FIVE THESIS PIECES:
FIVE COMPOSITIONAL EXPLORATIONS
HOLGER SCHOORL
A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF MUSIC
GRADUATE PROGRAM IN COMPOSITION
YORK UNIVERISTY
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1+1 Canada FIVE THESIS PIECES: FIVE COMPOSITIONAL EXPLORATIONS
by
HOLGER SCHOORL
A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of York University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
© 2009 Permission has been granted to: a) YORK UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES to lend or sell copies of this thesis in paper, microform or electronic formats, and b) LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA to reproduce, lend, distribute, or sell copies of this thesis anywhere in the world in micro form, paper or electronic formats and to authorize or procure the reproduction, loan, distribution or sale of copies of this thesis anywhere in the world in microform, paper of electronic formats.
The author reserves other publication rights, and neither the thesis nor extensive extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's written permission. IV
Abstract
My thesis details the progression of my compositional style from one that relied on predetermined structural mechanisms to a style of composing instinctively with sound.
A predetermined structural mechanism is a plan that one establishes in advance of composing a piece of music. These ordering mechanisms place a large emphasis on what lies behind the music. I once used ordering mechanisms to help me write music; however it was a methodology that did not suit me. I am more interested in sounds; in my view music is a sequence of beautiful sounds. In order to write beautiful music I felt I needed to listen only to the sounds and let them suggest what I should do. The five thesis pieces are attempts at finding a way of composing with sounds without any form of predetermined structure. V
Table of Contents
Abstract iv
List of Score Samples vii
Introduction 1
Part 1: Undergraduate Pieces, Polyphony; Bach and Messiaen 3
1 Woodwind Quartet (Carnival of the Intervals) 3
2 Polyphony I: Bach 7
3 Polyphony II: Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony 10
4 Juxtaposition, Obviousness and Repetition in Messiaen 12
5 The excess of polyphony: Bach and Messiaen 17
6 Piano Trio (materials) 21
7 Piano Trio (form) 28
Part 2: Sounds, Computers, Stalactites, Instinct and Morton Feldman 34
1 Sound Love 34
2 Gorecki's Tam-tams 44
3 Computer music and Stalactite composing 46
4 Instinct 49
5 Feldman's Forms 56
6 Feldman's Sounds 58 vi
Part 3: Thesis Pieces 61
1 Nonet 61
2 Sextet (for a quintet) 67
3 The Guitar (Trio 1, Trio 2) 76
4 Trio 1 78
5 Trio 2 84
6 Quintet 91
7 Duo 95
Conclusion 101
Bibliography 104
Appendix A (scores) 107
Sextet 108
Trio 1 120
Trio 2 128
Quintet 139
Duo 154
Appendix B (Cds) 160 vn
List of Score Examples
Example 1. Ligeti, Gyorgy. Musica Ricercata 4
Example 2. Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. Adagio and Fugue in C minor 8
Example 3. Bach, Johann Sebastian. Goldberg Variations 10
Example 4. Messiaen Olivier. Turangalila Symphony (statue theme) 13
Example 5. Messiaen Olivier. Turangalila Symphony (gamelan texture) 14
Example 6. Messiaen Olivier. Turangalila Symphony (syncopated rhythms) 14
Example 7. Messiaen Olivier. Turangalila Symphony (piano chord crescendo) 15
Example 8. Messiaen Olivier. Turangalila Symphony (descending chord) 15
Example 9. Piano Trio, (opening) 22
Example 10. Piano Trio, (cluster motives) 23
Example 11. Piano Trio, (flattened melodies) 23
Example 12. Piano Trio, (staccato confused counterpoint) 24
Example 13. Piano Trio, (ending of A section, first movement) 25
Example 14. Piano Trio. (B section opening) 26
Example 15. Piano Trio, ("fun" music) 27
Example 16. Piano Trio, (opening of second movement) 30
Example 17. Piano Trio, (themes first movement, second section) 31
Example 18. Schoenberg Arnold. Piano Concerto 39
Example 19. Berg Alban. Wozzeck. 40 viii
Example 20. Debussy Claude. La Mer 41
Example 21. Bartok Bela. Fifth String Quartet 41
Example 22. Ravel Maurice. Piano Concerto in G 42
Example 23. Verdi Giuseppe. Otello 43
Example 24. "irrational," nineteen year old melody 54
Example 25. Nonet, (two melodies) 62
Example 26. Sextet, (opening materials) 69
Example 27. Sextet, (repetitive material, discovery of the method) 70
Example 28. Sextet, (slightly altering repeated motive) 71
Example 29. Sextet, (an excerpt from the slightly altering repeated passage) 72
Example 30. Sextet, (first flute, clarinet, viola sonority) 73
Example 31. Sextet, (second flute, clarinet, viola sonority) 73
Example 32. Sextet, (piano and cello motive) 74
Example 33. Sextet, (an excerpt from the alternating three identities passage) 75
Example 34. Trio 1. (first busy material) 81
Example 35. Trio 1. (second busy material) 82
Example 36. Trio 1. (third busy material) 82
Example 37. Trio 2. (opening material) 86
Example 38. Trio 2. (vibraphone, guitar and toms playing on separate beats) 87 ix
Example 39. Trio 2. (guitar and toms melody) 88
Example 40. Feldman Morton. For John Cage, (chromatically ascending passage).. 92
Example 41 Quintet, (primary motive) 94
Example 42. Duo. (staccato passage) 96
Example 43. Duo. (first guitar and trombone echoing passage) 96
Example 44. Duo. (second guitar and trombone echoing passage) 97
Example 45. Duo. (teenager melody) 99 1
Introduction.
The thesis pieces I wrote from the summer of 2007 to the winter of 2008 were written in order to discover a compositional process that suited me. Despite my age - I am this year thirty three - I am rather inexperienced as a composer. My first piece of music conceived as notes on staff paper was not written until five years ago. Before that,
I had been an aimless musician; for a few years I had given up on music altogether. As an undergraduate student I was unsure of how to put a piece together. Therefore I followed conventional notions about form in order to compose. The act of composing was an inconsistent and unpredictable one. I often got blocked without knowing how to get out of it. While it was a joy to play music or to create music for pieces, like melodies, the idea of a piece, of a musical object was a problem.
The primary concerns I had was how to understand the chronology of a piece of music: why does one thing follow the next? Why is one thing similar or dissimilar from what preceded it? Moreover how long should one thing go on for before something else can interrupt it? My response to these questions was to imagine that there was a meaningful way to order a piece and that the meaning of a piece is wrapped up in how it is ordered. As I wrote pieces that were highly ordered I became less convinced of that conclusion. I increasingly felt that positing a piece's meaning in its ordering mechanism actually prevents me from listening to the music by directing me to what lies behind it. 2
What I started looking for was a way of making music that did not involve the use of perceptible order. I wanted to direct my attention to the surface of the music. The thesis pieces are explorations of the possibilities of composing without predetermined structure, and of composing freely with sounds.
The thesis will be divided into three broad sections: my compositional process as it existed during my undergraduate years, the composers who influenced it - Bach and
Messiaen - and the difficulties I had with it. The second section will describe my experiences that showed me a way out of these difficulties, and my discovery of Morton
Feldman's work which confirmed my suspicion about my process and general attitude towards music and showed me how I might better proceed. The third section is an analysis of the thesis pieces themselves and shows how they are attempts at overcoming my earlier compositional problems. In all three sections I will examine the music in great detail. It is the details of music that interest me. The surface detail of sound is where my compositional interest lies. 3
PART 1. Undergraduate pieces, Polyphony; Bach and Messiaen.
Woodwind Quartet (Carnival of the Intervals).
The woodwind quartet was the first piece I wrote under the supervision of a
composition professor. My inexperience in composing a piece of music made me use a
considerable amount of precompositional planning. I was not comfortable with merely
putting notes together, I felt the piece needed a form. Being an undergraduate student,
taking history and analysis courses in which the forms of pieces are discussed at length, I
thought pieces of music needed form in order to exist. While thinking about the piece, I
came up with a number or organizational mechanisms which allowed me to start
working. As I wrote, other organizational ideas occurred to me which allowed me to
give the piece an overall form. In the end the piece became very logical in its
organization which pleased me enormously.
The organizational plan of the woodwind quartet was greatly influenced by Gyorgy
Ligeti's Musica Ricercata for solo piano, a piece comprised of miniatures. The form of the piece is an accumulative one: the first movement contains only two notes, A and D; the second movement has three notes, E sharp, F sharp and G, and so on. Each movement adds another note until the eleventh movement when all twelve pitches are 4
included.1 I found this an appealing notion and conceived a form for my piece in which
I would deal with one thing at a time, in my case one interval at a time. This formal
notion preceded any musical ideas; I thought of it as an artificial restraint to work within.
That I enjoyed Ligeti's piece apart from its formal restraints is largely due to the
menacing sound of the second movement. The movement is comprised of a very simple
motive, moving back and forth between E sharp and F sharp. I enjoyed especially this
passage when the interval is heard in widely spaced octaves (see Ex. 1.)
(Ex. 1. Ligeti, Musica Ricercata, II):
What I found fascinating about this music was that it could illicit a complex
1. In writing this piece Ligeti said: "I regarded all the music I had known and loved up to then as something I couldn't use. I asked myself: what can I do with a single note, what can I do with the octave, or with an interval, or specific rhythmic situation." Tooppg. 38 5
emotional reaction while being made from such slight materials. I was impressed that it
required so little to construct a piece of interesting music. This fact would not however
impact the composition of my piece; what I was interested in was the organizational plan.
I was motivated to explore isolated intervals in order to overcome my difficulty
with solfege. I started my formal musical education at the advanced age of twenty six,
when I first encountered solfege. For me music was primarily experienced through
instruments and recordings. Hence I found the connection between notes on a page and
sounds in the air very hard to make. My idea was that if I wrote a series of pieces, one
dealing with each of the intervals, my ability to recognize and distinguish between them would improve.
Once this intervallic idea was in place Carnival of the Intervals became the title
for the piece, on obvious parody of Saint-Saens's Carnival of the Animals. I enjoyed the form of Saint-Saens's piece, how each of the small movements is a separate self contained entity. The piece moves from one miniature to the next without any development, or thought to the overall form of the piece. It is, of course, not a serious piece and is usually played for children. But I found the form compelling on account of its obviousness. I was also quite fond of the comic character of many of the pieces, the fifth movement in particular which depicts a dancing elephant.
Apart from the intervallic organization of the Woodwind Quartet I created an 6
overall form. Noticing that the intervals were organized in a palindromic configuration,
that when one passed the tritone, all the subsequent intervals one encountered were
inversions of intervals one had already passed, that the perfect fifth is an inverted perfect
fourth and that the minor sixth is an inverted major third and so on, I decided to give the
piece a palindromic form as well. The thirteen intervals were organized into three
movements in such a way that the third movement is an inverted rewriting of the first
movement and the middle movement is itself a small palindrome. In the use of a
palindrome form I was also showing Bartok's influence, in particular the fifth string
quartet with its five movement palindromic form.
As an idea this was very attractive. The piece would go along and then once it
reached the centre would turn around and retrace its steps until it reached the beginning
again. From this perspective the piece was a great success. However when the piece
came to be performed I felt uncomfortably distant from it. Being fond of experimental
music I was disappointed with how safe and old-fashioned the piece sounded. I had over
estimated the value of the formal devices. I thought that if the form was constructed in
an intellectual and artificial manner, that the music would sound interesting. What
Richard Toop said about Ligeti's Musica Ricercata "the musical outcome is, for the most part, much less iconoclastic that its intentions"2 would apply to my woodwind quartet
also.
2. Toop pg. 38 7
This piece was written in a sort of vacuum; I got involved in the logic of the piece
and did not wonder whether or not it had anything to do with the sort of music I actually
wanted to write. It certainly did not reflect the music I was listening to at the time.
Much more representative of this period is the piece that followed the Woodwind
Quartet, the Piano Trio. Before I discuss this piece I will discuss the sort of music I was
interested in at this time.
Polyphony I: Bach.
What initially impelled me to attend music school was a desire to learn how to
write a fugue. I had been listening to Mozart's Adagio and Fugue in C minor and I
found it intensely beautiful. I was fascinated by the persistent iterations of the fugue
subject, how the music, while in constant motion, was nevertheless always uttering the
same thing. During my undergraduate degree I of course become fond of J.S. Bach's
keyboard music and all the wonderful fugues contained in the Well-Tempered Clavier
(WTC).
For me the beauty of a fugue lies in the fact that the subject is stated so many times, either in its entirety or in a fragmented form. In order for the subject to be
distinguishable from the accompanying voices it must be distinctive so that when it is 8
heard those other voices recede. This can be done through a "striking feature,3 such as a
distinctive rhythm or a striking intervallic content, featuring for example leaps of more
than a third. These things would distinguish the subject from the regular rhythms and the
stepwise motion that the accompanying voices employ. The subject must moreover be
short enough to be easily remembered.
This is the subject from the above mentioned fugue by Mozart (see Ex. 2.)
(Ex. 2. Mozart, Adagio and Fugue in C minor, II):
It is short, a mere three measures it has a distinctive rhythm and it has leaps, first of a
perfect fifth and then of a major sixth. These things make the subject instantly
recognizable, and it can easily be heard when other voices are playing over and under it.
Even when a fugue is not incessantly iterating the subject4, fragments of the
subject are heard in the modulating episodes, those non-subject uttering areas of the
fugue which "provide variety, as well as relief from a constant emphasis on the subject as
3. Kennan pg. 204 4. As in the C major fugue from the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier, wherein the subject in its entirety is heard twenty two times 9
a whole."5 The subject from the C minor fugue from the first book of the WTC, while
not constantly present in its entirety nevertheless, "dominates the entire composition" by
having its opening rhythmic pattern occur 48 times in the fugue.6 Bach uses many
sequential devices to keep the subject constantly in a listener's mind, even though it is
not always there in its entirety.
The harmonic structure of a fugue is patterned after a narrative structure. The
fugue subject starts in a home key, moves towards the dominant or the relative major,
and then after visiting some other keys returns home to the tonic. This sequence of
events is analogous to a journey. While I am not dismissing the effectiveness or historical significance of such a musical structure, my personal enjoyment of Bach's music was never rooted in that structure. It is the fugue subject's quality of being there while at the same time being elsewhere that I find moving in Bach's fugal style. I do not require a fugue to go anywhere (much less arrive anywhere) what I enjoy is hearing the changes that the subject undergoes. Like this example from the tenth variation (the
fugetta) from the Goldberg Variations1 (See Ex. 3.)
5. Kennan pg. 204 6. Engelspg. 17 7. The second example shows the subject on measure 25, the penultimate utterance of the subject before its arrival at the tonic. 10
(Ex. 3. Bach, Goldberg Variations, X):
* ,#|.:g:::. mm r r ir r j 1—"• 1 "T"
yitJ J.=^ •^f 5RT" ^
What pleases me about those areas of a fugue is that the subject can be recognized as the
subject while its shape is significantly altered
Polyphony II: Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony.
While Bach uses a polyphonic style to create clarity in multi thematic situations,
Olivier Messiaen uses a polyphonic style in such a way that a sort of delightful confusion t
results. Messiaen combines numerous themes together, piling theme on top of theme
without ever attempting to make them go together. In his use of polyphony Messiaen
was in part inspired by birds. He wanted to imitate the sound of a forest filled with song
birds. "Ives used superimposed music. Milhaud, too. In my case, it was birds that led
me toward superimposing of tempos. Fifty voices might be superimposed in different
tempos. The result is an absolutely impenetrable chaos, a prodigious entanglement, 11
which nevertheless remains harmonious."8 In his treatise The Technique of my Musical
Language Messiaen details what he hopes to achieve with his music. He believed that
listeners wanted to be charmed by the "charm of impossibilities."9 These impossibilities
have to do with the mathematical formulas that organize the piece but which are largely
imperceptible. These charming impossibilities are meant to lead a listener to a
"theological rainbow which the musical language attempts to be."10 Messiaen was a
devout Catholic and believed that he was communicating the truths of that religion in his
music." While Messiaen might hope to communicate something profound with the
complexity of his music, I hear it in a very different way. To me the music sounds
haphazard and disordered. Far from detracting from the music it is precisely the
wildness of the disorder that I enjoyed in his music.
It might be more appropriate when speaking of polyphony in Messiaen's music to
speak of superimposition because, unlike Bach's polyphony, Messiaen's materials are
unrelated. In fugue for example, a subject and countersubject are made to fit together in
such a way that they belong together. There is moreover a hierarchy, at the top of which
stands the subject, the subsidiary voices stand underneath. In Messiaen's music there is
no hierarchy, materials are presented equally, one theme is not meant to sound as more
important than any other, and independently, the themes are not adjusted so that they fit
8. Messiaen/Samuel pg. 82 9. Messiaen pg. 13 10. Ibid. pg. 21 11. "Music should be able to express some noble sentiments (and especially the most noble of all, the religious sentiments exalted by the theology and the truths of our Catholic faith)." Messiaen. pg. 13 12
together. The materials are not intended to sound contrapuntal but textural.
Simultaneity is a persistent texture in the Turangalila Symphony. In the fourth
movement Messiaen introduces four melodies in the beginning and middle of the
movement, then near the end he lays them on top of one and other, not fitting them
together in a polyphonic way, but superimposing them. He then brings back a theme
from an earlier movement, and lays that on top of everything else. All the themes are
recognizable, I however find it disorienting to hear them all at the same time.
Juxtaposition, Obviousness and Repetition in Messiaen.
Like his layering of materials, his superimposed melodies, Messiaen uses juxtaposition to great effect. In the Turangalila Symphony Messiaen does not develop
his materials but repeats them and juxtaposes them with unrelated materials instead.
These materials are moreover so obvious that as soon as one hears them one
knows them so well that one does not need to hear them again for some time. An
example of Messiaen's obviousness is the "Statue Theme" which appears throughout the
symphony (See Ex. 4) 13
(Ex. 4. Messiaen, Turangalila Symphony):
Whenever this theme is brought back it is always in an identical or nearly identical
situation - in the trombones and tuba, played loudly at a sluggish tempo. In the first
movement of the symphony that statue theme is repeated four times in a row, while to
my ears once or twice would have been entirely adequate.
The use of very obvious materials in a non developmental way gives this
symphony what Paul Griffiths calls a vulgar and irrational quality.12 However it was the
vulgarity and irrationality of the piece that initially attracted me to it.
In the first movement, there is a prolonged passage of two sets of undeveloped
materials juxtaposed with one and other, alternating for a minute and a half. One is a
texture reminiscent of and influenced by Indonesian Gamelan music (See Ex. 5.)
12. a) "It does seem reasonable to call these rapturous chords vulgar, and just vulgar but stupefyingly vulgar." Griffiths pg. 130. b) "The Turangalila is nothing if not grossly irrational." pg. 139. 14
(Ex. 5. Messiaen, Turangalila Symphony, I):
0 ad' W #*= w 9 m VtW 1»I
=«£=£ : S t^H^ F3^ f ^=?
The other is comprised of horns trumpets and piano playing three separate things. First the horns, trumpets play this chord in various syncopated rhythms (See Ex. 6.)
(Ex. 6. Messiaen, Turangalila Symphony, I): ¥*^ ^U
i > VP" fr PHL1-*
The piano then plays this same chord for ten sixteenth notes, doubled by a maraca with a crescendo from pianissimo to mezzo forte (see Ex. 7.)
13 Played in the piccolo, flute, bassoon, tuba, triangle, celeste, glockenspiel, vibraphone, piano, ondes martenot, first violins, cellos and double basses. 15
(Ex. 7. Messiaen, Turangalila Symphony, I):
The horns and trumpets, and at the end the trombones, then play descending forte chords, which is then literally repeated by the piano14(see Ex. 8.)
(Ex. 8. Messiaen, Turangalila Symphony, I):
V>HM \h M i H ^•0 ^£&-» f ^^w ^^m^www
What interested me about this back and forth procedure, of alternating between
14. While these materials are being alternated there are four "rhythmic pedals" heard. A rhythmic pedal is described by Messiaen as a "rhythm which repeats itself indefatigably, in ostinato, without busying itself about the rhythms which surround it." from The Technique of my Musical Language pg. 26. The clarinets and oboes have an eight measure rhythmic pedal, two cymbals have one each and the second violins and violas have another. This passage combines Messiaen's juxtaposing technique with his superimposing technique. 16
those contrasting textures was, on the one hand, how obvious the materials were, how
literally they were repeated while, on the other hand, how ambiguous they were, how
they were varied constantly in terms of length. The gamelan music is played for three
and a half measures the first two times it is played. Afterwards the length of the material
is progressively though inconsistently shortened. The horn and piano material is
similarly shortened or lengthened with each iteration. This creates an interesting
situation because the music is very predictable. One knows that after the horns and
piano one will hear the gamelan again. There is at the same time an unpredictability of
when that alternation will occur because each section is of an unpredictable length.
Moreover what is interesting about this passage is how long it is. Each section is
heard eight times. The length of the passage is mysterious. Why there is so much
repetition is unclear. I sense that there must be some purpose behind it, because from a
musical point of view it is obvious and uninteresting. However that purpose is never
revealed. There are many passages in the Turangalila that feel like they go on for too
long, it is one of the ways that make this symphony "irrational."
What fascinated me about this music was how through its obviousness it risks being uninteresting. I found this obviousness most useful because I was under the
impression that music had to have elegant and imperceptible formal qualities. In the
Turangalila one does not get that impression as the entire work is based on juxtaposition
and superimposition. Messiaen reveals everything, the music is crude but not repellant. 17
While I enjoyed the clarity of the unsubtle form, it did not take long before I
became suspicious of the dramatic nature of the style, the gigantism of the gestures.
Why he wanted to make such ostentatious music was always an unanswered question for
me until I read this: "the Turangalila is nothing if it is not grossly irrational on every
front. The work is not made to be understood, but made rather to draw its listeners
through mind-defying complexity, alterations of time sense and sheer brilliance into a
state of amazement."15 That this music became aesthetically unappealing to me has to
do with the moral objection that I have to such aesthetic goals. I started to want
something more than mere amazement. I wanted a music that was more ambiguous,
which was more uncertain of its intended affect on the audience. I started to feel that music could be more than a sermon, that instead it could be an interesting conversation.
The excess of polyphony, Bach and Messiaen.
What is moving about Bach's polyphony ~ quite apart from the subtle intervalic alterations that the subject undergoes -- is the overwhelming sound of numerous melodies sounding at the same time in a comprehensible manner. This is particularly evident in Bach's choral music wherein so many simultaneous voices are audible and distinguishable. There is a fascinating magic that occurs when more and more voices are
15. Griffiths, pg. 139. 18
added to a musical space that already seems full. When two voices sound together one
feels that the space is adequately filled. When a third is added, one is surprised, then a
fourth arrives and it is bewildering. Listening to this excess of voices is often an
overwhelming experience; I find it hard to contain the exceedingly strong emotions it
arouses in me.
For years, while unsure of what I wanted from music, I would use the certainty of
that emotional reaction as an anchor to reassure myself that my love for music was
legitimately profound. After all if music makes me weep, clearly I am emotionally,
hence legitimately, engaged. As I became more involved with music not only as a
listener but as a composer I became less and less convinced of that conclusion. I came
to feel that music ought not to seek such an overwhelming affect on its audience but
should address it in a more modest and equal fashion. That instead of doing something
to the audience, it should do something with the audience. I also started to think that the
European polyphonic tradition with its historic roots in liturgical music was an inherently
overwhelming style. There is something magical about having many things happen at the same time and I became suspicious of this magic.
My experience with the composers of the Franco-Flemish school of 15th and 16th centuries, primarily Josquin and Ockeghem, and the English composers, Dunstable and
Tallis is similar to my experience with Bach. These composers had a tremendous emotional impact on me. Without leaving the slightest trace of influence on my own 19 music. The emotional reaction I derive from this music is not unlike my experience with
Pop music. The emotionally superlative Unchained Melody as recorded by The
Righteous Brothers reduces me to tears in the same way that the opening fugue of Bach's
B Minor Mass does. It should be stressed that the emotional experience I am suspicious of is not isolated to the European Christian tradition. Other musics attempt to have this impact on its audience also.
This comment from Evan Parker, perhaps an unlikely source from which to critique polyphony, cemented my suspicion of this polyphonic style: "The activity of maintaining several layers of activity (a prolix way of saying polyphony) has more in common with the circus arts of juggling and acrobatics than with the soul searching of high art."16 Following Evan Parker's remark, and this might not be what he intended, I might say that I started to view the goals of polyphony and the goals of art as being incommensurable.17 While one might be amazed by a juggler, it is an amazement that can only exist in the presence of the juggler. I feel that music should challenge a listener's ability to understand it. That it should have an ambiguous meaning. This is important because it forces a listener to ask questions about what the music is. The larger the number of interpretations a musical work can sustain the more interesting it is.
For me the sound of polyphony is not the sound of a question but the sound of an answer that wants to be very persuasive. Therefore my music became less polyphonic. I did not
16. Parker www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/ 17. Or as Morton Feldman put it "Polyphony sucks." Feldman pg. 158 20 want to persuade anyone of anything.
When I started taking a serious interest in Morton Feldman's music I was initially bothered by the fact that his music did not make me weep. I was worried about my affinity for this abstract and austere style of music. If I was not involved emotionally how could I be involved artistically? After a while I started to think that the emotional experience was actually a lesser form of engagement because of the singular nature of the reaction.
After I wrote the Woodwind Quartet I wanted to find a style that reflected not only my musical tastes but also my general aesthetic tastes. After a few false starts I wrote a piano trio in which I tried to apply the influence of Messiaen's music; it employs considerable amounts of non-developmental juxtaposition and some superimposition. It exists part way between a rational and an irrational form. I did not want to repeat the mistake of the Woodwind Quartet and allow the piece to write itself without knowing whether or not I liked it. The irrational nature of Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony gave me the confidence to compose irrationally myself. However I was still under the influence of Bartok and the undergraduate tendency toward predetermined forms. Hence the piece starts intuitively but ends mechanically. 21
Piano Trio (materials)
The opening of my Piano Trio was written quickly and with little thought about what I was doing. It started as a diversion from a soon to be abandoned piece that was going nowhere because I could not discover a form for it. The piece was inspired by a performance by the Vienna Piano Trio I had attended and emerged from an idea about the combination of strings and piano. It had been previously my tendency to write abstractly for groups of instruments, writing notes without much thought about the idiomatic characters of the instruments individually or the quality of the ensemble in its entirety.
The opening melodies played by the strings are in a D minor sort of tonality, were freely composed and are completely unrelated and indifferent to the clusters in the piano underneath them (see Ex. 9) 22
(Ex. 9. Schoorl, Piano Trio, I):
Violin
Cello
Piano
Those clusters, unimportant as they might seem, became the basis for most of the piece.
I saw in this group of clusters, spanning a major third from C to E (or B natural to F flat as the enharmonic notation of the score indicates), an appealing restriction to work within. I wrote these motives as horizontal versions of the clusters played by the piano
(see Ex. 10.) 23
(Ex. 10. Schoorl, Piano Trio, I):
m i i p r
?g> tff f ¥=* "m.
After those motives the piece returns to the opening materials except that the strings now have the clusters and the piano has the melodies (see Ex. 11.)
(Ex. 11 Schoorl, Piano Trio, I):
Violin
Cello
^mm Piano
n i r «r P^ 'P r ii f 24
The melodies are altered by removing rhythmic differentiation from them; they are flattened out into quarter notes. This sort of variation, of changing rhythms while keeping the pitches the same was the predominant form of development used in this piece.
After this passage comes a heterophonic passage, in which violin, cello and both hands of the piano play the same material at the same time, though not together, as they start in different places, and in different octaves. This texture was intended to sound like
Messiaen. These motives are the pitches of the opening cluster, C to E, its inversion, G sharp to C and a motive that puts those themes together (see Ex. 12).
(Ex. 12. Schoorl, Piano Trio, I): 25
The third theme ~ because of its distinguishing feature of many leaps — can be clearly discerned from the other two.
The next four measures bring a few things back, the A phrase in the violin, a harmonized and retrograded version in the cello and then the A and B phrases in retrograde in the piano, all this over the same piano clusters, which are now doubled a fifth above, which brings the A section to a close (see Ex. 13).
Ex. 13. Schoorl, Piano Trio, I:
Violin f
> Cello m Wf / \\ k HzH': \ 4 "' ft J 'I' l| J ZPi fW: w- Piano y i m P| •gfr? i ES / 26
The B section develops materials18 that are completely unrelated to the A section (see Ex.
14).
Ex. 14. Schoorl, Piano Trio, I:
! »r"T f U TJ pel D
They are developed in a conventional contrapuntal manner for many measures. I included this section as an irrational act of juxtaposition. I felt that the piece wanted a strong contrast at that point.
The C section returns to the A and B cluster themes from the opening (see Ex.
15).
18. The melody in the bass is one that I wrote when I was a teenager. Ex. 15. Schoorl, Piano Trio, I:
Violin
Cello
Piano mm
The obvious rhythm and prevalent staccato is intended to sound humorous. This is another instance of an abrupt juxtaposition. I had no reason for doing this other than I felt it would sound interesting.
Then there is a restatement of the opening melodies without the piano clusters as
a coda which brings one third of the movement to a close.
In this section I was functioning in a situation in which connecting motives and
chords was of great importance. The motives of the A and C sections, apart from the D minor melodies, are all derived from the idea of filling the chromatic space between C 28
and E, and though I by no means exhausted all the possibilities, it was the primary means
by which I constructed the materials. This was not merely an intellectual process. I
enjoyed creating this material and the idea that most of the materials were derived from
limited number of pitches pleased me also.
Piano Trio (form)
Eventually this enjoyment of small scale derivation, of creating motives from
chords and motives from other motives, led to the development of a large scale form.
The piece was going fine; it went from thing to thing with confidence and a sense of
purpose. Influenced as I was by Messiaen's music, I juxtaposed contrasting materials
without worrying whether or not a comprehensible form was emerging. Nevertheless I
started worrying about what I was doing, whether or not the piece was going in the right
direction. Hence I started thinking about a form.
The first movement is rather formless. There are three sections, the first two
comprised of three sections each and the last section is a long review of the first two
sections in which many things are brought back and repeated many times. From
Bartok's Second Violin Concerto I got the idea to create a movement which was a
rewriting of an earlier movement.19 I was very fond of Bartok's concerto, its melodies
19. "The finale is constructed exclusively from transformed first-movement thematic material: all the themes return; they have the same place and function in the structure of the movement as originally, and even the transitional and developmental sections show similar traits." Gillies pg. 522. 29 and its many inventive orchestrations, and I quite liked the idea of the form; that feeling of uncertain recurrence that I felt when listening to the third movement. To create the second movement I took the materials from the second section of the first movement and inserted them into the rhythmic and formal characteristics of the first section, and took the themes from the first section and put them into the second, the third section as in the first movement is also repetitive and recapitulative.
Following this structure the first section of the second movement was written quickly. The opening clearly resembles the the opening of the first (see Ex. 16). 30
Ex. 16. Schoorl, Piano Trio, II:
pizz. \,p.
Violin j^FPF ^^ ©E £ a
piZ-2. Cello yg i > 3BE£ 3* r Pp£ ^ feS i>
n—"r- iri # Piano P SPfS ^S fe s 933= s
The violin and cello play responsorial melodic material, though they play staccato
pizzicato instead of legato arco, and the piano instead of playing clusters, spreads the
minor seconds apart to form major seven grace notes. The melodies that the strings play
are the themes from the beginning of the second section of the first movement20 (see
Ex.17).
20 These melodies make an appearance in Trio I. 31
Ex. 17. Schoorl, Piano Trio, I:
ii i piif *p r r [y ¥ ,,,trvti^rr^*>? ^ ^ pk
The movement proceeds in a likewise manner, melodies are turned into other melodies
and rhythmic situations are rewritten to sound reminiscent of the first movement.
Creating these materials was a great pleasure and was very easy. Fifty measures were written very quickly. I was particularly satisfied with the fact that not only were the themes thoroughly interrelated but that I also found the themes aesthetically pleasing.
The success of this beginning seemed like a perfect coming together of abstract principle and aesthetic reality. This satisfaction was short lived as I was unable to achieve this balance between predetermined structure and audible surface again.
At the beginning of the second section of the second movement I got, so-called, writer's block. The point at which I got blocked there was supposed to be a long solo passage in the strings to mirror a solo passage in the piano from the first movement.
What had worked so well in the first section of the movement — turning old themes into new ones — stopped working; I could think of nothing for the strings to play.
There were two sides to this blockage. On the one hand I was genuinely 32 dissatisfied with my attempts at coming up with new themes; nothing sounded worthy of inclusion. On the other hand, as the frustration over the blockage continued I started feeling a petulant desire to rid myself of the restrictive form. I felt too hemmed in by the framework, and I started blaming the framework for the blockage. Wanting at all costs to finish what I had started I pushed ahead and came up with a solution that today seems to me substandard.
The solution to my inability to create new themes out of the opening materials was to not create new themes at all and use instead the materials of the first movement unaltered. In this way the melodic content of the entire first movement is literally restated in ten measures. The resulting passage is totally nonsensical. It lacks melodic shape and purpose, it is full of movement but it does not go anywhere. While the passage is justified by the form I was unhappy with the sound. I like melodies with a nice shape and purpose, a nonsense melody did not appeal to me. Moreover I realized that I did not require a form to create a passage like this, that if I wanted a sequence of random notes I did not require it to be a variation of another theme, but I could generate it independently. I had though an unshakeable belief in the form, and I was very stubborn.
The idea that I did not need to use an overall form was not available to me, I thought that when one composed a piece of music one used an organizing principle.
While I was satisfied with the relative formlessness of the first movement, how the 33 material is juxtaposed without being developed, how materials are brought back without a logical purpose, I was not content with a formless piece. As I said earlier I accepted the undergraduate attitude toward form. I felt that a piece had to have a logical construction that could be understood independently of the sounds. I therefore wrote the second movement as an attempt to redeem the irrational form of the first. In the hope that through re-conceiving the first movement in a second movement I would be turning an irrational form into a rational one, by making an order where earlier there was not one.
Both the Woodwind Quartet and the Piano Trio use predetermined forms. I was an undergraduate student and under the impression that when one composes music (as opposed to writing a song or making electronic music) that one used recognizable forms, that such forms were a precondition for intelligibility. I had the notion that one did not write music as such but rather wrote suites, fugues or sonatas, that a piece of music was inextricably linked to a form. I thought it was not sufficient to interest oneself in sounds, what one needed was a means for organizing those sounds.
Not one of these notions were forced on me, and my adoption of those methods was entirely natural; it felt like the right thing to do. I quite enjoyed coming up with the forms that I used. The only problem was that when I could not come up with a form, or when I found the forms hard to use, as was often the case, then I did not know how to 34
proceed. This had a lot to do of course with my inexperience. The more pieces I wrote
the more I discovered that form can emerge from one's writing. That the mere act of
writing ~ of accumulating measures; each section accruing to the preceding one — would
enable a form to emerge.
PART 2. Sounds, Computers, Stalactites and Instinct.
Sound Love.
The American composer La Monte Young had an experience in his youth that led
him to a compositional style of using very long sustained tones: "The very first sound
that I recall hearing was the sound of the wind going through the chinks in the log cabin
(where he lived as a child), and I've always considered this among my most important
early experiences. It was very awesome and beautiful and mysterious; as I couldn't see it
and didn't know what it was, I questioned my mother about it for hours."21 Later he
heard the sound of power lines and found that sound equally beautiful.22 In his later life
21. Young pg. 20 22. "Actually, the first sustained single note at a constant pitch, without a beginning or end, that I heard as a child was the sound of telephone poles - the hum of the wires. This was a very important auditory influence upon the sparse sustained style of work of the genre of the "Trio for Strings" and "Composition 1960 #7" (B and F sharp 'to be held for a long time.') Actually aside from the sound of groups of insects 35
when he started to compose music of very long held tones, initially for their own sake but increasingly for the overtones that he would be able to create using them, he would
site those early experiences with sounds of an indeterminate and interminable duration as
influencing his desire to compose such music. La Monte Young discovered that such
sounds could be an inspiration for a whole new sort of listening, of considering certain musical events previously thought of as minute and inessential as inherently interesting
and aesthetical.
Tony Conrad the composer and visual artist and for a time a member of La Monte
Young's ensemble the "Theatre of Eternal Music", described his musical practice thusly:
"I played two notes together at all times, so that I heard difference tones vividly in my
left ear. Any change in the pitch of either of the two notes I played would be reflected in a movement of the pitch of the difference tone. I spent all of my playing time working on the inner subtleties of the combination tones, the harmonics, the fundamentals, and their beats -- as microscopic changes in bow pressure, finger placement and pressure, etc., would cause shifts in the sound."23
What I find fascinating about this description is the question it raises of what constitutes a passage in music, how does one distinguish one moment from another.
That Tony Conrad could consider a slight change in the intonation of two notes sounding together as inherently interesting and worth listening to as though it were a modulation and natural geographic resonators, sounds of constant frequency are not easily found in nature before electronics. Young pg. 33 - 34. 23. Cox pg.. 317. 36
or a transitional section in a piece of tonal music is absolutely fascinating. Tony Conrad
does not need a sound to do anything, he only needs the sound to be there. He only
wants to penetrate the sound with his ears, get inside the sound and then observe all the
detail and nuances of the sound. A conclusion I made from this practice is that any
sound can be a musical sound. For me this is not an academic point but one that
confirmed intuitions and experiences I have had throughout my life. Though John Cage
made this remark "All audible phenomena = materials for music,"24it took me a long
time to find my own way to this conclusion.
As a teenager I was very interested to discover that the sounds of machines,
bathroom hand blowers, electric generators, aeroplanes and lawnmowers had pitches. As
soon as I discovered that one could hum the pitch of a machine's noise I started,
providing I privacy, singing along with them, improvising melodies over the drone of the
machine. I became particularly interested in sustaining intervals difficult to maintain
like the minor second and trying to find a smaller space than it, trying to find a stable
area between the pull of the unison and the relative stability of the minor second. As I
said this was only done in private; and though I knew I was having fun I did not think it could have serious consequences.
I once heard an upstairs neighbour practising a scale on a piano. The sound of a
24. Cox pg. 222. 37 small hobby aeroplane slowly joined the sound of the piano, it started very faint and gradually became louder, the pitch was also ascending in a very slow glissando.
Inevitably the pitch of the aeroplane's engines joined the key of the scale that the pianist was playing and for one moment the piano and plane were in harmony. Then as the plane continued its flight overhead the pitch gradually changed the sound faded and the duet was over.
I worked for one summer as a superintendent at an apartment building. To enter the front door I had to enter a code into a touch pad, the door would unlock and a nasal buzzing sound would emit from a small speaker. Once through the door I would walk through the lobby toward the elevators. Once the door closed behind me the buzzing sound stopped, and I would then become aware of another sound which sounded exactly like the buzzing of the door, like an echo or a memory. It was the lights above the elevators that emitted this buzz, the identical pitch and timbre, but much quieter. I found this experience of walking away from a sound only to be greeted by that identical sound to be magical, every day that I heard it.
I had an intermediate experience with a musical sound in a non-musical situation, at a workshop I attended with the composer and improviser Malcolm Goldstein. To demonstrate his improvisational practice he played his G string for a long time. At first I waited for change, waited for him to play something else, but it soon dawned on me that 38
he was not going to change but stay on that G. The longer I listened the more I became
aware of the complexity of the sound and of the details I could listen to and the changes
that those details underwent. Goldstein played the G on a very long bow, from the
bottom to the tip to create an even and continuous sound, but while the pitch was
consistent the sound was always changing. The scraping of the bow against the string
sound would change depending on the weight he applied, and the changes of this sound
created a sort of counterpoint to the unchanging pitch . Moreover whenever he reached
the tip of the bow there would appear a small glissando in the pitch on account of the
higher tension of the strings in that part of the bow. This experience of listening to that
complex and simple sound was wonderful and is I imagine much like the listening
experience that Tony Conrad described.
I do not know that I can conclude from these examples that, because I found these
sounds beautiful, I consider them music. Music is perhaps only music when it intends to
be music, sounds that are performed as music. This of course does not exclude the
possibility of making music from these sounds, which is exactly what John Cage was
doing in the nineteen forties.25 What interests me here is not music, as such, but rather an
attitude towards listening, that one can listen to any sound with pleasure. This of course
depends on the quality of the sound, if the sound is complex enough to reward someone
for listening to it. Significantly it was the sound of the violin that I could explore with
25. His opinions on this subject are stated in his well known essay "The Future of Music: Credo." Reprinted in Cox pg. 25 39 my ears while the sounds of machine drones could only be listened to in relation to my own contribution. The sound of the violin is so beautiful that it does not ask for a contribution.
In the same way that I enjoyed those mechanical and electrical sounds for their individual and unique beauty, I have found that frequently what I enjoy in much larger pieces of music are equally isolated and unrelated sounds. What follows are six examples of musical fragments that gave me enormous pleasure even when the pieces in their entirety did not interest me. In some cases, having heard the piece only once or twice it is the only thing I remember.
Schoenberg, Piano Concerto, Op. 42
Two chords in the piano which are echoed in the muted horns and trumpets (Ex. 18): 40
Berg, Wozzeck, Act I. End of the scene with the Doctor.
A miniscule motive rises from the lowest part of the orchestra in the double bass all the way up through various instruments until it reaches the top pitch in the celeste (Ex. 19):
english horn double bass contra bassoon bass clarinet > 4 : ) 4 tiBh^ 5£ p§ f ^ 5=1 vb- ovb ' 8 mf f mp Jn. ^%-V^-4^^-»^*^^V^^»^-V^Jvfr^^^^'W^^'»^»^V ^^•v^^^^v^w^fr^v^^^^^^^^^^^^^^. timpani n fr It" BW II" It"
"* F" ;TT F" W XX
I enjoyed this in a DVD version of the opera but was disappointed when I heard this passage in the COC's version from few years back when the passage was imperfectly executed, reminding me of how fragile these small orchestral events are.
Debussy, La Mer (Ex. 20):
Seven measures before rehearsal number nine in this first movement these four chords are played in muted trumpets and pizzicato violins: 41
O 1 > * *f?
While I quite enjoy this sound I enjoy it even more for the structural function that it has.
It acts as a sort of deflection of the energy that had been building in the measures before.
One expects a resolution of some kind but got this eccentric event instead.
Bartok, Fifth String Quartet, Second Movement.
A dyad played in the first violin and viola (Ex. 21):
I™ ff4^" W-0- Violin I ^
Violin II ^m i --'
Viola
Cello 42
I have often enjoyed the sound of passages played in widely separated octaves, and
although this one is not all that wide, it gives a wonderful impression of wideness. The dyad of F and G that immediately precedes it is not nearly as striking and the G sharp F
sharp. Because the spacing is much wider this one is more beautiful than the other. This is perhaps my favourite moment in all of the Bartok string quartets, as unlikely as such a
statement might sound.
Ravel, Piano Concerto in G, Second Movement.
A passage in the very high clarinet (Ex. 22): rt, £ J*** m^g^ T •< Prjivjy
I heard this piece for the first time from orchestra seats, virtually in the front row; hence I could only see the pianist and the front rows of the string players. When this passage appeared I had no idea what I was hearing. I could not connect that strange sound with a person playing it. The effect of this surprise was enormously exciting. 43
Verdi, Otello.
This low passage including the bass drum (Ex. 23):
bass drum zm •••ffi"Z^ PPP
, , , viola _i iyy "j""T "jj yy pp l*V im double bass ^ msm ppp
..Jr.. p.'L^ \> Q \. X w jE
PPP i?RP
jeiulia. ECfcVuJ X • 3I iP i ft.lx •>a?, fififrrnf^
In a performance of the opera, sitting in the front row, I could feel the bass drum in my lower torso. It is one of the most menacing sound I have ever heard, or felt. 44
All of these experiences were memorable from I might say a non-musical point of view. I found them to be fascinating sounds. There are more important things to admire in a piece of music: melody, harmony, the overall form, the so-called architecture and while I do enjoy those aspects of a piece of music it is frequently these smaller, often orchestral events that interest me the most. I enjoyed them as I enjoyed the sounds of machines or aeroplanes. Not as a part of a larger piece of music but as an isolated non- referential sound.
Gorecki's Tam-tams.
At a concert of the contemporary music ensemble at the University of Ottawa, where I did my undergraduate degree, there was a performance of the final movement of
Henryk Gorecki's Good Night for solo soprano, alto flute, 3 tam-tams and piano. At the end of the piece there is a short solo passage played on the tam-tams. At this performance, after the percussionist played this passage, he paused, stepped away from the tam-tams and turned to the audience to indicate that the piece was over. However in the intense quiet of that small concert hall, in that moment after the end of a piece, when an audience is quiet for a moment before it starts clapping, a very quiet sound was faintly audible. It was the sound of the tam-tams resonating. In his inexperience, the percussionist had forgotten to stop the tam-tams from sounding, he imagined that his 45
only responsibility to the piece was hitting them, not stopping them. Seeing as there was
still a sound present, the piece could not be finished.
The audience quickly realized that although the piece was technically over, that
there was still something present to listen to, and though the tam-tams were resonating
very quietly, it was clear that it would be some time before they would stop resonating,
hence some time before they could applaud. The percussionist realized this also and,
after standing looking embarrassed for a moment, he slowly backed up toward the tam
tams, gently took hold of them and stopped the sounds. The audience, sure that there
were no more sounds coming from the stage, then clapped.
I on the other hand, who had found that moment of intense focus on a nearly
inaudible sound intensely beautiful, would have been delighted if the sound of those tam
tams would have been permitted to fade away to nothing. Notwithstanding the mildly
humorous nature of the situation, the goofy embarrassment of the percussionist, this
moment is of great importance for the development of my music.
This moment revealed to me two things about music: first, what makes a musical
moment beautiful is not only the quality of the music but also the quality of the listening,
and second that sounds have a quality, a beauty, that precedes or supersedes composition, that sounds are beautiful beyond our desire to make something which is beautiful from them. It showed me that music can be a presentation of beautiful sounds.
What made the sound beautiful was how quiet, fragile and unlikely it was. Its 46
existence depended on the absolute silence of the audience. This gave the sound its
immense power because everyone knew that the slightest additional sound would disrupt
it. The conclusion I made from this is that what constitutes a beautiful performance is
not the presence of performers and their rehearsed composition (though this is, of course
also important) but is rather a group of attentive people providing a silence like an empty vessel into which performers put their sounds. This has lead me to an interest in a music of listening, a music that instead of rushing towards the ear, retreats from it, forcing thereby the ear to listen further, to cover the distance.
As obvious as this might sound, this experience demonstrated that while performers might make the sounds of the music, the sounds have a strong and self-reliant identity. Through opening my ears to them, removing the intermediate performers from them, I can listen to them much more closely.
Computer music and Stalactite composing.
All of these experiences with sounds opened my ears to a new mode of listening as an audience member. However I did not know how to listen as a composer, though I wanted to make a "music of listening" I did not know how to go about doing that. I finally did discover how to compose with my ears as a means of overcoming a compositional difficulty that I was having; that of creating music on a computer. 47
Working with computers exposed me yet again to the problem of starting with predetermined materials when making music. While I was able to overcome this problem in my Piano Trio by pure stubborn persistence, in my computer music I was unable to overcome it, and therefore had to come up with a different solution.
I took an undergraduate course on computers and music and learned how to use the music producing software Cubase. After I had been shown the tools of the software I went to make music with it. This proved to be much harder than I thought; knowing how to use tools does not prepare one for making music. The problem was the vastness of the possibilities; innumerable sounds could be created or imported into the computer and innumerable manipulations could be applied to them, how was I to organize it all? I did not know what to include and what to exclude. In order to make good computer music I needed to discover a means for limiting myself.
The first limitation I tried was to use ideas and forms; conceiving materials with pen and paper and then trying to make them work on the computer. I would, for example, write contrapuntal or rhythmic ideas and then try to find sounds that would fit into those ideas. Perhaps such a method might have worked but because they did not produce immediately satisfying results I gave up on such working methods.
Over time what started working was playing around with the sounds themselves.
A useful limitation I discovered was playing with one sound at a time, accumulating the results of this playing around until I had enough materials to form a piece. I decided to 48
work with a one minute form, each piece would be of a one minute duration and in the
end I would string these one minute pieces together to form one large piece. This is the
form of Harry Partch's And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma. I greatly
admired this piece, mostly for its strange and wonderful sounds, but once I discovered it
had this stark and arbitrary form I grew much fonder of it. As I said in relation to
Messiaen's music I am fond of strongly overt procedures. Partch's piece at first seemed
to interest itself only in exploring the strange sounds of the instruments he had made.
The discovery that it had this form as well gave my ears something to listen for, to
understand what was going on. More importantly it helped me realize that complex
sounding music does not need to have a complex structure.
Through working with the computer I slowly developed a working method. I
would import a sound, like that of a tuning fork or a finger snapping or some feedback,
and I would manipulate it ~ pitch shift it, stretch it, shrink it and reverse it26 — until I
found some sounds I liked. I would often then form those sounds into a motive. The
motive could then be pitch shifted, stretched, shrank or reversed. Or I could extract parts
from it to create other motives which I might then superimpose onto previous motives or
fragments thereof. I might then squash all of that material together to form another motive which would then undergo similar procedures. I did not start with ideas and try to make them work on the computer. Instead I started with a sound and discovered ways
26. These procedures are akin to transposition, augmentation, diminution and retrograding respectively. 49
of creating different sounds from it.
This was music that was created one sound at a time, by gradually adding things
without an overall plan. I began to call this a "stalactite" form of composing, after the
rock formation that is formed by the drips that fall from the end of the formation leaving
a small rock deposit on the very tip of it, adding length to it at a snail's pace. So too I
would listen back to a five second fragment and then add what I felt would sound good,
listen back to that and add something else and so on. I was constantly going back over
the whole thing before I would add anything, and the sense of where the piece needed to
go would emerge gradually from these repeated listenings.
Instinct.
Working on the computer music in that way showed me a way of working without inflexible forms. While this might sound contradictory as my computer music used a most inflexible form, the one minute form, I am referring to the sort of form that presumes to lend the music a semblance of order. The one minute form helped me make compositional decisions but it is not a form that is intended to be perceived as such. The one minute form does not address the meaning or overall coherence of the music. The stalactite way of composing was such a success that I decided to give myself and my music over entirely to my instincts. I wanted to make decisions without thinking about 50
them. I wanted to trust that I would spontaneously make the decisions I wanted to make
without knowing whether or not they were good decisions.
Though I have not been greatly influenced by Arnold Schoenberg's music, I
found his account of his compositional practice in his expressionistic period very
interesting. Schoenberg would, for example, compose a song without consulting the text
he was setting, and discover that by composing freely that he had instinctively captured
the essence of the poem, without bothering with its surface meaning.27 I found this
confidence in one's decision making faculty interesting because I was under the
impression that one needed to be able to justify one's decisions. Schoenberg did not
need to justify anything because he felt he was expressing himself, which he did
instinctively, when inspired.28 Not only was I impressed with this account, but I was
impressed that it should be Schoenberg saying this who is so often thought of as a
rational and systematic composer. I was interested to see that there was an ecstatic
irrationality that lay underneath his seemingly austere intellectual approach, that his
compositional decisions did not need intellectual justification. What Schoenberg's
27. "Inspired by the sound of the first words of the text, I had composed many of my songs straight through to the end without troubling myself in the slightest about the continuation of the poetic events, without even grasping them in the ecstasy of composing, and that only days later I thought of looking back to see just what was the real poetic content of my song. It then turned out, to my greatest astonishment, that I had never done greater justice to the poet than when, guided by my first direct contact with the sound of the beginning, I divined everything that obviously had to follow this first sound with inevitability." Schoenberg pg. 144. 28. "The perfected work of the great artist, is produced, above all by his instincts; and the sharper ear he has for what they say, the more immediate the expression he can give them, the greater the work is. This is exactly the relationship between faith - faith independent of reason - and instinctive live." Schoenberg pg. 442. 51
writings and the music of Messiaen gave me was permission not to worry about reason,
that I could follow my ear with confidence.
Another experience that consolidated my instinct to follow my instincts was my arrival in Toronto and the discovery of the improvising musicians there. Improvising had always been a part of my musical activities although it had always been private, mostly done to amuse myself. Not only did the places I lived prior to Toronto not have adequate improvising scenes, but I was neither interested, nor able to take improvisation seriously in its own right. Upon arriving in Toronto, however, and involving myself with the numerous excellent improvising musicians that live there I have found my ideas about composition confirmed; that if one has confidence and a willingness to see one's ideas through to the end that things will always find a way of working out. Improvising gives me the confidence to try things that do not have a foreseeable outcome; I jump in and hope for the best. If this best is not immediately landed on, I can move to the right or left to get a little bit closer to it, or I can sit on it and wait for it to turn into something else.
What I actually do is less important than the intention I have in doing it.
As I went through my thesis pieces I felt more and more comfortable with not knowing what I was doing. Moreover I became less and less concerned about the pieces;
I developed a confidence in their ability to survive and adapt. Hence I was less concerned with whether or not the piece was good, and allowed the piece to be whatever it was becoming. I would allow things that were perhaps less good into the piece 52 because I was convinced that the piece was strong enough to absorb it. Not that I would intentionally introduce bad things into the piece, but that I would try things, and if it did not work so well I would not necessarily take it out.
In this way the result, the composition, sounds like the process it took to make it;
I try something and I like it. I want to hear it again and therefore repeat it. I try something else which I perhaps like less which consequently motivates me to try something different. I come up with something completely different or, preferably, a variant or fragment of this less liked material which, through some changes, might result in material I do like. Which I therefore will want to repeat, or develop or both. All the stages that the material goes through are retained in the composition. The composition becomes a record of decisions, attempts and modifications and contains all the imperfections of failed attempts and unfulfilled expectations while, on the contrary, it also contains the beautiful moments when I achieved precisely what I had hoped to achieve. Just as the percussionist had to get out of the way of the sound of the tam-tams so too I had to get out of the way of the piece. The process I am describing is an attempt to get my ego out of my composing process.
While this compositional process might sound like improvisation there is a difference between composing and improvising. Both activities include an amount of freedom and lack predetermined form but improvisation is self expressive while composition is less so. The process of composition can be slowed to such a degree that I 53 can coax the maximum amount of details from the materials. Through this slowness I can eliminate my personal interests and find out what the materials wants to be.
Improvisation goes quickly hence materials can not be explored for as long as I would like. The speed of the improvisational situation makes for a different psychological state; one oriented toward personal expression.
In order to allow myself to write this way patience is required. That I developed this way of composing indicates that I had an interest in being patient before I developed it.29 As a teenager I started hearing a new sort of music in my head: irregularly propulsive and cacophonous, possessing considerable forward thrust without periodic predictability, pushed forward by its own accumulated momentum. At that time, not sure that I wanted a life in music, this music manifested itself only in "just having fun" contexts, like singing to myself while walking to work, or I would try to approximate it while improvising on the guitar.
29. As a teenager I attended a mini festival of experimental cinema at the National Gallery in Ottawa. I was particularly struck by a series of Fluxus films that seemed to me to address the state of being bored. In these films one thing is shown for a long time, or one thing happens very slowly. In one Yoko Ono film, for example, the act of lighting a match is slowed down so that an action which initially took one or two seconds is stretched so that it takes five or six minutes. How I reacted to these uneventful films was to think of them as something to be endured, as though the point of them was to test one's ability to get through them. The idea of enjoyment was not foremost in my mind. Later in life I would employ a similar attitude to my first exposure to minimal music; Drumming by Steve Reich. Knowing that not much was going to happen in this music, I put the record on and forced myself to sit through it. My experience of this piece was a test of endurance. I do not think this is an adequate way of listening to music but it certainly developed in me a means for dealing with things that might present a sometimes unasked-for-challenge, and thereby a general interest in things that might not at first be pleasurable but which hold out the promise of becoming so. 54
The idea of writing this music down did not occur to me. Even if it had I would
not have known how to do it. Not only did I not posses any notational know-how at this
time, having had, apart from years of guitar lessons, no formal training, but I also did not
have the patience or mental toughness to take the time to turn that imagined and
ephemeral music into notation. I might have been able to write fifteen seconds of it, to
give an indication of its style, but after that it would have become tricky, for then I would
have to deal with form and the idea of a piece. I did write30 a piece of this music once,
on the guitar, and it does give some sense of what this music sounded like - busy and
irrational (see Ex. 24):31
Ex. 24. Schoorl, Piano Trio, I.
k J*L m m:
I integrated this tune many years later into my Piano Trio (one of the "teenager
tunes") and fragments of it also turn up in Nonet, Trio II and Duo. I find it interesting 30. Not written in terms of notes on staff paper, but written like a "riff on the guitar; created and memorized but not written down. 31. The so-called tango rhythm, dividing a group of eight into 3+3+2, the rhythm that occurs three times in the bar of 3/2 was my idea of "irrational". That might seem comical, but to me it seemed like a novel way of dividing a regular bar. The intervals were also intended to be novel. I was looking for a way out of tonality; intentionally using intervals and rhythms I knew were not permitted. I did this in relevant ignorance of atonal classical music, in fact it was intended to sound closer to rock and roll than to Schoenberg. 55
that many of the things that characterize my music today were already present then, at a
time when my interest in music was waning.
Having confidence in one's irrationality, in one's instincts, to allow the piece to
go in a direction one is uncertain of is only half of a compositional ability, the ability to
hear. The ability to notate requires a different mental ability; it requires patience. The
task of writing down the music I hear would be unachievable if there had not been a
mental strengthening that went before it. This developed the psychological equilibrium
to remain open to the music long enough for it to become clear and not to grow impatient
and impose an order on it. Composing is inextricably linked with patience, the more
patient one is the more one can follow one's instincts slowly, one at a time. While I
possessed the patience to compose one minute computer pieces or three minute songs
without a form, letting the music happen for twenty minute piece is very different and is
a much harder thing to do. Though once I set my mind on doing it everything fell into
place.
The composer Morton Feldman likened composing in an intuitive way, to going
on an anthropological expedition: "you don't know what to take with you because you
don't know where you're going. You don't know if the temperature will be warm or
cold; you have to buy your clothes when you get there."32 To be out in an unknown
compositional situation, not to know what the piece is going to be in five or ten measures
32. Feldman pg. 60. 56
is troublesome33 and I had to find a way to not get troubled there. In this regard
Feldman was most useful in giving me the confidence to compose instinctively and for
stressing the mental and physical endurance one must possess in order to compose.34
For him it was essential to compose without predetermined forms and systems and to
have the confidence in one's music in order to let it happen, to have not only the ability
but the patience to write it down.
Feldman's Forms.
As I said in relation to my earlier compositions, the question of what form a piece
would take was frequently an obstacle to my ability to work on it. If I was not working
within a formal structure I did not know how to proceed. Even if a formal structure was
in place, and for some reason I found it difficult to use I did not know how to proceed
either. Feldman believed, and this is why he is so valuable to me, that music is made of
sounds, not formal structures, and that the use of forms and compositional systems are
not only not useful but are even harmful to a composition. "Everything we use to make
33. "Where in life we do everything we can to avoid anxiety, in art we must pursue it. This is difficult. Everything in our life and culture, regardless of our background, is dragging us away. Still, there is this sense of something imminent. And what is imminent,we find, is neither the past nor the future, but simply - the next then minutes." Feldman. pg. 32. 34. "That's why, who said it recently? I think it was Paul Valery, that when something is beautiful it is tragic. And I think the implication for me as I see it is that something that is beautiful is made in isolation. I mean it just in a sense of divorcing oneself from just the kind of camaraderie and group spirit in the sense that the young people seem to share together ... Just the idea of just going into a room and having to work six or seven hours because he has to do what he has to do. That's the price we have to pay." Villars. pg. 60. 57
art," he said "is precisely what kills it."35 What he means by this is that when
compositional systems are used; when the piece and the means by which it was created
become synonymous, the actual sound is of secondary importance. Hence the piece can
not be very good.
For Feldman music had to be free, he imagined that music already existed and it
was his role to listen for it, and try to get it on the paper. "I began to feel that the sounds
were not concerned with my ideas of symmetry and design," he said, "that they wanted
to sing of other things. They wanted to live, and I was stifling them."36 Feldman,
especially in his earlier music, when his scores allowed for considerable interpretative
leeway on the part of the performer, did not want to control his pieces. He felt that such
controls would prevent the sounds of the piece from actualizing their potential. Hence he
developed an intuitive and non systematic method of composing.
For me this was of course very exciting, it meant that I was given permission to
throw off the heavy burden of predetermined form. It meant that I did not need to start a
piece with its form and that I could compose without worrying about it. My experience
with the illustrated the difficulty I was having. I was looking for a way out of the
paralysis that system brought on. My compositional systems created situations that
impelled me to make unaesthetical decisions, which, though unaesthetical, were entirely justifiable on the basis of the form. The act of composition was joyful and effortless37 35. Feldman pg. 23. 36 Feldman pg. Ill 37 By effortless I do not mean to say that I no longer need to try but rather that I do not feel like I am 58
but how was I to translate that action into an object. The answer always seemed to be
structure, which did not please me. From Feldman I learned that I did not need anything
but the action. That I could compose without worrying about where the composition was
going. Form, in the sense that one thing happens and then another, did not need to be
determined in advance or need to be systematic and logical in its nature.
Feldman's Sounds.
When Feldman said that the sounds "wanted to sing of other things" he was
expressing a belief in the inherent beauty of sounds. His compositional style is one
which not only gives the sounds the room to exist but which uses instruments to create
ambiguous sound situations. "Composition," he said, is "the right note in the right place
with the right instrument."38 Feldman's conception of notes is determined by the
instrument. In order to know what note he wanted he had to know what instrument was playing the note.39 Orchestration therefore is more important for him than composition,
or, composition is orchestration. According to Feldman "timbre and range are the same problem, and both are more important than pitches. When one knows exactly the sound he wants, there are only a few notes in any instrument that will suffice. Choosing actual
pushing a heavy rock up a hill. Composing instead has become easy. I will still spend hours trying to get a short passage just as I want it, but those hours do not feel laborious but pleasurable. 38. Feldman pg. 160 39. "Unless I know what instrument is playing a note, I don't know the note." Villars pg. 171 59
pitches then becomes almost like editing."40 Feldman's compositional method was a
search for sounds. But what are sounds and how are we to distinguish them from notes?
What did Feldman "know" when he said that he knew what sound he wanted when that
sound is not determined by pitch?
While Feldman might be looking for a specific sound which can only be found in
the specific register of an instrument, the sound he is actually looking for is something
else which the instrumental sound is only an approximation. "Instrumental colour robs
the sound of its immediacy. The instrument has become for me a stencil, the deceptive
likeness of a sound."41 Feldman wants to achieve a musical sound in which it is not clear
what something is or where it is coming from.42 He calls this state of instrumental uncertainty the "obliteration of the aural plane."43 What he is after is a music of
ambiguous identity; a music that focuses on the mysterious beauty of sounds. The
experience of music should be an ambiguous one. "There are two kinds of people; the type that is only interested in what they understand, and the type that wants at all costs the hermetic mystery, enigmas. They first gets bored when they don't understand, the
second is bored when they do understand. Me, I accept poetry, the inexplicable."44
40. Ibid. pg. 36. This statement should also give an impression of how specific his early graph pieces were. Because he did not indicate pitches, only registers, does not mean that he did not have a specific sound in mind. 41. Feldman pg. 110. 42. "I've had professional musicians think that a violin was a high tuba." Villars pg. 27. 43. Feldman pg. 25. 44. Villars pg. 40 60
In Feldman's music I found the sort of music I had been looking for, a music that interested itself in sounds independently of composition. This interest in sound however does not mean than his pieces are accumulations of unrelated sounds. On the contrary he is able to compose pieces with a very developed sense of continuity and even causality, although expressed in a very personal style.
In my thesis pieces I tried to focus on the sounds I was composing with. At the same time I tried to always give the pieces a sense of momentum even if they tend from time to time toward stasis. This was a frequent compositional difficulty, how to make the pieces exist in time, moving towards the future, while at the same time allowing the ears to linger on the sounds. This is a tension between my interest in busy music, like
Bach's, and the perhaps antithetical predilection I have for non referential sounds. My thesis pieces are attempts to adjust to the ensuing compositional situations that this tension created. 61
Part 3 Thesis Pieces.
Nonet.
Before I started writing the piece that became Nonet I was intimidated. I started
it knowing that it would an important part of my evaluation for my Master's degree.
Hence I started thinking about it in the spring before school started. The first decision I
made was choosing the ensemble. Being focused as I was on the seriousness of the piece
I chose to write for the enormous ensemble of fourteen soloists.45 I felt that a serious
piece needed a serious ensemble. My second idea about the piece was for a form. I
chose the one minute form I had been working with on my computer music.
Once these things were in place, instead of writing the piece, I wrote materials for the piece. This involved writing melodies (see Ex. 25).
45. The ensemble was intended to have a member from each instrument from the orchestra - flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, french horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, percussion, piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass. 62
Ex. 25. Schoorl, Nonet.
l j WW m
srf s J »LJ -iJifff > jn^W^ >
^J^.^OT.dfjjjHj^ife^j
At that time I did not have much time to write, having a full time job and a family at home. I worked on music at night, when my concentration was low. That is why I made the computer music at this time because it requires less concentration. This melody writing was a way for me to feel like I was getting work done on the piece without actually working on it.
When I started writing the piece itself these prewritten melodies created a 63 problem. I wanted to write in an illogical way. I did not want to use predetermined forms but wanted to let the piece go wherever it felt like going. While I was not working with a predetermined form — because the miniature one minute form was abandoned almost immediately— I was still working with predetermined melodies, and they exerted a similar control over the piece that a predetermined form might.
A non-controlling compositional process and preconceived materials seemed incompatible. The entire time I was writing the piece, trying to let the piece go where it wanted to go, I felt the constant pressure of those melodies. The melodies wanted in. I wanted to bring them in, but I was not sure whether or not the piece wanted them. If the piece was going along nicely, why would I suddenly bring in a melody that had nothing to do with what was going on?
Not only was it difficult to bring the melodies into the piece, it was also difficult to know what to do with them once they were there. Should I repeat them or move onto something else? If I do repeat the melody, should I alter it, and if so, why? What happened was that I became reluctant to alter the melodies. There were two reasons for this reluctance: firstly I was too attached to the materials; I had spent too much time creating them that I did not want to submit them to an arbitrary developmental procedure like retrograde or inversion because I was worried that I would not like them that way, and I wanted to like my music, and to know that I was liking it. Secondly, I thought, why should I bring in this material only to derive other material from it, which is what 64
development is, creating new material from old.46 If this is the only point of introducing material, why not dispense with this material all together and just write melodies as I am writing the piece. It is not difficult for me to come up with material. Why not dispense with these inflexible prewritten melodies and just write the piece instead?
I never did arrive at a solution to this problem; and the piece manifests the problem. It is fragmented and incoherent, a melody is introduced, the piece moves on to something else, trying to go somewhere new, only to be interrupted by a new melody.
Another problem with this piece was the ensemble itself. What was I to do with such a large and unruly ensemble? One of the first decisions I made when I started writing the piece in earnest was to remove four instruments from the group, instruments I did not have an ear for at the time: the flute, trombone, tuba and contrabass.47 Having reduced the ensemble, I still found it very hard to deal with. I did not want to treat it like an orchestral ensemble, divided into its various choirs. Other than that, I had no idea what to do with the ensemble; if it is not an orchestral ensemble, what is it? My primary anxiety was that I had no idea what the sound of all those instruments playing at the same time would sound like. I wanted a very transparent sound, in which each instrument would be clearly identifiable, and I felt that if all the instruments played simultaneously then a delicate balance could not exist, that certain instruments would be
46. This is of course not true of motivic development. A melody possesses an internal logic, a propulsion of its own that moves it from the start to the finish. This is hard to maintain in retrograded or inverted situations. Or at least that was my concern. 47. Toward the end of writing the piece I dropped the percussion as well, not having found a way to use it in the piece. That is how I arrived at the eponymous nine instruments. 65 drowned out. For this reason I avoided using the entire ensemble at once and tended to break it up into smaller groupings. It was only when I was well into the piece that I realized that I had not written any tutti passages yet. Thinking it would be remiss of me to not have a tutti passage I, despite my uncomfortable hesitation, wrote a prolonged cacophonous passage in which all instruments of the ensemble participate. I chose to make it cacophonous because I imagined that I could not write intimate and subtle music for nine instruments.
Looking back at it now such a thought seems a little silly. In fact most of my concerns, which often ossified themselves into ideologies, were silly, and usually had their origin in inexperience. I would now quite enjoy writing for such a large ensemble, and I have all nine of them playing continuously, to explore the capacity of the entire ensemble.
I did not bring Nonet to a proper conclusion but drew an arbitrary double bar line when I got fed up with writing it. Relative to the other thesis pieces this one took a very long time to write, nearly eight months. I never felt comfortable with or in control of it.
I now consider it a sort of warm up piece for the pieces that followed it, that I had to make certain mistakes and discoveries in order to find the music, and the compositional process that I was looking for.
The compositional process I had been coming from was not only oriented towards preconceived forms but was also dependant on a computer which I would use to 66
help me hear the piece. What I disliked about using the computer in this way was that in
the end of the writing process, when the piece was done, my perception of the piece was
entirely determined by unaesthetical sounds which were completely divorced from the
acoustical reality of the instruments they were ostensibly representing. Moreover, and
this is a more obvious observation, the computer gave me a false sense of what
instruments and instrumentalists were capable of. In preparing a performance of my
Woodwind Quartet I was constantly bothered by the inability of the wind players to play
as I wanted them. Initially I attributed this to their inexperience (they were undergraduate
students) but later I came to see that I had the sound of computerized wind instruments in
my ear, with their controlled attack and sustain, and unlimited virtuosic ability. For these
reasons I stopped using Finale to compose. Over the course of writing Nonet I was
trying to find a way to compose without it. Because I did not use the guitar to compose
the piece, neither could I as it is too complex to play on the guitar, the piece exists in an
uncertain state.48
I did not want to use the guitar in the compositional process. The guitar is
severely limited in its harmonic capabilities. Certain intervals and certain chords are
very easy to produce, while others are very difficult. A three note cluster, for example 48. I have also never heard Piano Trio in performance but I have heard it on Finale. I have put Nonet into Finale but still I have not heard it. This is because I did not orient my notation towards what Finale likes to do, but towards what I imagined musicians like to do. Previously I would tinker with articulations until it sounded good on Finale, and that would become the final version. With Nonet I wrote the articulations as I wanted them and inserted them as is into Finale, which gave no impression of what I actually wanted. It interpreted my notation in a way that bore no relation to what the piece is intended to sound like. Hence when I listen to Nonet on Finale, which I am unable to do on account of its hideous ridiculousness, I do not think of it as the piece itself. 67
can only be played in very few places and with great difficulty. It is also difficult to
achieve truly independent lines in a contrapuntal sense. The challenge of making two
lines, unless they are separated by many octaves, sound like two lines and not like a
series of dyads is, in my experience very difficult. For these reasons I rarely composed
using the guitar.
I soon realized though that I should not try to hear things that I am not hearing. If
the guitar cannot play proper contrapuntal music, then I must not try to write such music.
I must be content with what I am capable of composing on the guitar and not think of the
guitar as a hindrance but rather as a particular sound universe with its own character.
This character would, of course, define the composition but so would any other means of
composing. This conclusion was not easy to arrive at and I certainly had not arrived at it
at the end of composing Nonet. In fact it would be part way through writing the piece
that came after that the idea would come.
Sextet (for a quintet)
To explain the silly title of this piece, I had finished the piece and was organizing
a performance of it. The clarinet, piano, viola and cello parts were quickly filled but the oboe and trumpet parts were hard to fill. I had brief e-mail contact with two separate oboists, neither of whom decided to participate so I decided to replace the oboe part with 68 a flute, flautists being easier to find than oboists. Two separate trumpet players said yes and then changed their minds. Hence I decided to drop the trumpet and rewrite the piece for flute, clarinet, piano, viola and cello. I quite enjoyed rewriting the piece and in fact prefer the second version to the first. However, because it does not actually differ from the first version in any real sense, I felt I should retain the title, even though it is no longer performed by six performers only by five. When the piece became a quintet I was even fonder of the piece as it created a very nice balance between the two winds and two strings, and all four of them created a nice contrast to the piano.
I started Sextet with the aim to overcome the perceived problem of Nonet, the incoherence of the ensemble. I started with the same group of instruments as I had used in Nonet and cut out the three instruments that had been bothering me: the bassoon, the french horn, and the violin. With a smaller number of musicians I felt more comfortable with the size of the ensemble. 69
I started this piece with some material I had created for Nonet (see Ex. 26).
Ex. 26. Schoorl, Sextet.
#•»#• f- k - 9- if ttp ^pi * - sff• m M u
^ »irirt *«y SPP
k •e- t>* » P"^# k fe. u -y- Id & *&
I ife ^P g
Distributing the notes across the ensemble in a klangfarben sort of manner. After the tune is heard, not knowing how to proceed I took to developing this material in a thoughtless manner. I detached fragments from it, playing them against other bits. This is an example of what I spoke of in reference to Nonet, that once prewritten material is brought into a piece what does one do with it? This type of derivative development is 70
the only thing I know to do with a melody once it has been played, but my heart is never
in such development it always feels insincere and uninterested.
At measure thirty three however everything changes, with the introduction of this material (see Ex. 27).
Ex. 27. Schoorl, Sextet.
I discovered this motive, which is a fragment of the main melody, while improvising on the guitar. I was playing around with it in an inconsequential manner, just enjoying the sounds when it dawned on me that I was creating material for the piece. The piece of paper that the piece was on was though inaccessible. I have two guitars, an expensive one beside my desk, the work guitar, and a cheap one that leans in a corner of the living room. My desk, though, shares a room with the bed that my son naps in. So, everyday for a certain time my desk is unavailable to me and I am forced to be downstairs. It was on such an occasion that I found this material, improvising rhythmic variations on the bad guitar and the piece locked upstairs with my sleeping son. I continued playing with 71 this material and did not concern myself with where it would go. While I knew that I was on some level writing the piece by improvising with this material, I was simultaneously listening to the piece, enjoying the sounds in a way that might bear more resemblance to an audience's mode of listening than to a composer's.
When it came time to notate this material I used the so called stalactite method of
composing; listening to the entire section (the quoted measures emerged in that form
from the improvising, the subsequent measures were paper composed) and adding what I
thought needed to follow it. The passage grew by very small increments -- my
compositional awareness directed entirely on the very end of the piece. Composing this
passage was such a pleasure that once I had written nineteen measures I immediately
returned to the guitar to play with this motive (Ex. 28).
Ex. 28. Schoorl, Sextet.
ft #• ^ ^ nr j r r i r (^ which is also derived from the opening material, the first four notes of which is heard throughout Nonet. The motive is repeated seven times. Each time it is repeated it starts one note over from the last time it was heard (see Ex. 29). 72
Ex. 29. Schoorl, Sextet.
(? ttrti m m m teP
I found the differences in the motive that resulted from this simple procedure fascinating.
Every time the motive is heard it is slightly different yet it is the same. After writing these two passages on the guitar I did not write any music thereafter without it. I had found a process that worked for me; using the guitar as I had used the computer, playing with small motives one sound at a time.
The most successful passage in this piece is one that most resembles Feldman's
music in its use of delicate sounds, modular repetition and disintegrating development.
The passage from measure 117 to 159 is comprised of three elements ~ two similar
sonorities in the flute, clarinet and viola (see Ex. 30 and 31). Ex. 30. Schoorl, Sextet.
¥ j. ij Ui iPP^
# ^ j. ^ g ••
iff IE XE: IE
Ex. 31. Schoorl, Sextet.
^Pin *—sr -o ~z*
^^ r<5 s*
i^g 74
and a motive in the cello and piano (see Ex. 32).
Ex. 32. Schoorl, Sextet.
t r*r i > r'r ifefe r7r r
These identities are initially presented independently and juxtaposed with one another and are then alternated while slightly varying their rhythmic patterns and durations. The motives are increasingly intermingled as the passage continues and, near the end, the three identities are alternated so much that they become in a sense one idea (see Ex. 33). 75
Ex. 33. Schoorl, Sextet.
-4 — 77" "J? -fit* 77" m
(fH> 4 "17i " =^ |™A„ "•••^[—h
^^
Bt -ri
What I enjoyed was that an obvious thing, a series of independent identities, through an obvious procedure, irregular alternation, can create a complex and uncertain situation.
What I particularly became fond of, over the course of rehearsing and performing this passage was the high A natural that appears in the piano, high above the other sonorities of long held pitches. While that A natural is in actuality not that much higher 76
than the other pitches, on account of the timbre of the piano it seems much higher. The
piano, with its brittle attack, offers such a frail contrast to the long held sounds of the
flute, clarinet, viola and cello. In this passage I achieved both a structurally satisfying
situation, the developing alterations and a satisfying sound situation — the delicate sound
of the piano against the rest of the ensemble.
The Guitar (Trio 1, Trio 2)
I have never been very fond of the sound of the guitar. In my opinion what prevents the guitar from having a beautiful sound is its lack of sustain. The guitar is
entirely an attack-oriented instrument. The sustain is determined by the harmonic series
of the lowest two strings, the E and A. E's, B's, A's and some G sharps resonate beautifully, but clearly that is small number of pitches. Most of the other notes die away quickly. Hence guitar music can not dwell on long, slow sounds.
To compensate for this lack of sustain the guitarist tendency is to fill up the space with lots of notes. Arpeggios and tremolos are techniques that give an impression of sustain; and while these techniques do enable a pitch to seem like it is lasting for a long time, they simultaneously lend the music a nervous atmosphere of activity. Whatever beauty might be gained with the ersatz sustain of tremolo is compromised by the effort it 77
requires to achieve it,49 the busyness of the sound, and the numerous ways in which it can
be derailed.
Another drawback of the guitar, though this is not an issue of its beauty, is how
quiet it is. While this is not a problem for intimate solo recitals, it is a problem when the
guitar wants to play in an ensemble. I have heard the guitar in numerous combinations with other instruments and in most cases the guitar was overpowered.50 While most
instruments can easily overpower the guitar, most instruments can play, if they want to,
equal to or quieter than the guitar. Not only does this create a dynamic balance between the instruments, but it also gives the guitar's negligible sustain a chance to be heard.
This is why in my pieces for ensembles that include guitar I have the other instruments play as quietly as possible.
I am of course a guitarist and only a guitarist, as much as I may regret not being a pianist I have to accept my instrument and its limitations both as a tool for composition and as an instrument to perform on. I wrote these pieces Trio 1 and Trio 2 (as well as
Duo for guitar and trombone) so that I might involve myself in the performance of my music. Knowing how hard it can be to organize performances of one's pieces I decided to write for friends with whom I already had an improvisational rapport with so that I
49 Not available to all guitarists as it requires considerable technical ability. 50. The guitar can of course be amplified, and I have heard music in which a better balance was achieved between the instruments through its use. But to my way of thinking amplification is not a neutral thing but brings with it numerous unresolved questions: primarily whether or not we have left the sound of a guitar when it is amplified and have entered the sound of the amplified guitar and whether or not that is a meaningful difference. In my opinion there is a significant difference as amplification significantly reduces the feeling of presence. 78 could interest them in playing the piece as if it was a pretext for improvising together. I should also say that I derive great pleasure from playing guitar, and I wanted to root my music in my guitar playing practice.
Trio 1.
I have never been particularly fond of the flute; I have never liked the breathy sounds that surround the pitches. Moreover it is a high instrument and I, being a guitarist, have an ear oriented towards middle and low sounds. One night I was listening to some improvisers when I heard a wonderful sound I did not recognize; it was the flute playing very quiet low notes. It was such a beautiful sound, not only because of its frailty but also because of the purity of the pitches.51 I immediately got the idea for a piece for flute, vibraphone and guitar. I knew Jo Kondo's piece Wisen Dance Steps which is for the same instruments. Though my piece borrows nothing from Kondo's piece, knowing that there was such an ensemble made the decision of choosing it much easier.
51. The idea that the flute's sound contains too much breath is a prejudice. Even though I had heard pure pitch sounds on the flute this prejudice persisted until I had the opportunity to work extensively with a flautist performing my music. Having said that it is still not a favourite instrument, there is something about the sound that I can not love. The idea of a piece that utilizes the lowest register of an instrument might be interesting but the reality was a bit unpleasant. The first flautist I played the piece with asked at the first and only rehearsal whether or not I "knew how to write for the flute." She considered the persistent use of the low B as a sign of my lack of knowledge. While I did want that sound, I was not aware of how taxing it can be for a flautist to play down there for twenty minutes, or how long it takes for those notes to speak, and how it can not move with great agility to other registers. To avoid these problems I will make the part for alto flute for any future performances. 79
Once this instrumentation was in place the piece emerged quickly. What was
particularly fortunate was that the flute's lowest note and the vibraphone's lowest note52
is a semitone apart a C and B for the vibraphone and flute respectively. This is in a sense
makes the instruments well matched as that is a nice interval and is one of the few minor
seconds that fits comfortably on the guitar, as the B is an open string.
These pitches guided the direction of the piece. This was the second piece I
composed entirely on the guitar and this time I wrote it at sounding pitch (the guitar is a
transposing instrument, all the pitches sound an octave lower than written).53 It might
seem trivial but it was important for me to connect the sounds of the guitar with the
actual untransposed pitches which correspond to them. It was important for me to have
the acoustical reality audible as I worked. This was a new way of thinking about
instruments. Thinking about it pushed my music into a different direction; more directly
into the real world of sounds. I no longer thought of notes as merely being marks on a page.
For this reason perhaps the piece is exceedingly simple, both rhythmically and harmonically. Composing this way was pleasant because there was no distinction made between enjoying the sounds and writing the piece. Perhaps because of the novelty of this approach my ear was easily satisfied. I do not mean to say that I find the piece
52. This is the smaller vibraphone which only goes down to middle C. 53. Sextet was written an octave lower than it sounds. During the first rehearsal I was alarmed at how bright the piece sounded. Apart from the instrumental changes I had to make to reduce the ensemble from six to five I also needed to transpose most of it an octave down as well. 80
unpleasantly simple, but it is the sort of piece I will not write again only because I will
not have the methodological innocence. Because I employ the intuitive process of
listening to the music before writing it down, once I hear something my ear grows
restless and wants to hear something else. I therefore must always be listening closer
and closer to the sounds and the rhythmic situation in which I am working, listening for
the implications of the materials, and adding that to the composition.54 The more I do
this the deeper my ear can penetrate into the more complex possibilities of pitch and
rhythm. Trio 1 is just an initial surveying of this terrain.
In Sextet I was not dealing with discovery so much as the materials have a
stronger motivic identity, hence it deals primarily with motivic development. In Trio 11
was working in an uncertain floating world like the opening measures of Mahler's
Adagietto from his Fifth Symphony, in which a minor third, C and A, is repeated a
number of times without establishing any clear tonal centre until the F arrives to
establish the tonality of F major. Trio 1 also opens with a minor 3rd but it seeks to exist
for much longer in this ambiguousness.55
I was interested to see how long I could go with a limited number of pitches, how
54. Feldman had this to say about listening and composing: "I had to change my ear, (this was during the writing of Triadic Memories written in 1981) had to change my thinking, and adapt to that, really that way, call it a system almost. But it wasn't really a system. I look for those things. I look for things that slow me down. I look for things where in a sense I have to get away from a certain type of skill and get involved in a sense of listening, and of developing a skill in relation to listening." Villars pg. 148 55. There is also a prominent major second in the opening, A sharp to C, which is also a reference to Mahler's ambiguousness, this time from the opening movement of the Ninth Symphony which features a melodically ambiguous F sharp to E motive. This motive is repeated throughout the movement and it should although it never does resolve downwards to the tonic D. While these intervallic references exist Trio 1 is in no way Mahlerian. 81
long I could exist in an unvarying and uncertain space. In Sextet nearly all of the long
ambiguous passages are motivic; one is always pushed into the future by the anticipation
of the next note which can usually be correctly predicted. Therefore there is a propulsion
to the piece that is largely lacking in Trio 1 which is mostly static.
There is however a propulsive area in the piece which created an interesting
compositional problem. As has been noted the piece is empty and spacious, the opening
is comprised mostly of four pitches, B, C, G sharp and A sharp with an occasional D
sharp, which goes on for thirty four slow measures. Then something busy started
happening (see Ex. 34).
Ex. 34. Schoorl, Trio 1.
— I J = J J
This material, which goes on for some time exerted a pressure on the piece. It created a need for more busyness. I provided this busyness (see Ex. 35) 82
Ex. 35. Schoorl, Trio 1.
a little bit faster 1=F& P¥& FP£
m^ i U'rJ]
then this material asked for even more busy material (see Ex. 36).
Ex. 36. Schoorl, Trio 1.
^ md *—# ^rpmJ r \i tt CU" 'Uwv [
I gradually found my slow and ambiguous piece turning into a silly march. I did not want to write a busy piece but as it got busier and busier I found it harder and harder to return to the slow and spaciousness that I had found so beautiful in the beginning.
Although I wanted to return to the music of the beginning it was not easy; I had to reduce the energy gradually. It took many attempts to get it right. Many times I felt I had lowered the energy sufficiently to return to the slow and quiet music, only to find that 83
upon going over it that the transition was still too abrupt. This was an interesting problem and finding a solution required a feeling for form and proportion that I had not
fully developed. I did not know how to let the energy dissipate sufficiently. I needed to be able to listen to the piece in order to discover what it wanted to do. But I became
impatient because I wanted the piece to return to slowness. The busy material obviously
only asked for more busyness.
In the end, the moment of transition was still too abrupt. The busyness felt like it
wanted to continue. In performance this fact was confirmed by the awkwardness of this
moment. We did not make the mental adjustment from high to low energy smoothly
hence the piece stumbled repeatedly around the transition point. It was as though we
wanted to continue running but were now forced to walk or stand still.
This busy area brought the energy of the piece to such a high level that the
remainder of the piece became one long coming down, a slow dissipation of the
accumulated energy. The expectation for activity was raised to such a level that it took a
long time to communicate that the expectation would be unfulfilled.
As I said earlier this was not the piece I expected to write. I wanted something
flat and undifferentiated. Instead I got a three movement-like form of slow fast slow.
That this happened illustrates that I am predisposed to busyness. Finding a way to listen
for my music will need to involve letting the various musics that jostle for attention in
my mind to find some form of articulation on the page. The busyness in this piece is not 84
an anomaly; the pull of activity was felt in all of the thesis pieces and was only avoided
in one, much to that piece's detriment. In my attempts to locate a functional
methodology this situation will need to be addressed; while I am drawn to composers
who have a fanatic faith in their style like Feldman or La Monte Young,561 will need to
concede that fanaticism is lacking in my psychological constitution. I am too much
interested in other opinions to be able to affirm any one thing with unwavering
conviction. While a slow and quiet style is certainly consistent with what I find most beautiful in music, I can not deny the immense appeal of excited activity, nor can I deny
a love for ugliness, not everything needs to be beautiful.57
Trio 2.
After I finished Trio 1 I immediately started work on another trio. This time for vibraphone, guitar and toms. The piece exists in a similar space as Trio 1 and I worked on a lot of the same problems: how to create a dynamic balance between disparate timbres, how to keep the piece interesting with very few materials and how to affect a successful transition from fast to slow.
I achieved a dynamic balance in this piece; percussion instruments have such
56. Schoenberg had this to say about fanatical composers: "Liszt's importance lies in the one place where great men's importance can lie: in faith. Fanatical Faith." Schoenberg pg. 442 57. Indeed I quite enjoyed making my computer music which I consider quiet ugly. It was mostly constructed out of the ugly sounds of computerized existence. 85 control over their dynamics that in performances I was often the loudest member of the group. In this piece, as in all my pieces, I wanted to create a balance between all of the instruments. I wanted them all to participate in one thing, which is the foreground, I did not want a hierarchical music in which certain sounds support other sounds. I thought it would be a beautiful texture to have three instruments with such differing timbres trying to blend their sounds.
The fact that the toms are not pitched did present some difficulties because I had to think about them in a different way. With the pitched instruments it was easy to get an idea of what I wanted by thinking about the notes, which I could approximate on the guitar, but how was I to approximate the sound of a drum? The opening measures demonstrate the difficulty I had with knowing what to do with the toms. It functions in a horizontal manner in which the notes of a melody are divided up between the guitar and vibraphone (see Ex. 37). 86
Ex.37. Schoorl, Trio 2.
zsrzJi<2_ •(ip^ EUC ""O"" IK
^_ zpzz ~rr~ ^P £ *• l»-
121 31 3S 3fc ==F ^E
Finding a place for the toms in that situations was difficult. They frequently took on a sort of subsidiary accompaniment role because the material is so melodically oriented.
At measure twenty eight I discovered a way to combine the heterogeneous timbres of the instruments by having each instrument play on a different beat of a measure (see Ex. 38). 87
Ex. 38. Schoorl, Trio 2.
x5
jfrj. •^ HP fr »—— -j; y. f » — ... j|, ; |# » ^ | M
Many passages in the piece return to this texture, as it was easy to compose --1 did not need to work so hard to hear it — and it made a very nice sound.
While I wanted a texture in the piece that enabled each instrument to exist in its own space, to demonstrate its timbre without the interference from the other instruments
I also wanted to be able to blend the timbres to form a single sound. This was achieved in two ways. In measures 238 to 252 the toms and guitar play a slow melody over a quiet tremolo in the vibraphone. The melody is very simple, rarely moving more than two notes in any direction. This allowed the three toms to follow the direction of the guitar and approximate its melodic contour (see Ex. 39). Ex. 39. Schoorl, Trio 2.
\f3T~—Jm" 3 % \}-wz ^SZ f^^r l&SZ y lgrsqgo c
*<*- -e- •o- -e- ^ -o- -e- -e- v
^^ :.:»..:..:ji:::.:::"...
And while the toms are not pitched, they seemed to have an interesting impression of pitchiness. The effect was enabled by the use of very soft mallets and very quiet dynamics which blurred the line between attack and sustain. A very soft attack is less of an independent sound and is more an activator of a drum's resonance.58 The spaciousness of the texture allowed the drum to sound for a long time. The guitar and toms seem to form strange chords of an uncertain identity.
The other way in which I attempted to make a single sound was in the busy section of measures 77 through 150. In these measures the piece plays to the strength of
58. I can actually claim no responsibility for the success of this passage as I had initially wanted the toms to be played with the fingertips. The percussionist I was playing the piece with recommended the use of mallets in this passage. His recommendation had less to do with the quality of the sound and more to do with the ease of cueing. We were having some difficulty coming in together on these notes and he thought that if he could raise the mallets for me to see clearly that we would be able to enter together more successfully. Not only did this improve our togetherness it also produced this lovely sound. 89 the guitar's tendency for staccato. The guitar and vibraphone play a melody and the toms
either emphasize strong beats or play the rhythm of the melody. The vibraphone plays without the pedal making the sound brittle and brief and the toms play in dead strokes which means that the mallets after striking the drum return to it immediately to dampen the sound. Blending the instruments was here achieved through making the vibraphone and toms play like the guitar not only quietly but without sustain.
Unlike the busy section in Trio 1 the busy section in Trio 2 was not a consequence of anything but emerged from a desire to have busyness in the piece. As in Trio 1 this material accumulates considerable energy, but unlike that piece I did not let the flow of the piece bother me. I composed as much of that music as I felt like composing and then abruptly moved to a long stationary sound in the toms. Whether or not this abruptness works or not, whether the awkwardness detracts from the piece more than it adds is open to interpretation. I myself am unsure about it. In performance it feels abrupt and awkward although I am not sure that it sounds that way, or if it does sound that way, it may not be a negative experience.
In this piece I tried, unlike any other piece I have written, to work some special effects into the piece. This arose from my lessons with David Mott who remarked that I was quite a "pitch and rhythm guy" which seemed a little antiquated to him. He noticed that I used very few articulation markings in my music and absolutely no extended 90
techniques. For a while I did not know what to make of this observation. My thinking
was that I was not hearing anything other than pitches and rhythms; hence why should I
seek other things out? My attitude towards timbre was that, to quote Feldman, "timbre
and range are the same problem."59 When I think about timbre and make timbral
decisions in my music it is usually a matter of choosing a register in an instrument. If I
want a struggling sound I will write for example an artificial harmonic played
pianissimo. If I want a comfortable lazy sound I will write for a clarinet in its chalumeau
register. That is how I tend to think of timbre. Prompted by David Mott I wanted to
challenge myself to use different timbres, to use them as a compositional parameter, as a
means for variation. Hence I attempted to get the more unusual sounds out of the toms
and vibraphone. The percussionists I was writing the piece for have extensive
experience as improvisers so I knew that they would be familiar with anything I might
come up with. I left the guitar out of the timbral challenge as I prefer the regular note
sounds.
I do not know if I truly rose to the challenge. While I did use some different means of creating sounds from these instruments (for example bowing the vibraphone, playing the toms with the fingertips, producing a sustained moan on a torn by running the fingertips along a very thin stick that is perpendicularly pushed again the skin, and dragging a stick across the surface of the drum), the piece is still very much a "pitch and
59. Villarspg. 36 91
rhythm" sort of piece. One thing that I did which is not at all an extended technique, or
even anything adventurous, but which was certainly motivated by this thinking about
timbre as an independent parameter, was the use of tremolo and grace notes on the
vibraphone. These are quite normal and conventional techniques, but I do not think that
I would have thought to listen for them if it had not been for the attempt I was making to use timbres creatively.
Quintet
Quintet was written in the fall of 2008 after a productive spring and summer in which I composed Sextet, Trio 1 and Trio 2. After writing those pieces I felt tired of
composing and I took a break. In the fall I felt ready to write again but nothing was coming. Those three pieces had all started with an idea, an impetus that propelled them.
With the Trios it was their instrumentations that interested me and exploring them gave rise to lots of material. Moreover composing on the guitar was still very new and exciting. The exploration of this method was still identical to the composition of the pieces. Each passage I wrote was at the same time an exploration of a compositional possibility.
The creative blockage I felt before Quintet had to do with the fact that I had not yet consolidated the discoveries I had made and turned them into a dependable and 92
manageable process. Through my improvising at the guitar nothing was emerging. No
materials separated themselves from the surrounding sounds and asked to be the start of
a piece. The minor seconds I had been building the pieces from were not interesting me,
and I had not found a way of writing without an idea or inspiration.
I overcame this blockage through listening to For John Cage for violin and piano
by Morton Feldman. After I heard the piece I immediately started working on the piece
that became Quintet. What I found inspirational about the piece was the lack of
interesting material. One passage in particular develops a very uninteresting motive.
Not only is the passage which develops this motive lacking in anything interesting but it
is also quite long, and through its length it is able to overcome this lack.
The material in question is an unaccompanied and unadorned chromatically
ascending motive from B natural to E flat in straight eighth notes (see Ex. 40).
Ex. 40. Feldman, For John Cage.
-pf. -0~ far ^
This motive is repeated many times in the piano and then doubled on the violin at the diminished second (Feldman became fond of microtonal spellings in his late music) then in octaves, then in major sevenths and so on. All sorts of doubling and durational60
60. The motive is first heard as five eighth notes, then five quarter notes, later five half notes, and it is then fragmented into alternating three and four quarter notes. 93 variations are brought to bear on this simple material. This passage goes on for three minutes or so, and not once while listening did I forget how uninteresting this motive was. I was amazed that this could be possible. The piece moves on to different things, and then to my great surprise Feldman concludes the piece with this material, persistently repeated and metrically obvious.
I was very impressed with this achievement when I first heard it. I was impressed that unpromising and uninteresting materials, by dint of the unflinching focus of prolonged attention could become engrossing. In For John Cage the experience is raised by an enormous degree by the length of the passage. How this helped me start my piece was that I realized that finding material is less important than having a proper attitude towards it. I saw that material for a piece does not require an immanent quality; it does not need to be interesting or even beautiful. A piece can by made of anything. What matters is not the material as such but the purposefulness with which one composes. If one concentrates adequately on one's materials, beauty will arise from it, regardless of whether or not the material itself is beautiful
Whether or not this is true is open to discussion. What is important to this discussion is the impact that this thought had on me and how it spurred me into the writing of this piece. Upon having this idea I immediately started Quintet. I chose the same ensemble as Sextet minus the trumpet, which it still possessed at that time, and a flute instead of an oboe, which it possessed at that time also, and this motive fell under 94
my fingers immediately (see Ex. 41).
Ex.41. Schoorl, Quintet.
In Quintet I sought to have a longer attention span. I lingered on this material for a long time. The first one hundred measures of Quintet is almost entirely comprised of this motive. I wanted to test how long I could keep this little bit of material going; in how many different rhythmic configurations I could conceive it before I grew bored. In the other pieces while I did this also it was not applied as rigourously. It would be my tendency that as soon as I started hearing other things I would allow the piece to go there.
Whereas with Quintet I would resist such different things and try to focus exclusively on the limited pitch content I was working with. I listening for more and more subtle alterations that I might apply to the motive. For this reason the piece sounds very austere. This was intentional as I was trying to see how far I could go with the compositional process I had developed. On that level the piece is a success; in 95 performance however I felt that the piece sounded too serious and rather tiresome.
Duo.
This piece is perhaps the most unusual of my thesis pieces on account of the
instrumentation. A guitar/trombone duo is a challenging combination to write for, one
that gave rise to various compositional challenges. The instrumentation certainly
restrained my thoughts about what I could do on a purely pitch basis. I had to
continually keep the antipodal sounds of guitar and trombone in my mind, always
thinking whether or not the notes would work in that unusual instrument combination. I
would write a page, we would rehearse and I would go home and write some more,
influenced by what I had heard and what I felt worked. This process of writing and
rehearsing continued for a few weeks. As the piece progressed a feeling of instrumental
balance gradually assembled.
As in Trio 2 I achieved instrumental balance by making the trombone play as
staccato as the guitar does (see Ex. 42). 96
Ex. 42. Schoorl, Duo.
This material is from the opening of Sextet. The passage worked very well as the sounds blended together perfectly.
Another way of blending the sounds was to have the guitar and trombone play the
same pitches after one another. In measures 59 through 61 the guitar and trombone alternate the pitches of a three note motive in various octaves (see Ex. 43).
Ex.43. Schoorl,Duo.
i «r | , f
^^ r r i r**r .Hi
In three instances a pitch is played in the same octave: the A sharp played by the guitar 97
in the first beat of measure 59 is played by the trombone on the last beat, the B played by the trombone in the same measure is repeated by the guitar in measure 60 and the C on the first beat of measure 61 is repeated by the trombone on the fourth beat of that measure. The effect of this repetition is like that of an echo; the pitch returns in a modified way. The experience of this returning pitch with a different timbre is a similar experience as the one I had with the door buzzer and the elevator lights; one moves away from a sound to be greeted by that same sound from a different place.
Similarly in measure 88 the guitar and trombone alternately play the same D sharp (see Ex. 44).
(Ex.44. Schoorl,Duo):
& % i "r * r *
The echo effect here is heightened by having the notes occur closely after one another. I found this to be a very beautiful sound situation. It highlights the differences between 98
the timbres while at the same time showing their similarities.61 When something is the
same and at the same time different — be it a fugue subject or a single note ~ I always
find it fascinating and beautiful.
Another reason this piece is unusual is because of its omnivorous style. I did feel the need to have some fun after composing Quintet which seemed to me a far too holy and self-conscious piece. As Quintet progressed I grew more and more dissatisfied with its seriousness; I was not convinced that I was finding what I was looking for in that piece and like Nonet it was not finished so much as it was abandoned. Hence I wanted to have fun in the next piece.
Another reason for its stylistic heterogeneity is that I tried to conceive of it as a version of Nonet, itself a very heterogeneous piece. I felt a sort of responsibility to
Nonet; I was not organizing a performance of it like I was for the other thesis pieces and I did not think fondly of it as a piece. The writing of Duo was a way of giving Nonet a second chance, so I worked some of the materials of Nonet into the piece. A particularly non-serious melody appears near the end. This was a melody I had written when I was a teenager (see Ex. 45).
61. In the recording the trombone is a little bit sharp (or the guitar is a little bit flat) this gives the re- articulation of the note an additional difference. The difference is a sort of accidental micro-tonality; the out of tune sound that I enjoy so much in Feldman's late music. In particular For John Cage, in the opening the difference between the D flat in the violin and the C sharp in the piano is enormous. Ex.45. Schoorl,Duo.
^(* r TJTT tlr ir c'? r p rrr r ir~PrLfP C£,r ISBSH} H f—tjg-1—*fl »»J— ksasj 5 j ' 3 3
4 |fj>j j j |7rr JJ '7tr Y m
Duo's nature was also influenced by the trombonist whom I wrote it for. In a conversation before I started composing the piece he remarked that he enjoyed playing
"lyrically." This gave me the idea to make the piece melodically oriented, which lead me back to Nonet which was so full of melodies.
The other influence that the trombonist exerted on the piece was how the piece ends, or more accurately how the piece does not end. Duo does not have a proper ending; the score we played from does not have a double bar line. This had to do with 100
time restrictions, that I simply ran out of time before I could finish the piece, but the non-
ending was also enabled by the nature of our musical relationship. When I felt that the
piece had been going along for quite a while and that the ending could very well be on
the horizon, not having the time to finish the piece I decided that we would proceed
immediately from the last measure to improvising. That I could make this decision was
entirely dependant on the confidence I had in his and my abilities to make such a
transition successfully, and that the improvisation that would follow the piece would be
good. I would not have been able to make this decision with another trombonist, and would have written a proper ending. But as it stands I am quite pleased with the ending
as it resembles our musical relationship which is primarily improvisational in nature.
These impulses pull the piece in various directions and it is consequently
stylistically inconsistent, and perhaps inconsequential. It is the lightest of the thesis pieces, which is appropriate; I had no idea how to write a serious piece for such an unlikely duo. 101
Conclusion.
The mixture of seriousness and humour in Duo represents perhaps where my
music will go in the future. It is an unlikely culmination of the compositional
exploration that I have undergone these past two years, but one I am pleased with. I do
not know that it contains everything that I would want for a piece of mine to contain but
I do not think that any of the thesis pieces do. The pieces were all attempts at getting
closer to not only a style that I could call my own but a process that I could enjoy and
depend on. On that basis all of the pieces were a success.
In Quintet I realized that what materials I chose to use for a piece were less
important than the attitude I adopted towards them. And while that is true in relation to
the motivic development in that piece it is not true in the choice of the materials. If the
materials are less important than the attitude then why do I not include whatever
materials are available? The attitude employed in the composition of Quintet could be
expanded to include a greater variety of materials. While I may have learned from
Feldman to follow my instincts and to compose without predetermined forms that does not mean that I need to compose in his style. I could use materials other than the
ambiguous materials he constructs his pieces from. In Duo I found a way of using pre written materials that I was not able to do in Nonet. This was done by employing an indifferent attitude to them; by not taking them so seriously. 102
Duo takes the idea that materials matter less than attitude to its proper conclusion.
The indifference to materials than an attitude-oriented process implies should mean all sorts of material can be included. Duo, through being stylistically heterogeneous, displays a more complete indifference. When I said that I would "allow things that were perhaps less good into the piece because I was convinced that the piece was strong enough to absorb it," it should have meant that anything was possible. Quintet however is not an anything-is-possible piece. It explores a very limited number of pitches, it has a persistently flat texture and an unchanging dynamic. Quintet is serious in a way that is inconsistent with my stated goal of composing intuitively — of letting things happen— because it only lets a very few things happen.
This is a question of style. What I do and do not allow in to the piece is determined by my ear. Those choices however are not made in a neutral situation. My preferences guide my choices. I have for example a preference for the minor second over the major second. My ear is definitely involved in deciding what sorts of materials are permitted into the piece. As such my ear is a manifestation of my ego. Duo has less ego as my ear was over-ruled by the peculiarities and parameters I established: the suggestion of lyrical lines for the trombone, the rehashing of Nonet's thematic content and negotiating the eccentricity of the ensemble. In Duo predetermined materials were a means for overcoming ego. With those same materials were a problem because I was too worried about them. I was so concerned about liking the piece and liking the 103
materials that I did not allow anything to happen.
It was appropriate to finish the set of thesis pieces by overcoming the problems of
the first piece in the composition of the last piece. That I overcame the problem can be
attributed to two things: composing directly on the guitar and not worrying about the
materials. In both of these things I was influenced by Feldman. Hence it is to him that I
owe the greatest debt. The debt that I owe him is similar to the debt that Feldman owed
Cage: "I would say that I owe him everything and I owe him nothing. He liberated me
in terms of self-permission to go on with what I had decided I was going to do."62 In my
thesis pieces I discovered the way of doing what I had decided I was going to do.
62 Villarspg. 31 104
Bibliography (scores)
Bach, Johann Sebastian. The Well-Tempered Clavier. New York: Dover, 1983.
Bartok, Bela. Violin Concerto No. 2. London: Boosey Hawkes, 1946.
Bartok, Bela. Fifth String Quartet. London: Boosey Hawkes, 1945.
Berg, Alban. Wozzeck. Vienna: Universal Edition, 1972.
Debussy, Claude. LaMer. New York: Dover, 1983.
Feldman, Morton. For John Cage. London: Universal Editions, 1982.
Feldman, Morton. For Philip Guston. London: Universal Editions, 1985.
Feldman, Morton. Routine Investigations. London: Universal Editions, 1976.
Feldman, Morton. Triadic Memories. London: Universal Editions, 1987.
Gorecki, Henryk. Good Night. London: Boosey Hawkes, 1990.
Kondo, Jo. Wisen Dance Steps. UK: University of York, 1995.
Ligeti, Gyorgy. Musica Ricercata. Germany: Schott, 1995.
Mahler, Gustav. Symphony No. 9. New York: Dover, 2000.
Malher, Gustav. Symphony No. 5. New York: Dover, 2000.
Messiaen, Olivier. Turangalila Symphony. Paris: Durand, 1948.
Mozart, Amadeus Wolfgang. Adagio and Fugue in C minor. Vienna: Breitkopf and Hartel, 1788.
Ravel, Maurice. Piano Concerto in G Major. Paris: Durand, 1932.
Saint-Saens, Camille. Carnival Of the Animals. Paris: Durand, 1922.
Schoenberg, Arnold. Concerto for Piano and Orchestra. New York: Schirmer, 1942. Verdi, Guissipe. Otello. New York: Dover, 1986.
Bibliography (books)
Cox, Chrisoph. Warner, Daniel. Editors. Audio Culture. New York : Continuum, 2005.
Davidson, Audrey Ekdahl. Olivier Messiaen and the Tristan Myth. USA: Praeger, 2001.
Delio, Thomas. Editor. The Music of Morton Feldman. USA: Greenwood, 1996.
Eggels, Marjorie Wornell. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier USA: McFarland USA, 2006
Feldman, Morton. Give My Regards to Eighth Street. Cambridge MA: Exact Change, 2000.
Feldman, Morton. Cage, John. Radio Happenings. Koln: Musiktexte, 1993.
Gilles, Malcolm. Editor. The Bartok Companion. London: Faber, 1993.
Griffiths, Paul. Olivier Messiaen and the Music of Time. London: Faber, 1985.
Hill, Peter Simeone Nigel. Messiaen. USA: Yale University Press, 2005.
Kennan, Kent. Counterpoint. USA: Prentice Hall, 1999.
Ligeti, Gyorgy. Ligeti in Conversation. London: Eulenburg, 1983.
Messiaen, Olivier. The Technique of my Musical Language. Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 1956.
Messiaen, Olivier. Olivier Messiaen Music and Color Conversations with Claude Samuel. USA: Amadeus, 1986.
Schoenberg, Arnold. Style and Idea. USA: Belmont, 1976.
Toop, Richard. Gyorgy Ligeti. London: Phaidon, 1999. Villars, Chris. Editor. Morton Feldman Says. London: Hyphen Press, 2006. Young, La Monte. Zazeela, Marian. Selected Writings. Munich: Heiner Friedrich, 1969.
Discography
Partch, Harry. The Harry Partch Collection (Volume 2). New York: New World Records, 2004.
Web Sources
Parker, Evan. Man & Machine, ww.efi.group.shef.ac.uk (European Free Improvisation Pages) 1992.
Ono, Yoko. One. Ubu.com. 1966. 107
Appendix (scores)
Sextet 108
Trio 1 120
Trio 2 128
Quintet 139
Duo 154 Sextet 108 Holger Schoorl
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