Notes about Music

Trio Nearly in C-minor (Bach Corrects a Student's Composition Exercise)

2012-01-01T22:49:00.001+07:00

This trio (for Flute, Bb Clarinet, & Contrabass), bears the sub-title "Bach Corrects a Student's Composition Exercise". Although the title suggests a lighthearted "the-dog-ate -my-homework" attitude, the music is nevertheless a serious two-minute micro-essay encapsulating a musico-pedagogical issue which troubles me deeply. In fact, one might claim that the entire future of serious music composition - and acceptance by audiences - depends on discovering answers to it. Yes, it's another angle on the "old-VS-new" debate.
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Rather like fiddling with prayer beads, my piece obsessively counterpoints the melodic fragment (at left) which is to some extent counter-intuitive to "normal" diatonic musical syntax. It stubbornly resists 'working' in the conventional ways which the diatonic ear has long been propagandized to expect. Trio Nearly in C-minor sets out to reconcile this "square-peg-in-a-round-hole" issue, and at one point even gets the benefit of a little subtle encouragement and modelling from the Master (originally, of course, in red-ink quill pen).
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You'll find the SoundCloud recording in the right-hand sidebar >>> Just click its orange PLAY button >
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Alternatively, you could listen to the music at its URL:
http://soundcloud.com/peter-gore-symes/trio-nearly-in-c-minor
In either case, please ensure that you use hi-fi equipment or good-quality enclosed headphones or you will entirely miss the vital bass.
Apologies for the noise in this recording - there was a problem with the file [grr *shrug*].
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And if you wish, you can read the pdf score here.
The transposing score is here.
Both the music (mp3) and score are downloadable and free. Prospective performers are only requested to acknowledge me as the composer on programs, fliers, sleeve notes or announcements. I'd also be kinda flattered if you let me know, too :)

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A genuine forensic reconstruction of the real face of J.S. Bach.
In this link, you can witness a historically unprecedented gallery
of photos of Bach as a child, a teenage rapper, and even one taken
during His previously unknown concert tour to Thailand in 1733.

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Trio Nearly in C-minor is a token attempt to absolve myself of the sin of years of preaching the Holy Musical Rules (yes, 'those' Common Practice Rules handed down to you on tablets of stone from Bach and Moses during those endless Harmony & Counterpoint tutorials). Thou Shalt Not end a piece with a first inversion. Thy Leading Note must rise, not fall. Parallel fifths or octaves are sinful, etc etc. Sure, you could recite them too?

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I knew that continuing to teach The Rules, ultimately, was to knowingly collaborate in creating a poisoned chalice for the future of Composition. There I was, assisting to brew up an educational potion which had the potential to cause serious long-term paralysis of our culture's collective creative/receptive mind. A doh-ray-mi straight-jacket to anaethetize the creative musical brain which had been born free-and-curious. What had I been thinking?? OK, here comes the excuse: I had to earn a living, mate. Yep, some people do it for money, lol. Sheesh. This still happens in educational institutions ranging from the "ta ta tee-tee ta" pre-school variety right through to undergraduates honing their skill at writing four-part harmony. Been there, done the lot. Cramped a lot of imaginations. Ruined countless lives.
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Music Composition is surely the ultimate candidate for nomination as a Rule-Free Creative Zone. Therefore it bothers me that The Rules get handed on so unquestioningly, usually with rather vague understanding of why they even exist, or who made them up. People have been fed the idea that music is somehow controled by inviolable universal natural laws which could not possibly be questioned. Musicians get awarded impressive Degrees and Diplomas for reproducing and obeying The Rules. They then go out and, in turn, pass on their half-knowledge to other victims, usually younger and powerless to resist. And thus the cycle repeats down the generations... a virtually identical process ever since the start of the 19th century, pretty much. And even Arnold Shoenberg's commented wryly that "Zair iss shtill a lot off goot music to be reeten in C-machor, ja?". Yes, undeniably true - I've done heaps myself, of course - but the point is: Why limit oneself to a bread-only diet?
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The problem is inflexible and difficult to tackle - music is arguably THE most conservative of the Arts. Most people will accept innovative modern art, architecture, literature, etc, as a cool thing, but when it comes to music most folks, even some "music lovers", just want something familiar and easy, a safe and predictable armchair ride, mindless chewing-gum for their ears.
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And from the music teacher's point of view it is all too easy to continue to teach an established method which clones exactly such safe and unchallenging panaceas. You can buy ready-made mass-produced text-books divided into neat eminently teachable chunks designed to fit conveniently into semesters. To teachers, the alternatives look all too hard, requiring too much thawing of mindsets, re-jigging of knowledge, curricula, and texts... and probably wouldn't even occur as useful to most conventional musicians.
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Yes, one certainly needs to know [and understand] The Rules sufficiently well in order to break them successfully, but they are but one of the many systems of musical thought which have evolved over the last 2000 years or so. How about codifying and teaching the style of the Notre Dame School of 12th century Paris? Or the Burgundian School around Dufay with their ear-tickling cadences? Or the Palestrina Style? The Debussy Style - (which actually requires parallel fifths)? Pan-Diatonicism? The Schoenberg-Webern Style? Quartal harmony? Minimalism? Raga? Micro-tonal scales? There are so many possible musical universes and systems apart from the narrow constraints of our beloved Bach. You need to break eggs in order to make an omlette.
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Many contemporary composers who have consciously challenged and overcome the mental shackles of their Education (and, consequently, have grown Ears to Hear) are certainly using all these alternative doctrines - and more - but (crucially) their audiences, the vast public, are mostly limited to making judgements according to the fosillizing doctrines of Bach - whether or not they are aware of it. ("I dunno the first thing about music, mate, but I do know what I like, eh"). Indeed, they may not know a Leading Tone from a First Inversion, but they do have a surprisingly sophisticated understanding (albeit untutored and 'naive') of what constitutes 'normality' in western music.
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Theirs is is an inarticulate understanding, partly intuitive, partly acquired, which has been absorbed simply by years of unconsciously hearing and absorbing "normal" music in locations ranging from supermarkets to concert halls. Everyone's a sponge... to varying degrees. Everyone will 'learn' that just about all western music from Machaut to Mozart to Madonna has structural elements in common when it comes to topics like harmonic progression/regression, phrase structure, melodic conventions, key/tonality, form, etc. This mute concensus, those understood commonalities of musical grammar and syntax are precisely what permits musicians to improvise together without rehearsal. They 'know' the language. They intuit its grammar. Through sheer experience, they have learned the traditional hierarchy of probablities - a B7 chord is highly likely to be followed by some sort of chord based on E, not E-flat. The average listener (and even some musicians!) will instinctively squirm if phrases aren't symmetrical, if they can't tap their foot because the beat is ambiguous or absent, or if the harmonies deviate significantly from the expected Cycle of Fifths. People often prefer to reach for the OFF button than be forced to actually focus attention in the same way they would if, say, reading a book or watching a movie.
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The end result of limiting options, simplifying and cloning musical education is that the average person tends to emerge with a clamped mind about what is Right or Wrong, Good or Bad in music. Those who become music students end up being able to write a stylistically correct Bach Chorale (in fact, so correct that it's boring as batshit), and that ol' magic just, well... evaporates.
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At this point the proverbial 'elephant in the room' ought to be apparent to the observant reader: relatively few musicians of any age - or audiences, for that matter - are likely to be craving new Bach Chorales in the year 2012. There are heaps of them out there to nick anyway, if you need to google something up for next Sunday's choir...
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Let's face it, The Rules are nothing but a codified instruction manual for imitating the very specific style of music used in Protestant churches in (northern) Germany during the first half of the eighteenth century. A fairly narrow slice of musical history, one might observe, but even today is preserved in historical ether and presented as Eternal Immutable Law to unsuspecting young devotees. The teaching of these precepts mostly happens in sterile tutorial rooms, soundless but for the scratching of pencils and rubbers. Very few students can actually hear anything they've written, but hey, they obeyed The Rules, step-by-step, and passed their assignments with an A+. May we present you with your BMus degree... now Go Ye Forth and propagate likewise.
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In terms of a liberal Arts education, this is totally outrageous propaganda in the league of Chairperson Mao or Joe Goebbels. The method is nothing more than a musical notation version of a "Join-the Dots" puzzle, a Composing-by-steps 'How-To' Manual for tone-deaf people who can't hum two consecutive notes in tune let alone hear the three notes of a triad. It offers prescriptions which allow novices to write complex counterpoint which doesn't actually sound entirely "wrong", even if it is terminally klutzy, awkward, and uninspired. Dumbing down and oversimplifying. The musical equivalent of literature's opening line "It was a dark and stormy night". And for goodness sake, don't embarrass people by asking them to explain WHY they can't end with a first inversion, make their leading note fall, or write [gasp!] parallel fifths.
Yes. We. Can.
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In my piece Trio Nearly in C-minor, Bach personally intervenes at one point to suggest a harmonisation of the melodic fragment in the style to which He is accustomed. I'm confident you'll detect when it happens, and (you'll be relieved to know), I committed no parallel fifth sins. Bach wisely decides to squeeze the fragment into the tonal straight-jacket of C-minor. To our ears, His sweetly familiar harmonic language with its formulaic predictable cadences homing in relentlessly towards the inevitable tonic c-minor chord seems, in this context, to be oddly and ironically out of place ...even 'wrong', or at least inappropriate.
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The poor student whose work he is correcting :) thankfully appears to be entirely unrepentant - except that the piece does actually end on a (albeit very brief) triad of C-minor as a polite concession to Great Teacher. It's as if the music's embarrassed not to cadence in C-minor, having spent most of the piece nowhere near C-minor or any other type of minor or major for that matter. And [*shock*] the final triad isn't even in first inversion! My my, isn't tradition tenacious?! But hey, ya gotta please the teacher if ya wanna pass, ja? Er, 7 out of 10 was OK, I suppose... Hmm, let's see, what do I need to do to score 8 next semester?

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Dear Reader, having joked thus, I must emphasize that I certainly do not disrespect Bach. On the contrary, if you've heard my other compositions, you'll know that I meekly worship His music, and take his Holy Rules seriously. They are part of the cultural DNA inherited by all of us, practising musician and non-musician listeners alike. But unless we really do want yet another Chorale, The Rules should only be a point of stylistic departure, merely one of the available options in the 21st-century's incredibly rich Global Style Buffet. An unexpected mixture of systems, even conflicting ones, can produce interestingly tasty results: fusion cuisine comes to mind. Impossible opposites can be a great source of inspiration, if you grant them an educational visa to enter your mind.
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For your delectation, here's my latest piece of Concept Music, cereally composed over breakfast this morning with the textbook Harmony & Counterpoint for Dummies open on my lap.
The easy-to-perform musical score goes as follows:

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..... 1. Close your eyes and gaze into your Blackness...

..... 2. ...then into that Vast Silence begin to imagine a

........... .tender duet between a whale and a mosquito.

..... 3. Allow them each to solo, then to sing together.....

..... 4. Gradually allow the performers to fade away.

..... 5. When the music is finished, open your eyes and

..... 6. if you enjoyed the performance, applaud.

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*Try performing the music again to discover if it is the same on the second time around.
*Try performing it a third time with animals/sound-sources of your own choice.

Thankyou thankyou thankyou

You've been a wonderful audience I love you all.

How Slowly Dark - a musical tribute to pianist Noreen Stokes

2011-10-23T21:36:00.032+07:00

Noreen Stokes records for Radio Malaya in September 1950. At the time I was months

away from being born, and perhaps already absorbing some musical insights in vitro.

I cannot imagine finer or more profound music lessons than these.

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My latest piece, How Slowly Dark, is a humble attempt at a musical tribute to my ageing mother Noreen Stokes O.A.M., retired concert pianist, accompanist, and piano teacher. Her tragic and inexorably increasing blindness, now almost total, ironically parallels the deafness of her beloved Beethoven.

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Listen to the music at
http://soundcloud.com/peter-gore-symes/how-slowly-dark
or click its orange PLAY button in the right-hand sidebar > > >
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The idea behind How Slowly Dark leapt at me the moment when I read Theodore Roethke's haunting and melancholy lines:
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spacerI see, in evening air,

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The piece is a dream-soundscape, deliberately rather formless and wandering - as dreams are. Strands of familiar piano music float from my childhood into the present moment, evolving on their journey into an aural tapestry, a private look into my mind's inner ear. Where will these fragments travel after this? And likewise, what is it that each of us might, in turn, bequeath to the future?
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This time there is no printed score. Instrumentation comprises: Piano, Classical guitar, Strings, ATTB choir, and tuned Percussion.

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The opening fades up into a brief passage from Liszt's La Leggierezza, a virtuoso concert study which requires from the pianist a light, nimble, lyrical, and understated touch. The piano crossfades into a guitar adaption in a new key (as, in my misspent youth, I was often fond of doing).
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Enter J.S.Bach - unexpectedly - smack in the middle of the guitar passage. One of the concealed elements glueing this patchwork dream together is a Bach Chorale, the same one borrowed by Alban Berg for his Violin Concerto, his tribute to Manon Gropius. Es ist Genug ("It is Enough, Take Me Now") was one of the last chorales written by the ageing Bach when he was going blind: I therefore deemed it to be eminently suited to the present circumstance, especially given that my mother enjoyed learning German. I borrowed Bach's melodic tritone (G, A, B, C#. See Box 1, below):

The opening of Bach's chorale Es Ist Genug, performed as 'vocalise' on this recording.

The original key was A-major, highly symbolic because Bach symbolised its three

sharps as the crosses on Calvary Hill. Hey, one cross is enough for me.

(PS: Bach is not responsible for the last few notes).

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Although the fragment in Box 1 is entirely tonal, functional, and - yes - 'legal' in Bach's harmonic language, I nevertheless grasped the opportunity to fashion the whole tone scale into un-Bachlike whole-tone harmonies, especially my beloved augmented triad. As a child, my ear gravitated instinctively towards any occurences of augmented triads (major triad with sharpened fifth degree), although then, of course, I had no technical words nor understanding, just feeling. Here, today, it constitutes the perfect compositional excuse to evolve towards Dubussy, yes? Sure, I can do anything I choose inside my own dream. The dear old augmented triad has not dulled with age or familiarity... formal musical education has failed to erase its melancholic magic (thank goodness).
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But Bach can always be mined deeper. Box 3 (see the bottom of the score) is a series of rising chromatic semi-tones. This motif becomes a "pillar of the temple" in the dreamworld of How Slowly Dark, woven throughout the entire piece no matter which composer happens to be at hand. The observant ear will already have detected it pervading the Liszt-based passages for guitar and choir. Liszt beat me to the idea, dang it. Fragments of it - as well as the whole-tone elements - emerge and recede frequently in the fabric of the sound like a kind of structural glue. Eggs in the musical cake-mix, perhaps. The chorale is only quoted at any length at the very end of the piece - as was Bach's own habit in his Cantatas. It may be worthy of note that both these elements, the whole-tone scale and the chromatic semi-tones, rise in pitch - and (hopefully) in spirit - surely an appropriate metaphor for my mother.
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At about 20sec, the strings fade up in C major during the E major guitar passage, converging on a cadence which merges the two keys into a chord of E augmented (E, G#, B#, which is enharmonically equivalent to a chord of C augmented, ie C, E, G#):

(Interesting to note, by the way, that Es ist Genug is the only

one of Bach's chorales in which He used all twelve tones)

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The F, F# and G of the cello and double-bass are part of a normal formulaic Baroque cadence in the key of C major (implying ii - V/V - V), whereas in the context of E major, Liszt's E#, F# and F-double sharp perform a highly chromatic and purely melodic/colour role. Aligning these enharmonic notes whilst superimposing and contrasting their keys makes for an interestingly ambiguous cadence: is the root C or E? In effect, it's both, really - the guitar's low E is very close in pitch to the cello's C, so there is no obvious front-runner in terms of the chord's perceived root note. After this brief Ives-inspired side-trip (thanks, Charles!), the guitar resumes briefly back in E major - just as if nothing had happened. Perhaps it hadn't even noticed the choir...
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As the guitar fades, the dream drifts into a meditative choral arrangement - the same piece of Liszt, yet utterly transformed. The paradigm Piano à Guitar à Third medium, a sequence neatly summarizing my entire musical life (as Listener, then Guitarist, lately Composer), sets the underlying format for subsequent sections of the piece. The choir begins multi-layering the rising chromatic motif in the manner of an introduction, after which it presents a quartal re-harmonisation of the four-square Liszt melody.
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As the voices fade on a cadence of C augmented, who should materialize out of the mist but Monsieur Debussy. The first movement of Debussy's Pour Le Piano deliberately explored augmented chords by using them in a non-functional and colouristic manner (ie requiring no 'resolution'). Rebellion! Mutiny! Mozart's Universe turned on its musical head. Crikey, these chords were no longer expected to resolve to pre-ordained destinations - they could just "be". I recall as a child hearing my mother play Pour Le Piano and vaguely thinking "Hey, there's that funny sound again... and gosh, there's another... and another!" Interesting to reflect that Debussy's piece was composed in 1901, a mere sixteen years before my mother's birth.
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Meanwhile, Bach's chorale again looms up like a pale watercolour wash to provide a ghostly background floating behind Debussy's stridently rhythmic piano chords. This time the choir offers the rising whole-tones of the opening phrase itself, Es ist Genug: It is Enough.
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As per the blueprint, Debussy's piano gives way to a guitar adaption - necessarily a thin-blooded mock-up and hardly a match for the piano, of course. What was I thinking! Thankfully, stimulated by Debussy's strings of augmented chords, my dream dissolves into a more guitaristically sympathetic and lyrical passage of guitar with string accompaniment. This is actually a brief quotation of my own piece for chamber orchestra, Reconciliation, whose sound-world seems (on the surface) to be as stylistically remote from Debussy's pianism as it is possible to be. Nevertheless, in musical terms, it is closely DNA-related by its free use of of augmented harmonies à la Debussy. Thank you so much... may I call you Claude? And of course - equally - thank you to my mother for performing it so sublimely. Both pieces do what Herr Bach would have considered ridiculous and illogical - attempting to tonicize/stabalize a chromatically-altered chord whose normal "Common Practice" syntactic function is that of a species of dominant (by its nature inherently unstable).
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After the string passage, the violin evaporates in a rising whole-tone scale (generated - again - by the augmented harmony), into which Chopin delicately floats the theme of his Ballade No 1, another pianistic pot-boiler from my youth. My mother adored Chopin, who, in his heart-warming and enlightened Romantic Wisdom, invariably managed to remember to obey The Golden Rule which obliged the sharpened fifth note to resolve by step (in this case, Bb to A):

(Technically, the Bb ought to be A#. Chopin wrote it like this to avoid
notational clutter and to make the fall in pitch more visual, bless his socks)

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But the ever-observant Guitarist :-) notices the rising augmented triad (bracketed above) and immediately feels inspired to let loose a volley of three successive augmented arpeggios, each one beginning a semi-tone higher, recalling the earlier chromatic motif. In this manner the two motifs, based respectively on the whole-tone and the semi-tone, are finally merged, and thus the circle is completed. And not even one of the augmented chords feels any pressure to resolve. Do I pass my test, Monsieur Debussy?

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Several passing percussionists, one of whom may well have been Toru Takemitsu, notice the three semi-tone motif and decide to play with it as a cat teases a mouse. This continues in a rhythm-free microtonal zone until the guitar steps in, tentatively takes matters into hand by re-instating tempo, crystallizing an unexpectedly conventional cadence, and framing attention back onto the piano's final entry. We hear a snatch of Schumann's Papillons (from Carnaval Op.2, another of my mother's epic favourites), before it disintegrates into nothingness. It is in its original key of C, even though this fragment begins on its V chord (G). The tonic C is only implied, not stated.
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The Schumann is soon comprehensively submerged by the Chiangmai Bach Choir's otherworldly vocalise of the entire opening section of the chorale Es Ist Genug continuing in a radiantly clear G major, thereby prolonging the dominant of C. Its three phrases, too, fade slowly, glacier-like in their tenacity and endurance - almost as if locked in a hapless struggle against inevitably encroaching Darkness. Heightening the sense of "unfinished-ness" is the fact that although the chorale begins anchored on the tonicized centre of G, the last phrase skids off a banana-skin C# towards its dominant key, D. But not only that, but you land gingerly on a very un-final and slippery triad of D augmented. The music ends before it finishes, awash in a sea of ambiguity, heart-breaking pathos, and incompletely fulfilled potential. One thing's for sure, whatever comes after the final silence is always up to you.
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By now the final three notes of the chorale excerpt (G#, A, A#) will probably be more self-explanatory (refer back to Box 2 in the first diagram). Analytically, the final harmony could be C: II^#5,...or perhaps C:V^#5/V ...or your ear might demand G:V^#5 (or even D:I^#5 if you were totally outfoxed by the persistent C#) ...but aw heck, who really cares? It feels tonicized/completed in a strange kind of a way, but it isn't. It can't be - unless you decide to let it. Whatever the case, the Memory will probably linger in your mind after the Sound has died away.
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Noreen Stokes was awarded the Order of Australia Medal in January 2000

for services to music, especially for accompaniment and art song.

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She organised a recital soon after arriving in post-war London from Capetown.

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(Click on any picture if you need to biggen it)

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By Xmas 2007, mum could just manage to see a small faint area under strong lights.
She still maintained her discipline of technical practice every morning from 7-8 am.

Nowadays (2011), she feels too disheartened to even attempt to go to a piano.

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Fibonacci's Rabbits - the sound of one mathematician thinking.

2011-08-30T20:25:00.016+07:00

Woo-hoo, I've dumped MySpace as a music-hosting service. Instead, you can now listen to all my music online via the "SoundCloud" hosting website. Muuuch better :)

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You'll find the SoundCloud recording in the right-hand sidebar >>>
Just click its orange PLAY button >
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Alternatively, you could listen to the music at its URL:

http://soundcloud.com/peter-gore-symes/fiibonaccis-rabbits-the-sound

In either case, please ensure that you use hi-fi equipment or good-quality enclosed headphones or you will entirely miss the important sub-tones.
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If you wish, you can read the score here.
Both the music (mp3) and score (pdf) are downloadable and free.
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Many things in Nature, such as cabbages, pine-cones, sunflowers and snail-shells all grow in spiral patterns controlled by the series of numbers known as the Fibonacci Series. The 12th century mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci discovered that exponential growth occurred if the last two numbers of any series were added together (eg, 1+1=2; 1+2=3; 2+3=5; 3+5=8; 5+8=13; 8+13=21, etc). As with Bartok, who always composed with a pine-cone on his desk, these numbers provided the very simple genesis for my short piece "Fibonacci's Rabbits".

When considering the dimension of musical Pitch (assuming one is counting by semitone), the Fibonacci Sequence neatly generates the ratios which create the intervals comprising the major triad. The 'cell' in the first bar-and-a-half of my piece, for instance, outlines the triad of C-major. At this point I choose bypass the usual debate arguing "Co-incidence or Causality?" ...as that is not my purpose here.

The Fibonacci Series can also be applied to the dimension of Time. Counting by demi-semi quaver (DSQ), my cell exponentially stretches out in time-values as the numbers of DSQ obey the dictates of the series.
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Once I had established the mechanical aspects of this cell, however, Rationality was summarily overuled by Art. I proceeded to present the cell in the freely imitative fashion of a Renaissance motet, symbolic of the ordered growth yet highly chaotic interaction of plants in Nature. This image was triggered in the first instance by watching the astonishingly rapid growth of the Climbing Spinach Vine on our Chiangmai balcony.
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The Fibonacci Series can be taken a step further - to suggest Form in music. As the ratios of the numbers spirals from 1+1=2 right through to higher numbers such as 13+21=34, 21+34=55 and so forth, the ratio increasingly accurately converges towards the decimal fraction 0.618, known as the 'Golden Mean', an irrational mathematical constant. View more complete examples here and here. In my example, the number 21 comprises approximately 0.618 of the number 34. Hence in my music, not unlike the music of countless other composers in history, I engineered the the climactic point to occur at about six-tenths of the way through - an aesthetically pleasing proportion which defiantly sidesteps symmetry. That accounts for the off-centre position of the Mona Lisa.
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I gleefully noted the presence of the G# just after the triad in my cell, which immediately authorized me to write my beloved augmented triads (C-E-G#). The successive entries of the cell in the keys of C, E, and G# (bars A/B/C) resulted in the extended high-pitched augmented triad which materialises in the high notes towards the end of Bar 6:

Similarly, personal choice determined the extended quartal harmonies - traditionally and accoustically more stable/final than augmented triads - which serve to conclude the piece:

The final gesture includes the only instance of a cell which falls in pitch - symbolic, perhaps, of decay and death as the necessary counterbalance of growth, the ends of empires, the eternal wheel of life.

Other interesting stuff about the Fibonacci Series:
* The piano keyboard from C to C has 13 keys comprising 8 white keys and 5 black keys, split into groups of 3 and 2.
* In any key, the 'dominant' note is the 5th note of the scale, which is also the 8th note of all 13 notes that comprise the octave. Note that 8:13 = 0.61538, which approximates phi. It's precisely that assymetric wildcard which makes a musician's and (theoretician's) life interesting and happily irrational.
* The spiral layout of cabbage leaves ensures that the smart little plant receives the maximum possible sunlight over the span of a day.

Diverse Variations on "Happy Birthday". Don't send 'em soppy e-cards, send this mp3 instead

2010-09-22T21:12:00.017+07:00

Ever need to email someone a fun-quirky (but tastefully arty and not crass) birthday greeting? Here's your solution. I have concocted a short set of variations on (you guessed it) 'Happy Birthday'.
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You'll find a recording in the right-hand sidebar >>>
Scroll up to find it, then click its orange PLAY button >
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Alternatively, you could listen to the music at its URL:
http://soundcloud.com/peter-gore-symes/variations-on-happy-birthday
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It's a quartet for flute, oboe, bassoon and a part-time percussionist). You can download a free copy in mp3 format, in a file-size that's easy to email. Whenever one of your friends has a birthday, forward them a copy with my compliments. Guaranteed low in carbs. Bingo.
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One of the variations features an embedded version of "Yellow Submarine". Ten marks if you can spot it.
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I doubt anyone but the true dilletante will want a score, so there is no link for that. I could easily make one if requested, though, and hey, I'd probably feel sorta flattered :-)

Kaleidoscope for String Septet

2009-09-30T11:26:00.074+07:00

Kaleidoscope (4 violins, viola, cello, and double bass) sets out to be the aural equivalent of a kaleidoscope's ever-mutating patterns and colours. This project has been gestating for ages, yet remains as a draft for a bigger piece.

You'll find a recording in the sidebar >>>

Just scroll up till you see it, then 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/kaleidoscope
Please please use decent quality headphones or sound system or you'll miss out on both highs and lows. It's even better to press headphones close in to your ears. Laptop speakers are a waste of everyone's time.
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If you wish, you can read the score (in pdf format) here.
Both the (mp3) recording and the score are free and downloadable.
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I've deliberately selected a mono-chromatic photo [above left] because my piece employs only string timbre... it awaits a future project to significantly vary the instrumental colour palette as well. This 'limitation', however, enabled me to focus on harmonic colour. Another huge advantage of 100% string instrumentation is the ability of strings to blend seamlessly, so useful to my purposes here.
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The project was inspired principally by the French composer Perotin (of the late 12th century Notre Dame School)... but actually sounds very little like him (oh, how I do delight in being contrary and annoyingly cryptic :-) I've always been impressed by the vision and magnificence of Perotin's organa such as Viderunt Omnes (this link to Youtube opens in a new window: after listening, simply close it, and you'll be back here). Its cornucopia of cascading sound was Perotin's musical response to the glittering kaleidoscopic refractions of light flooding in through the enormous stained glass windows of the then newly-completed gothic Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. One can't help also recalling Messiaen for the same reason, of course... I'm sure they would have enjoyed a chat.
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Magister Perotin was in awe of the sheer height of the cathedral's lofty ceiling, which soared vertiginously above all the comparitively squat architecture of the conventional Romanesque architecture of the day. It was this which prompted him expand the music of his predecessor Leonin from two parts to four, a vertical expansion analagous to the cathedral in which the music was to be performed. Now, with four parts, Perotin could now weave a denser musical web of sound, more a massed sonic "fabric" rather than the limpid clarity of Leonin's two polyphonic strands. Not only creative and visionary, but mighty courageous, I'd say. Respect, dude... high fives, etc. The Beethoven of the 12th century, no less.

Perotin, like most church musicians of the time, composed by successively adding melodic layers above the Cantus Firmus, or lowest voice. The Cantus Firmus (CF) was usually a melodic fragment of Gregorian Chant, but stretched out to be so glacially slow that its melodic character was effectively denied, serving instead simply as a musical foundation (these days it's the 'bass') on which to build upwards. This not only offered the composer ready-made tonal structure on which to add his own layers, but conveniently ensured that the church could not criticize the music for ignoring God or the liturgy. However by contrast, in my piece Kaleidoscope, the CF is both freely composed and decidedly secular - vaguely inspired by the theme from the Pink Panther. Those slow-moving parallel fifths appealed to my Debussy-inspired bad-boy streak, my love of questioning not only the What but also the Why of the so-called "Rules" of music. Anyone in the Arts who adheres to Rules needs to be interrogated under hot lights.

For instance, one of the traditional cornerstones among the Rules of conventional part-writing is the preference for "contrary motion"... eg, when one part falls, the other[s] rise, etc. So [perversely], I decided to move all my parts in similar or parallel motion. The four lowest parts [comprising the CF] move solidly in parallel octaves and fifths (8,5,16,32) - hence the faint suggestion of the Pink Panther. As with mediaeval organum, this is, in reality, a 'thickened' single line, the cello, viola, and fourth violin merely reinforcing the contrabass by amplifying its primary overtones. To get high enough, in fact, the fourth violin plays in harmonics throughout, soaring quietly over the other violins, creating not so much a melodic contribution of its own but a faint and mysterious overtone haze. Only at the Chorale-style coda are the four instruments in this lower group given any real melodic independence from each other - this is purposefully done at that point in order to prompt the listener's expectations of a more conventional polyphonic 'tonal' environment.

Likewise, the three violins jointly constitute [for the most part] another single thickened line, tightly bound together, moving mostly similar motion like strands of a rope. I nursed the very tactile image of shoppers jostling in the crowded alleys between market stalls - personal space in Thailand is practically a non-issue. I also imagined the violin "trio" as a metaphor for a churning river of sound, like a painter twisting his brush as he moves it over the canvas. These three strands are melodically independent of each other, but I made them obey several self-imposed restrictions (mm, yeah, OK..."rules"!):

1. The three strands are confined mostly within a narrow tessitura of [about] a fourth. When an upper or lower voice rises or falls, the others are obliged to follow [albeit in a quite elastic manner] in order to respect that narrow tessitura. That way, the ear is more likely to hear them as a single entity, a broad 'ribbon' of sound.

2. Harmony is mostly quartal/secondal. Some conventional chordal moments do occur, but only as momentary flashes of colour as if from facets of a revolving diamond. Relatively rare events like this are non-functional for the most part, and (statistically speaking) democratically represented within the extensive universe of intervallic possibilities inherent within the span of a fourth.

3. As with all harmony, quartal or otherwise, the succession of chords may be chosen to manipulate levels of relative consonance and dissonance. Needless to say, it is impossible to build a conventional triad within the span of a fourth. A chord built from two major seconds will sound relatively consonant by comparison to one built from a major second plus a minor second. Two minor seconds will seem even more dissonant. More so three... which is possible here because the violins are heard as an 'overlay' on top of the Cantus Firmus, generating almost limitless gradations of harmony and dissonance for the composer to manipulate. The three voices are not related to each other in any conventional sense according to the Rules of harmony or counterpoint, except at times of my strategic choice where I choose to hint salaciously at tonal direction.

4. Staying roughly within the tessitura of a fourth does not preclude the three violins from approaching each other even more closely at chosen moments in order to generate increased harmonic tension [eg, see bars 17/18 and bar 38]. This process is the logical continuation of a thousand years worth of music history: the exploration of the harmonic potential of the upper end of the Overtone Series. It's already been done in Electronic Music because technology has made it easily possible. But it pays to keep things in perspective - Monteverdi in the seventeenth century was howled down by critics for using unacceptable dissonance... and he had done no more than write a 7th chord whose 7th wasn't suitably 'prepared in advance'. Um.

5. Importantly, the three violins should mostly remain rhythmically independent of each other. This deliberate offsetting of rhythms vastly increases the number of momentary passing chords and harmonic colours available on the composer's palette, sometimes two or three changes per quarter-note beat. It is the very genesis of the title "Kaleidoscope". This also serves to suppress any unequivocal sense of beat, which is left more to the slower-moving lower group, creating the effect of superimposing a fast movement over a slow one. The effect of such rhythmic independence in the trio is analagous to that of the painter smudging one colour into the next in gradual transition of hue.

In summary, while the score requires seven instruments, these actually function in two groups, ie., I conceived this essentially as two-part music [low in opposition to high]. Most of the time there is space between the two groups, as well as contrasting rhythms, so the ear may more easily distinguish them from each other. The bass group moves in a generally lower realm than the treble group, which prefers to soar higher in my conceptual Cathedral of sound-colour. On occasion, however, they do briefly collide and fuse. Between the two groups there is no consistent use of contrary motion: according to the dramatic needs of the moment, you will hear a mixture of similar and contrary motion.

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All this talk of breaking rules seems a bit hollow when you suddenly realize that the entire piece is securely in the key of C. Not C-major, thank Buddha, but "C-centric": I weave a texture of harmonies around the note of C, not the chord of C. In a quasi-conventional way, there are vague tonal implications as the music approaches the dream sequence beginning at bar 26. The music gravitates back to the note of C at structurally significant points (eg., an implied cadence on C at bar 33, in spite of the G# bass(!); bar 38; a rise to high C at bar 38; implied cadences at bars 43-4. The final chord is also built on the note C but is intentionally 'unstable' in conventional terms, but is heard as stable by contrast to the body of the piece. But (horrors!) you'll hear pure C-major scales in bars 46-9; and the final chorale from bar 50. Even at the opening, the violins highlight the high notes e'' and g'' in bars 12 and 17... all very conventional stuff if subjected to the scrutiny of Shenkerian analysis).

Post-script: Because my piece was written specifically for computer-generated performance, I allowed myself to take the liberty of writing the double-bass part right down to low C below the bass clef. This enabled the double-bass to, as it were, creep slowly out of the Creation Swamp at the start, then crawl back quietly into it at the end. Why? Cuz I enjoy the noise it makes on the computer - I don't care too much that real double-basses can't play down that far... (yet).

Pierre Gorgon-Symes:
Sometimes I sits and thinks. Sometimes I just sits.
A composer is probably working hardest when staring blankly out a window.

Fantasia on a Theme from "Buppha Rahtree"

2009-09-14T21:59:00.030+07:00

What's a sweet little Thai schoolgirl like this doing brandishing a dripping cuthroat razor? I recently watched a sub-titled Thai language horror/romance/comedy ghost movie titled Buppha Rahtree 3.2 ("Buppha's Revenge") and sensed under-exploited musical potential in its theme - hence my latest composition, below.
Instrumentation: flute, violin, cello, double-bass, synth and piano.
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You'll find a recording in the right-hand sidebar >>>
Just scroll up till you see it, then 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/fantasia-on-a-theme-from
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If you wish, you can read the SCORE (in pdf format) here.
This will open in its own window so you can scroll thru while listening to the music. Both the score and the mp3 recording are free and downloadable.
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You can watch the teaser here if you want to (opens in a new window). That will also permit you to hear the theme on which I loosely based my next piece. My own music, however, is more an independent composition than a straight arrangement of the film's theme. The two falling semitones (Eb-D-C#) heard in the ominous opening are heard again when the main theme begins in the flute, but they appear buried in the accompaniment. The climax of the piece (at Rehearsal letter E) occurs at the 'golden mean' - which I always measure in time, rather than bar numbers because bars are not always the same length.
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For the record, here's the poster, featuring the usual de rigeur Thai heart-throbs:

Thai people know for sure that ghosts exist. Ghosts and spirits are integral to Thai stories and legends, but also feature heavily in the reality of Thai daily life. In Thailand, "Spirits of the land" have been living here forever, and we humans are ephemeral visitors in their eternal realm. We must accord them respect as elders and owners and ensure they have an attractive place to live - which accounts for the spirit house attached to virtually every house, shop or condominium. Keep 'em happy and feed 'em, and they won't disturb us.
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However, some ghosts can prove more problematic. Ghosts of people who have recently died may not yet "understand" that they are in fact dead, and continue to roam around seeking their family and friends - until such time as a local monk performs a ceremony to inform the ghost that it's time to 'cross over'. Or, worse, a few malevolent ghosts seek revenge for violent deaths - which was the case with our cute little razor schoolgirl in the film Buppha Ratree.
Read more about Thai ghosts here.
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Er, no, it's not a ghost... it's my alter ego in the morning before coffee.
Hey, nothing makes any sense before coffee.

SO glad you could visit my blog.
It's been lovely - but I have to scream now.

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

2009-07-28T15:52:00.056+07:00

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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You'll find a recording in the sidebar >>>
Just scroll up then click its 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 the relevant brief soundclip, live on guitar, of that piece here. Thanks for nothing, Frank. This tiny .wav audio file should only take a few seconds to open.

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 conforms to the conventional I-ii-V-I harmonic 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 (unbeknown to the 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 bomb.
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This next photo represents how I feel 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.
mThus, the entire piece is gradually colonized by this lightweight jingle. Prepare Ye Your 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 :-)
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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 deliberately 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).

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)

2009-07-17T17:03:00.029+07:00

ABANDON YE FORTHWITH your 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 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 styles. In fact, it is a veritable smorgasbord 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.
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You'll find a recording in the right-hand sidebar >>>
Just scroll up, then click its orange PLAY button >
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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 scroll thru while listening to the music. Both the score and mp3 recording are free and downloadable.
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The melody line functions as a simple 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 was Banjo Gore-Paterson?
And what the f*** is a jumbuck anyway?

Harpology 101 A reckless adventure into composing for the Harp

2009-07-01T12:07:00.040+07:00

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.

You'll find an mp3 recording in the right-hand sidebar >>>
Just scroll up then click its 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 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 (and well) for the guitar.

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'.

Francis Poulenc Goes To Osaka (for flute and 2 guitars)

2009-06-20T22:56:00.046+07:00

To the very best of my knowledge, Mr Francis Poulenc never actually went to Osaka ...however, I wrote some music in case someone ever discovers that he did.
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You'll find a recording in the right-hand sidebar >>>
Just scroll up, then click its orange PLAY button >
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Alternatively, you could listen to the music at its URL:
http://soundcloud.com/peter-gore-symes/francis-poulenc-goes-to-osaka
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If you wish, you can read the score (in pdf format) here.
This will open in its own window so you can scroll through while listening. Both the score and the mp3 recording are free and downloadable.
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My music was inspired by Poulenc's sublime "Sonata for Flute and Piano". It still transports me after all these years. Hey dude, re-spect, hi-fives, [etc]. A master of the augmented triad.
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Poulenc was a member of "Les Six", a radical group of young revolutionary "Up-the-Establishment" French composers loosely centered around "bad boy" Erik Satie in Paris early in the 20th century. Gee wiz, I was born too late - they ought to have been "Les Sept". Mon dieu! Zut alors! [etc]
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Poulenc's Sonata, however, is not to be found in my trio Francis Poulenc Goes To Osaka, but its impact can surely be sensed in the flippant playfulness, free contrapuntal lyricism, and evolving interaction and exchange between parts. The flexibility of the hemiola facilitates the Japanese cultural penchant for 'separateness': the flavour of each element, as in a Japanese meal, can only be savoured fully when tasted individually. Likewise, Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu indulges in contrasts - he likens his compositional process to that of "placing objects in a garden" in order to showcase each one to best advantage.
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Strong elements of quartal harmony in my piece do not deny Poulenc's unapologetic sense of tonal centricity and formal conventions: this music is anchored firmly around the note C from start to finish, and adopts traditional ternary form.
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So, why didn't I just use a single guitar? Because with two guitars it is possible to create extremely dense, close secondal or quartal harmonies that are mostly impractical on a single guitar - without resorting to the clever idiosyncratic (but harmonically restricted) open-string trickery of which Heitor Villa-Lobos was so fond.
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And why Japan in particular, I hear you ask? As part of the Creative Process, I often like to put irreconcilable opposites together into a conceptual mixing bowl, then stand back and watch what happens. The music of Poulenc is about as far from Japanese music as you can imagine, so - ideal. Impossible is Nothing. Hey, it works OK for me. But admittedly, for a long time I had to confront the blank score marked boldly with "flute-guitar-guitar". LITTLE ME vs BIG SCARY BLANK MANUSCRIPT PAGE. We defiantly stare each other down like wrestlers before a match.
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Finally, here's a photo of some typical 1920s Parisian concert-goers reacting critically to Poulenc's music...

"Imbecile!! Vous devriez continuer le style de Beethoven, alors!"

Linden Lea Revisited - an arrangement for flute and string trio

2009-06-20T21:23:00.027+07:00

I've been in two minds whether to put this music out into the world or not. Originally it was intended as a pre-study for my woodwind trio There Came A Glance From Igor, which is based on the same melody.
For that piece, check out the sidebar 8 8 8 8
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But months later I pulled Linden Lea out of the legendary Bottom Drawer... and immediately it began morphing into a seething morass of ultra-romantic lush elevator harmonies (at which Ralph Vaughn-Williams would no doubt be aghast). It grew a string section because string sound was more 'romantic' ...and the strings' ability to blend can conceal a multitude of part-writing atrocities :-)
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You'll find a recording in the right-hand sidebar >>>
Just scroll up then click its orange PLAY button >
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Alternatively, you could listen to the music at its URL:
http://soundcloud.com/peter-gore-symes/linden-lea-revisited
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If you wish, you can read the score (in pdf format) here.
It will open in a new window so you can scroll as the music plays. Both the score and the mp3 recording are free and downloadable.
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I suppose my chocolate-coated version of Linden Lea really didn't ever urgently need to be created - it has all been done before by others. Routinely iconic style. The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck... It was a Dark and Stormy Night, etc etc. So why bother doing it? Cuz I can: so there. Sheer self-indulgence. Any trained monkey can be taught to write this stuff in the usual courses like "Harmony & Counterpoint 101". ..and I confess I did enjoy flexing the mind muscles again, going through the old routines once more. But I'll behave more responsibly in the future: in the interests of Really Serious Composing, I promise humbly not to write schmucky schmaltz like this ever again.
Well, I'll try to promise :-)
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(At least I don't have to take the blame for the big sloppy vibrato in the flute. Sibelius 4 software offers no option... yet.)

Reconciliation: music dedicated to peace in the Middle East

2009-05-10T16:16:00.141+07:00

Israelis spray burning phosphorus onto civilians in Gaza, 2009.

Can we even begin to imagine the horror?
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This music is dedicated to peace in the Middle East. Two clashing keys are eventually reconciled and, in the process, are fused together and completely transformed. These musical transformations are a metaphor for the huge social changes and compromises which will certainly be necessary for any political or social reconciliation.
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Reconciliation
for string chamber orchestra or string sextet
(v, v, v, vla, vc, db; 6 min 03sec)
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You'll find a recording in the right-hand sidebar >>>
Just scroll up then click its orange PLAY button >
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Alternatively, you could listen to the music at its URL:
http://soundcloud.com/peter-gore-symes/reconciliation
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If you wish, you can read the score (in pdf format) here
Both the score and mp3 recording are free and downloadable.
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NOTES:

(For a quick overview, read the red bits only)

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00min:00sec The slow Introduction is symbolic of thousands of years of co-existence between Palestinian and Israeli peoples. However, embedded in this atmospheric passage is a brooding, unsettled sense of yearning, hinting of unresolved issues.

Technical notes: Introduction, bars 1- 15. The brooding unsettled mood at the opening is generated by a D-augmented triad (D, F#, A#) over a D pedal (the music is at least 'D-centric' if not in pure D-major), extended over unexpectedly long stretches of time (bars 1-3 and 8-10). At the start, the listener might normally have expected the key of D-major, but here the chord is disturbingly "corrupted" by the A# (notated here, for convenience, as Bb). An augmented triad is normally quite unstable and tends to resolve promptly to another chord, like iron filings drawn inexorably to a magnet. Here, however, at the very opening, its agony is prolonged for 3 full beats before momentarily changing to an A minor triad on the fourth beat. Bar 2 resumes the augmented triad, relentlessly sustaining the tension well into bar 3. This effectively turns conventional musical syntax on its head, making stable the chord which is usually unstable. By corollary, the normally stable A minor chord is treated as if it were a unstable passing dissonance. This inherent instability of augmented triads saturates a great deal of the Introduction: by way of example, see the bass (bars 6-7) and the viola (bar 7). In addition, the melodic outline of the future main theme is previewed in bars 1-3 and 8-10. Here the first violin meanders around the descending cells of F# E D (suggestive of D-major) and C Bb A (suggestive of F-major). This theme will feature in the next section "Robusto".

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00min:27sec A brief 'roll of thunder', swelling in the remote key of F-major (bars 6 and 13), followed by few brief moments of disturbingly jagged, lightning-like melody in the viola (bar 7) represent occasional social discord. You are at liberty here, Dear Listener, to visualize whichever Qu'ranic/Torahnic events you will. This Introduction, musically speaking, is a chilling premonition, a compressed exposé, of the two conflicting keys which are to become, in musical metaphor, the antagonists in the Muddle East.

Technical notes: The long-anticipated D-major triad does finally appear - but only momentarily - by the middle of bar 5, before being swept aside by the surging crescendo in F-major (bar 6). These two key centres are to represent Israel and Palestine. Sharing only the common note of A (first violin, bars 5-6), they exert a colourful chromatic-mediant relationship to each other. It is this relationship which is exploited (twice for emphasis) in the Introduction. It is perhaps fitting that the letter A should represent the common element between Israel and Palestine if you consider that the words "Allah" and "Adonai" both begin with "A": the two countries do worship the same God, after all.

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01min:32sec "Robusto" - the main theme begins.
This innocent 6-note falling melodic motif contains all the musical seeds of the coming cataclysmic descent into conflict in the Middle East. Its melody can musically accommodate TWO keys (D-major and F-major, representing Israel and Palestine). All continues reasonably harmoniously, but at...

Technical notes: "Robusto": (bar 15, Rehearsal A)
The main theme (F#, E, D, C, Bb, A), as in the Introduction, juxtaposes the two keys D-major and F-major, thrusting them together even within the opening bar. The notes F#, E, and D constitute a segment of the D-major scale, and the notes C, Bb, and A suggest the scale of F-major. There are some repetitions of the theme, with embellishments, which serve strategically to to impress it on the listener's memory, given that it will re-appear, transformed, throughout the rest of the piece. The underlying harmony in each bar is a repeated alternation of two beats on D followed by two beats on F, ie, constant juxtaposition of the antagonist keys not unlike an ostinato.

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02min:08sec. ...things begin slowly to unravel and get slightly disjointed... until an unexpected dramatic pause…

Technical notes: After bar 20, however, the two keys begin to blur and overlap as the Fnaturals in the lower voices begin colliding violently with the Fsharps, as if someone were deliberately smudging the entire score. Appropriately, there are instances of "false relations", which, according to the conventional canon of music "laws", are the equivalent of an atrocity. In addition to this, the phrases become rhythmically more disjointed, harmonically more blurred and confused. These harmonic and rhythmic distortions and collisions symbolize the ongoing Palesine-Israel conflict.

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02min:22sec After the pause comes a brief allusion to "Tristan und Isolde" by Richard Wagner, the notorious 19th century anti-Zionist. Passions immediately inflame, with volleys of dissonant chords rising like tracer fire, and the two clashing keys of D and F angrily lock horns.

Technical notes: "Langsam" (Rehearsal B, end of bar 22).
At Figure B, the fragment of the Tristan theme (laced with even more chromaticism than the original) surges up to a spicy clash between F and F# at bar 25. Volleys of augmented chords rise like tracer fire during bars 25 and 26, cadencing on further F-F# explosions at the beginnings of bars 27 and 28. Just like the Middle-East conflict, there is no consistent logic to the sequencing of these chords. Prominent are F-augmented and F#-augmented, followed by some which spiral through the circle of fifths towards a chord of D-major/minor at bar 27. The chord at the start of bar 28 has lost any immediately recognisable tonal basis - it comprises mainly the notes of F and F#, the conflictual nub of the matter.

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03min:05sec Next, coming out of the blue like the proverbial white-hatted "posse" in a B-grade Western movie, a fragment of the melody "The Star-Spangled Banana" boldly steps into the musical fray. This rising ditty, of course, alludes to a familiar 20th century fundamentalist hamburger-consuming pro-Zionist superpower. Ironically, this intrusion seems to whip up even more angst than ever before. Under this needling provocation, the Middle East conflict quickly escalates into a searing musical conflagration in the high register of the violins. There is a series of violent flashpoints at which you might interpret screams of agony during Israel’s Six-day War in 1967, and Palestinian citizens deliberately crushed to death by Israeli bulldozers in the Jenin refugee camp, not to mention the calculated slaughter of more than 1300 Gazans in 2009.

Technical notes: "The Star-Spangled Banner" (Rehearsal C, bar 29)
The rising triad of "The Star-Spangled Banner" is doubled by basses and celli in octaves in imitation of brass-band voicings. (Incidentally, the word "Langsam" was Herr Wagner's choice, not mine). The level of dissonance between the instruments' parts increases after this (bars 29, 30), and their degree of musical rationality and accountability decreases. Fully-fledged war breaks out at bar 31 ("Appassionato molto") with head-on confrontation between Fsharps and Fnaturals.

...but Peace Talks continue, and small compromises slowly begin to happen. The source of cultural clash (represented in this music by the note F) is gradually eliminated, resulting in a building sense of relief and relaxation. The instruments begin to cascade slowly downwards, concluding in a curiously satisfying and peaceful cadence...

Technical notes: The Fsharps (from bar 33; ironically a prominent note at the opening of Wagner's Tristan theme) begin to subdue and eliminate the Fnaturals during an extended descending passage. A tentative cadence at bar 37 arrives at Skryabin’s so-called Mystic Chord, which, both by being placed as the lowest pitch and by its louder dynamic, arbitrarily asserts the centricity of the note C over both D and F. Like tonal chords, this chord, with its strong quartal elements, is capable of being inverted to create subtle shades of harmonic colour.

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03min:56sec (Rehearsal C, bar 37) But now, lo and behold! This is an utterly new species of chord, the long-awaited moment of reconciliation between the two competing keys - they have been fused into a new entity altogether. In fact, from this point on, nothing in the music (or the Middle East, for that matter) can ever be the same as before. This unfamiliar New Chord is neither D-major nor F-major, but a negotiated composite of the two. It is a complete transformation of Tradition, both in music and social metaphor. The creation of this New Chord constitutes the pivotal moment in this entire piece. (Perhaps at this point I ought to coin the term "Peace Acchord"). This time, however, it is built on the foundation note of C, not D or F as before.
The sound quality of this New Chord may not be fully to the taste of either Palestine or Israel, but nevertheless it is the essential compromise with which they must learn to live. Could this mysterious New Chord metaphorically represent some Cosmic Compromise-maker, a canny Concord-broker? United Nations delegates sitting at The Round Table in the glassy "Tower of Babble" in New Camelot, perhaps? Can the peace last? Well, as the proverb goes, a Camel is a Horse designed by a Committee...

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04min:10sec "Ballo Dolente" = "Sad Dance" (Rehearsal D, bar 39). Now that peace is achieved, there is a dance of celebration - but it is a lugubrious and tired dance, soured by traumatic bloodied memories. Musically, the dance showcases the ethereal, strangely beautiful qualities of the New Chord, the ‘bringer of peace", in a number of varieties not unlike typical chord changes in a slow Blues. (I visualize these as akin to the ever-mutating qualities of dappled late-afternoon sunlight filtering through forest foliage). Their orderly movement is determined by traditional cadence formulae dictated from the deep by the domineering double basses, like a Council of Wise Elders, a metaphor for the authority of Musical Tradition.

Technical notes: Isolated from the other instruments, the bass-line during ‘Ballo Dolente’ would make perfect tonal sense to musicians from Mozart to Zappa to Leadbelly. Soaring over this rock-solid conventional bass-line are various transpositions of the Mystic Chord, conjuring up a kaleidoscopic palette of subtly different harmonic colours (given that there are always six of the possible twelve tones being heard at any one moment). This harmonic 'disconnect' between upper and lower parts makes for disturbingly disoriented experience for the listener* - a neat metaphor, perhaps, for the eternally polarized misunderstandings between governments and citizens.
*To further illuminate the point about a tonal bass-line controlling a quartal environment, have a look /listen to my piece Chord Soup, a miniature I wrote as a pre-study to Reconciliation. Its time-scale is so compressed (less than a minute) that it may assist you to hear what I'm bonging on about here. Its structure is a simple I-V-I arch, so send your ears down to the double-bass).

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05min:00sec CONCLUSION
As the dance draws to a close, worrying snatches from the Introduction are heard again, reminding us that it is all too easy to slip back into old ingrained thought habits and prejudices, or to permit extremist elements to re-ignite hatreds of the past. From this point on, however, the Musical East lives happily ever after, beginning with a series of three cadences at...
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05min:11sec ...in which the authority of the new musico-social language is re-affirmed, allowing the music to fade comfortingly into the future. In an effort to be democratically inclusive, the note F is offered a place. Although on first impression the texture of this final chord sounds vaguely similar to the very opening chord of the piece, it is actually quite different, utterly transformed by the reconciliation process. Thus the piece does NOT end as it begins: instead of the schematic paradigm 'ABA' so beloved of the 19th century European Enlightenment, this music adopts a more dynamic and forward-looking 'ABC' format.

Technical notes: There are unnerving flashbacks to 'augmented fifth' chords - like those heard back at the very opening. This constitutes a worrying re-emergence of the old musical language, a recidivist step in terms of the reconciliation process. There is even an ever-so-brief allusion to the rising minor 6th motif of Wagner's theme again, as well as the ‘thunder in F major’ (bar 50).

General note on the form of Reconciliation
The formal strategy underlying Reconciliation is not entirely alien to the musical reconciliation at the heart of the musical architecture of 18th-century Sonata Form. However, whereas the old Sonata Form required one key to completely vanquish the other to impose a "winner", my music simply merges both keys into democratic compromise and equality of status. I have attempted to broker a reconciliation between the sound-worlds of Tertian and Quartal harmony: in fact you may have noticed that the note of F, earlier so vilified and exiled during the musical ‘Peace Process”, has been quietly re-incorporated in the final cadences (from bar 47). Arbitrary exclusion of any note, any voice, would have represented a cultural loss to the entire community ...we all need to move beyond adherence to destructive social hierarchies, illogical land borders unrelated to cultural borders, or self-centered nationalisms. And historically, it is often the Artist who has volunteered to be the sensitive barometer, the mine canary, of social justice and change.
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The genesis of the music
At the musical heart of the portrait - and the very genesis of the the music - is the exquisite agony of the augmented triad. When I was very young I heard Schuman's sublime piano piece Traumeri, and was totally overwhelmed by its emotions: back then I had no idea, of course, that it was Schuman's sublime use of compositional devices such as augmented triads, double-diminished sevenths, dominant sevents with flatted ninths etc, that was the musical cause of the uncontrollable lump in my young throat.
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Years later, as a music student, it all became clear and "explainable" of course, even if in coldly rational prosaic terms. I duly absorbed the "Rules", handed to me on (well-tempered) Musical Tablets directly from Moses and Bach, such as "Thou Shalt Resolve Augmented Triads"... (and even more specifically, how they should be resolved!) Academe has such a lot to answer for in such Attempted Codification of the Uncodifiable - the Muses should be outraged at the insensitive "one-size-fits-all" authoritarianism. But all the same, I consciously determined never to lose those tingling sensations of musical magic I had felt as an untutored but attentive Young Listener.
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Now in later life, I have tried to re-conjure that, to weave all of the old magic deep into the fabric of Reconciliation and hopefully to carry it a step further, to intensify it, gently prod and challenge. Why must an augmented triad resolve into some other chord if you enjoy the sound of it 'per se'? For an even more thorough answer, I'm going off now into the Hereafter to consult with my friend Claude Debussy...
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Afterthoughts...
I would like to have this music performed at any formal or informal send-off of my mortal coil, pre- or post-cremation ...preferably on something of better quality than a boom-box, with any luck. Reconciliation can be understood not only as a parable of the Middle-East, but also as a personal metaphor for my life. In fact, the piece began its existence as an autobiographical endeavour; later, I switched to the Middle-East dedication because I felt so strongly about the heartless bombardment of Gaza. So it is perhaps appropriate that an autobiographical musical portrait should accompany my Exit: the shape of the music reflects phases and transformations during my life, and those who are close to me may be able to understand what I mean when I say "personal metamorphosis".

Please ask those present to resist the senseless ritual urge to clap (clapping is such a noisy shattering atrocity after the otherworldly experience of focusing attentively to Music). Instead, simply allow a period of silent reflection before fading the lights back up. Fade the lights in the room, then allow some silence to elapse before beginning to play the music. Ditto, permit some silence after the music fades. Silences can be the element of a performance which have the capacity to speak the loudest.

Chord Soup: a study in quartal harmony based on Skriabin's "Mystic Chord"

2009-05-05T16:10:00.067+07:00

Chord Soup is a miniature piece for string sextet or string chamber orchestra (v,v,v,vla,vc,db). It was only ever planned as a short pre-study to my larger piece, Reconciliation. I had therefore never envisaged Chord Soup for public consumption, but have always harboured a secret soft-spot for it. Later, I went back and stirred it up a little...
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You'll find a recording in the right-hand sidebar >>>
Just scroll up then click its orange PLAY button >
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Alternatively, you could listen to the music at its URL:
http://soundcloud.com/peter-gore-symes/chord-soup
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If you wish, you can read the score (as a pdf file) here.
This link will open in a new window so you can follow the score while listening. Both the score and the mp3 recording are free and downloadable.
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Back when I first sketched Chord Soup, I was experimenting with its key ingredient, Skriabin’s ‘Mystic Chord’, excitedly tasting its characteristic flavours:

Read more about this chord at wikipedia.

This chord is ‘non-functional’ in a conventional harmonic sense because it is Quartal, ie., it uses chords stacked in fourths instead of thirds. It is not unlike a mini-"skyscraper" chord, a thick, opaque chunk of sound. Presented in this manner, like a pinned insect specimen under glass, it looks (and sounds) like an inert and immovable object. After all, it uses up a full six of the twelve possible notes, whereas a "normal" chord requires only 3 or 4, or possibly 5 when 'extended' (eg, G, G7, or G9).

Significantly, the Mystic Chord lacks a perfect fifth above its root (in this case there is no D above the G). This denies the chord a clear tonal axis, thus is a big factor in the ambiguity I so enjoy. But it is a moot point as to whether there is an identifiable "root" note at all ...ah, but I digress.

Just like traditional tertian chords, the Mystic Chord (a.k.a. the "Prometheus Chord") can be arrayed in various dispositions, plus be inverted as well. Given that there are 6 notes available instead of the usual 3 or 4, simple arithmetic suggests that the number of possible voicings and inversions offers the composer a considerably larger number of options and (therefore) a much wider spectrum of harmonic colours and degrees of tension.

Herewith a few examples, from which one can extrapolate:
The quartal harmony born of Skryabin's chord therefore admits not only of fourths but a wide variety of intervals - even (gasp!) thirds and fifths. However, it lends itself most readily to a harmonic language favouring seconds, fourths, sevenths and ninths, thereby casting doubt on the assumed distinction between 'consonance' and 'dissonance' so smugly (and arbitrarily) asserted by conventional chord structures like C, G7, f#m, etc.
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Like tertian chords, Skryiabin's Mystic Chord can also be transposed through all 11 of the other semitones, eg., here I've transposed up it by a perfect fifth:
Given the assumption that "bass notes = root notes", Chord Soup can be reduced (in terms of Shenkerian Analysis) to the very simplest chord progression I - V - I, the simplest of tonic prolongations, plus a short formulaic coda (complete with traditional octave leaps circling in on the tonic at the end of bar 13):
This is, in effect, forcing Quartal Harmony (innately non-functional materials) into the straightjacket of functional traditional tonal conventions. It's rather like trying to mix oil into water: well, as they say, Impossible is Nothing. However, the ear can quickly reconcile the conflict precisely because the formal context is so familiar and unambiguous. It is also on an extremely compressed time-scale (only 15 bars or 56" long), thereby demanding precious little of the listener's musical memory. In short, the dilemma exists primarily on paper and in the Theorist's mind, not so much in the ear of the Listener.
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In fact, even the unsuspecting listener soon hears and accepts the quartal chord on G functioning in the role of Tonic, and the quartal chord on D functioning as in the role of Dominant. The usual principles of perceived consonance and dissonance apply just as much here as they do in Mozart or Mahler - the quartal chord on D is heard as "the dominant" precisely because it has been placed in a position conventionally heard as relatively unstable. It's the "B" in the old "ABA" paradigm.

The "arch form" of the first violin's melody also facilitates this perception of Tonic-Dominant polarity. The violin melody surges up in waves to the high point at bar 5, and so does the bass, at which time the harmony changes to chord V. From that point it reverses direction and begins falling in similar waves until the return to chord I at bar 9. Likewise, the bass rises and falls to assist the ear to articulate these pivotal structural moments. The violin and the bass are therefore not just pretty faces, but actively serve to highlight the harmonic architecture of the entire piece.

And just like all "normal" tonal I - V progressions from Machaut to Madonna, there is even a "common note". In fact, the composer exploiting the intriguing resources of Skryabine's Mystic Chord happily discovers the luxury of a choice between two common notes (in this piece, the notes E and B). Listen, for instance, to the note E in the first violin during bars 4 and 5 as the harmony underneath changes from I to V.

There Came A Glance From Igor (Woodwind Trio)

2009-05-03T19:47:00.024+07:00

I wrote There Came A Glance From Igor (wind trio: flute, oboe, bassoon) mainly as a tribute to Stravinsky, who helped me (along with Charles Ives and Sebastian Bach) to stretch my youthful ears.
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You'll find a recording in the right-hand sidebar >>>
Just scroll up then click its orange PLAY button >
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Alternatively, you could listen to the music at its URL:
http://soundcloud.com/peter-gore-symes/there-came-a-glance-from-igor
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If you wish, you can read the score (as a pdf file) here. This link will open in a new window so you can scroll thru the score as the music plays. Both the score and the mp3 recording are free and downloadable.
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Ralph Vaughn-Williams provided the wonderful melody ("Linden Lea") which forms the backbone of the Trio, but it is to Stravinsky that I owe most debt. Like Stravinsky, I enjoy woodwinds: their individual "enameled" timbres ensure linear clarity in a self- consciously polyphonic texture, and therefore militate against the sometimes cloyingly sentimental harmonic blend of strings so tiresomely favoured by 19th century Romantics. Stravinsky ("Counterpoint is my natural home") also loved the music of Bach: his Dumbarton Oaks Concerto was a clear neo-Baroque tribute to the Brandenburg Concerti. My trio (a set of variations with finale) therefore opens in a distinctly Bachian "common practice" contrapuntal style. The attentive listener, however, will soon notice occasional and increasing intrusions of quartal and secondal sonorities. It is these which constitute the "glances from Igor" implied by the title.
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Harmonies such as these (built on fourths, seconds, sevenths and ninths) do not automatically suggest the same tonal functions as traditional tertian (triadic) harmony, so can sound more "static". Blending and reconciling these two musical languages was the underlying aim of my piece. Vaughn-Williams' melody, employed as a "wandering" Cantus Firmus, imparts familiar musical architecture, comforting cadence formulae, and clearly implied syntax offered by its regular phrase structure. These aspects are the music's "bones", which are then fleshed out by the spectrum of quartal harmonies. As the music progresses, the subtle shadings of quartal colours begin to reconcile with conventional elements.
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The finale departs from the safety of the melody line by using only its opening motif in a quasi-fugal texture: thank you Herr Bach. But the finale is tri-tonal: thank you Mr Ives. And thank you, Dear Reader, for taking the time to read me blog.

FOUR BRITISH FOLKSONG SETTINGS (for SATB)

2009-04-09T17:52:00.051+07:00

You'll find a recording of the entire bracket in the sidebar >>>
Just scroll up then click its orange PLAY button >

Alternatively, you could listen to the music at its URL:
http://soundcloud.com/peter-gore-symes/four-british-folksongs
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If you wish you can read all the scores here as the music plays.
The score and the mp3 recording are free and downloadable. Ensembles are free to perform this music with no risk of copyright infringement - just acknowledge me in announcements or program notes as the composer. The music was composed in 2009 and revised in 2011.

The songs, in the published order, are

    1. The Oak and the Ash
    2. Rosebud in June
    3. Bonny at Morn
    4. Searching for Lambs
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...although you may prefer to change the order or eliminate some according to needs.
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The computer-synthesized mp3 recordings on MySpace are by no means intended as the "authorized version" in terms of performance. They are intended merely as a private introduction for each performer prior to the start of rehearsals, therefore should never be broadcast. Indeed, I necessarily had to compromise artistically between the need for rigid adherence to the beat and the more interpretative and delightfully flexible reality of flesh-and-blood performers.
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The lyrics are traditional. Computer music notation programs (as far as I am aware) cannot yet actually pronounce text, thereby denying these songs their pivotal aspect, that of "Story-telling". The computerized “vocalize” quality on the MySpace recordings is necessarily a bland compromise when compared with real voices singing real words. I also encourage performers to approach these arrangements with a flexible and relaxed attitude to phrasing, much like folk-singers do - it is appropriate with this music that enjoyment, passion, and a cheeky sense of humour overcome the stultifying strictures of "correct" academic musical protocol.
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It may feel intuitive, for instance, to accelerate a little during a rising passage where the lyrics are leading towards some crucial word. A well-placed silence can be magic, akin to a painter’s dramatic use of white. Experiment with holding pauses just that dangerous bit longer than written, and watch what happens. Take time to breathe between phrases. Also, where lyrics suggest social/comic interaction between characters, don't feel inhibited to enliven and entertain by indulging in occasional "wink-wink, nudge-nudge" stage histrionics. It is true, though, that understatement is both more humorous and dignified. And so much more, yes, "British".
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Performers will need a proficient intervallic sense for well-intoned performance of the harmony. Although the melody is always clearly present in one voice or another, the surrounding voices clothe it in a constantly mutating blend of Tertian, Quartal/Secundal sonorities. Resist the temptation to employ a rehearsal pianist - purer intonation as the result of listening to each other will generate a sonority sweeter than the piano’s equal temperament. Ironically, these recorded versions, even though nominally ‘vocal’ sounds, are actually equally-tempered due to the setup of the Sibelius program. In that sense, live singers have the opportunity to adjust sizes of intervals and thus produce a version harmonically ‘sweeter’ than the recordings. To this end, I suggest some rehearsal run-thrus at molto adagio. Take care to minimise if not entirely eliminate vibrato... in the interests of accurately honed temperament.
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Real folksingers often delight in ad-lib embellishment of a melody. I have written out some such ornaments, but encourage whichever singer has the melody from moment to moment to enjoy venturing into a few (tasteful) ones of their own. If you have fun, the audience will too.
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PS: If you wish to perform these pieces, I could on request create individual .mp3 rehearsal tracks for individual practice prior to rehearsals. An Alto rehearsal track, for example, would amplify the Alto part while still retaining the other three parts in the 'background' in a manner analogous to the experience of standing in the midst of the Alto section a choir.

Peter Gore-Symes: "Classical" music, the Universe, and Everything

2008-03-19T13:42:00.016+07:00

I've spent a good deal of my life spending energy on other people's music - teaching about it, compereing it, broadcasting it, performing it, being a crit... so now that I have more leisure time in retirement at Chiangmai (in the north of Thailand), it's gonna be more about my own works. So there.
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Notes About Music is a space where I doodle in a shamelessly self-indulgent way about the nature of my recent "Classical" Music Compositions, the Universe and Kitchen Sinks... but mainly about my music.
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If you like the look of one of my pieces, and would like for courtesy's sake to ask me for performance rights, contact me at goresymes@gmail.com. Obviously, both the recordings and the scores are technically copyright, but I'd in all likelihood I'd be happy to approve performance of either provided the normal notification protocols and courtesies are observed and acknowledgement made on announcements, printed programs etc. I do not seek to become the wealthiest de-composer in the graveyard. I am rich enough already because I have a good life, a good wife, and Lovely Free Time (yee-HAH! at last!) to indulge in creative pursuits.
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So - what music do I write? For starters, it's not "Classical", as MySpace once rigidly tried to label me. Did I have a choice? Maybe Ska-Punk or Death Metal could have been better alternatives if indeed I sought to solicit more hits. Nope, Classical means Telemann, Haydn, CPE Bach, Mozart. My stuff's not "Classical". Period. For a start, it is composed and synthesized on a computer. Here's a poke in the eye with a quill, Herr Ludwig. But it is an inevitable cultural reference point for everyone, and anything new is always heard against Classical music as a 'departure'.
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What else isn't it? It isn't Baroque, Romantic, Rococo, Renaissance, Mediaeval or 20th-century either, yet it eclectically draws a great deal from all of these periods. My music has all been composed in the 21st century, so I suppose that has to be its "label". But labels are dangerously slippery. We are all fragile snowflakes and tough individuals. Maybe I'm the Charles Ives of Thailand ;-) The concept of distinct musico-historical 'periods' is, I feel, a necessary fiction to make generalisations about the chaos and stylistic variability that was the reality of History. It's all about the need to artificially systematize historiography, reduce it to distinct dumb-down chapters, and thus make it 'packaged and teachable' in schools and conservatories. I prefer a more longitudinal approach which is free to recognize the potential symbiosis between Jazz and 13th century Motets, Raga and Gregorian Chant... and sometimes finding new environments for old instruments...
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Each piece can be heard via a link to the SoundCloud website, accessible via the orange players in my right-hand side-bar > > > There you'll find downloadable mp3s of my latest work: pleeeease be sure to use quality earphones pressed in close to your ear to capture enough bass, because computer speakers are usually hopelessly tinny. Scores are available in pdf format as per the links offered to Scribid.com

In particular, I have a fondness for taking irreconcilable opposites and watching what happens when they're mixed together...