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Music 109 for a Musical Harmonic Phrase, Indicating a Modulation (Change) from One Key to Another

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Music 109 for a Musical Harmonic Phrase, Indicating a Modulation (Change) from One Key to Another 17 opera Einstein on the Beach The first thing you hear inEinstein on the Beach is a three- note bass line played on an electric organ. It is repeated over and over again as the audience comes in to the theater. It takes the place of an overture. The notes are A, G, and C, the sixth, fifth and first degrees of a C-major scale. It’s a basic Western harmonic cadential figure. Let’s take a look at each of the seven degrees of such a scale. If we step up the white notes on a piano keyboard, starting on C, we get a C-major scale: C, D, E, F, G, A, B, and C. If we con- struct triads (chords consisting of two thirds stacked one upon the other) on each of the seven degrees we discover that I (C), IV (F) and V (G) are major triads, having major thirds (two whole steps) on the bottom, minor thirds (one whole, one half step) on top. II (D), III (E), and VI (A) are minor triads, minor thirds on the bottom, major thirds on top. VII (B) is a diminished triad, consist- ing of two minor thirds. I, IV, and V are strong triads, by virtue of their structure (major) and their roots (bottom tones) that appear early in the overtone series on C. I is the fundamental; V, the third overtone; IV, the fourth. II, III, and VI are relatively weak, relat- ing to the stronger triads. II and VI share two tones with IV and I. III shares two tones with I and V. VII is unstable—it shares tones with V, II, and IV. It can’t stand by itself, it has to go somewhere, usually to I. The strongest cadential figure in Western harmony is IV, V, I. By substituting VI for IV, Philip is substituting a weaker opera : 155 chord for a stronger, lightening the cadence. He might have felt it was wise to do so, it gets repeated so many times. After awhile a small chorus in the pit joins in and sings the three bass notes on the syllables La, Sol, and Do. These syllables are part of the Italian solfeggio system used for sight singing. Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do indicate the notes of any diatonic scale. Instead of a text, the singers are simply telling you the names of the notes as they sing them. Then they begin counting the dura- tions of the notes—one, two, three, four, and so forth. (Einstein: mathematics, get it?) They’re singing the rhythm. It’s wonderful. You don’t have the burden of a text about Einstein or anything else, for that matter. Someone once asked Philip what Einstein meant. He replied that it didn’t mean anything, it simply was what it was. However one cannot forget that Einstein’s formula, e = mc2, made the atomic bomb possible, and that Stanley Kubrick’s movie On the Beach depicted the world after a nuclear holocaust. There is a long trial scene in the opera, too. When we try to explain the theory of relativity, we can use as an example throwing a ball up in the air inside a moving train. The ball is moving vertically while the train is moving horizon- tally. Time and space are relative. That perhaps accounts for the image of a train in Einstein. Or maybe Wilson simply wanted to have a train on stage. Anyway, a huge locomotive moves on stage imperceptibly slowly until it’s totally in view, then there’s a black- out and it’s gone. It reappears several times. This wouldn’t happen in the movies or traditional opera. Repeating it gives you another chance to see it. Someone asked Bob why his works were so repet- itive and slow. He answered that he wanted the audience to have time to think about them. Let’s pretend we’re on an anthropological mission to another planet. We come upon what looks like a written formula or graffiti of some kind. After a little study, we discover that it is shorthand 156 : music 109 for a musical harmonic phrase, indicating a modulation (change) from one key to another. Here’s what it looks like: (f------D -------B (i) (vi) (ivb) A-----B-----E (IV) (V) (I) Small letters indicate minor chords; capitals, major ones. B (B double flat) is the same chord as A spelled enharmonically. This chord acts as a pivot between the keys of f minor and E major. Philip repeats this harmonic progression over and over again, each time varying the durations of each chord. It sounds like an object being looked at from various angles or in changing light conditions. In traditional music this progression would have been used to get from one place to another. In Einstein it goes nowhere. Satyagraha At the end of Philip Glass’s opera Satyagraha (1980) Mahatma Gandhi sings one of the most poignant arias in all opera. It is in Sanskrit and consists of thirty repetitions—ten groups of three— of the same upward Phrygian modal scale. The Phrygian mode is one of the so-called medieval church modes that were thought to be recreations of the ancient Greek modes. Each mode is characterized by a particular pattern of whole and half steps around a central tone (tonic). If you start a scale on each of the notes of a diatonic scale on the white keys on the piano, for example, you have the patterns of the medieval church modes. If you randomly let your fingers wander over these white keys, be- ginning and ending on each mode’s final (beginning and ending tone) you hear its distinct personality. We have lost the subtlety of hearing the rich emotions connected with these modes in favor of the more generic sounds of the major and minor keys. In ancient opera : 157 Greece one mode was outlawed because it was thought that it pro- moted lascivious conduct. Imagine that! That’s what they used to say about jazz; that’s what they say about rock and roll now. That’s why we like these musics so much. Starting from the note E on the piano keyboard and playing the white notes upward to the E an octave above will automatically generate the Phrygian mode. The melodic results of even random choices of these notes will sound unmistakably Phrygian and pro- duce an emotional effect distinctive of that mode. As you move up the keyboard you will discover that the interval pattern of whole and half steps is as follows: half, whole, whole, whole, half, whole (E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E). There’s a semitone (half step) at the begin- ning, a whole tone at the top. The pattern of a major scale, on the other hand, is whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half. It has a whole step at the bottom, a half step at the top. This half step is called a leading tone. A leading tone gives a strong unambiguous push to the tonic, or final tone of the scale. It is partly responsible for the assertiveness of Western music. The leading tone is con- tained in the dominant (V) chord which, when followed by the tonic (I), is the strongest chord progression in Western classical harmony. By having Gandhi sing a Phrygian scale over and over again, Glass emphasizes the non-violent aspect of Gandhi’s political phi- losophy. The half step at the beginning (E-F) gives a push up to the tone above it, a sort of leading tone to the second degree of the scale. The whole step at the top (D-E) produces a softer ca- dence. The combination of half step at the beginning and whole step at the top gives this simple scalar structure a feeling of up- ward expansion. It reminds me of thirty flowers blossoming, one after the other. If you invert the Phrygian scale—EDCBAGFE— it becomes sort of an upside down major scale. It’s as if Gandhi were turning Western culture on its head. 158 : music 109 Perfect Lives Sometime around 1970 or so, the Sonic Arts Union was per- forming at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. After the concert, Bob and I went out for a drink. Since Yellow Springs was dry, we had to drive to Xenia (coincidentally, the name of John Cage’s first wife), Ohio. We drove through cornfields. You know how straight those roads are. Pretty soon we came upon a road- house. We went in and the first thing we saw was a huge elec- tric organ. It was just sitting there idle. I think it was a Wurlitzer. There was a row of men and women sitting up at the bar talking to each other very seriously. It seemed to me that none of the cou- ples was married because they were having such interesting con- versations. They were having fun, smoking and drinking. We sat down and Bob started talking about Jimmy Smith, the jazz organ- ist, and the legendary pianist Bud Powell. After awhile we went into Xenia to get something to eat. When we stopped at the same roadhouse on our way back, the scene was exactly the same. Here were these lives going on and on. It felt timeless. Since the early Eighties, Robert Ashley has made a series of op- eras to be shown on television. The first one he made was called Perfect Lives (1978–1980), subtitled Private Parts.
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