major seventh intervals although several other intervals, notably the major ninth, minor seventh and major second, are also prominent. Edwards has established for himself an identifiable harmonic language in his sacred series, and there are even sonorities, which aremmon to two or more of the works. The low three tone cluster, for example, is found in each of the five works. Reflections employs four players. One plys piano, another vibraphone, another plays three gongs, tam-tam, cowbell, sandblocks and marimba, and the fourth plays glockenspiel, cowbell, two temple blocks and bass drum. The scoring is dominated by the piano, as it is in all the other works of the series. Chordal attacks by piano and vibraphone are often heard simultaneously with soft gong, tam-tam or cowbell strokes, a technique which yields subtle timbral modifications. Even though the piano seems to dominate most of the motives, it is the sound of the vibraphone which lingers at the end of many of the complex sonorities. The opportunity of using a wider variety of timbres than in the previous three works of the series has enabled the composer to explore to a greater extent his idea of the randomness of the intersecting rhythms of nature. Yet the expansion of the textural field in Reflections and the associated proliferation of musical ideas can in some ways be regarded as a regression from the austere compositional perfection of The Tower of Remoteness, Kumari and Etymalong to the richer textural concepts of Shadow D-Zone. The piano solo in Reflections may even be considered as reminiscent of the flamboyant Monos II (1970). Considering the mixture of old and new compositional approaches in Reflections it will be interesting to see how the sacred Reflections was commissioned by Synergy, who first performed the work in the Sydney Opera House on 7 July 1985." -- Michael HannanItem Open Access Trevor Pearce: Deserts I (1982)(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1982) Composer: Trevor Pearce; Hare, David"Deserts I is drawn from a series of three works which owe their inspiration to the idea of deserts in both literal and metaphorical senses. The work in this series set out to explore and interpret specific aspects of our understanding of deserts. Deserts I for instance concentrates on the evocation of space, colour, distance and contour. The subsequent two pieces, Deserts II composed for Flederman and Deserts III composed for the Seymour Group, deal with the idea in a wider, more abstract framework. Deserts I is made up of three movements, each centred on a specific idea. The first focuses on the suggestion of soft intricate vibration and gentle power. The grainy texture of the side drum rolls in the opening bars gradually gives rise to subtle shifts of colour and rhythmic layers with emergence of tuned percussion instruments in all parts. While the piece is essentially non-programmatic, the second movement introduces and develops a harsher, more violent component. It takes as its point of departure the British atomic testing in the Maralinga desert area in the 1950s. Repeated rhythmic figurations give way to material of a more fragmented and suspended nature. With the third movement the focus shifts to ideas of regeneration and vitality. The texture is once again sustained, built up of the continuous repetition and transformation of melodic motives, primarily among the tuned percussion. Non-tuned percussion instruments are used on the one hand to support and expand the texture, and on the other to interrupt and change the direction of the musical flow. The percussion ensemble is treated largely as an amorphous and intangible sonorous body: sometimes homogeneous and closely synchronised, sometimes four percussion players with the fourth performer doubling on piano. Deserts I was composed especially for Synergy." -- Trevor Pearce