CSM 01: Works By Hair, Smalley, Vine, Wesley-Smith
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Item Open Access Roger Smalley: Impulses (1986)(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1986) Composer: Roger Smalley; Harding, Max"For many twentieth century composers, returning to an earlier work as the basis for a new composition has been both a fertile source for renewal and a means of creating a sense of continuity. The Italian composer Luciano Berlo is one prominent contemporary composer who has undertaken such reworkings of earlier pieces, particularly in his series of ensemble works Chemins which are based on the solo work series, the Sequenze. Berio has described the process of reworking an existing work as like peeling back the layers of an onion: 'each new layer creates a new, though related surface, and each older layer assumes a new function as soon as it is covered'. 8 Other composers such as Bart6k and Ravel have produced various versions of a single . Vt'.Or}c. :Fore~ruppJe,_R~v~l's_Lq, V.al,$e ~ppeare~ i1.1 I920 in three versions: one for piano, another for two pianos, and a third for orchestra. Allowing a single conception to take on a number of manifestations is not limited to composers of this century. One need only think of Bach and a work such as the B minor Mass with its borrowings from earlier works to see the validity of this. Smalley's Impulses for flute, trombone, cello, piano, synthesiser and percussion is a 1986 revision of an earlier piece called Pulses. In a program note on the work the composer has commented: Towards the end of last year (1985) I made a thorough revision of my 1969 work Pulses for fifteen brass instruments, five drummers and live electronics for a revival in London. This gave me the impulse to further explore some of the ideas in that work which I had neglected in recent years. I had been thinking about the implications of the unique makeup of the full Flederman sextet for many months, having already tried and failed to write a highly contrapuntal chamber work for it. Now, I decided to explore ideas from Pulses with the Flederman sextet, treating it, basically, as a pair of continually changing trios. To this end the flute and 'cello are amplified to bring them up to the rather high dynamic level of the rest of the ensemble. The basic idea of Pulses is a series of overlapping rhythmic patterns in different tempi with improvised transitions between them. Pulses is generally slow moving and meditative in effect, but in this new piece the same ideas are applied to music of a much more dynamic character. A simple pitch structure, gradually expanding from a unison to an octave, permits concentration on the rhythmic intricacies. As Smalley notes, the handling of pitch is in contrast to the rhythmic organisation of the work. In fact, it is the element of rhythm that most dominates the score. A fair characterisation of Impulses is as a set of rhythmic variations on the initial section. The opening portion of the work (to bar 87) contains a diminishing rhythmic process. The drumner strikes a tuned drum in a series of attacks with shrinking silences interspersed (that is, 11 semiquavers rest, 10 semiquavers, rest, 9 semiquavers rest and so on). When the process reaches its end it is repeated (at bar 25) but with a shorter silence between attacks than the first time. Other instruments are introduced playing fixed pulses, ostinato-Iike, which are contracted for each new process. The overall effect is a dramatic increase in tension through the continually contracting pulses. The technique is employed again in the work and is accompanied by pitch expansions from the unison. A further resource called upon in the work is that of polyagogics; that is, the simultaneous use of two or more tempi. Charles Ives, in works such as The Unanswered Question, pioneered this technique which has become widely used in much aleatoric and electronic music. The use of the technique poses significant problems for the performers (and the composer) in maintaining coordination and in making the presence of differing speeds an audible phenomenon. Smalley frequently employs instrumental groupings from the sextet at differing tempi. The textural result is, inevitably, rich and complex. Another moment of rhythmic density is achieved at bar 175 where the ensemble is instructed freely to distribute given pitches (in a box) on a given rhythm. On this occasion, and in other points in the work, the players are following through individual or group processes of gradual musical change. On the level of sonority, many interesting features are apparent. Dynamics are continually presented in a terraced way. This is a feature that reflects the blocklike formal character of the work. A related feature is the suppression of dynamics to low levels at several moments of intense rhythmic activity. This results in a heightened intensity at later stages of the work. This technique could only be successful so long as the ensemble is evenly matched in terms of range (hence the choice of alto instruments) and in dynamics (thus, amplification is used). The choice of an angklung-Iike timbre for the synthesiser is perhaps a clue to the nature of the work. Features such as patterned rhythms, repeated phrases, terraced dynamics, polyagogics, limited pitch choices (perhaps reminiscent of modes), the sound of the skin drum and the work's static quality suggest the sounds of a Balinese gamelan. Likewise, the notion of a continuously unfolding process is also characteristic of a non-Western aesthetic. Impulses was composed in May 1986, and was commissioned by Flederman with assistance from the Music Board of the Australia Council. It is dedicated to the members of Flederman." -- Andrew SchultzItem Open Access Carl Vine: Elegy (1985)(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1985) Composer: Carl Vine; Harding, Max"The expression of grief has been a recurrent focus in Western art. Musical works as different as Josquin's Deploration sur la mort de Johan Okeghem or Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem possess unique expressive qualities that, at least in part, relate to the sense of loss experienced by the composer. Carl Vine's Elegy is a short work for instrumental sextet in memory of Peter Harthoorn, a friend who died suddenly in 1985. In a radio discussion considering the work, the composer Roger Smalley referred to it as a piece in which the 'dark side' of the composer's personality emerges. The alternation of plaintive and lyrical melodic writing and quite savage, loud outbursts suggests this quality. Throughout the course of Elegy lyrical expression is gradually overwhelmed and almost swamped by loud, texturally complex writing. The juxtaposition of opposites mentioned here provides a model for the work. Whilst it opens with a brief, loud flourish, the character of the opening is quiet, diatonic, tonal and tuneful. Brief interruptions of loud material soon begin to occur, suggesting the unfolding of a dramatic structure. Yet even in the early stages, where the cello takes an overtly soloistic and melodic role, intricately patterned ostiruzti in cross rhythms create an uneasy background (see, for example, bars 23-7 and 39-51 ). After each loud intrusion in the work (at bars 15-16, 30-7 and 99-148), the music is rebuilt, frequently using ostinati or similar figures as an accompaniment to lyricism. The loud outbursts increase in length and impact until the final and longest outburst at bars 99-148. This sustained loud section surpasses the role of interruption and emerges as the dominating and climactic part of Elegy. The music that follows as a kind of coda is high and dreamlike - a gradual dying away. A striking quality of drama is apparent in the way the music unfolds. The clear characterisation of ideas as either passive or violent also suggests this. Vine's extensive experience as a composer for ballet is evident here: the music always focuses the dramatic point in a direct manner. Elegy was commissioned with assistance from the Music Board of the Australia Council by Flederman, of which Vine was a founding member. The scoring is for flute ( doubling piccolo), cello, trombone, piano four hands {the second player doubles electronic organ), and one percussionist. The variety of colours and instrumental sub-groups that such a combination permits is exploited by Vine. A feature of the work is, in fact, the roles into which instruments are cast: cello as lyrical and expressive; flute, upper piano and tuned percussion predominantly decorative; trombone, lower piano and organ providing sustained textural underpinning; and untuned percussion, aggressive and loud. Whilst Elegy has many strongly tonal elements (diatonic harmonies, pedal points and other moments of tonal repose, triadic and quartal based melodic writing), their presence is quite frequently offset by Vine's placement of such ideas within an otherwise dissonant context. Likewise, the density and intensity of rhythmic writing have a counterbalancing effect on the pitch material. Obviously, this combination of diverse elements is a consciously eclectic act. Other unifying features in the work are the use of repetition of small melodic fragments, the isometric use oflonger phrases and the gradual expansion of the cello's opening figure. In addition, there are strong references to the passacaglia in the use of repeated patterns oflong notes in the trombone and bass parts of the piano and in sequences of chord progressions (see especially the trombone and organ parts in bars 99-148). Perhaps the logic of this 1s not solely musical. Passacaglias, chaconnes and ground basses have often been associated with the theme of death: Dido's lament from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas or the Crucifixus from Bach's B minor Mass are but two outstanding examples." -- Andrew SchultzItem Open Access Ganymede/Prometheus (1982)(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1982) Composer: Graham Hair; Harding, Max"Graham Hair divides his music into two types related to the association of words and music. The first type, vocal pieces, forms the mainstream of his musical activity while the second type, instrumental works, many of which, like Ganymede/Prometheus, relate to a literary program, is subsidiary to his main compositional activity. Ganymede/Prometheus was written over a period of ten days towards the end of 1982 and was first performed in Las Vegas at the University of Nevada in January 1983 by the Flederman ensemble on their first American tour. The dichotomy of the title is realised on a number of levels, the most obvious being the two sections of the piece and the musical personality of the chief protagonists the flute and the trombone, and incidentally the respective players in Flederman, Geoffrey Collins and Simone de Haan. 'Ganymede' embodies a certain attitude towards belief - a follower of received opinion, while 'Prometheus' is somewhat the opposite - a discoverer both led on and finally defeated by what he discovers. The music of 'Ganymede', in words of the composer, is that of 'mercurial aesthete' while Prometheus is more 'shaggy and rough spoken'. These musical personalities are predominantly realised in the styles of instrumental writing rather than in any specific harmonic or melodic characteristics. At the same time there are binary oppositions within the harmonic structures which run parallel to, if not being expressive of, the dichotomy of the title. The aesthetic. of the .piece twns on this .dichotomy. First, it is reflected in the relationship of the piece to a historical model, in this case two early poems by Goethe and settings of these by Schubert and Wolf. The notion of a Goethe setting already embodies a certain received nineteenth century attitude to music which is subject to a 'Promethean' transformation. Similarly the notion of adopting a model, in this case Schubert's setting, exemplifies a received notion of twentieth century neoclassical structure. This is transformed to the extent that the surface and ostensible structure of Ganymede/Prometheus are very different from those of its models with which it shares none of the stylistic referents which are the characteristic rhetoric of neoclassicism The manner in which the structure is derived from Schubert's turns more on a similar approach to resolution and interplay of' opposite' musical parameters ( or at least ideas which are made to appear opposite by being placed in binary opposition to one another). The derivation of form is thus structuralist rather than morphological. Schubert's song ( as the composer of Ganymede/ Prometheus has pointed out) progresses from the key of A flat to the key of F, the two keys being linked by the note C flat/B natural which is foreign to both, though being capable of resolution to either B flat ( as in the key of A flat) or C (as the dominant of F).In many ways the B is thus neutral and can be 'poured' into either mould. In Ganymede/Prometheus this structural determinant is realised through whole tone tetrachords which can be altered either to become or to resemble tetrachords which are found in the cycle of fourths on the one hand or to resemble tetrachords which are part of the dominant seventh on the other. The first section, 'Ganymede', is reflected in a black for white image in 'Prometheus' which realises the same structural components but aniculates them in a binary opposite fashion. Thus 'Ganymede' is scored for alto flute, flute with keyboaros and percussion and is Joined at the climax by the alto trombone, while 'Prometheus' is for tenor trombone with keyboards and percussion joined at the climax by the piccolo. Each piece is divided into three tripartite sections which can be seen as textural and hannonic variants of one another. From the rhythmic point of view each section is marked by a change of figuration and a change of polyrhythm. The polyrhythms in 'Ganymede' move from 3 against 4 to 8 against 9 and in 'Prometheus' from 9 against 8 to 4 against 3. Harmonically the sections in 'Ganymede' are marked by the way in which the whole tone tetrachords are filtered into other harmonic types. In 'Prometheus' the same principle is applied to tetrachords from the cycle of fourths. What the listeners will be aware of is a harmonic world out of which emerge, in varying degrees of relief, elements of the whole tone and pentatonic ( cycle of fourths) world, for example the emerging whole tone sonorities of 'Ganymede' and the eruption of pentatonic clusters at the climax of 'Prometheus'. Since its first performance, the score has been through several versions in which the basic musical material and structure have been realised in different ways for each performance ('like Handel's Messiah' as the composer says). Each new version is not so much a revision of the original as a reconstruction of the original musical and literary ideas starting afresh and without reference to the previous score. In thus refusing to take on a fixed and stable form, Ganymede/ Prometheus has probably displayed its most Promethean characteristics. If, as the composer intends, a definitive version emerges in 1989, the balance may well be restored in favour of 'Ganymede'." -- Peter Mc CallumItem Open Access Martin Wesley-Smith: Snark-Hunting (1984)(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1984) Composer: Martin Wesley-Smith; Harding, Max"Snark-Hunting was composed as a study for the musical comedy Boojum!, which I wrote in the following year. Boojum! is about the life and work of Lewis Carroll, and is based on his epic poem The Hunting of the Snark. (English composer Mike Batt has also based a piece on this poem, and several other composers have set it to music.) An intrepid band of adventurers, led by the Bellman, sets off in search of a Snark, a strange creature about which they know only a few odd facts (it .has a hollow .but crisp taste, for example, and is fond of bathing machines). They have been warned that if their Snark turns out to be a Boojum then they will softly and suddenly vanish away. Undeterred by this possibly terrible fate the Baker, who some believe is Carroll's representation of himself, surges to the front, finds the Snark, then promptly vanishes ('For the Snark was a Boojum, you see'). Snark-Hunting 1s a programmatic piece loosely based on Carroll's poem. It attempts, like several of my other Carroll pieces, to paint a musical picture of his drawing room at Oxford, where he often used to entertain his young girl friends by tinkering with music boxes so that they played their tunes backwards and upsidedown. The piano is the Baker, the flute the Beaver {Alice?), and percussion the Bellman; the tape is the rest of the crew. One of the tunes used upside-down and backwards during the piece 1s heard rightways-up and forwards at the end: Rock-a-Bye Baby; other snippets come from Humpty-Dumpty, Pat-a-Cake, Oranges and Lemons and others. The tape part for Snark-Hunting was realised in the Electronic Music Studio of the NSW State Conservatorium of Music using, amongst other things, a Fairlight Computer Musical Instrument. The piece was commissioned (and first performed) by Flederman with financial assistance from the Music Board of the Australia Council." -- Martin Wesley-Smith