Martin Wesley-Smith: Pat-a-Cake (1980)

Abstract

"Children's rhymes and their accompanying tunes tend to be very simple. Because they are based on the rhythms and intonation f.speech they often.repr~sent examples of playground refinement: music in which constant use has eradicated any inessential adornment. Like hymn tunes they conform to conventional notions of a theme for variation: that is, stripped down source material with unlimited potential for expansion or embellishment. Wesley-Smith's Pat-a-Cake for solo tenor trombone and tape takes the first three notes of its namesake song as its musical point of departure. These notes consist simply of an arpeggiated major triad in a triplet pattern. That the work never proceeds past these three notes is a measure of the potential Wesley-Smith is able to find in the most basic of source materials. For much of the work WesleySmith treats the triad in such an obsessive manner that the characteristic sonorities and textures are entirely saturated by its statements and transformations. The tape part of the work was created on the Fairlight CMI. Wesley-Smith has worked with the Fairlight in much of his recent music, including For Marimba and Tape and Snark-Hunting. The transparent, diatonic textures and metrically articulated rhythms of these works are also apparent in Pat-a-Cake. At its premiere Pat-aCake was given with live performance on the Fairlight. The tape part was subsequently recorded in the form heard on this disc; it is quite restricted in its choice of sonorities and most sounds used resemble or are modifications of the trombone's timbre. This is not surprising, given that the work was composed in 1980 in the early days of digital sampling. This technique, in which live sounds are 'sampled' and electronically imitated, was pioneered by Fairlight. The similarity of tape and trombone sonorities is also reflected in the work's structure. The tape part often imitates and repeats the trombone's interjections and is the primary determinant of texture and continuity in the work. The sameness of material in a monothematic work can make sectional divisions rather unclear. To some extent this is the case in Pat-a-Cake. Despite the exuberant rhythmic activity, the piece is quite static. Broadly speaking, Pat-a-Cake consists of an introductory section followed by four stanzas or variations, built on repetitive patterns drawn from the triadic figure. The work opens with a fanfare-like statement of the triad. The music in the introductory section is disjunct and hesitant, with sudden accumulations and dispersals of sound surrounded by lengthy penods of silence. Some elements are presented in their rawest form here; especially significant is the accumulation of arpeggiated thirds to form chords and an insistent, but normally short lived and rapid repeated note figure. Both elements appear throughout the work, particularly as a cadential gesture at the end of the four subsequent sections. The material that follows the opening section at times suggests the repetition based patterned music of minimalist composers such as Steve Reich or Louis Andriessen. Unlike much minimalist music, however, the work does not consistently present a gradual process of evolution. Instead, minimalist techniques are used as a constructional device. The four 'variations' on the triad have a common structural formula consisting of (a) a simple statement of the triad by trombone, (b) the imitation of first and subsequent trombone patterns by tape, (c) an increase of harmonic, rhythmic and textural density, and (d) a cadential gesture, returning to (a). Variations one and two are most alike; in three and four, the longest variation, varying rhythmic shapes proliferate. Composers of stereo tape music have at their disposal an· element additional to pitch, duration, timbre and volume - that of space. It is this feature that in some ways dominates Pat-a-Cake. The sounds on the tape are in a constant state of physical motion. The trombone remains solidly in the centre. At one point in the fourth variation a quick, repeated triad on the tape is presented in the centre of the loudspeakers. The pattern is then panned outwards to left and right speakers, revealing that what sounded as one pattern is, in fact, two. Later, WesleySmith's separation of space allows the original and the retrograde forms of the triad to be heard simultaneously. This separation of left and right, forwards and backwards, is in turn mirrored by a rhythmic dislocation of the two lines, which produces a hocket effect. Analogies with children's games are hard to avoid. This is as much apparent in the playful, rather sardonic nature of the piece, as it is in its derivation of source material from children's songs. Many of the fast spatial effects may be likened to the skipping or hand clapping games that might accompany a child's performance of Pat-aCake. Yet, as in the work of Lewis Carroll (whose works Wesley-Smith has frequently set) the childlike, apparently naive exterior often conceals twists of reality and looking-glass illusions. The use of stereo space is at times like an optical illusion - what we hear is not necessarily what we think we are perceiving, as it is often in the process of becoming something else. The moralising duchess of Alice in Wonderland has expressed it better: .. the moral of that is - 'Be what you would seem to be' or, if you'd like it put more simply - 'Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise'." -- Andrew Schultz Show more