Here's the commentary I submitted in May along with the portfolio of recordings and scores completed for the second semester's composition module.
Composition B Commentary
Simon Hopkins, May 2020
- General introduction
The aim of the work[1] here was to explore some of the themes of this semester’s teaching and revisit some of the concepts from Composition A, as well as follow up with my own independent research. The areas I set out to investigate include:
- Joseph Shillinger’s approach to rhythm
- Rhythmic dissonance more generally
- Bartók’s pitch axis and ocatonicism
- Lutosławski’s “chain”-based compositional approach
- NRT-based voice leading
- Messiaen’s modes of limited transposition
A key aim was to explore not simply different ways of composing, but also of scoring.
- “Three Sonnets by Elizabeth Barrett Browning”
2.1 Stimulus & Process
When the Joyce Dixey competition was announced, I immediately thought about writing a piece for Yi Zhang to sing with classical guitar accompaniment[2]. I decided to set poetry and Barrett Browning’s early sonnets struck me as rich in musical allusion and structurally full of potential musical cues.
I began with a period of wide-ranging listening and score reading[3]. I looked at Western art song from the early 19th Century onwards and paid particular attention to the post-war period. Britten’s sonnet poetry settings were useful for understanding scansion[4]. Brouwer’s “Canciones Amatorias” was key to exploring voice and guitar in terms of texture. Alongside this musicological research, I did extensive reading around the sonnet’s history, and around the setting of sonnets to music in the 20th Century[5].
The process with each setting was similar. The first stage was to create a rhythmic framework based on the poem. The sonnet’s iambic pentameter[6] immediately suggests a dotted rhythm, but I was keen to avoid anything too obvious here[7]. I simply read through the poems, out loud, to come up with rhythm that was syntactically coherent.
I then looked at the poems for any structural or “tonal” clues. The breakdown of sonnets into quatrains suggests clear points for an instrumental interlude, for instance. A line such as “where is any certain tune or measured music in such notes as these?” clearly suggests non-diatonic harmony[8]. Finally, the crucial “volta” in the sonnet – a clear change in mood/argument – hints at a change in the music. With a rhythmic and structural shape in place, I transcribed the sketches into Sibelius and built a basic harmonic framework.
The melody was built intuitively on the harmony and other poetic cues[9]. Lastly, the guitar arrangement was built from the basic harmonic structure, with the aim of supporting the vocal line while remaining engaging in itself. A final set of largely pragmatic changes were made following our initial rehearsal and recording session[10].
2.2 Analysis
Harmonically, all three songs draw on the two semesters’ lectures on modality and NRT-based voice-leading, as well as my own research[11]. As outlined above, the songs’ rhythm flows primarily from the poems’ scansion. The accompaniment is designed to be as supportive as possible, but often employs rhythmic displacement in the solo passages to provide textural and dramatic contrast.
“Perplexed Music”: Until the poem’s “volta” at b38, the tonal centre is around D minor, although is modally ambiguous (eg. the opening, which moves between dorian and phrygian). Through to b34, the harmony variously moves through A aeolian, G dorian, and Eb major, using NRT voice-leading to make harmonically unexpected transitions smooth (eg. bb16-18, with a transition from A major to minor, or b13 where the closely voiced trichords move quickly from D minor to D mixolydian). The passage at bb34-37 is a whole-tone passage. The final section of the piece broadly alternates between G major and G mixolydian.
“The Soul’s Expression”: The piece’s home mode is E Aeolian. After the guitar opening, which employs a “line cliché”[12] – a descending chromatic bassline against a static Em9 chord - the first passage up to the restatement of the opening theme is almost entirely in E aeolian, with the exception of a passing chord at b12. The passage from b17 – b27 is more harmonically ambiguous and again uses NRT voice-leading to create unexpected harmonic movement (eg. bb 25-27, with a move from FMAJ7#4 to Fm7). The concluding passage from b28 is entirely diatonic to E aeolian. The guitar part features an ostinato E pedal in both the bass and in the middle voice of the ascending trichords, and the melody comes to rest on the mild dissonance of a M9.
“The Seraph and the Poet”: The solo opening and first passage are largely based on NRT moves, with the AM-Bbm contrast at its core. Again, the middle passage (from b17) introduces more harmonic ambiguity; the ostinato 4ths in the upper voice of the guitar echo bb38-40 in the first song, and the chromatically descending bassline in bb32-33 reprise the line cliché in the second. After the volta at b41 the piece is entirely in E lydian[13]. The guitar part in bb 47-51 features quartal harmony[14], slightly offset by the #4.
2.3 Reflection
Given that this was my first attempt at writing any form of song, I’m broadly happy with the results. This is obviously entirely subjective, but I think the songs capture the mysterious and at times rapturous mood of the poems. I’m especially happy with the use of NRT voice leading, which led me into new harmonic territory. The scansion was the most difficult aspect of the composition, and at times it does follow the poem a little too faithfully. In future similar work I would like to be a little more audacious with this, and in particular investigate more use of melisma[15].
- “Doom Scrolling”
3.1 Stimulus & Process
Following this semester’s lecture on Joseph Shillinger’s approach to rhythm, I wanted to take the principles and apply them to a contemporary “math metal”[16] piece. In terms of influence, the starting point was the Swedish extreme metal group Meshuggah, whose disorientating polyrhythms are legendary[17]. However, I wanted to explore a slightly older sound world. I set about writing a piece that recalls mid-late 70s hard rock and prog, most notably Red-era King Crimson and Rush[18]. I also set out to explore some of the harmonic areas covered over the last two semesters, including Bartók’s’ pitch axis and octatonicsm, and modality more generally.
I started by sketching out different resultants and spent days “living with them” trying to hear the contrasting underlying rhythms. I finally settled on a resultant of 3 and 5 which seemed to offer riches in terms of complexity and ambiguity, but still really grooved.
To avoid guitaristic clichés, the entire piece was written in Sibelius[19]. As the piece built, I occasionally exported the midi into a metal template I’d built in Ableton Live, to confirm that things were sonically appropriate[20].
A midi file of the final score was imported into Logic 9.[21]. The midi guitar parts were mostly replaced with real guitar, although in some places the midi parts are retained low in the mix. The scored drum parts were supplemented with improvised cymbal and tom-tom fills[22]. A final version of the score was produced in response to some performance issues that arose in recording.
3.2 Analysis
The A section sets out to be disorientating and ominous from the start. The rhythmic “stabs” are based on the underlying 15/8 rhythm, but this only becomes clear from B, when the complete rhythm is established. The ascending minor 2nds in the lead guitar part outline a W/H octatonic scale on G. The main riff enters at B; the parallel bass and rhythm guitars spell out the resultant in full; the kick drum is grouped in 5s, the ride in 3s. The tonal centre is G minor. The entry of the lead guitar part introduces more ambiguity, with an octatonic melody in groups of 2s but on every four quavers[23]. At b16 the riff modulates to the subdominant, but the melody outlines C lydian dominant. At b23 the riff moves to the mediant, and the melody outlines Bb lydian. The main riff and melody return from b26, but in b30 the lead guitar reprises the minor seconds from the opening.
Although the underlying tempo remains at b31, the meter slows 4/2. The kick drum is a classic death metal “blast beat”[24]. The rhythm guitar plays sus9 power chords outlining G mixolydian; the bass plays a contrary motion part. The lead guitar from b35 moves the harmony to an implied G major, although there is no third in the melody; the rhythmic displacement and hammer-on technique owe a clear debt to Rush’s Alex Lifeson[25].
The main 15/8 rhythm returns at D, but with a dramatically different texture. The entire section builds from a bare kick and hi-hat pattern, with each few bars adding to both the complexity and the dynamics. The bass reintroduces G minor as the tonal centre from b41, with rhythmically offset trichords in the rhythm guitar from b44. The guitar melody at b50 introduces G phrygian, and again uses cycling in its construction. The riff moves briefly to a whole-tone scale on Ab from b15, before the whole texture moves to A dorian from b58 (the melodic pattern remains the same to retain some stability). The final statement of the melody is A dorian, but with a #4. The breakdown at b70 returns to G aeolian, at which point the piece returns da capo. The fading coda ends in G aeolian, and once again uses rhythmic displacement.
3.3 Reflection
On balance I think the piece broadly achieves its aims of exploring both rhythmic and harmonic ambiguity, while still grooving and being, well, heavy. My main concern is with the audio realisation rather than the composition per se. Of course, it is all but impossible to recreate the sound of a real metal band using midi instruments and modelled guitar amps[26], but my engineering skills certainly need work in this area. The middle section of the piece is a little less organic than I would like, and might benefit from some room for improvisation.
- “In the Empty Pianos, Puppeteer Spiders”[27]
4.1 Stimulus & Process
The motivation for the piece was the lecture on Lutosławski’s “chain” approach to composition and how I might use it to reverse-engineering my own “assemblage” approach to creating electro-acoustic work[28]. I initially settled on the instrumental line-up of string quartet, electric guitar and atmospheres. I spent several weeks studying string quartet scores, especially early 20th Century work and more recent pieces that incorporate electronics or tape. I wasn’t so much studying the string quartet as a form, but rather trying to absorb the ensemble’s texture, as well as idiomatic issues such as range and technique. I also studied several scores for contemporary electric guitar. However, my early experiments in creating a palette suggested that the guitar parts were neither necessary nor particularly successful. After several experiments with different work-flows I settled up the following process.
The first stage was to map out the entire shape of the piece on paper, to have a structure to work through.
Each instrumental “cell” was created by choosing a given pitch class set and then improvising around this using the Spitfire strings plugin in Ableton. Once I was happy with a given “cell”, I recorded a take, hoping to retain some of the improvisatory feel. Each link was then exported into Logic according to the structural outline.
The cells were notated in Sibelius. The three atmospheres were adaptations of sketches I’ve worked on at various points on the course. The final score was assembled in PowerPoint[29].
4.2 Analysis
With this piece, I was guided more by musical intuition than theoretical concerns and in general to create a “mood” which reflects the title – dream-like and unsettling. Hence the theoretical analysis here is somewhat lighter than elsewhere. Structurally, the piece is relatively straightforward: instrumental gestures or cells are introduced gradually, constantly expanding and then contracting the texture, until the final passage from 7’40” has all the voices build to a fff climax and a subito stop.
The pitch class sets chosen for each individual cell frequently feature ic 1. However, it is in the PCSs of combined voices where the real complexity is introduced. For instance, at 3’25” the combined texture has an ic vector of 443352 (Forte # 7-14) and is particularly rich in dissonance. At this stage I haven’t mapped out the entire piece in terms of PCSs but will be doing this subsequently to inform further work.
4.3 Reflection
This is paradoxically the piece I’m the most satisfied with of this set, and yet is in some ways the most disappointing. Musically, it is a clear extension of my usual practice; indeed, the structural approach has enhanced the way in which I would normally approach such a soundscape, and the results created are the closest to the sound image in my head before starting. The disappointment is that while this piece arguably took the most time to conceive, and was the most painstaking to assemble, the results “on the page” are possibly underwhelming. The string writing some was somewhat constrained by my own experience and what is reasonably achievable with even such a good sample set as Spitfire; certainly, the string writing would benefit from a greater variety of technical approaches. Ultimately, while the piece stands on its own, it may be the basis for a larger scale piece – both in terms of instrumentation and length.
- Overall reflection
The key take out for me here is that I wouldn’t have written anything like these pieces before starting this programme. To be clear, the music here is in some ways akin to what I’ve worked on for years, not least in the kind of ambiguity to which I’m naturally drawn. But the lessons I’ve learned thus for around harmony, rhythm, and structure have benefitted my practice hugely, and taken me into entirely new areas.
One obvious question that comes up in listening back to these pieces is: do I have a “voice”? I’ve deliberately set out to explore different approaches to composition, scoring and realisation. I wonder whether this has sacrificed something in terms of identity?
A clear issue is around not having real musicians to work with on the pieces[30]. The most sonically successful piece in this submission is the Barrett Browning settings, sung by a real singer and played by an actual guitarist[31]. “Spiders” and “Doom” lack the equivalent benefit of using a real string quartet and a real band respectively. It’s not so much that this has impacted the audio renderings, but that working with other musicians can realise other musical avenues.
In all cases I’ve tried to balance what I’ve learned theoretically with personal musical intuition. I think broadly the balance is right, although as observed above, “Spiders” is perhaps (harmonically speaking, at least) the least theoretically grounded of all the pieces here.
Areas of further development include:
- More detailed writing for strings.
- Further investigation of singing – perhaps in a more clearly modernist setting.
- More detailed solo guitar writing.
- Resources
Academic papers & online articles
Lawrence Kramer: “Song Reconsidered: Words and Music, Music and Poetry” (Fordham University, 2017)
Jeremy Noble: “Britten's 'Songs from the Chinese'” (Cambridge University Press, 1959)
Mike Ingham: "'The true concord of well-tuned sounds': musical adaptations of Shakespeare's sonnets" (Routledge, 2013)
Jonathan Pieslak: "Re-casting Metal: Rhythm and Meter in the Music of Meshuggah" (Oxford University Press, 2007)
Philip Brophy: “Post-human Synchronisation – Meshuggah Live” (Real Time Sydney, 2017)
Michael Klein: "Texture, Register, and Their Formal Roles in the Music of Witold Lutosławski" (Indiana Theory Review, 1999)
Books
Robert Sherlaw Johnson: “Messiaen” (Omnibus, 1975)
Vincent Persichetti: “Twentieth Century Harmony” (Norton, 1961)
Stefan Kostka: “Materials and Techniques of Twentieth Century Music” (Prentice-Hall, 1990)
Eliane Gould: “Behind Bars” (Faber, 2011)
Reginald Smith Brindle: “Musical Composition” (Oxford University Press, 1986)
Ernő Lendvai: “Béla Bartók – An Analysis of his Music” (Stanmore Press, 1971)
Steven Stucky: “Lutosławski and his Music” (Cambridge University Press, 1981)
Mark Mynett: "Metal Music Manual - Producing, Engineering, Mixing, and Mastering Contemporary Heavy Music" (Routledge, 2017)
Katherine Rapaport: “Violin for Dummies” (John Wiley & Sons, 2020)
Joe Mulholland & Tom Hojnacki: “The Berklee Book of Jazz Harmony” (Berklee Press, 2013)
Malcolm Hebron: “How to Read a Poem” (Connell Guides 2017)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “Collected Poems” (Wordsworth Editions, 2015)
Camille Paglia: “Break Blow Burn” (Vintage, 2005)
Rhian Williams: “The Poetry Toolkit” (Bloomsbury, 2013)
Stephanie Burt & David Mikics: “The Art of the Sonnet” (Harvard University Press, 2010)
Federico García Lorca: “Selected Poems” (Penguin, 1995)
Scores
Benjamin Britten: “Songs from the Chinese” (Boosey & Co, 1959)
Benjamin Britten: Seven Sonnets of Michaelangelo” (Boosey & Co, 1943)
Benjamin Britten: “The Holy Sonnets of John Donne” (Boosey & Co, 1946)
Leo Brouwer: “Canciones Amatorias” (Ediciones Espiral Eternal, 2011)
Leo Brouwer: “Guitar Works” (Eschig, 2006)
Witold Lutosławski: “Symphony No 3” (Chester Music, 1984)
Witold Lutosławski: “Mi-Parti” (Chester Music, 1976)
Witold Lutosławski: “Chain 3” (Chester Music, 1988)
Dmitri Shostakovich: “String Quartet No 1” (Edition Eulenberg, 1938)
Sergey Prokoviev: “String Quartet No 1” (Boosey & Hawkes, 1931)
Steve Reich” “Different Trains” (Boosey & Hawkes, 1988)
Anton Webern: “Five Pieces for String Quartet” (Universal Edition, 1922)
Olivier Messiaen: “Quartet for the End of Time” (Durand, 1941)
Christian Wolff: “Another Possibility” (Edition Peters, 2004)
Tom Armstrong: “Diversions 3” (2015)
Betsy Jolas: “Episode septième” (Alphonse Leduc, 1989)
Morton Feldman: “The Possibility of a New Work for Electric Guitar” (Reconstruction by Seth Josel) (Edition Peters, 2013)
Tōru Takemitsu: “Landscape 1” (Editions Salabert, 1962)
Various: “Violin Grade 8” (Trinity College London, 2015)
György Ligeti: “String Quartet No 2” (Schott, 1968)
Kevin Volans: “String Quartet No 2; Hunting: Gathering” (Chester Music, 1997)
Ludwig van Beethoven: “String Quartet 15, Op. 132” (1825)
Ludwig van Beethoven: “String Quartet 13, Op.130” (1825)
Ludwig van Beethoven: “Grosse Fugue, Op. 127” (1825)
Claude Debussy: “String Quartet” (1893)
Béla Bartók – “String Quartet 1” (1909)
Luciano Berio – “String Quartet” (Universal Edition, 1956)
Kaija Saariaho: “Nymphea” (Editions Wilhelm Hansen, 1987)
Listening
Spotify playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5Umr9WOOgWIJ0kkqvNJh7Z?si=3eba36bf58024bf8
[1] Some of the work here recycles material from sketches produced in response to various challenges and assignments set across the two semesters; most of it, however, is entirely newly composed. It was reassuring to hear this recent Radio 3 “Listening Service” edition all about musical recycling: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0017678
[2] I’d heard my fellow student Yi sing at her first semester recital and was hugely impressed, particularly by her performance of early 20th Century material.
[3] A full list of scores consulted and a related Spotify playlist are included in the “resources” section at the end of this paper.
[4] See Noble, 1959
[5] See Ingham, 2013
[6] https://nosweatshakespeare.com/sonnets/iambic-pentameter/
[7] Although the weak-strong stress of the iambic “foot” does heavily lend itself to melodic phrases beginning on an anacrusis, which I’ve largely run with.
[8] In this particular case I opted for a whole-tone melody, which as it turns out isn’t an easy “sing”.
[9] Of course, I established Yi’s range before starting writing the melodies.
[10] A note on the recording: Given the little time available for rehearsal, the recordings are all composites. The guitar parts were recorded first and Yi overdubbed her vocal parts in sections of several bars at a time. The outer songs were recorded in my home studio, but Yi’s part for the middle song, “The Soul’s Expression”, was recorded on campus and is of a slightly lower quality, with a small amount of clipping. The mix for the entire suite was done in Logic X.
[11] Esp. Persichetti, 1951, and Kostka, 1990
[12] See Mulholland & Hojnacki, 2013
[13] The tone of the poem from this point is one of celestial joy, which suggested lydian, the “brightest” mode; whether seraphs actually favour the lydian mode I cannot confirm.
[14] https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/mt21c/QuintalHarmony.html
[15] It’s worth noting that Hubert Parry’s celebrated Shakespearean sonnet settings eschew melisma almost entirely.
[16] https://www.last.fm/tag/math+metal/artists
[17] See Pieslak, 2007
[18] I also, I took considerable influence from the current generation of “post-metal” bands such as Vessels, Battles and Mono.
[19] Of course, some idiomatic guitar writing was entirely appropriate (eg. the 5 chords, or “power chords” used throughout the main B section of the piece).
[20] Which is of course all but impossible in Sibelius.
[21] I have a large library of pre-sets and plug-ins I previously used on the avant-metal project Nape, and haven’t been able to replace satisfactorily in the more recent version of Logic.
[22] The final mix was mastered using SoundCloud’s Dolby-based, machine learning-driven mastering service.
[23] This is also drawn from Shillinger – this time his concept of rhythmic cycling.
[24] https://www.drumlessons.com/drum-lessons/heavy-metal-drumming/blast-beats/
[25] With pleasing circularity, this technique is heavily employed by Meshuggah’s virtuosic lead guitarist Frederik Thordendal.
[26] See Mynett, 2017
[27] The title is taken from the Lorca poem “In the Street of the Mutes”.
[28] Principally Boom Logistics (https://www.dgmfsmedia.com/my_weblog/boom-logistics.html) and Abyssal Labs (https://www.dgmfsmedia.com/my_weblog/abyssal-labs.html).
[29] The linearity of this process is somewhat misleading; in truth, the whole procedure was iterative and editorial decisions were made throughout.
[30] With the exception of Yi, of course!
[31] Or at any rate, in this case, me.
