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| Dong Qichang, Eight Views of Autumn Moods, dated 1620. Album of eight leaves, leaf five |
I encountered a lot of Asian music when I was young as well, both directly in the form of Folkways recordings of music from Java, Bali, India and Japan as well as indirectly through a composer friend of mine who studied with Toru Takemitsu in Tokyo. I encountered the music of Jō Kondo in a lecture he gave that I attended as a young undergraduate. I was also fortunate to hear Ravi Shankar in concert when I was still in high school.
Being aware of these influences actually helps me solve some aesthetic problems, particularly of structure, as it frees me from either conforming to, or consciously avoiding, Western structural concepts.
"Dark Dream" is, for me, a fairly long piece, its single movement coming in at over fourteen minutes. I wrestled with the structure a lot, re-writing the piece several times. One of the basic thematic ideas is an accelerating and decelerating repeated note figure that is played against itself. Another element is the octatonic scale which I use fairly freely. One section is aleatory, with both instruments playing individual cells in an order that can vary with each performance. Unusual timbres are also used which include a "snare-drum" effect on the guitar, playing with the wood of the violin bow, preparing the guitar with a paper-clip and frequent glissandi on both instruments. All this sets up a contrast between discrete, incremental passages and ones where there is sliding from one pitch or rhythm to another.
The piece is dreamlike in that it features unexpected transitions and timbres that tend to estrange the listener from the melodic and harmonic elements.
I hope that you will enjoy the piece!
UPDATE: By the way, is everyone able to access the piece through the link ok?
9 comments:
Yup, I can hear it, and I quite like it, FWIW. I like the use of the different timbres, and the repeated notes do help give it (to my ears) an Eastern feel.
Personally, I'm a big fan of Japanese art, and here I liked that this music has that same sort of minimal feel (not in the movement sense of minimalism :-) ), while at the same time not trying to imitate Japanese works, if you know what I mean. (Indebted to, but not imitative)
It's funny, but I'd always imagined your compositions would be more conservative, no real idea why.
I waited a few days to comment -- you must be anxious to hear some feedback, but I wanted to give it at least a couple of proper, dedicated listens. Just listened to it for the second time late this evening having returned from a concert of Shostakovich string quartets. All judgement is comparative, as Samuel Johnson said, and I honestly preferred your piece to the Shostakovich quartets. I really, really like it! Both times I found myself really moved by the piece, which is perhaps odd for a work without obvious movement. The 14 minutes are hardly perceptible. Some music (for me at least) seems to bend or refract or somehow alter time, while with other (indeed most) music you notice every second, the music being so reliant on the forward progress of time. I want to say it has a motionlessness, but that's not what I mean. It's like walking down a path from nowhere in particular to nowhere in particular, with all that involves (spontaneity, contemplation, sights, change but not progress). Well, kind of. Oh I loathe trying to describe music! I hear some (and only some) similarities to Gubaidulina or Takemitsu -- closer to the textural extremes of Gubaidulina than the harmonic lusciousness of Takemitsu (though there are some beautiful melodies). To my ear, it doesn't have a note more than it needs.
I also compare it to your past work, which I have to confess I haven't always 'got', though I love the songs, particularly Goe and Catch a Falling Starre. This really does feel different. It's unique. Although I mentioned Gubaidulina and Takemitsu, it doesn't sound in any way derivative. I think you've created a truly exceptional soundworld. And it sounds even more striking when listening to it at a nocturnal hour such as this...
I'm not trying to flatter you or exaggerate praise... I really mean it. I wasn't sure what to expect when first clicking the play button, but within the first minute I knew I was going to like it.
Right, must go to sleep, dream dark dreams...
Thanks so much to both of you for your kind comments. Speaking of conservatism in composition, yes, I have written a lot that was much more conservative than this. I realized that I wasn't happy with those pieces, nor with a couple that were over influenced by minimalism. I had to find a new path and while there were certainly some influences, ultimately, I had to go to some places I hadn't gone before. Thanks so much for your support. When I played this piece for a gathering a couple of weeks ago, they said some similar things: they went on a journey and it was a new sort of journey.
Your comments are immensely valuable to me because I didn't really know how this music would be received. Now I have some idea!
I am working on a new string quartet to be premiered in Vancouver next season and I will work harder than ever on it.
Again, thanks so much!
I can't write technically about music but experientially I relished all the space I felt, uncrowded and unrushed, with a slight wistfulness at moments but never pains of actual desire. A starkness that is never cold, and although in an almost empty place there is comfort in the companionship between the 2 voices, each expressive as a unique human soul, neither quite alone because so comfortable and empathic with the other.
Thanks so much Will. I value very highly your comments on the piece. Now I have a quite different challenge that I have to solve the problems of! But I do feel that Dark Dream is a success.
Best wishes for the holidays and in the new year.
Bryan, as you approach composing the quartet, can you say yet how much you start with melodic phrases or other concrete musical ideas, and how much you start with ideas of an overall architecture or perhaps even a spiritual or emotional condition that awaits translation into sound?
Every piece seems to present a completely different problem! As for the quartet, I had an idea, largely rhythmic, for the last movement and it just fell together quite quickly. The middle movement I decided to do in moment form, or rather a variation on moment form, and it came together quite quickly too. The first movement is the problem. I have a very, very vague idea of the overall mood or shape, but I have been struggling to find the particular germ or germs of motivic ideas that I can use to start building the structure. I have started it four or five times and then rejected the way it was going. So I am still at square one!
Would it be too pat to take fragments of 3 &4 as germs to drop into that vague feeling of what 1 will be?
I'm sure that some of the "moments" of the second movement as well as perhaps a motif from the third movement (there is no fourth movement) will find their way into the first movement. But they are likely to be echoes or liaisons rather than the actual meat of the movement--which is what I am still seeking.
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