The Infernal Element

Another soundscape, Spencer Topel’s Incendio is an image of fire. It is in three main segments, the inner representing embers against the flames of the outer two. Each segment has a series of sections that go by quickly, flaring and dying with shifting colors. You can listen to it for the rest of the week here.

Ignited by a sizzle cymbal solo, the first section introduces the dominant feature of the music, that of oscillating orchestral colors. The vibraphone stands out, but only as a first among equals; the texture is paramount. The trombones burst out and are punctuated with a bass drum thump. Then the trumpets and horns catch fire, with two short explosions from the orchestra, and the flame dies down a bit.

The second section features first the violins then cellos against a sparser accompaniment. It ends with the opening of the first section and the short explosions moved from the trombones to the tympani, and a longer flare from the sizzle cymbal (the cough is not in the score :-).

The oboes kindle the third section which is dominated by the horns, building to a passage featuring the English horn and clarinet. That clarinet imitates the opening sizzle cymbal solo to reprise the first section. A coda ends the first segment with the clarinet fading to nothing.

The embers segment is at a slower tempo. Pops of color with occasional little flare-ups lead to a brief re-ignition of flames in the middle that dies down to coals again. The sparkle of the tuned percussion send glowing embers dancing into the air. A deep bass pedal foreshadows the end of the segment where the entire orchestra bursts anew into flame with the gong playing the role of the sizzle cymbal.

The concluding segment is an abbreviated recapitulation, starting with the first section. The oboes and horns bring back the third section, with the English horn and clarinet passage leading to a coda where the fire fades and dies.

The Hat, the Elephant, and the Snake

Kathryn Selfelder’s Dessin No. 1 takes its title from a drawing of an elephant inside a snake in the Little Prince, “which is the incarnation of the quote ‘One only sees well with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes’” [program note]. For the rest of this week, you can hear the Minnesota Orchestra’s performance at ClassicalMPR.

The work is dominated by the opening violin melody that is broken up and re-mixed in various forms and instrumentations, the entire work is derived from the opening melody. The first section has slowly oscillating tetrachords over which the melody is introduced by a solo violin and gradually transformed, first by the oboe and bassoon, then the violas and cellos. The transformation of the melody is continuous throughout the piece, using fragments of the melody in various permutations.

The second section is accompanied by lightly arpeggiated chords in the violins. The melodic metamorphosis is mostly augmentation of fragments, with a two note fragment (short-long) stepwise either ascending or descending, not unlike the grace note that the solo violin played at the beginning or the extension of the melody by the oboe in the first section, permeating the whole orchestra to a climax that ends with a octave string passage with brass accents.

The third section is quietly introduced by a descending fragment in the winds, then taken over by the strings with a violin solo singing the melody augmented. That descending wind fragment then reappears and is echoed by the brass. The descending fragment is inverted in the strings and winds until, in its descending form, it is blown clearly by the horns at the second climax. Over that horn call, the violins play the melody in a very augmented form, under which the violas and cellos bring back the arpeggios, reinforced by the winds.

The final section uses a seemingly new melody in the flute and clarinet that, to me, sounds like it is derived from the opening melody yet transformed like a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, or a hat becomes an elephant in a snake. The oscillating tetrachords reappear as the accompaniment to balance the piece.

A Cinematic Soundscape of the Seasons

Two weeks ago, I had the privilege of attending, as an auditing backbencher, the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute, during which I had an opportunity to read through the scores of the seven composers, attend the rehearsals and the concert on Saturday night. That concert was recorded by Minnesota Public Radio and can be heard this week only on their website.

Angel Lam’s In Search of Seasons opened the concert. The piece is in four sections (one for each season) with a short narrative prologue. Deep chords by the piano and harp with low string pedal tones introduce winter, a timeless and contemplative season. Tuned gongs sound a chilled four-note motive. A single cello sings a mournful melody ornamented with glissandi and grace notes. A single violin answers sympathetically with a long, lyric line that, after one last echo of the tuned gong motive, is smoothly transformed into spring by a leaping solo cello.

A pizzicato violin gets time ticking. Bird-like twitters in the celesta, harp, and winds flutter over the solo cello and viola just before dawn. The sun bursts over the horizon on a sweeping violin line. All manner of swoopings up and down in the winds and strings bring spring to blossom then a quick close with a string glissandi and straight into summer.

A gentle gust of wind in the harp, oboe, and clarinet precedes summer’s motive: four notes outlining a minor third which is tossed among the percussion, harp, piano, and strings throughout the summer. The driving ticking of time reappears in the lower strings. Glittering figures in the marimba and vibraphone and short glissandi propel the season forward. Time accelerates with the bass and snare drum, and the high hat. Over this is a lyric yet energetic violin line, full of life, joy, and surprise, interspersed with the four-note summer motive. A small storm swirls up and dissipates. The heavy tread of time in the lower strings underlies an urban collision of rhythms as the long summer spins off into the distance.

Autumn arrives with sparkling, calming figures in the piano and harp and a solo violin melody reminiscent of the one in winter. This is quickly followed by the rustling and falling leaves propelled by gusts from the winds and harp, vibraphone and marimba. Over all is an almost wild lament by the violins, which calms to a single note in the flute and clarinet. The violin sings a tender farewell as the glitter of piano, harp, and vibraphone fades.

Finding the Forest

Working through Fux these past few days has taught me more about the technique of writing counterpoint, but that is a lesser problem standing in the way of completing “A Moral Little Tale”. I am confident that I can figure out the mechanics of good writing, contrapuntal or otherwise, as I go along, it is just a matter of learning the rules and guidelines, practicing them, and using them. The greater problem is figuring out and articulating how the expressive details of the piece will fit together to form a coherent whole that is both intelligible and appealing to a listener (which raises a related question: who is the intended audience?). I lack a vocabulary and analytical framework to guide me in creating that coherent whole.

The outline posted on August 8th is a technical framework: a list of roles and their assignment to voices, a division of the text in to 16 movements, a key structure for those movements, and a simple label describing the nature of each movement. The two paragraphs at the end of that post may be suitable for program notes, but have not helped me put the musical notes, measures, phrases, and chords into the larger whole. I’ve never been able to simply let the music flow out; if that talent exists, it is buried deep.

The posts that followed talked through the chord progressions, phrases, etc. but said nothing about why one phrase followed another, why a particular chord progression or key change, how those sequences and changes fit together to help the listener both understand and enjoy the music. There have been descriptions of bits of word painting, but they are isolated episodes. By the time I got to the counterpoint in the 2nd movement, I had no idea why I should be using counterpoint, other than to give the movement some length. Switching from the melody-harmony texture to counterpoint could be jarring, so why do it? That contributed more to the contrapuntal crackup described in the last post than an unfamiliarity with contrapuntal technique.

“A Moral Little Tale” has a coherent overall structure. Each piece fits together with the others in a specific manner to create the whole. If I can articulate the nature of the pieces and how they fit together, then I should be able to better understand how to fit together the musical pieces into a larger whole. A quick course in literary analysis would perhaps be helpful.

Countrapuntal Crackup

The contrapuntal section of the second movement just wasn’t sounding clear to me. The notes were acceptable, but the words tended to collide with one another and would be indistinct to a listener. I set about reworking it. The first attempt cleared up the word collision, but suffered from flowing smoothly for a few beats (e.g., bars 1-2), then rushing and clunking (bar 3).




I threw that out and started again. This version cleared up the rushing and clunking in the first 8 bars, but got muddy in bars 8-11; the entrances were clunky again. Also, the back and forth aspect of the initial entrances (bars 2-4, 8-11) were not quite working either.




Out went that version. The third try was just a mess.




It finally dawned on me that the real problem was I don’t know enough of the fundamentals of counterpoint. So I’ll set aside “A Moral Little Tale” for a while and spend some time at the feet of Johann Joseph Fux.

Filling In the Counterpoint

Calling the 2nd movement, starting in measure 20, fugal is a bit of a stretch. There is no consistent countersubject. This two bar phrase (below) serves as a substitute, appearing in different forms in the tenor, alto, and bass after their entrances, in bars 22 through 28.




The subsequent statements of the subject are also non-standard; the alto enters on the mediant rather than the dominant or sub-dominant, for example. The first episode (bars 24-25) does not, as is common in a fugue, modulate to another key, but leads to the bass entrance using the inverted subject.

The second episode (bars 30-31) follows the second alto statement of the subject and does modulate to the dominant (C major), where the tenors take the subject and extend the eighth-note run with the altos harmonizing a third above and modulating to G major.




A longer episode of four bars (36-39) leads back to C major and an entrance by the altos. The sopranos follow their statement of the subject with a new counter subject in bar 36 that is taken up by the basses in bar 38, slightly altered. The altos take the dotted-quarter eighth rhythm of the first counter subject and use it in bars 36 and 38.



The alto entrance in bar 40 is followed by the quarter note counter subject, again altered and also extended. Having modulated back to G major, the tenors state the subject in bar 42 with no counter subject.



The stretto section starts with the altos and contains no counterpoint beyond the overlapping of the subject statements. The final statement of the subject is done by all voices.



I’m not yet convinced that the counterpoint is the best setting for this segment of text. The text isn’t meditative in nature, but those that hold the viewpoint expressed tend to lean towards a meditative life, so the counterpoint could be said to illustrate them rather than the text itself. Following that line of construction, the next section should be dance-like, and not counterpoint.

The 2nd movement so far:

A Fugue

The first movement ended too abruptly. There were only three bars after the narrator finishes (including the measure where the narrator sings only on the first beat); typically, though not always, in traditional Western tonal music four bars would follow. I extended it to five by inserting a bar (measure 31) and drawing out the last bar. The inner strings (violin 2 and viola) were also altered to rise to the end, which could suggest the Puritan looking or striving towards heaven.



Back to the second movement, my initial attempt for the vocal entrances was compact but muddy, especially considering the violin line that precedes it.



That was changed to a progressive building from the bass to the soprano. The bass and tenor enter on a half note while the alto and soprano compress it to a quarter. In addition, the alto entrance is anticipated by the tenors singing “there” on beat 3 (bar 12) and the soprano entrance is doubly anticipated by the tenors (beat 2) and altos (beat 3) in bar 14. The net effect is a building momentum through all of the entrances and a better fit with the introductory violin line.



The rest of the phrase, “who hated the dance”, gets a chordal treatment with accented emphasis on “hated” by the strings.



There follows a fugue. At this point, I have the fugue subject appearances laid out but only bare harmonic structure in the other voices (and no strings). This allows me to see the overall form and get that reasonable set before filling in the details. It begins with the tenors, then on to the altos and sopranos, the last two compressing the opening note of the subject from a half note to an eighth to give it some momentum. The tenors sing the subject on the tonic (F), the altos climb a third to A, and the sopranos progress to the dominant (C).



After a two-bar episode, the basses initiate a series of inversions of the subject. The first two (alto follows bass) are on the tonic, but the third (tenors) modulates to C and the four (sopranos) moves on to G major. The first note of the subject in each occurrence is extended from an eighth to a quarter note. The first note of the subject, when next it is heard, will extend back to the original half-note, which will probably need to be balanced by episodic rhythm to keep the momentum going. 2-bar episodes separate the subject statements and help establish the modulations.



After a longer episode, the altos and tenors begin tossing the subject back and forth, the altos in C major and the tenors in G major.



The altos take the subject again and the tenors follow with a stretto section, interrupted momentarily by the basses and finally extended to the sopranos. Harmonically, the section passes quickly through A minor and F minor, then settles in C major as the dominant prior to returning to F when the subject passes to the sopranos in bar 50.



In bar 51, all four voices sing out the subject to bring the fugue to a close; it is followed by a chordal section (in the home key of B-flat) on the words “those who hated the dance.” It is similar to the chordal section before the fugue, but the strings add an additional punch after the choir sings “hated”.



The video below starts at the very beginning.

“There Loved Him All of Those” Gets a Start

Below is the basic rhythm of the second number, “There loved him all of those”. As before the pitches have no meaning at this point.






In the first phrase, “loved” needed some more emphasis to counter “hated”, and “those” was much too long. This version placed more weight on “hated” and “dance”, but also slows the rhythm down as the phrase progresses.



Further revision places the four principle words of the phrase, “loved”, “those”, “hated”, and “dance” on the downbeat of each bar and has a bit more rhythmic variety.



Applying the same method to the second phrase, whose four principle words are “those’, “loved”, “dance”, and “respected” yields a five-bar phrase without much rhythmic interest and which conflicts a bit with the text; these are, after all, the folks that like dancing.



Adding some syncopation resulted in a drawn-out and undanceable mess.



I’m in a coffee shop right now; the background music is a folk-dance tune, possibly Greek, wich gives me an idea: change the meter to 5/8 with a simple dotted-quarter – quarter rhythm.



I wrote this setting of the third and fourth phrases a couple of weeks ago and for now I’ll keep it. Doing so means taking the first two phrases and extending them for several more measures so that this chorale acts as a summarizing coda; I’ll do that later.



Back to the first phrase, it’s time to add pitch:



To transition from the first section I added a couple of bars after “his was a zealous life”, bringing it to a full plagal close.



And to start the second section, an introduction based on the opening figure of the vocal part:



The tale so far, from the top:

Some More Cleaning

The opening chorale (bars 1-3) had a weak harmonic progression, namely I-V-I-vi-iii-v. Changing the last two chords to I7-IV gives it a better direction and an appropriate plagal cadence.



Bars 4-7, the instrumental interlude, also were scrutinized. The voice leading in the viola part was cleaned up a bit and the harmony in bars 6 and 7 were clarified to a more definite cadence.



The strings in bars 8-10 also lacked direction. Keeping them all below the soprano line led to excessive parallel fifths and octaves so the first violin moved up to join the narrator mostly (some rhythmic exceptions). The Puritan gets the plagal treatment in bar 9.

Orchestration and Tweaking

I corrected a discordance in bar 5, where the cello plays a run of sixteenths starting on F against a run starting on G in the violin. My ears aren’t would they should be, I fear. The corrected measure is:



Another fix, a transposition error, was in bar 20. The narrator should sing an E-flat on the last beat, not an F.



The rather rough string passage in bars 20-23 has been cleaned up a bit. I left out the 1st violin to get a dark, somber sound.



The last bit of the opening number as scored for strings:



The first violin reaches for the heavens as the Puritan labors hard, then the cello descends back down to earth for the grave, zealous life.

Here are the first 32 bars:

Orchestration

I added a cello line to the introduction, contemplating two possibilities. The first has quarter notes to contrast with the choral half notes. Two difficulties with it are the break in stepwise upward motion in measure two and the discordance in beat three of the second measure. The second and third beats could be considered changing tones, but beat three is a bit too strong to be part of that. Altering beat three to an F minor or A-flat chord would muck up the voice leading for the soprano and the introductory chord progression would no longer be the same as the keys of the first six numbers. Changing the third beat from an A-flat to a D (repeating second beat) would be one way to resolve the problem. The quarter notes in the cello do add some impetus to the introduction.



The second possibility is half notes in the cello, which means it does not stand out at all until the quarters in the third bar as the choir finishes. The upward impetus of the first possibility is perhaps too subtle. The first possibility’s upward movement highlights the moral nature of the text.



So I’ll go with the first possibility:



Scored for a string quartet, the introduction and first number look like this so far(click the image to embiggen):



and sounds like this:

Introductory Remarks by the Narrator

Something needed to happen between the singing of the title and the Narrator’s opening number. One possibility is this instrumental interlude, which has a considerable amount of sub-dominance (A-flat) to it:



The accompaniment for “wrong to dance” has been altered from a plain half and two quarters to a duple transformation of the previous triple meter dance rhythm; marching is OK, but no dancing.



The “Labored hard” melisma has been extended to three bars with the dotted-quarter-eighth rhythm from two bars previous to accompany it. The E-flat minor chord at the end of the melisma has been worked into a more frowning E-flat minor seventh. The last bar of the melisma is echoed in the bass and the Puritan’s zealous life is staccato block chords; no frivolity here.