I've just posted a score video for my 2021 piece for flute and classical guitar, "She Erases a Constellation", which was the first full submission on my Master's course at the University of Surrey, and to be honest my first real attempt at anything one might call "formal", or at least notated composition. I've posted the commentary I had to write about the piece below. (The course was at least in part research-based, so all creative work submissions required an accompanying reflective commentary.) But before that, some thoughts two years on.
- I guess the first thing that strikes me is that it is a little jejune. To be sure, there's a lot of influence in there, which you would expect after >45 years of listening to music seriously. But if an informed listener were to come to it cold, I think they'd immediately see this was the work of a student finding his way. (I think this goes for the commentary too).
- That said, I can see that I was already starting to grapple with some of the themes that I'd continue to work with on the course (and since), in particular rhythmic and harmonic ambiguity.
- The piece was written, as I recall, about six weeks into the course, at which point most of the composition modules had been led by Milton Mermikides (now Gresham College's Professor of Music). On each week of the course we'd been set various compositional exercises and I really threw myself at them, turning out sketch after sketch (as anyone following my Soundcloud "Surrey Sketches" playlist at the time will testify). A lot of the material ended up recycled in this piece.
- As a result, as I noted in the commentary below, there's perhaps a little too much going on stylistically. Like I say, a bit jejune.
- The recording is currently midi-only. I'm hoping to record it properly in 2024 if I can find a flautist to work with. I think at that point I'll re-work the score, and try to incorporate more idiomatic writing for the flute. Are some of those passages even playable?!
- And on that point, I realise that the guitar part is a bit of a monster at times, particularly the faux-metal ostinato passages. One thought I'm paying with is to re-score the piece for flute and electric guitar, which I think could work well. We'll see.
- I think I'm mostly struck by the distance between this piece and my final submission, the small ensemble composition "The Poems by Li Bai". Although some of the approaches in that piece are foreshadowed in "She Erases", the difference in scale, ambition, materials, attention to detail and execution is pretty colossal. It was quite a year!
I'm hoping to re-work the DGMFS website over the Christmas, er, "break", including a page dedicated to all my scores so far, so expect more score videos like this one over the next few weeks. In the meantime, here's what I had to say about it two years ago.
Commentary (October 2020)
Process
Following Reginald Smith Brindle’s observations about the difficulty of starting with a blank page[1], I started with a simple sketch of the piece’s outline:
I then outlined the piece purely rhythmically, initially working with cells such as this:
The entirety of the agitato A section and much of the Tranquillo B section were written as rhythms only, according to the narrative structure outlined below. Different harmonic and melodic approaches were ascribed to “zones” of the piece. The melodic lines and chords were then written into this framework. I worked on paper with the first full draft, adding dynamics, expression and correcting errors in the scoring:
The scoring was finalised in Sibelius and the audio was rendered (in midi) in Logic X.
Structure/narrative
The overarching narrative took its cue from the first movement of Leo Brouwer’s “El Decameron Negro”[2], especially in its juxtaposition of agitated and reflective passages. Essentially ABA in structure, the piece’s sections respectively move from rhythmic and harmonic dissonance towards a more congruent endpoint.
Analysis: rhythm, harmony & melody[3]
The piece employs rhythmic dissonance throughout. The opening (bb 1-11)[4] and duet in the Tranquillo (bb46-69) use radically different rhythmic groupings in the parts to render them apparently independent, somewhat influenced by Morton Feldman[5]. The guitar solo (bb70-92) uses guitaristic Euclidean rhythms in the style of John McLaughlin[6] and Roland Dyens[7]. The ostinato groupings in bb22-33 are obliquely inspired by the math-metal of Meshuggah[8] and Tool[9].
The harmony draws on a range of approaches The opening (bb1-10) is based on two whole-tone scales, and is polymodal from b9. The chords in bb11-17 are Lydian AITs based on the notes of the first AIT. The approach is modal in many places (eg. Lydian dominant and altered scale in bb18-30; Dorian #4 in bb54-67; Aeolian, Dorian and Lydian in bb68-90). Trichords are deployed extensively (eg. bb16-18 and bb54-67).
The melodies were mostly drawn instinctively from the harmony. The melody in bb 46-57 is based on a palindromic dissonance contour (IC: 16234543261); this is foreshadowed in the flute solo. The flute part in the recapitulation is in large part melodically inverted from its initial appearance.
Notation
I drew on Eliane Gould’s Behind Bars (2011)[10] for notation guidance. The guitar part is more closely annotated (see below); RH fingerings and string directions are given where necessary to avoid ambiguity but are indicative only[11].
Critical reflection
I’m broadly happy that the narrative objectives of the piece and the intended tension between dissonance and consonance (generically speaking) have been achieved. I would love to have worked with a flautist to explore the flute more idiomatically, and of course to have had the time to record the guitar parts properly. Overall, I may have employed too many of the approaches discussed in the course so far, and in retrospect might have given a little more breathing space to fewer.
[1] “Another important factor must be borne in mind when we begin a piece: too much detail at that stage can be a handicap.” Reginald Smith Brindle: Musical Composition (1986), p5
[2] See The Music Salon Blog (2012): http://themusicsalon.blogspot.com/2012/12/townsend-el-decameron-negro-i-el-arpa.html
[3] For a full breakdown of the harmonic, rhythmic and melodic approaches, see Appendix: Annotated Score
[4] Observations about the opening A section apply to the recapitulation.
[5] See Samuel Andreyev: “Morton Feldman's Bass Clarinet and Percussion: Analysis” (2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emeDjNSxsCs
[6] eg. Mahavishnu Orchestra: “Faith” (1975) https://open.spotify.com/track/3jobR8lLBgq4VZiqRcZhae?si=50c396dc7bd2405c
[7] eg. “Lettre mi-longue” bb33-35 and “Lettre à soi-même” bb6-14 (2001)
[8] See Jonathan Pieslak, "Re-casting Metal: Rhythm and Meter in the Music of Meshuggah"(2007) https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/mts.2007.29.2.219?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
[9] See Rick Beato: "What Makes This Song Great? Ep.15 TOOL" (2018) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScRG40_7zb0
[10] For flute: pp253-260; for guitar: pp373-389
[11] “My fingerings are offered only as suggestions throughout, but students are urged to consider the rationale behind them before throwing them out!” Gerald Garcia, introduction to “25 Etudes Esquisses” (1995)
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