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Deconstructing David Lang's the Anvil Chorus

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Deconstructing David Lang's the Anvil Chorus Columbus State University CSU ePress Theses and Dissertations Student Publications 2014 Deconstructing David Lang's The Anvil Chorus Brandon M. Smith Columbus State University Follow this and additional works at: https://csuepress.columbusstate.edu/theses_dissertations Part of the Music Education Commons Recommended Citation Smith, Brandon M., "Deconstructing David Lang's The Anvil Chorus" (2014). Theses and Dissertations. 113. https://csuepress.columbusstate.edu/theses_dissertations/113 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Publications at CSU ePress. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of CSU ePress. Deconstructing David Lang's The Anvil Chorus by Brandon Michael Smith A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of Requirements of the CSU Honors Program for Honors in the Degree of Bachelor of Music in Music Education College of the Arts Columbus State University Thesis Advisor Committee Member Dr. Sean Powell Honors Committee Member J&^^ f Date [g^SjLS ' Dr. Susan Tomkiewicz Honors Program Director ^trkO^h^C^^ Date £&Q indy Ticknor 1 Usually, when a piece of music is taken out of context, that is, when it is learned and performed without studying the piece, the composer, the musical genre, or the historical significance, the understanding of it for the performer is narrow and limited and the performance is less than ideal. This leads to a substandard realization of the music. Contrarily, a musician should integrate research with the learning process as to enhance the comprehensive understanding of the piece, which ultimately results in a high level of performance. This idea is important for the complex and extensive musical repertoire of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. David Lang's solo percussion work, The Anvil Chorus, is case and point. Lang was born in 1957 into an inartistic family. His interest in composition, and indeed classical music, was sparked at the age of nine when he was shown a film performance of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 1 by Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic. The film brought forth the fact that Shostakovich was only nineteen years old when he wrote the symphony. Lang thought, "I have ten years and I could do it." Consequently, from that moment on, he did everything he could to nurture his ambition for composition. Lang stated in an interview, "my family was tremendously unartistic. I was not allowed to have music lessons when I was a kid, because my older sister had music lessons, and it had been a horrible failure." However, his persistent interest in composition forced his parents to find a private teacher, Henri Lazarof at UCLA. This marked the beginning of Lang's formal musical training in composition. Lang had a natural interest for science and mathematics as the son of a doctor. As a result, he viewed music from a microscopic perspective. His interest in music was a scientific "take it apart, from the inside of a car" kind of interest. Lang stated, "I started by going through music counting, by looking at things and taking them apart, and that's why, when I was in high school and heard the music of Philip Glass and Steve Reich, it really made so much sense to 1 Andrew Bliss, David Lang: Deconstructing a Constructivist Composer. (Ann Arbor, MI: ProQuest, 2008), p. 5. me." This microscopic perspective permeates his compositions. But, Lang wants to take it a step further. He does this by introducing rhythmic or melodic patterns with immediate disruptions that make way for other patterns. It is the disruptions that make Lang's music his own, as compared to the music of Reich or Glass where there are drone-like textures and continuous ostinatos that often shift subtlety over time. In a way, Lang tests the audience by presenting cyclic and interruptive ideas in his works. These ideas are usually mathematical in formulation, as mentioned above. The Anvil Chorus was written in 1991 for renowned percussionist, Steven Schick. The Fromm Foundation at Harvard University commissioned the piece and Schick gave the premiere performance on May 13, 1991 during the Bang-on-a-Can Festival in New York, which was founded by Lang and colleagues Julia Wolfe and Michael Gordon.34 The composer's notes for the piece are below: When percussionist Steve Schick asked me to write him a solo piece I wanted to do something that showed percussion's connection to real life activities. I didn't want to work with the pretty instruments, like vibraphone or chimes, that were invented so that percussionists could play politely with other musicians. I wanted to write a piece that reminded the listener of the glorious history of percussion - that since the beginning of time people have always banged on things as a result of their professions. Then I remembered that I had once read a book on the history of blacksmithing, and I had become particularly interested in how medieval blacksmiths used song to help them in their work. Although small jobs could be accomplished by individual smiths, larger jobs created an interesting problem - how could several smiths hammer on a single piece of metal without getting in each other's way? Smiths solved this problem by singing songs together which would control the beat patterns of the hammers. There was a different song for each number of participating blacksmiths — obviously, a song that allowed for three hammer strokes would be confusing and even dangerous if used to coordinate four smiths. 2 Andrew Bliss, David Lang: Deconstructing a Constructivist Composer. (Ann Arbor, MI: ProQuest, 2008), p. 14. 3 David Lang, The Anvil Chorus. (New York: G. Schirmer, 1991). Steven Schick, A Percussionist's Art: Same Bed, Different Dreams. (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester, 2006), p. 26. My solo percussion piece The Anvil Chorus also uses a "melody" to control various beat patterns. The "melody" is played on resonant junk metals of the percussionist's choosing, and, by adding certain rules, it triggers an odd accompaniment of non-resonant junk metals, played both by hand and by foot.5 The blacksmiths devised a system of counting combined with a meticulous internal pulse and pre-determined beat patterns to work on a project. The songs they sang changed to accommodate the number of blacksmiths working. In this particular composition, the idea of multiple blacksmiths working on a project is downsized to only one solo percussionist responsible for all components of the project.6 Schick described it: A single percussionist plays the part of many blacksmiths by performing several kinds of rhythmic material in several different speeds. The different rhythms and speeds create waves of pulsation: they cycle, overlap, and compete; the ebb and flow of these pulse cycles provides the genesis of large-scale sense in The Anvil Chorus. Schick and Lang's collaboration developed the piece over time. What we have today is a written and oral tradition.8 Following the first performances, they tweaked the instrument and mallet choices, which resulted in a "reasonably fixed version... by the time the piece was first recorded in 1993."9 However, instrumentation and set-up choices are crucial to the success of the piece. The Anvil Chorus is scored technically for thirteen idiophones and one membranophone. Specifically, the score notates three major groups: 1) three resonant metals to be played with the hands, 2) four non-resonant metals to be played with the hands, and 3) four foot-operated non- resonant metals -junk metals. There are also two wood blocks and one kick drum (bass drum) notated in the score. The piece is labeled as open or free instrumentation since no specific instruments are listed, only guidelines. Therefore, it is up to the performer to choose the David Lang, "David Lang - The Anvil Chorus (1991)" from MusicSalesClassical.com, Internet; accessed 23 Aug., 2013. Steven Schick, A Percussionist's Art: Same Bed, Different Dreams. (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester, 2006), p. 26. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid., p. 30. 9 Ibid., p. 31. INSTRUMENTS REQUIRED: R-l 2 3 resonant metals wood blocks NR-1 2 3 4 non resonant metals J, w/foot pedals bass drum w/foot F-4 3 2 1 Instrument Requirements and Notation (with labels) instruments. Schick defines this type of music as second-generation percussion works.10 These second-generation compositions are "less concerned with the quantity of sounds [like the first- generation works] and more concerned with their qualities."1' Among the first-generation pieces are Luciano Berio's Circles and Karlheinz Stockhausen's Zyklus, both of which include a substantial percussion set-up for over twenty specific instruments for one percussionist - an orchestra of instruments for one person. This contrasts with second-generation pieces such as Michael Gordon's XT, Brian Ferneyhough's Bone Alphabet, Vinko Globokar's Toucher, and j£ 19o First generation - The massive set-up for Berio 's Circles 12 10 Ibid., p. 25. 11 Ibid., p. 24. 12 Luciano Berio, Circles (New York City, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1960) W* ?.*-* ??** *M*jf g iJB&£* &_*?&** _jrppjfpp tfrpp sfrpp ifcpp sfeppsfrpp Second generation - Seven instruments for Ferneyhoush 's Bone Alphabet13 Iannis Xenakis's Psappha that all feature some element of free instrumentation and a much smaller list of instruments. In The Anvil Chorus, the open instrumentation is actually deceiving because one does want a specific palette of timbres. As Schick said, "the illusion of freedom exists until you understand the piece."14 The formal layout and the rhythmic phrases in the piece should be audible by performer and audience but the clarity comes from the right instrument choice. If chosen incorrectly, the tone qualities will blend with one another and the compositional effects will be lost.
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