The following is a somewhat edited facsimile of the commentaries I wrote for my composition submission last semester. Needless to say, recordings aren't available and I can't be bother to post pdfs of the scores, but I think they may make interesting reading on their own. Some of the technical details may need editing out, but it's late and I don't want to; the key points, I think, are my own views on my music. Where I have been unclear, it is only through inability to fully elucidate my (by their nature, abstract) opinion. I haven't included the writing on my orchestration of Webern's 3 Little Pieces because it was pretty boring. At the very least, it stops this blog being filled with only one entry (but of course I said I'd never apologise for that, didn't I?).
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Introduction
Q: Why did you write a commentary in this style?
A: Quite simply, to fully get onto paper the reasoning behind my compositional processes. Writing from two sides, in the form of Question and Answer, allows me to elucidate my thoughts and reasonings behind the compositional processes. Hopefully, the style allows me to move away from the more abstract realm of the straightforward academic musical approach previously used in these types of documents.
Q: Is it not egotistical to assume oneself worthy of interview on the subject?
A: Not at all. The process is a natural extension and bastardisation of the Socratic methodology; writing like this I can, quite literally, question any of my ideas to be sure of any doubts.
Q: What's with the quotes?
A: They serve as a brief introduction to the mode of thinking I used when writing the pieces. Despite the humorous nature of two of them, it's not meant to be a flippant gesture. That said, they shouldn't be seen as strict sources of inspiration.
Q: Are there any overarching themes throughout your work?
A: Hopefully they should become apparent throughout this document. In any case, while there is a distinction made between the Webern orchestration and my original compositions, I feel there is a certain unity between the Horn Trio and the Three Pieces for Clarinet Solo. Obliquely, the two pieces are both written at 60 bpm, with 4/4 time signatures. Both were written using a combination of aleatoric techniques and intuition. Both of them feature the number 3 quite heavily.
Q: The number 3?
A: Yes. I'll go into more detail about it later, but the number is perhaps the one contiguous theme throughout the pieces. On a macroscopic level, the relationship is obvious: obviously, there are three separate submission. Three of Webern's Little Pieces. Three Pieces for Clarinet Solo. The three instruments playing in the Horn Trio. More microscopically, the number crops up as a variety of three-note phrases.
Q: Anything else I should know?
A: Each specific commentary is not necessarily only applicable to each specific piece. This entire document, as well as providing specific details and insights onto the pieces should be taken as a faintly recursive commentary on the sum total of my compositional output, and as an insight on my creative processes.
Three Pieces for Clarinet Solo
“I am playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order”
–Eric Morecambe
Q: What is this piece about?
A: Straight to the point, I see. That's actually not a terribly simple question to answer. Firstly, the question assumes through their grouping as one 'work' the Three Pieces are thematically contiguous, or at least somehow related to each other, however tangentially. I suppose, at their most basic levels, the pieces are about the clarinet itself, and the playing thereof. Ideas and sounds are presented in a linear fashion, due largely to the monodimensonal nature of time, and the relationships and tension between these sounds create what I'd like to call the 'interest' of the music. What you really want me to say is that these relationships imply something concrete. Instead, I see each piece as a different iteration of the same thing; their ordering from 1–3 doesn't necessarily imply order, more coincidence. Perhaps one way to visualise this is to consider the pieces is as 'rotations' of each other rather than variations. In a form of musical recursion, each piece contains within itself elements of the all the pieces, both in terms of thematic material (however masked) and the compositional techniques I used to create the pieces.
Q: What regard do you have for previous works? Stravinsky's own 'Three Pieces for Clarinet Solo' is fairly well-known.1 To what extent has this influenced your compositional process?
A: Well, obviously there was a decision to reference Stravinsky as soon as I'd decided what it was I would be writing, and for what instrument, but the relationship is not always oblique. The number three is incredibly useful as far as any artistic design goes, as it is the simplest way to establish pattern. Consider a numerical pattern of one digit: [1]. Obviously without any external knowledge there's no way of determining the meaning of the pattern, where it may go to if extended, or where it has come from. A 2-digit pattern ([1, 2]) has a clear direction, but there is no sense of movement, or a definite relationship. Yet again, there is no way to extend the patten with any confidence. A pattern of [1, 2, 3], however, has both direction and a definite relationship. The presence of a third item creates an expectation of its content (or even meaning). Naturally, the most obvious extension of this pattern would be [1, 2, 3, 4], but now the extra item adds nothing but redundancy, spoiling the elegance of the power of three.
Q: I think you went off on a bit of a tangent there.
A: Bear with me. It may seem like I'm using mathematical ideas but I'm just making up my own justifications for why I like certain numbers. The pattern [2, 3, 5] is another example that has directionality and an implied relationship/meaning; in this case, the prime number sequence. Obviously this does take some form of external knowledge of basic mathematical concepts, but I should think you're more than capable of that.
Q: Thank you.
A: Don't mention it.
Q: Where does your material come from?
A: This is always the clincher for me. I long ago realised that, either through lack of confidence or ability, I was unable to write a decent tune. Thus, most of my musical output stems from an attempt to move away from the intuitive usage of any specific notes or rhythm. Consider: a tune comprised of the melodic pattern F–G–A–F–G, with a rhythm of crotchet–crotchet–quaver–quaver–crotchet. A simple, diatonic tune that by itself means nothing, one might think. Yet there are 248,832 5-note arrangements of the 12 notes in the western musical system, and that's just within one octave. How can I with any justification say that F–G–A–F–G is the 'right' one to use at any given time? I can't go through every 5-note pattern and decide if any are better, so I have created compositional methods that distance myself from intuitively picking out melodies or rhythms. I often use note rows of a vaguely mathematical nature (the number π, for instance), quotations (either direct or indirect) or aleatoric techniques to create a set of pitches and rhythms that I can safely say I did not directly create.
Q: You still haven't explained where your material actually came from.
A: I'm getting to that. Inspired by Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies, I created a series of flashcards consisting of instructions, notes, images, numbers or patterns. The cards ranged from the specific (tongue slap against reed, blow air over mouthpiece, A# etc.) to those more open to interpretation (play the same note a few times, two notes in quick succession)2.
Q: Surely it's hypocritical to use artificial processes for deriving pitch and rhythm, yet leave the important things like structure entirely at the mercy of whim?
A: By the time I get to organising the structure of the piece – that is, placing together all the wonderful phrases generated by chance, or some other method – I have a large amount of material to work with. Just as the eventual shape of a wall is inherent in the structure of a masonry brick, it is my belief that the constituent parts will have an ideal arrangement (or multiple arrangements) that will become apparent as they are put together. Unlike the aforementioned F–G–A–F–G, which has no inherent meaning, completed phrases are by definition meaningful objects, and so putting them together is dissociative technique that once again takes any responsibility out of my hands. Perversely, this loose grip on the music that I have given myself is precisely what draws me to writing in the first place. If there is any theme to my musical output, it would probably that of transcendence (or at the very least, catharsis) through abstraction and detachment.
Q: Where are the brackets/braces at the beginning of each system?
A: There are none. Putting a bracket on a solo instrument is an unnecessary engraving technique that adds visual clutter to the page.
Q: Why is your music atonal?
A: Weren't you paying attention? I already said that I used a random process for choosing the order of pitches. Obviously the chances of the pitches coming out as an F# major scale are fairly remote, so the finished product sounds fairly 'atonal', but the term is inaccurate. Tonality was never a consideration in the writing of the piece– I don't mind when a series of minor 2nds comes out of the aleatoric process of composition, and I don't mind a string of perfect 5ths either. Whereas when I was younger I would often emphasise tritones, minor 7ths and other dissonant relationships in an attempt to move away from what I perceived as 'boring' notes and music, I now realise that all notes and intervals are created equal. It is only in our subsequent treatment of these key features of music that we arrive at a tonal/atonal system that treats some notes as 'better' or 'more approriate' than others.
Q: Sounds a bit Orwellian.
A: Don't read too much into it. In my opinion, abstract musical composition isn't the place to make any grandiose political statements.
Q: Do you consider extended technique to be a prerequisite for contemporary music?
A: Not necessarily. When writing a piece of music – and by that I mean the actual nitty-gritty action of choosing what notes go onto a page and where – the decision to use notes and sounds outside of conventional technique is always a conscious one, and one that I consider should not be taken too lightly. It's fairly safe to say that, due to the musical traditions of the last 300 or so years since the development of the clarinet, there is an expectancy of what a clarinet should sound like. Ranging from the low warmth of concert D3 (about 147Hz), up to the piercing G6 (1568 Hz, reed depending), emphasising the odd-number harmonics and notably “smoother” than the other classical woodwind instruments. Using breath tones, key-slaps and other sounds challenges these audience expectations, generating a tension between perception and meaning. A marvellous aid to me was Philip Rehledft's book on clarinet extended technique3, that goes so far as to treat these newer sounds and techniques as part of the musical canon. In fact, compared to wide world of extended techniques on the clarinet, I feel I have been almost tame in my usage. At no point does the performer have to take apart the instrument, or sit down, or shove anything up the end, or sing down the instrument. Instead, I have used only a few sound and techniques that I feel act not as novelties to challenge as audiences perception of clarinet performance but as colours that complement each other and more conventional styles of playing.
Q: The use of extended techniques, technically challenging runs and complex tuplets creates a complexity that could be said to be reminiscent of Ferneyhough and the New Complexity.
A: It would be massively presumptuous to associate any of my work with Ferneyhough, and in any case, I don't see complexity itself as a the means to an end; my use of irregular tuplets and extended technique is incidental to the style and aims of the piece (the focus on chance and disassociation). In any case, while I supposed I am influenced by Ferneyhough to an extent, my rhythms are nowhere near as complex as his. Lachenmann's4 use of extended technique (and its almost poetic context) was a great inspiration too, as well as his methods for notating breath sounds. But perhaps the greatest influence in the writing of this piece was the late Pamela Weston, whose comprehensive clarinet study books5 were both the bane of my childhood and a great resource for developing clarinet technique. Collating various studies by great virtuosi such as Carl Baermann and Iwan Müller, the books have undoubtedly influenced my idea of how the solo clarinet should sound.
Q: But of course, your focus away from diatonic systems means you don't actually sound much like Baermann etc.
A: True, but the influence on texture, shape, and playability is certainly there. I don't in any way consider the Three Pieces to be a technique study, but there is a certain relationship.
Horn Trio No. 1
“I painted the picture, and in the colours the rhythm
of the music quivers. I painted the colours I saw.”
–Edvard Munch
Q: How did you go about writing this piece?
A: My original stimulus was the brief given by the FOCAM Call to Works: write a piece of music for violin, French horn and piano, lasting between 5 and 10 minutes. Given this macrocosmic structure within which to work, I first began by drawing out a large diagram depicting 5 minutes’ worth of time to fill. Marking out the moments of climax and silence in each part, I already had a broad overall structure with which to work in. I decided that (like much of my other work) the speed of the piece was to be a steady 60 bpm, so that the seconds would become markers of time, and all notes between the beats would simply be used as a means of travelling from second to second. Beginning with the violin solo set to occur 2 minutes into the piece, I established a graphic style of notation that was to become the main compositional focus of the piece. The y-axis of the graph depicts specific pitches, while the x-axis represents time. However, since the divisions of larger and smaller squares on the paper were at multiples of 12, the time value for each note becomes unclear, and up to reinterpretation on my part. Bearing in mind the strong 60 bpm backbone of the piece, I worked out proportions of time based on the position of the markings on the graph, transforming them to complex, yet largely even rhythmic figure. As seen in the score, each beat is largely obvious clearly, and only very rarely does a tuplet figuring span more than one beat. Thus, each second becomes an even space, filled proportionately with notes of a largely even value.
Q: What advantage did graph paper have over conventional manuscript paper as a means of notation?
A: The use of graph paper as a compositional tool allows me to disconnect myself from absolute pitch and focus instead on a more gestural form of texture; certain themes repeat themselves throughout the piece and on different instruments, such as the V-shaped 3-note relationship that appears at different pitches, speeds, intervals and orientations. While the repetition of this 'theme' may not be apparent in the final piece, its masked ubiquity creates a developmental form for the piece. I mentioned earlier my admiration for the number 3, and its simple elegance. This 3-note pattern and its many iterations could be seen as a representation of the macrocosmic elements of the piece (i.e. the amount of performers) within the microscopic.
Q: Would you say that there's an inherent discord between the intention for graph paper to be used as a cold and scientific tool for recording data, and your own use of it for purely artistic purposes?
A: That's fairly insightful of you.
Q: Thank you.
A: Insightful and inaccurate. Yes, there seems to be a disparity between my use of graph paper and its normal employment in the sciences and mathematics, but to draw a distinction between writing music and recording data seems ludicrous. It's all just a series of numbers, after all. I never intended to subvert any kind of authoritarian methodology for graph paper usage. I just really like lots of perpendicular lines.
Q: So where are these graph paper scores? I imagine it would be fairly useful to see first-hand the context behind the piece.
A: Ah. You're quite right, it would be more useful to be able to demonstrate exactly what I meant with a copy of the original score, but sadly the scores have been lost, and so all I can rely on to explain my piece is this commentary.
Q: Idiot.
A: Tell me about it.
Q: Where are all the bar rests?
A: Call it stylistic licence. To me, a bar's rest looks quite ugly, as if the player is preparing to play. Directed silence, rather than an actual absence of sound. The empty bars, devoid of any detail, indicate not just that no sound is coming out of the instrument, but that they play should not be doing anything at all. This is probably a structural hangover from the original graphic notation, organised as it was into blocks of silence and sound.
Q: The Horn Trio isn't a very common ensemble, and your naming it as a Horn Trio (rather than, say, Music for Horn, Piano and Violin) seems to reference Brahms7.
A: That's not actually a question.
Q: Okay then. Did you consciously reference Brahms?
A: No. At least, not directly. Ligeti wrote a Horn Trio8 as a direct homage to Brahms' piece, and it was his treatment of the instruments that I believe is an influence apparent in my own approach to structure and orchestration. The three instruments in the ensemble are very distinct in terms of the timbre, sound production and expressive and technical abilities, and so I wrote each part as its own separate entity. In Ligeti's piece, they appear on a surface level to be quite unconnected, at times arguing amongst each other rather than acting as a contiguous ensemble. Similarly, in my own piece, there is on the whole no direct correlation between each instrument, despite thematically interlocking at various sections of the piece.9
I suppose my overall treatment of the instruments resembles in some way Brahms’ own orchestration of the Horn Trio in E-flat. The melody in Brahms’ piece is shared between Horn and violin, while the piano is often plays more of an accompanying part. Due its inherent polyphonic nature, and the manner in which I wrote the original graphic score, the piano in my piece ends up being treated in a similar way, yet through near constant motion underpins the development of the piece.
Q: Also, you mentioned earlier that you began writing the piece with the violin solo. Does that mean the violin is the most important instrument?
A: No. Well, maybe. Although the violin admittedly is the most prominent instrument and has the most solo time, I never meant it to be like that. It just happened, I suppose. In any case, the title of the piece as Horn Trio doesn't imply that the horn is somehow more important than violin or piano. The name is just convenient means of referring to the three instruments as a collective ensemble.
Q: So then, what is the piece ‘about’?
A: Must it be about anything? I do hate these questions. There's no programmatic element to the music, if that's what you're getting at. As I mentioned before, it is through this form of detachment from the music that I create any form of emotional investment; whether or not this comes through to the listener or performer is a different matter entirely, and not one I could safely answer with any certainty.
Q: You mentioned the performer, and their interpretation of your music. To what extent does this affect your role as a composer?
A: I don't think it necessarily has much effect on how I write the music, but it certainly has a great amount of influence in the way the piece is created.
Q: That's a contradiction.
A: Let me explain. The actual concept of what defines the piece of music is constantly in a state of flux during the entire compositional process, from first inception to first performance. Beginning first as a nebulous idea, or series of ideas, within my head, the piece undergoes a transformation as it is translated onto the page; in this, the sheets of graph paper. These first drafts written and mapped out, the idea of what construes the original version of the piece within my head has subtly changed, by its very nature altering my perceptions and memories of the music without my noticing. Subsequently, when transferring the music from graph paper to manuscript paper, a transformation occurs as certain inconsistencies have to be fixed and fudged to be rendered at all playable. Rhythms and timings must be altered so as to be readable, and once again my original idea of “the piece” is changed, only now the process is less subtle. The transformation from written score to performed sound is perhaps the greatest jump in the entire chain, as the concepts and relationships that define “the piece” must be arrived at from scratch by the performers as they make sense of what is in front of them on the music stand. Of course, it is entirely possible to force ones will onto the performers and instil in them one's own understanding of what the piece entails, but how can one be entirely sure of what that is? The final link in this chain of relationships is the performance, and the audience's reaction to it. It is entirely the product of the monodimensional nature of time that an audience cannot cross-examine a piece of live music in the same way one can study a painting, and so it is inevitable that no one audience member will ever truly understand the full complexities of the compositional processes involved in creating a piece. They may not even collectively ever know what's really going on beyond the surface level, but that's not to say that an audience's reaction is at all inferior to a composer's intent.
Q: What is “the piece” then?
A: I think the question you probably want to ask is “where is the piece?”. It doesn't lie in my head, and it doesn't exist on graph paper. It's not on the manuscript in front of the performers and it's not in the performances and interpretations of said performers either. It's most certainly not in the ears or later memories of any audience member, and it probably isn't recorded onto a CD for later playback. Instead, “the piece” lies in the inherent tensions in the relationship between these different positions on the scale of the creative process.
Q: So you're saying that the composer is not the creator of the piece. Merely its... midwife, if you'll excuse the metaphor.
A: That seems a fair assessment. A little graphic, but fairly accurate.
Q: But without the composer acting as ultimate authority over the music, how can anything be played with any certainty? Or indeed, why not just slip into free improvisation?
A: Free improvisation is a misnomer; improvised music follows a set pattern of rules laid down in ones own subconscious developed through years of practice both performing and listening to music. In this respect, what is so different to performing music as printed on the stand in front you? The rules are more explicitly laid out and one can consciously become involved both in the performance of the music and its overarching structures, but the drive behind both methods is still that same. Like I said before: transcendence (and/or catharsis) through abstraction and detachment. I can't claim any kind of ownership over the piece, which somehow makes it all the more personal to me.
Q: Do you have any idea what implications this has in terms of copyright law?
A: Not really. If I knew anything about copyright law I wouldn't spend my time writing music.
1Igor Stravinsky, Three Pieces for Clarinet Solo (1918)
2A few examples of these can be seen in the appendices.
3Philip Rehfeldt, New Directions for Clarinet, revised edition (USA: University of California Press, 1994)
4 Helmut Lachenmann, Dal Niente (Interier III) for a Solo Clarinet Player (1970)
5Pamela Weston, 50 Classical Studies (1976), to name but one
6Of course, it is possible to simulate a long attack to a note or chord through a crescendo tremolo, but this is still by no means comparable to the variations of tonguing available to a flautist, for example.
7Johannes Brahms, Horn Trio in E flat Major, op. 40 (1865)
9The notable exception to this rule is at bars 41–43, where the piano picks out notes from the violin part an octave below. This was added in after the transcription from graphic notation to the score, as a means of segueing the violin solo into the next section.
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