Old Instruments, New Sounds, Same Language The Notation, Orchestration, and Compositional Use of Contemporary Techniques for Orchestral Stringed Instruments By Chase Jordan University of Wyoming Bachelors of Music, Viola Performance, 2020 Minor in the Honors College Honor’s Thesis Table of Contents PREFACE ii Abstract, ; Acknowledgements, INTRODUCTION 1 Background, 1; Scope & Purpose, 3; Conceptual Framework & Methodology, 4; PART I: Techniques Affecting Pitch CHAPTER 1: Microtonality 8 Quarter-Tones, 9; 72-EDOs & It’s Subsets, 12; 31-EDO, 16; Thoughts on Developing the Notations of Other EDOs, 18; Non-Octave EDOs, 20; Just Intonation, 22; CHAPTER 2: Harmonics and Related Effects 25 Natural Harmonics, 27; Dual-Node Harmonics, 36; Artificial Harmonics, 37 Harmonic Trills, 37 Multiphonics, 41; Subharmonics and ALFs, 45; CHAPTER 3: Vibrato 46 Changes in Speed, 47; Changes in Width, 48; Changes in Regularity, 49; Changes in Shape, 49; CHAPTER 4: Other Extensions of Pitch 50 Indiscriminate Pitch, 50 Scordatura, 52; Peg Glissando, 54; Bowing Under the Strings / Bowing with Two Bows; 55 PART II: Techniques Affecting Timbre CHAPTER 5: Pizzicato Techniques 57 Variations along the Length of the String, 57; Bartok Pizz., 59; Buzz Pizz., 60; Fingernail Pizz., 60; ii CHAPTER 5: Pizzicato Techniques (cont.) Pizzicati with an Implement, 61 Slurred Pizz., 62; Strumming, 63; Left Hand Techniques, 63; Pizzicato with Multiple Fingers, 65; Sweeping the Strings, 66; CHAPTER 6: Unpitched and Percussive Sounds 67 Muffling Strings, 67; Bowing on Other Parts of the Instrument, 68; Percussion on the Body of the Instrument, 72 CHAPTER 7: Using Different Parts of the Bow 72 Col Legno Battuto, 73; Col Legno Tratto, 75; Using the Screw of the Bow, 75 Extensions of these effects, 76; CHAPTER 8: Changes in Bow Placement 76 The Sul Tasto — Sul Ponticello Spectrum, 76; Sub Ponticello, 78; Bi-Tones, 80 CHAPTER 9: Changes in Bowing Patterns 81 Spazzolare, 82; Circular Bowing, 83; Helicopter Effect, 84; Vector Bowing, 84; Vertical Bowing, 86; Jeté and Balzando, 87; Split-Tones, 88; Bow Whip, 89; CHAPTER 10: Changes in Bow Pressure 89 Flautando, 89; Overpressure, 90; Ponticello pressato, 91 CONCLUSION 92 WORKS CITED 94 iii Abstract This research project utilizes semiotic principals in order to outline a comprehensive notational system for orchestral stringed instruments and the contemporary practices and extended techniques composers ask for in 20th- and 21st-century repertoire. This work acts as both a survey of the repertoire of orchestral string music, selected based upon the use of these techniques, and as a notational guide targeted towards composers. Techniques are chosen based upon their accessibility, historical importance, and my own personal experience composing with and performing works containing them. Additionally, the techniques discussed within this thesis can be viewed as building blocks to more extensive techniques that combine multiples of these techniques within a single mass effect. iv Acknowledgements This project was made possible and generously funded through the University of Wyoming Honors College. Thanks to those who aided and guided in the research for this project, and provided firsthand training on the instrument with these contemporary methods of performance and extended techniques; including James Przygocki, John Fadial, Beth Vanderborgh, & Sherry Sinift. Special thanks must be given to Ann Roggen for leading two private week-long personal workshops in New York City that both ignited my interest in the topic and continued professional education in it and to the University of Wyoming Symphony Association who helped fund the original workshop that ignited the interest. In addition, thanks should be given to Aaron Kirschner (Professor, Utah Valley University) for his aid in research due to his immense knowledge in the field of contemporary music. Thanks also to James Przygocki for mentoring this project. Additionally, thanks to my numerous friends at the University of Wyoming and throughout the country for working with me as I used my compositional and performance abilities to experience these techniques firsthand, especially Ross McIntosh (University of Indiana, B.M. ‘22), Hannah Rice (Louisiana State University, B.M. ‘22), and Stephen Weigel (Ball State University, M.M. ’19). Finally, thank you to all of the composers who allowed excerpts of their work to be decimated through this thesis. v Introduction Instrumental musicians and music performance education covers a narrow range of playing an instrument that has come to define technique of the common practice period. The technique and pedagogy of the common practice period are sufficient for performing most of the traditional solo, orchestral, and chamber music repertoire. Hence, instrumentation, arranging, and orchestration courses at universities and their standard texts, including Samuel Adler’s The Study of Orchestration and Kent Kennan’s The Technique of Orchestration, provide a limited and insufficient analysis of important musical techniques known as extended techniques and other contemporary performance practices of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries,1,2 Background The composer Matthew Burtner in his article, “Making Noise: Extended Techniques after Experimentalism,” provides a concise definition of an extended technique as something that “requires the performer to use an instrument in a manner outside of traditionally established norms.”3 Extended techniques are often considered an advent of the twentieth-century with influences from the musical avant-garde movement, including the composers of John Cage, Henry Cowell, & George Crumb, and from the musical futurist movement, including the composers George Anthiel, Alexander Mosolov, & Edgar Varèse. This twentieth-century search for new sounds came as a result of futurist composers and artist pushing for the incorporation of noise sounds into, 1 Samuel Adler, The Study of Orchestration, 4th ed (New York: W.W. Norton). 2 Kent Kennan and Donald Grantham, The Technique of Orchestration, 6th ed (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall). 3 Matthew Burtner, “Making Noise: Extended Techniques after Experimentalism,” NewMusicBox, New Music USA, March 1, 2005. 1 or even replacing, the traditional musical sounds and ensembles, as Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Luigi Russolo accomplished through their Intonorumori noise orchestra.4 Luigi Russolo, in his 1913 letter to the futurist composer Balilla Partella, writes that: At first the art of music sought purity, limpidity and sweetness of sound. Then different sounds were amalgamated, care being taken, however, to caress the ear with gentle harmonies. Today music, as it becomes continually more complicated, strives to amalgamate the most dissonant, strange and harsh sounds. In this way we come ever closer to noise- sound. He further argues that this next step is noise sounds supplanting the traditional sounds of music.5 While this prediction that noise sounds and the noise orchestra would replace the traditional orchestra and traditional sounds was incorrect, its influence on future composers to imitate noise- sounds and innovate new ways of playing instruments continued a trend of technical and timbral development that had begun long before. In 1605, the Scottish composer and viol player Tobias Hume, wrote his First Part of Ayres. In one of the pieces in this collection, “Harke, Harke”, Hume request the viol player to “play nine letters with your finger” and to “drum this with the backe of the bow”.6 This constitutes the earliest documented use of pizzicato and col legno, and is one of the earliest technical, timbral advances in string playing that was an extended technique for its time.7 Col legno was not the only technique developed in the common practice period to make it into musical compositions. Circa 1738, the French violinist and composer Jean-Joseph de Mondonville wrote the first composition that made 4 Ibid. 5 Luigi Russolo, The Art of Noise (futurist manifesto, 1913), trans. Robert Filliou (Chelsea, NY: Something Else Press, 1967). 7-9. 6 Tobias Hume, “Harke, Harke”, in The First Part of Ayres, (London: John Windet, 1605; facsimile reprint, Atelier Philidor, 2014). Spelling is left as it is written in the original; while capitalization has been adjusted to fit contemporary standards. 7 Peter Walls, “Bow”, The New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians, eds. Stanley Sadie & John Tyrrell (London: MacMillan Publishers, 2001), i: 894. 2 extensive use of natural harmonics, Le Sons Harmoniques (Opus 4).8,9 These techniques would continue to be used and innovation in playing would continue, but it was not until the twentieth- century that the proliferation of extended techniques became a ubiquitous part of a musical style. Furthermore, as Matthew Burtner explains in his article, some technical advancements that were once considered extended techniques, or at least considered at the edge of what a standard technique was, have widely been adopted as part of the standard orchestral lexicon. These include pizzicato, harmonics, col legno, and playing with a mute in the world of stringed instrument technique.10 This boundary of what is considered an extended technique today is blurred as the norms of solo, chamber, and orchestral playing have evolved; and these norms will continue to evolve in the future. Scope and Purpose Within this thesis, I will lay out a guide for composers on how to notate extended techniques in a manner most useful to composers. This means that the techniques