Formal Discipline

This is going to be the opposite concept to the last post: there we had the phenomenon of musicians subjecting themselves to the Procrustean beds of Autotune, pitch correction and other kinds of editing and processing--all of which have the cumulative effect, as Fil points out, of erasing individuality and leaving a host of standardized human units. Why would we do that? He mentions fear, but there must be more.

Anyway, what I want to talk about here is something quite different: the idea in composition of choosing ahead of time to work within strict limits of form or texture. Some of these forms are rather hard to describe. Take the Baroque prelude as Bach and his claveciniste predecessors composed. It is a remarkably fluid form, but it certainly has a distinct character, particularly when it precedes a fugue or an allemande. The prelude is often arpeggiated harmonies with no clear melody; the rhythm might be very loose or improvisational and so on. It has characteristics, though they are loosely defined. But Bach sat down and wrote twenty-four of them in all the keys, preceding twenty-four fugues. The fugue is another form, though it is often described as more of a polyphonic texture. But again, especially in the hands of Bach it has a distinct character that contrasts nicely with the prelude. The fugue immediately establishes a clear meter and rhythm with a subject, a theme that defines a musical space right away. Then this space is expanded with other iterations of that same subject. There are a zillion ways to do this and Bach writes each of those twenty-four fugues in an entirely different way. The first fugue in the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier uses stretto--the piling up of the subject on itself--to a maximum extent. The next fugue uses no stretto whatsoever. Each fugue, like each prelude, is an entity in itself. Then a couple of decades later, Bach did it all over again with a new set of twenty-four preludes and fugues in all the keys. 

What I want to draw your attention to here is the returning again and again to the same kind of challenge and finding new ways each time to solve the problems. It's the new approach each time that is marvelous. This is the kind of creativity that has astonished every composer since. We find it especially admirable when a composer can, again and again, create something entirely new within very specific boundaries. Every Bach prelude and fugue sounds like no other kind of piece. Similarly, Domenico Scarlatti took up the keyboard sonata and composed five hundred and fifty-five of them, each one most definitely a Scarlatti sonata, but each one a unique individual. It is that combination of individuality within a form or genre that we find so compelling. Perhaps because it is a model of the whole problem of human society: how do we live as individuals within a community?

Lately I have been fooling around with poetry since I am in a dry spell as a composer. I first took up the very familiar and very easy form of the haiku: just three lines with five, seven and five syllables. And traditionally there is a mention of the season. Haiku tend to be inspired by nature. Over the last couple of years I have probably written five hundred haiku, most of them bad, or at least dull.

Recently I have been looking at Pierrot Lunaire by Schoenberg (and there are a couple of posts in the works) and in so doing I have examined the poetic form of the text. These twenty-one poems are taken from a German translation of an original set of fifty poems in French by Albert Giraud, the nom de plume of Emile Albert .Kayenbergh. The poetic form he chose is rather an obscure one, the Rondel Bergamasque originating in 14th century France (though obviously, from the name, previously coming from Bergamo). The form is quite strict: there are two quatrains and a quintet. The first two lines are a refrain that repeats as the last two lines in the second quatrain (a quatrain is a set of four lines and a quintet, of five). Then the first line comes again as the last line of the quintet. This gives the form as follows where the capital letters are an exact repeat: ABba abAB abbaA. Here is an example so you can see how that works:

A Columbine

Les fleurs pâles du clair de Lune,

Comme des roses de clarté,

Fleurissent dans les nuits d'été:

Si je pouvais en cueillir une!

Pour soulager mon infortune,

Je cherche, le long du Léthé,

Les fleurs pâles du clair du Lune,

Comme de roses de clarté.

Et j'apaiserai ma rancune,

Si j'obtiens du ciel irrité

La chimérique volupté

D'effeuiller sur ta toison brune

Les fleurs pâles du clair de Lune!

Of course the translator into English doesn't attempt the rhyme scheme:

To Columbine

The pale flowers of the Moonlight,

Like roses of clarity,

Blossom in the summer nights:

If I could pick one!

To relieve my misfortune,

I search, along the Lethe,

The pale flowers of the Moonlight,

Like roses of clarity.

And I would soothe my rancor,

If from the irritated heaven I obtained

The chimerical sensuousness

Of depetaling upon your brown fleece

The pale flowers of the Moonlight!

And neither does the German translator:

Columbine

Des Mondlichts bleiche Blüten,

Die weissen Wunderrosen,

Blühn in den Julinächten--

O bräch ich eine nur!

Mein banges Leid zu lindern,

Such ich am dunklen Stome

Des Mondlichts bleiche Blüten,

Die weissen Wunderrosen.

Gestillt wär all mein Sehnen,

Dürft ich so märchenheimlich,

So selig leis--entblättern

Auf deine braunen Haare

Des Mondlichts bleiche Blüten!

Since the poetic form evaporates when you translate, I decided to try out the form myself. Here is my third attempt:

Wildflowers

Wildflowers dance across the meadow

Rising to the nearby height

Los Picachos catch the morning light

Illuming every hollow.

This is no place for sorrow

Surrounded by such a sight

Wildflowers dance across the meadow

Rising to the nearby height.

I say I'm moving here tomorrow

Leaving urban noise and blight

But really it is so I might

Find inspiration in Nature mellow

Wildflowers dance across the meadow.

It was an interesting exercise. You write entirely different poetry depending on the form you choose. When I was young I just wrote free verse, but as T. S. Eliot once said "no vers is libre for the man who wants to do a good job." Now I'm interested in the influence of form on content. If you are attempting a Rondel Bergamasque, be careful what rhymes you choose because you are stuck with them for the whole poem!

Here is Sviatoslav Richter with the second prelude and fugue from the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier:

Glenn who?