Quartetus Interruptus (The "Nokia Quartet") for woodwind trio and mobile phone

Telephones are considerably more mobile they were in the Good Old Days... nowadays they have mutated into Machiavellian Devices specifically designed for interrupting classical concerts at crucial moments. Therefore I felt impelled to write a Woodwind Quartet (oboe, 2 clarinets, bassoon) to immortalize the insistent penetration of the Nokia Corporation into the musical fabric of Western Culture. There is nothing especially novel or innovative about this - many mediaeval motets of the 13th century, too, had street-vendor jingles of the day woven into their fabric.
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Connect your device to a decent sound system or enclosed headphones, and click the orange PLAY button...


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Alternatively, you could listen to the music at its URL:
http://soundcloud.com/peter-gore-symes/quartetus-interruptus-the
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If you wish, you can read the score (in pdf format) here.
A transposed performance score is available here.
Each of these links will open in its own window so you can scroll thru while listening to the music. Both score and mp3 recording are free and downloadable.
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Did u know that Nokia's irritating little tune was surgically extracted from a classical guitar solo by Francisco Tárrega (his "Gran Vals"). You can hear it here on Youtube... it will open in a new window. Thanks for nothing, Frank.


As Howard Dietz once quipped, "Composers shouldn't think too much - it interferes with their plagiarism".  My Quartet is probably (as with most "original" compositions) a subconcious re-editing of various pieces I've enjoyed but "forgotten", a sort of musical potage-compilation. It's deliberately "pretty" - and there's a good reason for that. I wanted it to sound like a prim and proper little mainstrean chamber piece, the accessible melodic sort which might be preferred by normal "music lovers".  Therein lies its vulnerability, its ultimate doom... as the audience relaxes and drifts along with the music, Unthinkable Horror can happen... even at a concert-hall NEAR YOU.

I had gleefully noticed that Tárrega's little telephonic ditty roughly compatible with the conventional ii-V-I  harmonic cadence formula:
That's why Quartetus Interruptus features innocent short phrases which frequently incorporate such ii-V-I sequences (circling through a variety of keys). This gave me the opportunity to surgically implant or rather, superimpose the Nokia tune over a number of my own phrases.
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Quartetus Interruptus could actually work viably just as a trio of oboe, clarinet and bassoon. In terms of conventional part-writing, it doesn't really need to be a quartet. BUT (un-beknown to the poor innocent audience) the spare fourth performer is a desperate Terrorist clutching a mobile phone which has been cleverly modified to appear like another clarinet, silently waiting to ambush the ensemble when s/he detects a suitable.moment. The devastating Nokia tune can then be cruelly detonated to inflict maximum casualties. The unfortunate fact that the audience is usually seated closer to the mobile phone than to the musicians means that the penetrating Nokia ringtone can sound relatively louder than the music itself. With this in mind, it would be okay/fun/alarming for the second clarinet to be placed next to, or for novelty's sake, even among, the audience ;-)
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Surely this telephonic intrusion comprises nothing less than Musical Terrorism on a mind-numbingly pervasive international scale! The Mobile has mutated into Phonezilla, a deadly "Weapon of Muse Distraction" ...and Dubm Dubya never even recognized it for the threat it is (coz he's probably never been to a concert :-) Surely everyone else on the planet has by now been the helpless victim of a laser-guided Nokia sound-bomb.
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This next photo represents how I feel when seated in a concert in the brutal aftermath of such a bunker-busting attack, musically stunned, limping through the decimated remains of the beautiful musical landscape-that-was... 

  Listen out for the renegade bassoonist who, in a moment of weakness? insanity? corruption? .briefly becomes a willing accomplice to the Nokia suicide bomber, before regaining his senses. The bassoon, always the buffoon of the orchestra, of course gets the Nokia tune slightly "wrong". At one point, the music is hijacked and fooled into changing key by a rudely insistent mobile. Thus, the entire piece is gradually colonized by this lightweight jingle. Prepare Ye Thine Ears for a few brief moments of utter telephonic chaos when all the mobiles in the audience begin ringing together - the music goes completely "out of focus" during a poly-rhythmic rhythmic canon. It sounds chaotic ...but, ironically it is arguably the most structured passage of the entire piece (and - perversely - it's the bit I like best, of course... :-)
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Also beware the very end - there's an unexpected but subtle visitation by the Nokia startup tune, then an unexpected Nokia grenade hurled by a disaffected concert patron, followed by the musical equivalent of a staredown: the loudest silence you'll ever hear. Eventually though, Moral Fortitude triumphs...
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Speaking of Moral Fortitude, I suggest that before anyone is permitted to enter a concert venue, they should be frisked or x-rayed and any mobiles temporarily impounded. Offenders whose phone interrupts the concert should be required to stand onstage for the remainder of the performance, then be frog-marched off by the Music Police to a sound-proof padded cell and forced to listen to my "Nokia Quartet" looped 12 hours (a.k.a. "music-boarding"). As a newly-converted Music Jihadist, I'm considering applying to perform with this ensemble on YouTube.
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Although Quartetus Interruptus is clearly a "novelty piece", I think it still hangs together in its own right in a fairly integrated way. As George Bernard Shaw once quipped, this music is better than it sounds. Your beloved Nokia tune appears right at the outset although you might not immediately recognize it embedded in quartal/secondal harmony. Its rhythm is distorted and the normal pattern of accents displaced, creating the world's first Waltz in 4 beats to the bar. Plus there are also a couple of extra passing notes snuk in to throw you off the scent... marked with x 

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Tarrega's Granvals is a waltz, so (naturally :-) I wrote my own piece in duple time in order to generate rhythmic conflict-of-interest: the triplets of the Nokia tune are pitted against the twos and fours of mine. Likewise, the Nokia ring tone is quite disjunct (the notes mostly leap around by wide intervals), therefore I made my piece smooth and melodically conjunct. That makes the jagged mountain peaks of the Nokia ringtone leap out dramatically against the languidly rolling countryside of my own music. Lastly, the piece also addresses one of my favourite quests, a seamless interface between Tertian and Quartal harmonic systems (particularly in the Intro and Outro).

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ADVERTISEMENT:
Out of respect for the Muses and sensitive concert-goers' ears, I'm thinking of re-marketing various vintage "less-than-mobile" phones in order to discourage saboteurs from sneaking them into concerts:

Retro mobile phones

Waltzing Mad Hilda (for two pianos)

 



ABANDON YE FORTHWITH your futile quest to find the ultimate encore piece for your next piano duet concert - you've just found it! Especially if you happen to be piano duetists of an excessively Australian persuasion.
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Waltzing Mad Hilda comprises no more than a single Verse & Chorus of Australia's real national anthem, yet showcases a wide range of musical styles. In fact, it is a veritable buffet of genres, a light-hearted international frolic packed into a mere 1 minute 30 seconds. From moment to moment you get snatches of Jazz, Bach, Ragtime, Chopin, Blues, or Viennese Waltz etc.  Expect anything.

Connect your device to a decent sound system or enclosed headphones, and click the orange PLAY button:
 

Alternatively, you could listen to the music at its URL:
http://soundcloud.com/peter-gore-symes/waltzing-mad-hilda
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If you wish, you may read the pdf score here.
This link will open in its own window so you can follow the score while listening to the music. Both the score and mp3 recording are free and downloadable.

The melody line functions as a simple 'wandering' Cantus Firmus threaded through most of the piece which, once identified by the performers, can be deliberately made a little more prominent if desired. To this end, melody notes are often placed in prominent positions rhythmically (eg, bars 18-19 have them placed as high notes on the beat, in spite of the flurry of semi-quavers). The Introduction (bars 1 & 2) and the Outroduction (bars 28-31) are freely composed.
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Bah. This cryptic pic of a sheep was put here to whet the curiosity of those who are not familiar with the story behind Waltzing Matilda. 
 Who the bloody hell was Banjo Gore-Paterson?
And what the f*** is a jumbuck anyway?

And don't forget to place a bottle of beer and a pair of shearing clippers on the piano before launching (lurching?) into your performance.

Harpology 101 A reckless adventure into composing for the Harp

Wagner reckoned he wrote "music of the future", and performers insisted that Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was "unplayable". Nowadays, these pieces are standard repertoire. Maybe that will also be the case with my new piece for harp.

Connect your device to a decent sound system or enclosed headphones, and click the orange PLAY button...

Alternatively, you could listen to the music at its URL:
http://soundcloud.com/peter-gore-symes/harpology-101
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If you wish, you can read the score (in pdf format) here .
This link will open in its own window so you can scroll through while listening to the music.  Both the score and the recording are free and downloadable.
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I'm a self-confessed novice at the hazardous task of writing for the concert/pedal harp (hence the title of the piece!), and to an experienced harpist that will probably become obvious. By way of parallel, as an [ex-] performer on the classical guitar, I can confirm the immense difficulties for the non-performer of writing idiomatically.

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In fact, I would truly appreciate any constructive feedback from bona-fide harp-ophonists. I anticipate that you'll demand "Where are the #@! pedal indications?" or "Can you please edit out those impossible chromatic runs" , or "Go find a harp therapist!", etc, and I shall have to hang my head in guilt. But the notes that I wrote are the notes that my Ears wanted: they overruled my Head. If, as a consequence, this music only ever gets heard via my computer-synthesized rendition, then so-be-it, I suppose. I could get lucky - someone might invent a fully chromatic harp with automatic transmission (plus air-con?). But by 1890, that had been tried already (a double harp, but minus the air-con). And can you imagine how awkward it might be to negotiate the forest of strings in this triple harp. Today, the harp repertoire still has an (undeserved) reputation of being a tad trite and a little stale: I'd like to think that Harpology 101 could be seen as a nudge in a slightly more adventurous (if challenging) direction. That's my excuse...
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The music is in palindromic form with the slow central Cantabile section in pride of place at the mid-point or axis. Harmony is predominantly quartal/quintal. Melodic style in the early and later sections is quite giddyingly disjunct, often leaping around in fourths. In the central slow section, however, the intervals iron out into a more conventional linear style which, by the sudden contrast, sounds relatively 'romantic'.