This is always the most difficult moment for me with a new piece. I have spent the time, often quite a long time, composing and re-composing; we have had the premiere and there is a recording, but now, I just don't know what to think of the piece. I need a lot of distance! So I offer the recording to you for your thoughts...
I may try and do a better one later on, but this is my first stab at putting together a little video of the premiere of the String Quartet No. 2 that took place in Vancouver on May 27 of this year. My deepest thanks to the Pro Nova Ensemble who put in a lot of work and did a fine job of bringing the piece to life. And, of course, to the audiences who attended the three concerts (the two others were May 21 and 25). It was a real privilege to get to hear this piece. I started composing it three years ago, but the original plans were thrown awry by the Covid epidemic. Many thanks also to Richard Volet who made the journey over from Victoria just to record this concert.
The members of the Pro Nova Ensemble are:
- Hyunsil Lucia Roh (violin)
- Ju Dee Ang (violin)
- Barbara Irschick (viola)
- Shin-Jung Nam (cello)
- Mountain with Birdsong
- Moments in the Forest
- The Surrounding Ocean
I think the recording captures the performance quite well. At the beginning of the second movement a loud motorcycle went by, but it seemed almost to fit in. I have only rudimentary skills with iMovie. I have just put some photos and a couple of short video clips over the recording to give you a bit of a taste of the experience from my point of view. The opening panorama is of the water reservoir in North Vancouver. There is a photo from the last rehearsal which I attended. Most of the other photos are from the second concert, in a cultural centre on the water in West Vancouver.
Please let me know your thoughts and comments on the music.
First listen, I enjoyed this! Need to listen again of course. The harmony interests me throughout all the movements -- the music seems to have a consistent harmonic language? Mvt 1 develops in interesting ways. I like the bird song motif. I like the bit starting 2:19 and how it transitions into the theme at 2:50. Some of it took me by surprise: the polyphonic dance at 5:06 and the beautiful transition at 5:51. And where the earlier idea returns at 6:26 -- powerful. There is more dance and playfulness than I expected, given the titles and the fact that the thing I most remember from your blog posts about the quartet was the moment form movement. Plus, 'The Surrounding Ocean' first made me think of John Luther Adams -- fortunately it was totally unlike his music, which is to say it was enjoyable!
ReplyDeleteI quite liked the additional motorcycle 'moment' (could be an ad lib part in the final score?)
Are you willing to share the score? I'd be interested to see how parts of it were written.
Thanks so much Steven, for your thoughts. Yes, I am happy to send you the score.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the score. Just listened through with it -- it was very clear to read and understand, which was great. I was interested to see what was going on with the polyrhythms on pp. 3-4 -- simple but clever! And how the texture at e.g. figure L was created. I like it more on the second listen.
ReplyDeleteI'm always curious to know whether a composer worked on the score at an instrument, in their head, or using software playback?
(And you know, having lived a rather charmed and sheltered life, I'm not sure I had ever seen an 8/2 time signature before! Or at least not whole sections in 8/2.)
Thanks for your followup comments. I'm sorry for the delay in responding, but it was a very busy week for me here. The first movement really has the meat and it is what absorbed the vast majority of my composition time. The original inspiration was climbing some mountains on Vancouver Island when I was young. There is a little touch of Messiaen, of course. Another influence is Asian music where we often have almost random sounding passages of instruments folding around one another. In some pieces I was very focussed on voice-leading, but here, much of the time, I actively avoid any sense of voice-leading. The harmonies, diminished chords, were purloined from a Rimsky-Korsakov sketchbook and I also used them to frame the moments in the second movement. This movement is about 50% planned and 50% pure intuition.
ReplyDeleteThe second movement is the problematic one and I think I see why. I first played moment-form music in a 20th century performance practice seminar at McGill in the 70s. Then in the 80s I played a piece by Tony Genge for flute and guitar in moment form. I also wrote a piece for guitar orchestra in moment form which I conducted and incorporated a section of moment form in my Dark Dream for violin and guitar. I even discussed moment form with Karlheinz Stockhausen in Salzburg in the 80s when I was studying there. In every instance before this one, I was either directing or playing in the piece. Here, I just wrote a movement and, apart from some suggestions, had no actual part in the performance. I think that made a big difference because, it seems, there are subtle imponderables that are hard to put into words or notation.
I wrote this quartet largely using music software (Finale) as it seemed the most practical. But for my new guitar piece, I am avoiding that entirely and working just with the guitar and pencil and paper. I think it will result in a far more idiomatic piece.
Ah yes, the infamous 8/2 time signature. That came from a piece I wrote for solo guitar in which I wanted to imitate the feeling of monastic chant. I used mostly whole notes for everything with a few flurries of grace notes. Each measure was a phrase so there were time-signatures of 15/1. That might be your kind of piece! Anyway, the intent is to avoid the music sounding too metric.
Ah, you've noticed my inclination towards that kind of music... Yes I have the scores for both your suites and have enjoyed reading through them.
ReplyDeleteInteresting to hear more about the process, especially the deliberate avoidance of voice-leading. I've never tried that -- I imagine it's actually quite difficult to actively avoid.
I enjoyed the moment form movement in spite of my continued reservations about the form. It is sparer and quieter than I thought it might be (qualities I like, I should add!) But it is very hard to tell, looking at the score, what the overall feel of the movement ought to be (if it ought to be anything). Surely the point of moment form is for the composer to relinquish control -- if he or she directed the music, even in some unwritten way, wouldn't it defeat the spirit of the thing?
Moment form brings up some interesting philosophical issues: what you have in front of you is not a score, for example. It is a set of instructions for creating a performance which you could record and then transcribe into a score. But that defeats the whole purpose, of course. It does depend a great deal on what the performers can bring to the table. In my conception of moment form it always has a certain Eastern quality: lots of silence, wisps of sound, etc. But even with a quartet that are 3/4 Asian, they are actually strictly trained in the Western European concepts of form and performance. So they don't necessarily take to the basic concept.
ReplyDeleteMost performers are going to simply play the moments as if they were a score. What you want to do is be hyper-attuned to the atmosphere and take each moment as contributing to that atmosphere. That is the performance practice. I have never really thought about these things until recently because I have always been directly involved in the performance and therefore helping to create the right atmosphere.
A recent example is the moment from section from Dark Dream. I will send that section of the music to your email along with the YouTube clip. The violinist and I made that section work quite well and she, I believe, took performance practice cues from me.