It should be easy. The least elusive meaning of ‘inspiration’ is ‘inhalation’, so inspiration should be as straightforward as breathing; or, precisely, as easy as breathing in. Voice teacher Michael McCallion advises that ‘the hard work in breathing, surprisingly, is not breathing in but breathing out. We have a basic predisposition to breathe in which makes that part of the breathing cycle relatively easy for us.’² Jonathan Harvey, in his book, Music and Inspiration, points eloquently to this primary meaning of inspiration:

This is not to suggest that inspiration is there for the taking. Though arguably essential, it seems to lie beyond our grasp. How can we pin down a concept as elusive as inspiration? Perhaps it is a sort of ‘dark matter’, recognisable as a force but impossible to observe directly? Perhaps it is not to be ‘grasped’ at all, but simply touched, like William Blake’s Joy, in ‘Eternity’:

Jonathan Harvey’s book (re-drafted and updated by Michael Downes) was based on his doctoral thesis. When he first expressed a wish to explore the subject of music and inspiration, his university, Cambridge, disapproved and he headed to Glasgow where he was welcomed ‘with open arms’. The book is packed with quotations. It is a mixture of gentle probing and wise reflection. He begins at the beginning, finding three definitions of inspiration in the Concise Oxford Dictionary (7th edition). The first is the literal ‘drawing in of breath’ described earlier. The second refers to divine influence; and the third describes it as a ‘thought etc. that is inspired, prompting; a sudden brilliant or timely idea’. ‘Timely’ suggests immediacy: a flash or spark of illumination; a ‘lightbulb moment’. Dieter Schnebel, writing about Stockhausen in the fourth issue of the journal die Reihe, describes the process of creation of Stockhausen’s music as ‘like lightning – illumination and endless work at the same time’.⁶

Jonathan Harvey makes a number of references to Stockhausen in Music and Inspiration, but also draws heavily on writers from other disciplines. One of these is the psychiatrist Anthony Storr, who casts light on the role of inspiration in both science and the arts.⁷ He recognises its magical nature in noting that ‘creative people habitually describe their dependence for inspiration upon sources outside their conscious volition’.⁸ This quotation is taken from a chapter entitled ‘Symbols of Integration’. It begins, irresistibly: ‘Jung, like Freud, and like many another creative person, fell in love with his own ideas to the extent that he was apt to overgeneralize them.’⁹ Storr goes on to discuss Jung’s observations on the appearance of so-called mandalas in the drawings and paintings of his patients, and suggests that in describing his patients’ quest for integration, Jung was also describing the creative process. He explains:

Most composers would recognise this process; not just from work to work, but from day to day. Invention or formulation prompts self-criticism, provoking further invention or formulation, and consequent self-criticism, and so on. We could view this alternation, this back-and-forth, as integration and interrogation; with integration somehow linked to, if not identified with, inspiration: an integrating breath in, and an interrogating breath out.

~~~

Connections of one sort or another are the key to inspiration. For the composer, a connection must be made between pattern and sound; and between ideas and circumstances. Benjamin Britten understood this clearly, and it is good to be reminded of relevant extracts from his speech, ‘On Receiving the First Aspen Award’. Britten is ‘amazed not only by the extraordinary mastery of [Schubert’s Winterreise] … but by the renewal of the magic: each time, the mystery remains’.¹² He continues, ‘This magic comes only with the sounding of the music, with the turning of the written note into sound – and it only comes (or comes most intensely) when the listener is one with the composer, either as a performer himself, or as a listener in active sympathy’.¹³

Britten is forthright in promoting practicality. ‘During the act of composition one is continually referring back to the conditions of performance … the acoustics and the forces available, the techniques of the instruments and the voices – such questions occupy one’s attention continuously, and certainly affect the stuff of the music, and in my experience are not only a restriction, but a challenge, an inspiration.’¹⁴ Inspiration often springs from reality; from lived circumstances. However ineffable it is, it is probably meaningless unless it connects with reality. Anthony Storr highlights the example of Albert Einstein: ‘Einstein’s laws proved to be an advance on previous scientific thought because the effects predicted by them turned out to be better in accord with observation. In other words, where his theories touched the external world they worked’.¹⁵ The interaction of reverie and ratiocination with the ‘external world’ or ‘conditions of performance’ may result in new connections being made, and what one might call a ‘eureka’ moment.¹⁶

What is happening here? An understanding of the physiology of the brain may offer clues. Some five decades ago, the mathematician Christopher Zeeman decided that the time had come ‘to provide some sort of mathematical theory connecting the activity of nerve cells and electro-chemical activity in the brain together with the global structure about memory and thinking’.¹⁷ Zeeman, who founded the Mathematics Department at the University of Warwick was a specialist in topology. He offers an account of how his mathematical (topological) model of the brain could explain the mechanism underlying creativity. His explanation is challenging for the layman, requiring a grasp of concepts such as dynamical system, multidimensional space and attractors. Within the multidimensional space of the brain – with as many dimensions as neurons – there is a stable flow towards attractors, each of which is itself multidimensional. We are to understand that ‘an attractor represents a body or context of ideas’; also, that the mind ‘will seldom stay still and will tend to jump from idea to idea, but … remain within the same context of ideas’.¹⁸ It is then assumed that two states can be superposed.

Zeeman explains, ‘the superposition of states means that two attractors can be multiplied together, corresponding to the mind thinking of two thoughts at once and creating an associative memory (putting two and two together). However, in the dynamical system the product of two attractors is unstable, and “any arbitrary slight perturbation” [highlighted, in italics] will cause the product to break up into new stable attractors (of lower dimension than the product)’.¹⁹ This ‘phenomenon of the break-up of the product into new stable attractors’, he continues, ‘is the essence of creativity. … [There are] a finite number of contexts [of ideas], but these are drawn unpredictably from an infinite bank of possibilities’.²⁰ If this forming of new attractors is associated with a flash of insight, there is another creativity associated with the growing conviction or mature reflection. It follows, that ‘if a mind dwells upon a large body of ideas and experiences, the dynamical system of the brain will build huge attractors, which in time will break up into fewer smaller very stable attractors.’²¹

The unpredictability of this process accords with Stravinsky’s view of creating a ‘faculty [that is] never given to us all by itself. It always goes hand in hand with the gift of observation. And the true creator may be recognized by his ability always to find about him, in the commonest and humblest thing, items worthy of note.’²² It is here – and only here – that Stravinsky acknowledges inspiration: ‘One does not contrive an accident: one observes it to draw inspiration therefrom. An accident is perhaps the only thing that really inspires us.’²³

The good news is that we do not have to wait for accidents to happen, but rather technique is all-important. By technique, I mean how we go about doing what we do; how we set things up; how we ‘prime the canvas’. Accidents do not happen by accident. Preparation might be so careful as to become almost a ritual. In Stravinsky’s case, one imagines pencils lined up and ready for action. He would have had intimate knowledge of his habits, and limits, as a pianist, and would have been able to trust his fingers to slip with sufficient frequency. His technique allowed him to enable inspiration (as described above) by playing to his strengths as a musician: by exercising his musical memory, by using his taste and reason to select from what he found, and to shape it and commit to paper what needed to be saved for further consideration. We cannot copy Stravinsky – technique is idiosyncratic – so the accidents we have will be of our own making, and the ways of dealing with them, of our own choosing. Inspiration will be there, looking over our shoulder (as long as we allow it to do so).

There is another view of inspiration, of course; the popular view that a work can be conceived in a moment. Dieter Schnebel’s remark about Stockhausen’s music – quoted above – suggests as much. One can understand why those of a Romantic disposition would prefer to hold out for the explosive revelation, in the manner of Mahler’s account of being ‘at the mercy of spontaneity’.²⁴ Having committed himself to finishing his Seventh Symphony, both slow movements having been completed, he became convinced, after weeks of waiting, that ‘not a note would come’. Returning home, he recounts in a letter to his wife, ‘I got into the boat (at Knumpendorf) to be rowed across. At the first stroke of the oars the theme (or rather the rhythm and character) of the introduction to the first movement came into my head – and in four weeks the first, third and fifth movements were done.’²⁵ His reference to ‘the rhythm and character’ of the work qualify – but do not replace – theme. Here at last, in something like idyllic circumstances, the composer ‘unlocks’ the piece. This theme may not (yet) take the form of a melody, but it still inspires in its completeness and openness. As for divine influence, who can say? It is enough to wake up to love: that is inspiration enough.

Analysis of a work of art as an academic discipline invariably addresses the investigation of a completed (or, in some cases, partially completed) object. For composers this has been – and remains – an important activity because the processes involved necessitate asking the questions ‘why’ and ‘how an artistic decision was made’: the ‘why’ leading to a consideration of the aesthetic and historico-cultural aspects of what is under investigation, and the ‘how’ necessitating an examination of the ‘workings’, structures, and processes of the object itself. It is useful, I suggest, for composers to adopt an approach which synthesises these elements.

‘Deep’ analysis can be an important skill for a composer. Theory was once considered innovative and creative in the minds and writings of figures like Jean-Philippe Rameau, Hugo Riemann, Heinrich Schenker, Arnold Schoenberg, Paul Hindemith, Milton Babbitt, and others,¹ but analysis often comes with a danger that preconceived notions regarding inherited practice(s) either precede, or go hand in hand with, the analytical approach in question, tying us down to a limiting aesthetic and technical frame. Rather, I suggest that any analysis must take an individual approach, where notions of conscious or intentional objective context or historical style are not necessarily part of the solution. When analysing musical works – including my own – I think about a sample of musical ‘DNA’ which proceeds ‘outwards’ to create a whole from a small fragment. Of course, music analysis inevitably requires such an approach when working ‘forwards’ in detail but, in my scenario, there is no a priori whole from which to work ‘inwards’. In other words, the necessary process is (re)-constructive, not de-constructive.

Two Approaches to a Major Third

Although many composers have claimed that a movement or work appears to them as a whole, often with indescribable immediacy, there are many examples of works being developed from a sample of musical ‘DNA’; the best known perhaps being J. S. Bach’s Musical Offering, which presents a series of compositional schemes (fugues, canons, etc.) derived from the so-called Royal Theme given to him by Frederick the Great. For this chapter, I want to take as the nugget on offer not a fugue subject, but one interval class: the major third. Devoid of context (and, by implication, ‘meaning’) the major third has to be considered for our purpose as being comprised of four equal semitones, and so will be referred to here as ‘interval class 4’ or ic4.

In terms of notes, several considerations arise: ic4 could be considered as one element in a number of scales/modes, or it could be the lower interval of the major triad or the upper interval of the minor triad. It might also be considered as the fourth and fifth harmonic partials above a fundamental pitch, depending on decisions concerning functionality and context. For our purposes, we are not considering the deeper acoustic potential of the dyad – for example the results of combination tones and their acoustical and structural effects – fascinating though this would be. However we proceed, context and function will need to be established and, in order to demonstrate the significance of these, we will use two case studies to think about how a composer might reconsider their intervallic approach as the compositional process unfolds.

These case studies will be two relatively brief pieces for piano, selected as springboards – not necessarily as models – for study, the word ‘brief’ itself leading to consideration of timescale and duration in relation to content. These examples will be Voiles, the second piece in Book 1 of Claude Debussy’s Preludes (1909/10), and the second piece of Arnold Schoenberg’s Sechs Kleine Klavierstucke, Op. 19 (1911), which are effectively contemporary with one another: a vital factor on our investigative journey. In both, the initial sound heard is our chosen ic4: in the case of Voiles, the notes in descending dyadic pair order are those of the whole-tone scale beginning on G♯ (Example 2.1); in the Schoenberg, the invariant dyad consisting of the notes G4 and B4 (Example 2.2).

Example 2.1 Claude Debussy, ‘Voiles’ (1909/10) from Preludes Book I, bb.1–9.

Example 2.2 Arnold Schoenberg, Sechs Kleine Klavierstucke, Op. 19 (1911), ii, bb.1–4.

Debussy presents ic4 as the first sound in what turns out to be a whole-tone scale, presented as a descending chain solely consisting of that interval class. It should be noted that the notational difference between G♯ and A♭ throughout is the result of local voice-leading rather than enharmonic function. Initially, there is no wider context, and it is reasonable to assume that a listener in real time – but not the performer, a matter which we will come to later – has no point of reference within which to situate what is heard. There appears to be no implied, or actual, harmonic root; a situation reinforced by the lack of a bass sonority which, in conjunction with the absence of a (regular) pulse, results in the ‘sound object’ being experienced in a sonic vacuum. It does not merely exist, but creates the space surrounding it by its energy, shape, and density, rather as Paul Klee illustrates the case of a line in space at the beginning of his Pedagogical Sketchbook (Figure 2.1).

Figure 2.1 Paul Klee, Pedagogical Sketchbook (1925), 20.

How then do Debussy and Schoenberg establish context and function? Debussy repeats the opening descent registrally, with a subtle metrical shift and augmentation completing a ‘classical’ underlying four-bar opening unit. Schoenberg’s use of the ic4 dyad offers a regular pulse, although, if listening without looking at the notation, the metre is (perhaps intentionally) unclear. There is an opening four-bar unit with an extension in the fourth bar, as in Voiles, but where for Debussy the material appears to be both background and foreground, in Schoenberg’s piece we realise that the left-hand dyad is an accompaniment to the entry of the right-hand melodic line on the last beat of the second bar. Where Debussy creates a static ‘bubble’ consisting of a pure ic4 descent, Schoenberg offers an ostinato ic4 accompaniment which acts as structural upbeat to his well-defined, downward-arcing melody. The latter begins with an upbeat ic3 dyad (D6/B5) which, although completing the G major triad vertically in conjunction with the G/B ostinato, not only bursts the static ‘bubble’, but also leads directly onto an F♯ an octave-and-a-half lower. This wide, downward sweep creates melodic and harmonic tension, which implies gestural and harmonic/melodic continuity and opens up the possible need for an answering phrase. Debussy’s equivalent move after the first four bars of arithmetic – if not musical – symmetry is to extend his ambitus by introducing low B♭1, thereby creating a registral gap between left and right hands of two-and-a-half octaves. To describe this as establishing a whole-tone collection ‘on B♭’ would be accurate, but as yet functionally meaningless.

Vertical versus Horizontal

There are four opening bars in each piece, both initially presenting ic4 as an important sonority. Until bar 5, Debussy has avoided any sound below C4 and has used ic4 only, whereas Schoenberg writes down to A♭3 but only as the last note of his downward melodic arc; the G4/B4 dyad remaining, so that the right hand has crossed the ostinato dyad in the left, and new interval classes have been introduced. Where Debussy sets the boundaries of his sonic space, Schoenberg does not, his ostinato behaving as a literally ‘obstinate’ invariant middle register accompaniment above and below which the arching melodic line is heard, introducing a regular pulse from the outset. Debussy does something similar in the fifth bar (the goal of the initial four-bar structural upbeat) with the B♭1 introducing a sense of pulse by means of a rhythmic pattern similar to Schoenberg’s ostinato. Whereas the sense in both pieces is of a potentially continuous, static sonority being interrupted, Schoenberg’s invariant dyad in fact eventually descends in the final three bars, offering a sense of movement, before it cyclically returns to its initial registral position at the piece’s closing cadence. Debussy does also create some contrast and a brief sense of movement in a pentatonic passage around the golden section but this leads to a slightly developed recapitulation which re-confirms the static nature of the music.

Debussy expands his aural landscape by introducing a middle register octave sonority as a textural layer, with the upper register soon being re-introduced over this as a sort of upper stream. The use of a symmetrical mode of limited transposition enables him to achieve this sonic expansion, and as the higher register repeats the initial material rhythmically and gesturally, we hear three distinct superimposed levels. Symmetry is structurally – and perhaps even viscerally – experienced in the middle layer’s A♭3 and C4 on either side of the central B♭3, which itself doubles the bass note, reinforcing the new octave sonority. We soon hear augmented triads, but with the outer pitches doubling one another and the chordal boundary retaining the octave sonority with which we have now become familiar, the two inner voices continue to emphasise the ic4 sonority. The layered result is heterophonic. There is no ‘harmony’, but a specific and limited corps sonore.

After extension of the G4/B4 pedal in the fourth bar, Schoenberg offers a multi-levelled surprise. A composer presented with only the opening four bars might imagine a wide range of possibilities compared with those in the Debussy extract: where Voiles has offered variety produced from homogeneity, Op. 19/ii does not. If we were to proceed bearing in mind a ‘classical’ Austro-German approach we might consider creating a counter-statement, perhaps transposing the invariant dyad up one octave and (re)-writing the melodic line for the left hand producing invertible counterpoint. I am not suggesting this as an artistically viable solution, but as a way of clarifying the essential differences between our two models, and the process of thought in conjunction with a basic idea. In Debussy’s case, he retains the idea of unity defined a priori by the choice of limited mode, whereas Schoenberg’s melody and accompaniment combined create a teleological gesture with local harmonic tension and release in the apparent absence of either a ‘steady state’ or functional harmonic or motivic grammar. The opening statement appears to invite a balancing/answering sentence and closes musically with the effect of what, in conventional terms, might be heard as an interrupted or imperfect cadence. However we interpret this, there is no equivalent sense of closure in Voiles due to the overlapping of, and increase in, layers which contribute to a sense of seemingly inevitable continuity.

The golden ratio of both pieces is simultaneously an arrival and a turning-point.² Debussy achieves this with a mode switch, Schoenberg with the only hexachord thus far stated, as a vertical aggregate. Given our knowledge of both composers and their working methods, it is likely that this moment in Voiles was planned, but perhaps unlikely in the case of Op. 19/ii. Debussy’s ‘modulation’ to the pentatonic collection ‘on’ B♭ answers – retrospectively – why this has been the pedal bass note since bar 5, as the pitch classes available above it include D♭ and E♭, introducing ic3 as a significant sonority (after the pervasive use of ic4) by using this particular transposition of the whole-tone collection. These are the two complementary pitch class sets which are omitted from the modal transposition on B♭. In contrast, Schoenberg’s piece introduced ic3 in the second bar, which, as described already, completes the triad through a B♮, shared (at the octave) between the right-hand ic3 and the left-hand ic4 invariant dyad. Contextual function and ‘meaning’ of the simple ic4 interval, as we consider them alongside the planning and instinct of both composers, are now coming to the fore as compositional premises.

Climaxes and Resolutions

Both composers create long-range structural coherence in similar fashion by means of registral emphasis. Debussy, having emphasised D6 as well as introducing seemingly incidental semitones, makes us hear (retrospectively) the music ‘resolving’ into the pentatonic section; Schoenberg, likewise, stating E6 significantly as F♭, so that we hear this contextually as an upper neighbour to D6 that we earlier encountered as the upper dyadic pitch of the initial melodic arc, and will do so again at the close. Schoenberg’s hexachordal climactic bar is the only one in the piece in which the invariant ic4 (G/B) dyad is omitted; this not only emphasises the importance and uniqueness of the moment, but also creates structural tension as we instinctively await the return of the ostinato. The return duly occurs in the next bar at its expected registral level, but now ic4 is also heard as a descending whole-tone scale with a significant semitone ‘twist’ onto C3/E3 in the final bar. Various analysts have put forward background tonal theories about this piece, and a compelling idea is that the closing low dyad should be viewed as the first and third degrees of C major (a finally achieved tonic goal) above which the invariant dyad of G4/B4 act as an implied chord V, itself forming the lower third of a vertical aggregate with the pitches (reading upwards) E♭5, F♯5, B♭5, and D6 that form part of the closing hexachord.³

The compositional question here is: how does Schoenberg achieve a sense of closure? Although it is feasible to hear the closing collection of the piece ‘vertically’ as a (tonic) 15th over C3, it is, I suggest, preferable to designate it as a hexachordal aggregate, the latter defining what is a conjunction of registral layers, and the function of which being resolution. The lowest two notes are, as established, the invariant G4/B4 dyad at its original pitch level. The uppermost ic4 dyad, B♭5/D6 ‘resolves’ the opening melodic line’s anacrusic B♮5/D6 (which also form the upper notes of the climactic hexachord in b.6) and the axis ic3 dyad E♭5/F#5 creates the horizontal axis of symmetry. The closing sonority is therefore a conjunction of three dyads from different registral streams. In describing the presentation of the central invariant G4/B4 dyad of Op. 19/ii as an accompaniment to the melodic line heard from the last crotchet of the second bar, we signal acknowledgement of an historic/cultural source, continuing this perspective in hearing the fifth and sixth bars of the nine-bar whole as a concentrated development towards the climactic hexachord in the second half of bar 6, the closing three bars functioning as a condensed recapitulation and coda. Bars 5 and 6, involving the absence of the invariant dyad in the latter, have, in conjunction with the lower-register climax hexachord, created the required tension to perceive the final three bars as fulfilment of registral and tonal space and its cadential, stabilising effect.

A potentially fruitful, abstract approach to compositional possibilities inherent in our ic4 dyad could be the result of considering what we may hear as the possible background pitch class sets in Op. 19/ii. Using Alan Forte’s analytical system,⁴ we can see that G, B♭, B♮, D, E♭, F♯[0,3,4,7,8,11] has a horizontal axis of symmetry between [4,7] dividing the hexachord into two trichords related by inversion. We then consider two tetrachords G, B, C, E♭ [0,4,5,8] and G, B♭, D, F♯[0,3,7,11], which we find share the same designation, [4–19] in Forte’s table in addition to the two surface-level hexachords, the GS marker [4,5,7,8,10,11] and the closing cadential sonority already cited as the background and which we now hear as the goal of the music [0,3,4,7,8,11]. The ‘best normal order’ (cyclical permutation followed by transposition) of the former offers [0,1,3,4,6,7], for the latter [0,1,4,5,8,9] which reveals the invariant trichordal collection [0,1,4] giving three of the four pcs of the tetrachords. Whatever the pros and cons of set theory, there is undoubtedly more than enough contained here to whet the appetite of any composer, particularly as our compositional DNA has already opened up a wide vista ranging from the non-contextual dyad to the consideration of material within a defined historico-cultural context. In addition, [0,1,4] is the clearly audible basis of the music at surface level.

Voiles, as has been observed, marks its climax with a modal switch before closing with a clearly audible third section in which the restoration of the whole-tone background and surface is influenced by the gestural character of the pentatonic section as the music leads to its close, but is it, in the sense that we observed in Op. 19/ii, an ‘ending’? Where Schoenberg invites a dual perspective hearing (background V-I with C as ‘tonic’ in conjunction with structurally functioning registral layers) Debussy, significantly, does not. In contrast, and despite the initial statement veiling the implied symmetry of two two-bar phrases, the music creates its own parameters ex nihilo. The third part returns to the whole-tone orbit of the first section, now incorporating the textural and gestural features of the pentatonic climactic passage. Once more, Debussy presents a paradox: a recapitulation influenced by aspects of the preceding development was a common feature of the mature Classical style but, in this context, the effect is one not so much of stable return as of continuing ‘motion within stasis’ leading to an enigmatic ending. The C4-E4 ic4 dyadic close returns the music to the same pitches in the same register as at bar 5 but now, rather than B♭1 entering beneath, this pedal note has been withdrawn, reversing the procedure both literally and gesturally. Important, too, is the relationship between B♭ and C (ic2) and B♭ and E (ic6), the two intervals that, with the fading C and E (ic4), are the constituent interval classes of the whole-tone scale. A sense of circularity rather than recapitulation underlines the feeling of stasis, offering a sense of wholeness if not completion in any cadential sense.

One final point underpins the difference between compositional strategy in these two pieces. Whilst Schoenberg’s piece is written for the piano, it is not essentially ‘piano music’ in the sense that Debussy’s is. This is not meant pejoratively, but culturally, relating to the two distinct lineages of keyboard music that stem from J. S. Bach in Germany and his slightly older contemporary François Couperin in France. Bach’s music ‘works’ in various arrangements across genres and styles, driven by the pitches themselves and their interplay with one another. With François Couperin (and his uncle Louis, amongst other French seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century keyboard composers) this is not the case, with the nature of sound evolving from a specific source being the key driving compositional intention. This continuing tradition – evident in the work of French composers from the Baroque claveciniste via Berlioz, to Messiaen, Boulez, and the Spectralists – lies at the heart of Voiles, its constituent harmonic and sonic layers exploiting use of the sustaining pedal to create the veils of sound suggested by the title. In Schoenberg’s case, where the dyad is revealed as accompaniment to a melodic line (which would itself suit a clarinet or violin, for example) a different approach is revealed. The presentation of the idea is heard as predominantly linear, the individual elements creating the sound world rather than existing within it, as in Debussy’s case.

Conclusion

Using a given sample of musical DNA, it is possible to work forwards intuitively. During the compositional process I encourage composers to analyse what they have notated, using their first draft as an a priori template from which to extract and mould material further. I am not recommending that a theory is developed; rather that what has been ‘fixed’ so far is examined for coherence, cohesion (or not), shape, proportion in relation to potential duration, and use of register as a possible structural parameter amongst other possibilities. The approach outlined in this chapter supports this examination and helps offer a way for composers to develop and ‘unfold’ their material. Fruitful further examples of this in the writings and music of other composers include Per Nørgård (b. 1932), whose algorithmic process applies these ideas initially to pitch generation before application to other parameters,⁵ and George Perle, whose essay The First Four Notes of Lulu discusses the opening tetrachordal structure of Berg’s eponymous opera in relation to his own music and that of Béla Bartók.⁶

Pitches alone, as we initially posited, are ‘meaningless’, but once we begin to examine or create a context – such as the possible lingua franca and body of common practice underlying the musical syntax of a particular era and cultural climate – the framework becomes ever broader, and we can dig further into matters of manner and style and consider individual approaches to parameters ranging from quality of idea to context and practical-imaginative ‘balance’. Generalised pitch classes are interpreted and experienced as individual notes (i.e. sounds in real time) in relation to one another within a network of compositional possibilities (which include register, metre, duration, and rhythm) implying an a priori set of conditions. If there is no pre-ordained organisational principle, each parameter contributes to the formation of compositional syntax a posteriori. Throughout the entire creative process from conception to completion, the relationship between micro and macro aspects of the whole is essential for the creation of a work. The manner in which this is accomplished is a matter of a composer’s natural individuality – not intentional originality, which is a false premise – in conjunction with aesthetic, cultural, and historical conditions. While issues such as the difference between structural levels (i.e. function in relation to decoration) and the relationship between pulse, meter, and rhythm have not been addressed, what has been suggested in this chapter may, I hope, act as a springboard for invention to a composer setting out on their creative journey.

Listening List

https://shorturl.at/acgHX

One of the tasks set for young musicians when first introduced to aspects of composition is writing a melody: a single linear pitch and rhythmic succession that exhibits a graded ambitus and balanced contour, and with a coherent rhythmic profile. Of course, definitions of balance and coherence spring from the musical traditions a composer identifies with, as do approaches of achieving forms of narrative coherence. Monophony often constrains range and therefore registral choices, and as greater contrapuntal combinations are made available the single line may seem too limited in sheer sonic and dramatic impact. Yet even the single musical line provides a means to explore the implications of verticality, of formal organization, and of perceptions of time; when conceived for a specific instrument, the potential for variety of expression and dramatic impression is great. Constraints – registral, timbral, or physical – of the solo instrumental canvas need not dictate a diminutive response, the composer being fundamentally as free in duration and scale as when writing for larger instrumental combinations. Acquired insights from monodic instrumental writing can, and often do, feed further experimentation at greater degrees, whilst highlighting what is fundamental to a composer’s language in expressive and technical terms.

How expressivity, musical logic, or narrative preference is made evident relies not only on invention and notation but on the mediation of the performer as communicator and commentator, negotiating between intention and realisation of the score as it is ultimately conveyed to the audience. The value of the performer’s role in the composer’s process should not be underestimated; an individual musician’s ability, musicality, and experience are important resources and contributing factors to the motive force as composition takes shape. This chapter focuses on solo monodic writing as a vehicle to think through expansion, unfolding, and development. Musical dramaturgy, alongside properties of formal narrative, are considered, as are provocations against normative approaches often found in solo instrument writing. We begin, however, with perceptions of individual instruments, their established uses, and new technical developments and reimaginings.

For (and against) Old, New, and New-Old

Instruments have an established history based on their technical abilities as well as the extant repertoire (one feeding the other). By exploiting those compositional traditions established around a particular instrument, a composer can be said to work for the established norms of that instrument: cantabile tone, stable intonation, and a potential for agility being amongst the typical expectations² that arose through composer, performer, and maker experimentation culminating in the nineteenth century. Throughout the twentieth century, players and designers researched and developed new ways of playing instruments, altering how they were heard and enlarging their expressive potential. Among the early publications that classified extended techniques for both monophonic and multiphonic production was New Sounds for Woodwinds (1982) by the Italian composer Bruno Bartolozzi, a pioneer in the development of extended techniques for wind instruments who established an early taxonomy for such effects. This emancipation of traditional capabilities led to a new range of sounds and techniques which we still designate as ‘extended’, though many are now fully established.

As composers of the mid-twentieth century continued to explore new attitudes to instruments, the sonorism movement of the 1950s formalised such experiments, and the growing influence of ancient and non-Western instrumental colours and tunings further stimulated the exploration of sound and expression that continues today. For instance, the expressive and extended timbral possibilities of brass instruments through extension of range, a wide variety of mute usage, valve effects, altered tunings, vocalisations, mouthpiece effects, and air sounds has been a notable focus in the music of composer and trombonist Vinko Globokar. An improvisor as well as a performer, Globokar in his compositions often includes theatrical/dramatic aspects, putting the performer literally at the centre of the compositional process. Beginning with the mouthpiece alone, his work Oblak Semen for trombone (1996) gradually reconstructs the instrument (Example 3.1). Vocal exclamations and physical movement interrupt dramatic overtone figures, glissandi, and double and flutter tonguing effects. Not a theatre of the absurd, but theatre where water-filled buckets act as one of many mutes, and a highly gestural, interruptive language explores the nature of physical and musical communication. Additionally, in the wake of greater sonoric independence and colour usage in orchestral writing the percussion solo repertoire established itself, leading to an explosion of tuned and non-tuned percussion works shaped as much by rhythmic, harmonic, and timbral possibilities as by the influence of different cultures and traditions, such as Keiko Abe’s work and pieces like Per Nørgård’s I Ching (1982).

Example 3.1 Vinko Globokar, Oblak Semen (1996), fig 1–7.

© 1996 Editions Durand. Reproduced by permission of Hal Leonard Europe BV (Italy). All rights reserved.

The influence of sonorism had a notable impact on the timbral explorations of Krzysztof Penderecki, an example of which can be seen in his Capriccio per Siegfried Palm for cello (1968) with its use of hammering (forcefully bringing down fingers of the left hand on the fingerboard) and bowing the tailpiece. Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino in his Sei Capricci for violin (1976) brought an expanded use of string harmonics to the attention of many composers, and in doing so encouraged novel approaches to instrumental roles and narrative behaviour. The effect of Sciarrino’s approach is what Lucia D’Errico calls a ‘cultural memory of instrumental sounds’ where ‘a subtraction of instruments from themselves carves a violin out of a violin, a flute out of a flute’.³ In this way Sciarrino ‘creates a void inside’ the (mostly) acoustic instruments, exploring their natures through sonic and physical boundary modifications.

The collection of Luciano Berio’s Sequenzas (1952–2002) and Mauricio Kagel’s music theatre compositions are two notable examples of the experimentation begun in the 1950s and 1960s that reappraised composition for solo instruments, not only technically but on gestural, timbral, rhetorical, and phenomenal levels as well. Berio’s sequenza cycle has influenced many subsequent works in its relationship between a gestural language looking both back and forward; a new-old, working with conventional associations, resolving the tensions between the creative demands of past and present, and employing instruments as a means of research and expression.⁴

Composers seeking to expressively extend the established role of instruments via electronic or physical manipulation in their work established new sonic landscapes that included extramusical elements and influences, philosophical or political perspectives, the autobiographical confession now casting the soloist as a personal amplifier of a specific persona. In Sofia Gubaidulina’s work, the focus on sound and reverberation forms not only an important compositional determinant but projects religion and mysticism in sonic terms, directly casting the soloist as seer and symbolist. Alongside other technical features in Gubaidulina’s work – such as golden ratio proportions in rhythmic structuring in pieces like Sieben Worte for cello, bayan, and strings (1982) – timbre and resonance ‘concentrates the mind’, where the impression of ‘being submerged in the centre of the sound [makes] the meditational attitude to sound … important’.⁵ Gubaidulina equates resonance of sound with a musical expression of mysticism (see In croce for cello and bayan (1979/1992)); in the decay of bells or timpani, and the influence of chant in ambitus and phrase lengths, we see her work exploiting both the meditational and ritualised as a form of ‘incantatory’ composition.⁶

The modification of the established ‘accent’ of an instrument’s modes of sounding – rubbing, tapping sound boards, hitting strings with the palm of the hand or the fingertips, key clicks, teeth on reeds, the removal of brass slides, the use of breath, and so on – have become commonplace; but importantly, the perception of what and how one hears has affected not only the timbral surface but the composer’s communicative impulse. Harmonic and rhythmic structures have long since become only one of many determining features for a composer, and this is particularly notable in works for solo instrument where timbre and time, the examination of the single sound, and the single static harmony are now equally familiar.

Kaija Saariaho’s approach to timbre in her solo instrumental writing, through her studies and research at IRCAM as well as the influences of Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail, has explored influences of electronic sound manipulation such as overpressure (‘distortion’), molto sul ponticello, metallic/glassy harmonics (‘high-pass filtering’), and rapid alternation between different single note sounds (‘granulation’). This tendency is also evident in its guiding of form: ‘when timbre is used to create musical form it is precisely the timbre which takes the place of harmony as the progressive element in music’.⁷

In Saariaho’s Sept Papillons for cello (2000) the use of a variety of (now ubiquitous) playing modes establishes a palette of sounds, creating ethereal glistenings of timbre; the gradual changes from one sound or one way of playing to another (e.g. sul tasto to extreme sul ponticello), crescendos and diminuendos, overpressure bowing, and trill harmonics display a dynamic sound surface, the motivic recurrences underlining the importance of melodic linearity in her approach to the instrument. Formally, the reflexive forms (movements 1 and 4, 2 and 7, 3 and 5, 1 and 6, 5 and 7 sharing materials forming an interlinked arched formal structure with introduction) alternate between textural focus, emergent or suggestive melodic contour, and clear sustained pedal supporting a simple descending harmonic major scale. A few principal elements can readily be observed: The cello open strings’ (C, D, G, and A) fifths give tonal cohesion to the whole, being primarily centred around D and A (with C as the subtonium), and D harmonic major could be said to be the operative mode of the work. The recurrences of a trichord motivic element (F♯, A, B♭) further underline the classical logic and hierarchy behind the extended timbres of the work; the teleological direction of each individual movement further supports the formal linearity, with the bracing of the part to the whole via the ‘daisy chaining’ of the final gesture of a movement to the opening gesture of the next. A brief formal overview (Table 3.1) highlights interconnections in material, interval and tonal bounding features in pitch, and the moving to and from normal arco (it is interesting to note the absence of pizzicato – finger percussion and col legno, I would suggest, are used as surrogates).

Extended timbral palettes are a central feature in the work of Helmut Lachenmann, not measured against established instrumental norms but as aspects of an enlarged grammar of what instruments do and how they speak. In denying or obscuring the established expectations of instrumental sound parameters, this supranormal extended palette, alongside alternate tuning systems and more varied formal expression, categorises Lachenmann as writing against, and in doing so, his example further reoriented composers’ perspectives on the nature of sound and formal argument. More recent examples of timbre and instrumental colours as central foci can be found in the work of Chaya Czernowin and Rebecca Saunders, for whom exhaustive research preceding composition focuses the means and potential of timbre, of sound, in instrumental behaviour, unfolding for the listener the conventions by which it communicates meaning.

Rebecca Saunders notes of her work Fury for double bass (2005) that ‘despite the choleric nature of the sound material, silence is regarded as the canvas upon which all sounds surface out of, and disappear into. Fury was conceived of as a melody, stretched to breaking point over the full eight minutes of this solo.’⁸ The 5-string bass, with scordatura of the 2nd string tuned down a semitone to C♯ and the 5th string tuned down to a low E♭, provides the player with the distinctive open-string tuned chord first implied in bar 11 and fully heard on the downbeat of bar 21. The incantatory rhetoric of the opening statement, one of fragmented introduction and gradual accumulation, allows the listener to concentrate fully on the instrument’s timbral profile whilst simultaneously following the gestural nature of the unfolding narrative.

The New (New-Old)

A single sound or timbre is now a well-established source for musical argument and narrative as much as a harmonic/rhythmic progression or melodic contour. The search for new instrumental capabilities and palettes has led to a wider range of expressive forms, and whilst composers may have instigated this in the past, performer–composers, or those ‘who operate with “creative marginality” – that is, at the margins or intersections of disciplines and traditions’⁹ – are often leading innovation today. Two notable examples of instrument innovators should be mentioned; the first being Eva Kingma, whose Kingma System quarter-tone flutes and alto flutes developed out of a request for an open-hole alto flute that could play glissandi, quarter-tone scales, and multiphonics.

Canadian-Greek composer Coreen Morsink’s Andromache’s Recitativo, Aria and Subtext for Kingma alto flute (2012) is a ‘silent song’ utilising sections taken from Euripides’ Andromache, setting the sections of text silently (i.e. only the performer is aware during the performance of the exact musical prosody of the words). The flautist must attempt to dramatically realise the different character’s words (Andromache, Hermione, and Thetis) as if an actor (Example 3.2). The varied technical, timbral, and dramatic demands seen in this extract are typical of the complete work. The timbral focus, including the ‘pitch beating’ of singing and playing, quartertone passage work, and dyadic multiphonics, lends inflection and greater authentic colour to the referenced Greek modes. Whilst such a passage would be maddeningly difficult on a normal alto flute (though Morsink has prepared a traditional instrument version as well), the Kingma alto flute quartertone fingerings are stable and readily available.

Example 3.2 Coreen Morsink, Andromache’s Recitativo, Aria and Subtext (2010), bb.99–122.

Reproduced with permission.

The second innovator is oboist Christopher Redgate, who has effectively redesigned the oboe in conjunction with the oboe makers Howarth of London, allowing for greater trill work, consistent microtonality throughout the instrument, and fingering that allows the top C (C₇) without using teeth on the reed. A greater number of multiphonics is also achievable on this instrument, and even though the oboe is naturally predilected to the production of multiphonics (Heinz Holliger’s Studie über mehrklänge (1971) being an early and notable example of the lyrical potential of this particular sound), Redgate states that a total of 2,548 multiphonics are possible on his new instrument. A recent work written for the Howarth-Redgate oboe that exploits and explores the extensive range of multiphonics discovered by Redgate is by composer Paul Archbold, titled Zechstein¹⁰ for solo oboe (2016). In the words of the composer, the piece is tranquil and contemplative, but as can be seen in the first extract, not without mobile technical demands (Example 3.3).

Example 3.3 Paul Archbold, Zechstein (2016), bb.57–9.

Reproduced with permission.

In this extract the accented tempered pitches act as markers in the surrounding stream of quartertone roulades, the timbral colour constantly’ changing depending on the specific pitch. As Christopher Redgate states: ‘It has been said that a performer cannot play quartertone fingerings at any speed – this is not quite the case – but it does take a great deal of dedication to practice complex passages sufficiently to perform at any speed.’¹¹

The final apotheosis of Zechstein shows how the often-strident quality of multiphonics can be turned to beauty in the hands of a master player and with an instrument constructed to allow such an effect to speak with greater expressive range. The second extract demonstrates the new potential of multiphonics on the Howarth-Redgate instrument (Example 3.4). By way of clarification, the composer points out that the lines between chords are not smooth continuous glissandi but suggest an audible voice leading. Pitch and timbre change from chord to chord but not enough to break the continuity of colour and intensity.

Example 3.4 Zechstein, bb.76–9.

Both Redgate and Rees, by commissioning composers and recording their works, make it possible for such innovations to become fully integrated components of twenty-first-century music making, demonstrating new expressive opportunities available to the composer and performer.

Mention should be made of the BACH.Bogen curved bow (Figure 3.1), which constitutes a development (or rather a return) not to an instrument itself, but to the string bow and the way in which one to four strings can be produced simultaneously, specifically through the design of the high arch of the bow patterned approximately after the Renaissance or early Baroque models. A lever mechanism at the frog end affects the tension of the bow hairs, which allows the bow to come into contact with all four (or more) strings if desired.

Figure 3.1 The BACH.bogen curved bow, fully slackened by the lever release mechanism.

Reproduced by permission of Atelier BACH.bogen.

Dieter Schnebel’s Fünf Inventionen for cello (1987) utilises the BACH.bogen to great effect amidst a range of theatrical, and vocal, simultaneously sounded counterpoint. A mixture of notationally determined, free, and suggestive provocations lend this work a rich timbral profile alongside a euphonious harmonic language where counterpoint is actualised in a particularly ear-catching way when first heard. Movements 1, 3, and 5 show this feature to best advantage, and the addition of spoken and sung vocal commentary, interruptive, provocative, or encouraging, lends further dramatic counterpoint to the physicality of the BACH.bogen’s use.

Dramaturgy, Dualism, Dialectic, Density

The performance of an instrumental solo piece can be likened to an actor’s soliloquy, where the performer reaches out to the audience as the direct recipient of emotional expression. The concept of the miniature has been utilised many times in solo pieces (character pieces, variations, or technical studies and hybrid combinations being numerous), but an interesting later-twentieth-century incarnation of the form can be found in James Tenney’s Postal Pieces (1965–71), whose constructions are open to wide interpretation in approach to performance. Likened to Buddhist ‘koans’ (a paradoxical type of riddle intended to exhaust the novice’s analytic intellect and egoistic will), Tenney’s pieces are miniature in score size but not necessarily in duration. Many models can be found in the solo repertoire more traditionally organised through mixtures of iterative, discursive/recursive, strophic, or expansive (through-composed) designs. As an arena for the novel and provocative, linearity and continuity are often subverted in solo works to create new forms of narrative (with numerous forms of mobile or open form having been explored, the Berio Sequenzas being only one of many); yet ultimately, however elements of transmission (time, style, mode, causality, and logic) are conveyed, the organisation and interpretation of those elements is the province of dramaturgy.

Compositional dramaturgy may be understood as the organisation or assemblage of musical objects and events in time and space. It provokes questions on the nature of compositional objectives and their instrumental realisation for the performer and communication for the listener,¹² and is of particular importance when writing for a solo monodic instrument being the sole focus of physical and sonic theatre. Dramaturgy is distinct from form, the product of design and the means by which coherence is sought. Primarily manifested through repetition (invariant), variation (alteration), or contrast (new or related variant), form is distinct from musical dramaturgy, which is to be understood as a refractor, bending constituent elements in dimension, focus, and importance. Two broad categories of dramaturgical approach can be outlined:

• Dynamic, characterised by a multipart form of contrasting structures, often utilising binary oppositions within a linear (teleological) or nonlinear trajectory.

• Static, characterised by small levels of change concentrated around static, repetitious, or highly similar material often ambiguous in direction or temporality, silence being notable by its inclusion.

A formal trajectory that listeners instinctively navigate, namely the linear, teleological archetype, is a ‘conceptual hierarchy’ – larger structures being formed of smaller ideas recursively linked through repetition, referentiality, and ultimate return – such musical unification being widespread in solo pieces. However, simple shifts and inflections of musical temporality (e.g. dilation or extended silence), non-linear progressions, and perceptions of musical chronology are quickly undermined; dramaturgy does not necessarily seek cohesion or hierarchy, but the effective presentation of elements.

In many solo instrumental works, an element of particular focus is the musical gesture which centres around the recurrence and importance of a musical element, such as a cell, motive, harmony, rhythm, silence, timbre, or gesture. There is often a notable focus on individual gestures or a generalised gestural approach in solos, possibly in response to the instrument itself (for or against a type as noted earlier), perhaps to an encroaching cultural/aesthetic exhaustion towards pitch (vertical and horizontal motion) or the need to redefine/reorient timbral and temporal identities to express greater fluidity and less specificity. A more gestural language must rely on other means, particularly when pitch hierarchy and harmonic motion, or inflection of pulse or time cannot be easily sensed or intuited. The use of repetition in its various forms (e.g. in symmetry and transposition) becomes an important feature by which the interplay of formal structures and the creation of tension and resolution patterns are realised.

In Bryn Harrison’s Open 2 for clarinet (2001), dilation of interior time and the ‘moving toward’ of traditional form are challenged, through expectation, amplitude, and particularly cycles of repetition in which the simple and separate gestures of a single note and arpeggiated contour (up/down, though the ambitus changes subtly throughout) are given greater or lesser focus as the piece unfolds. The register in which the longer, bell-like note is heard, and the changing placement and shaping of the arpeggiated figure, creates a series of expectancies that are seldom carried through, yet remain architecturally taut across its duration. Harrison himself states that in ‘exploring high levels of repetition … exact repetition changes nothing in the object itself but does change something in the mind that contemplates it’.¹³ His style assumes a form of the ‘cyclic ceremonial’, where characters are distinct, and narrative continuity and formal patterns become independent of any immediately predictable teleology (Example 3.5).

Example 3.5 Bryn Harrison, Open 2 (2001), bb.1–18.

Reproduced with permission.

What is immediately perceived in Harrison’s work is the clear gestural binary between the long pitch of nuanced amplitude and varying shapes of the arpeggiated figure. The relationship between the oppositional binary and the more dialectic discourse can be judged by the levels of synthesis, transformation, and invariance over time. The linear progression of the dialectic¹⁴ exchange, the ongoing evolutions of musical materials whilst still maintaining initial forms, suggests a constant folding-in of material through ongoing alteration (an example being Berio’s Sequenza VIII for violin (1976)). The binary opposition, a dualism that implies the presence of one object being dependent on the absence of the other, has cast its shadow over much compositional thinking from the twentieth century onward, particularly at a gestural level. Pierre Boulez’ list of basic binary oppositions in his Leçons de Musique (2005) includes structure of the material/structure of the composition, certainty/uncertainty, repetition/variation, free-form/strict form, figure/structure, and smooth time/striated time.¹⁵ Of course, in real musical contexts such oppositions are seldom static or mutually exclusive; the confluence of different parameters, morphing between form and aspect, creates a thickness of texture, a multiplicity of events that can be termed density, experienced as harmonic verticality, or intense rhythmicisation of time.

Density

As a general definition, density can be viewed as the necessary presence of a (usually higher) number of simultaneous constituent musical elements within a period of time and speed. Vertical (simultaneous pitch) density can be implied horizontally through succession of pitch, and in the context of solo instrumental music can be seen in three (very loose) categories:

• Rhythmically dense: a segment (time-span) that contains many complex patterns of musical events at once (i.e. irrational/irregular rhythmic schema, polyrhythms) or a time-point that carries/implies several simultaneous attacks.

• Melodically dense: a segment that contains several melodies occurring simultaneously (heterophonies), often registrally febrile.

• Texturally dense: a segment that combines many varied, distinct playing modes and timbres in a way that cannot easily be simplified into smaller discreet moments.

The concatenation of a high number of superimposed and/or rapidly successive events, with concentrated textures, often suggestive of superimposed melodies, timbral and noise content, and an irregular (quasi-improvisational) rhythmic profile, is typical of new complexism. In an oppositional position to the dilation of time as expressed in Harrison’s work, a recent example that combines all aspects of the preceding categories of density can be found in Jason Eckardt’s The Silenced (2015), a monodrama for flute which the composer describes as ‘a meditation on those who are muted, by force or by political, economic, or social circumstances, yet still struggle to be heard’.¹⁶ The constant intensification of event, gesture, and theatre fuses into a taut fluvial energy whose leaping register and rhythmic profile suggest multiplicities of voices rapidly changing in rhythm, ambitus, and form.

Interestingly, difficulties of expressive comprehension or narrativization encountered by many listeners when presented with multiple-element superimposition/alternation is often mitigated by physical theatricality and/or use of poetic conceptions, ‘something which engages both the eye and the ear’ as John Cage put it.¹⁷ A sound surface and form that may otherwise immediately deny the listener is a potential invitation to narrativise, something that stimulates a narrative impulse. Vincent Meelberg suggests that, dependent on the nature of the music, overtly narrative music mimes speech, whereas non-narrative music mimes sound itself.¹⁸

Two brief commentaries follow, one an example of solo writing weighted towards clear conceptual hierarchy, the other towards a dialectic of oppositional gestures and dilated temporality. Composer Isabel Mundry, whose aesthetic grows from influences of figures like Hans Zender and York Höller, has spoken of her relationship toward composition as ‘the capturing in sound of a moment (no matter how long)’.¹⁹ ‘Idea and intent, structural matters and compositional action’, she notes, ‘are three inseparable interlocking aspects; their temporality emerges from their relativity. In their particular relation lies the uniqueness of a composition.’²⁰ In her work Le corps des cordes for cello (2013), the expressive idioms expected from the instrument, such as lengthy melodies, arpeggios, or fifths, are closed in upon to the point that ‘seemingly closed structures break open and unfamiliar sounds collapse’.²¹ The registral separation, clear pitch centricity, binary oppositions, and strophic aspect of phrase organisation conforming to a conceptual hierarchy whose linearity survives local warping.

In the music of Pierluigi Billone, a contemporary of Mundry, considerations of time, silence, and extended timbral palettes echo aspects of Sciarrino and Lachenmann (with whom he studied) and are easily perceived in his Equilibrio – Cerchio for violin (2014) (Example 3.6). The scordatura used in the piece (I → E, II → F, III → G, IV → D) alters the very nature of the violin sound (less taut, rougher sounding), whilst the lower pitched and beating nature of double stops, and long sonic continua (drones) impede the immediate perception of time, and the use of unstable beating pitches and glissandi (long a feature of contemporary and non-European music) place this work in a different relationship to the tradition to that expressed by Mundry in her work. The localised movement and direction, less immediately dynamic than in Mundry’s, alters the listener’s expectations, but because of the use of established playing modes – and their more extreme, noise-oriented versions – the initially unpredictable non-linear narrative eventually acquires flexibility, forming islands of narrative order. As the composer states, ‘everything is designed to give birth to a “musical voice” of the violin that can be different, and that generates “other constructional possibilities”’.²²

Example 3.6 Pierluigi Billone, Equilibrio–Cerchio (2014), opening.

Reproduced with permission.

Conclusion

As seen in the examples throughout this chapter, the composer’s concept of – and relationship to – an instrument, borne of self-identification with a tradition or culture, is often the guide to the expressive and formal choices adopted in composition. By encouraging a flexible, informed, and wide-ranging questioning of compositional attitude to matters of synthesis, presence (or absence) of hierarchies of musical elements, their functions, and dramaturgical shaping, the ersatz and facile may be avoided and a wider awareness of approach that steers away from the clichéd and self-mannered can be cultivated.

Much that could have been discussed (or discussed further) has been attenuated due to considerations of space. The vertical-to-horizontal relationship of harmonic pitch-space, still an important goal for many composers when writing for a solo monodic instrument, must unfortunately receive short shrift indeed, but a constant in the works cited is the projection of harmonic order through demarcation of registral space, the implication of vertical depth arising from the projection of pitch through metaphorical high and low. As harmony lends a clarity to formal articulation, pitch choice at specific registers lends a particular harmonic colour and sonority to a region which, when composing for the monodic instrument, helps articulate hierarchy and harmonic rhythm in the pacing of events one to the next. The abundance of organizational methods available to help define logical relations and unity in pitch space (systematised, intuitive, or chance) are referenced in the reading list. A single rule of thumb regarding notation, particularly in graphic²⁴ score notation where the solo interpreter is placed at the centre of the creative process is all that can be offered here; particularly in explanations and communications facilitating a broader interpretative palette for the performer, musical invention should be harnessed by clarity of intention – even when the animating force is ambiguity and open choice – communicated by a form of notation suitable to convey ideas and concepts ultimately providing a space for the performer to harness their own creativity.

The joint ownership of musical creativity is not a new concept (in fact it is a very old one), and according to Roger Smalley writing in 1969, there is the need and opportunity for composers ‘to broaden the range of their activities’.²⁵ Nearly half a century later, composer, pianist, speaker, and improviser Viola Yip wrote of how the (re)integration of composer and performer (and the opportunities for development of new directions in music) is still very much a considered goal.²⁶ Cellist Anssi Karttunen spoke of his own working relationship with composers, his sentiments echoing those of many contemporary performers:

Perhaps the most helpful suggestion of this chapter’s focus then is to always consider the performer(s): to be in ongoing discussion with them, not merely about technical demands or some new timbral technique, but with the very nature of the idea you intend to convey through them to the listener. Take pleasure in the discovery of emergent features, work towards knowingly consolidating the intentional but particularly the accidental. Risk taking and mistake making (by both composer and performer) have great potential to challenge normative working methods, and these approaches can be most immediately apparent and rewarding in composition.

Listening List

https://shorturl.at/ijqVW

The study of composition necessarily involves some study of instruments. In order to write effectively for any instrument (acoustic or electronic), one needs to have an understanding of its method(s) of sound activation, pitch range, timbral characteristics, dynamic scope, and rhythmic limitations. While composers consult orchestration textbooks or online resources for some of this knowledge, it is also acquired through collaboration with musicians, hands-on experience with an instrument, and trial and error. In this way, organology, or the study of instruments, is an essential part of composition technique. Yet organology is also part of the creative process. With each new piece, the composer decides on a different approach to the chosen instrument(s) – which playing techniques to use, what physical gestures to emphasise, and even what objects should count as instruments to begin with. Instruments are inventions that enable us to invent.

This chapter examines the relationship between composers and instruments. More specifically, it is about how composers ‘get creative’ with the instrumental object, and how these small acts of subversion have a profound impact on both sound and meaning. A composer does exert their will upon instruments (and therefore the musicians); however, we can trace a less common narrative, one in which sound objects themselves provoke and facilitate experimentation. How do composers discover new sounds with old instruments? What conceptual priorities are evident when composers incorporate ‘external’ objects or processes into a piece? What are some of the motivations and objectives behind subverting traditional practices of writing for instruments? This essay focuses on externalised instruments rather than the voice or other body-based music-making. Also beyond its immediate scope are related topics of instrument design and digital instruments.

Composers and Organology

Several early twentieth-century cultural movements and figures set the stage for an organological framework of composition, wherein one’s approach to instruments is as much a defining character of a piece as harmonic or rhythmic structures. The approach often correlates with the musical aim of discovering and revealing novel sounds. This modernist attitude is evident in Luigi Russolo’s Futurist Manifesto The Art of Noises (1913). In the document, he advocates a radical overhaul of instrumental forces in order to better reflect the contemporary urban soundscape, calling for the ‘joining and substituting of noises to and for musical sounds’.¹ Subsequent composers whose work features innovative approaches to instruments include Edgar Varèse, who envisioned music made boundless by technology, and American Experimentalists such as Charles Ives, Henry Cowell, Harry Partch, Conlon Nancarrow, and Lou Harrison. They were independently interested in alternative tunings and/or instrumental mechanism, further contributing to the rise of percussion in mainstream music-making. In the subsequent generation, John Cage composed with equal fervor for prepared pianos, silence, turntables, and vessels of water. His ground-breaking practice broadened many artists’ receptivity to objects and techniques that are associated with non-Western and non-classical genres.

As Russolo dreamt of replacing the symphony orchestra with ‘noise-machines’, Erich von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs worked to organise and label existing instruments from around the world. The Hornbostel–Sachs music instrument classification system was first published in 1914, challenging the three traditional groupings of strings, winds, and percussion.² Instead, it assembles instruments according to sound-producing material: aerophones (air column), chordophones (string), idiophones (body of the instrument), and membranophones (membrane). Under these four broad categories, sub-categories describe how the material is activated, whether it is blown, struck, plucked, or manipulated with friction. Further descriptors (up to nine levels of hierarchy) refer to idiosyncrasies within each sound-making system, such as whether an aerophone is blown directly, like a flute, or by way of a vibrating reed, as with saxophones and oboes.

While there have been expansions and updates to the Hornbostel–Sachs system since its initial publication, such as the addition of electrophones in 1940, the four top-level categories still largely define how composers learn about and approach instrumental writing. Orchestration guides and a vast majority of the repertoire reinforce seemingly inextricable pairings of instrument and technique: strings are bowed or plucked, winds are blown, and keyboard and percussion are played with a striking action. Moreover, these resources expectedly focus on ‘idiomatic’ music as examples of good practice – writing that ‘reflects what an instrument can and cannot do, what it does willingly, and what it does reluctantly’.³ A harpsichord is unable to sustain notes, yet it can easily produce the illusion of continuous sound through rapid arpeggiation of chords. It perhaps more reluctantly creates crescendi, not by changing the actual volume of individual notes, but with increased density of texture. The limits of these instrument-technique pairings and musical idioms, though practical for typical use, fall short of describing the full extent of musicians’ activities today and rarely account for moments of experimentation.⁴

The contemporaneous development of free-thinking Futurist ideas along with the rigid Hornbostel–Sachs classification system is perhaps symbolic of a perpetual tension that composers face. One strives to write idiomatic passages that are realistic to play, while simultaneously seeking out a personal way of composing for the instruments in the hopes of contributing something unique to the repertoire. In light of this, the act of subversion – disrupting the way instruments sound without rejecting them altogether – can be a dialectical solution to an age-old dilemma. The meteoric rise of digital technology at the turn of the twenty-first century, coupled with recent efforts to diversify and decolonise the field of contemporary classical music, further motivate a subversive approach to instruments.

Today, being creative with the instrument itself is part of a composer’s task, whatever their musical style. This encompasses a variety of approaches, such as inventing a new technique, modifying the instrument, or using unconventional objects. All these endeavours typically fall under two strands of thought. The first method attempts to expand the musical vocabulary of an existing instrument: extending its pitch range, thwarting the expected method of sound production, and/or prioritising noisy timbres over pitch. The second method is more conceptual, broadening the definition of what is musically ‘useful’ in a composition. This includes expanding the roles of ‘non-musical’ objects, such as audio equipment and toys, into the realm of ‘instrument’, as well as showcasing sounds that are usually considered residual by-products of music-making.

Expanded Vocabulary

Experimentation with instruments can be motivated by challenging the technical bounds of pre-existing works. Although it is overly simplistic to generalise that older music is conservative while newer music is experimental, the development of certain techniques can be traced in a linear fashion within the Western classical repertoire. For example, the upper range of the violin has been increasingly explored over the centuries, particularly through the use of natural and artificial harmonics. Even as Niccolò Paganini’s 24 Caprices (1802–17) for violin set new standards for high notes in the early nineteenth century, the first movement of Salvatore Sciarrino’s Sei Capricci (1976) ‘one-ups’ the frequency domain, reinterpreting Paganini’s first caprice through harmonics only. In Sciarrino’s rendition, rhythmic gestures and contours are preserved while the notes shimmer over an octave above the original pitches. Of course, new techniques, sounds, and musical priorities develop alongside broadening skills of performing musicians. Luciano Berio’s series of Sequenzas is a paradigm of this interdependence of risk-taking between composers and performers. Developed for and dedicated to specific collaborators, each work integrates ‘extended’ techniques into solo works of unparalleled virtuosity.

Certainly, extending the upper range of an instrument is the more obvious direction of exploration. This is partially due to acoustics: the fact that an infinite number of overtones vibrate over a single fundamental pitch, limited only by the range of human hearing. In contrast, the opposite task of extending an instrument’s lower range is seemingly impossible without altering the physical size of the resonating body. However, with sensitive ears, tenacious practice, and a bit of imagination, this ‘impossibility’ can be achieved and reproduced with consistency. What follows are examples of techniques that allow the instrument to sound lower than its ‘lowest’ note.

Subharmonics coax the violin to produce pitches up to a full octave below G3 without detuning the string. They were developed in 1993 by violinist and composer Mari Kimura, who initially discovered the ultra-low sounds while riffing on a pedagogical bowing exercise. She has since refined and articulated the technique for wider usage by other performers and composers. The technique consists of manipulating bow pressure and speed so that the bow exerts an even amount of weight on the string across an entire stroke. Pitch shifts within this acoustic zone from G3 down to G2 are managed with changes in bow location relative to the bridge.⁵ Due to this unique activation method, the resulting timbre is intense and nasal, quite unlike the cantabile tone commonly associated with violin playing. Thus, subharmonics not only provide new notes with which to compose, but also the potential for a different kind of emotional expression.

For Kimura, going beyond the conventional pitch range of an instrument is also about subverting classical music stereotypes – of what the music should sound like and also who is making it. In the notes from her debut recital of this technique in 1994, she writes, ‘I wanted to free myself from the boundaries of Western musical idioms, associated with traditional violin literature, to reflect my own Japanese heritage in my compositions.’⁶ Despite having a rigorous classical training, Kimura’s creative practice challenges the ‘ever-higher’ type of virtuosity by heading in the opposite direction altogether. In fact, this is made clear in her 2010 album ‘The World Below G and Beyond’, which features her own set of Six Caprices for Subharmonics.

To extend the low range of wind instruments, one could use an auxiliary instrument (e.g. switching from oboe to Cor Anglais) or extend the length of the resonant tube with a hollow prop. However, there is a less unwieldy method. Certain fingerings on the bassoon enable perceived pitches as low as F1: a perfect fourth below its ‘lowest’ note of B♭1. These are ‘sounds with a missing fundamental’, a psychoacoustic phenomenon where one’s brain constructs the fundamental below a collection of higher frequencies recognised as its harmonics.⁷ On the bassoon, this technique consists of omitting various keys from standard fingerings to produce complex multiphonics. These sounds ‘trick’ the ear into hearing low fundamentals that are not actually present.⁸ In Timothy McCormack’s Body Matter for amplified bassoon (2014–15), written for Christopher Watford, the ultra-low sounds function as guttural outbursts at moments of dramatic climax. For McCormack, the idea of ‘amending’ standard fingerings serves as the foundation for investigating a ‘soundworld caught in the middle of a metamorphic shift’.⁹ This transformation also occurs in the performer’s body as they navigate intricate and complex maps for the bassoon key interface.¹⁰ Body Matter uses an elaborate hybrid score with tablature elements to convey deviations from standard practice – departures that, for the performer, are both sonic and haptic.

While range-extending techniques for violin and bassoon expand what can be achieved on these instruments, they do not radically change how the instrument is played. Subharmonics are still produced by dragging the bow along the string, and any multiphonic fingering is latent in the bassoon’s keywork, waiting to be sounded through blowing through the instrument. What happens if one challenges how the instrument is ‘supposed’ to be played? One option would be to borrow the conventional sound activation method of a particular instrumental family and apply it to another group: striking wind instruments percussively, bowing parts of the piano, or singing into a drum. In this category of techniques, previously described instrument-technique pairings are intentionally decoupled. The following examples discuss friction techniques within the realm of percussion, expanding the expressive vocabulary of that instrumental family.

Western orchestral percussion instruments such as timpani and snare drum are not designed to vibrate through friction. They are designed for a striking action, where the percussionist’s main task is to attend to the beginning and end of a sound. Once a note is played on the marimba with a standard mallet, the sound begins to decay instantly. Since the instrument’s resonators delay this deterioration, the player might choose to dampen the note early. String players, on the other hand, spend most of their efforts managing the middle of a note, or its sustain. They achieve various tone qualities, from wispy to rough, through different combinations of bow speed and pressure.

Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Aura (2015, rev. 2017) transfers these concerns of speed and pressure to percussionists, along with a new awareness of pitch space and instrument geography. The work uses multiple friction techniques to create an evocative, singing quality in percussion instruments. The opening bars feature a tam-tam rubbed with a superball mallet, followed by a bass drum activated with two bows to produce a ‘deep droning sound’.¹¹ This musical layer is also orchestrated with white noise (from brushes and hands on the skin of other bass drums), as well as an ethereal low F3 from bowed vibraphones. Thorvaldsdottir thus achieves a haunting chorus of sounds through several blended timbres. Applying friction to ‘unpitched’ percussion such as tam-tam and bass drum has other consequences. These instruments temporarily occupy ‘pitched’ space, albeit a rather unstable and microtonal one. Their notes clash with more precise, equally tempered pitches of the vibraphone and bells, further contributing to the highly nuanced soundworld of Aura. Gesturally, friction techniques require experimentation in order to attain the desired sound on different surfaces, specifically the negotiation of speed versus pressure. Too little pressure and no sound results, while low speeds render discrete clicks rather than a smooth tone. New spatial areas on the instrumental body also come into play. Activating the bass drum with a superball mallet requires the percussionist to trace a continuous path on the drumhead, venturing beyond and between typical strike points.

Such varied applications of friction percussion in Western art music, as in Thorvaldsdottir’s piece, clearly stem from an experimental mindset. New methods continue to be explored on various objects and instruments, with different implements of activation ranging from the bow to special mallets and hand techniques. However, friction drums, as a specific category of instruments, are neither new nor restricted to the Western classical tradition. These membranophones are rubbed directly by hand or through an attached stick or string (e.g. ‘lion’s roar’). They are prevalent in folk traditions from around the world reaching back to ancient times, manifesting as the Italian caccavella, Brazilian cuica, and many others.

The distinctive sound of folk friction drums surely prompted the investigation of friction on orchestral percussion instruments. Amadeo Roldan’s Ritmica No. 5 for percussion ensemble (1930) features friction sounds directly inspired by Afro-Cuban instruments. The timbre’s cross-over from folk music traditions to contemporary concert music was further accelerated by popular Hollywood film scores of the ensuing decades. In Jerry Goldsmith’s 1968 score to Planet of the Apes, there are many notable moments for the friction drum. During ‘The Hunt, Part 2’, stuttering groans of the friction drum depict an uneasy calm within the strangeness of Ape City after the preceding violence of the humans’ capture.¹² Such creative effects were developed in part by Emil Richards, percussionist in the original soundtrack (as well as thousands of other films). In fact, there is a commercial series of superball mallets created by Richards himself, a lasting acknowledgement of the spontaneous atmosphere of studio recording and its evocative sonic results.

Finally, instruments can be made to vibrate in a myriad of ways that prioritise noise over pitched sounds. Just as previously ‘unpitched’ percussion instruments can be made to sing, strings, winds, and keyboard instruments can also express with non-cantabile behaviours such as whispering, creaking, or clicking. Helmut Lachenmann is perhaps the composer best known for broadening the vocabulary of unpitched sounds for orchestral instruments. Since the 1950s, he has tasked himself with ‘confronting the norm’ – not only of musical sounds, but also of beauty, a concept that for him ‘had become not [only] idealised but stylised’.¹³ A particularly rich library of noises can be found in his string writing, ranging from whispers of white noise to ‘Lilliputian snoring of great purity and charm’,¹⁴ which results from high bow pressure and reduced bow speed. Lachenmann’s string techniques include modified versions of conventional playing as well as newly invented gestures. Within the latter category, examples include bowing areas other than the strings (on the bridge, pegs, tailpiece), and ‘vertical’ bowing perpendicular to the bridge. This ‘play’ with the bow can go even further: in Toccatina for solo violin (1986), the player is tasked with ‘dabbing’ the strings with the screw of the bow where the left hand would normally stop notes. The resulting sound is a metallic ping unlike any other, while the bow standing vertically out of the instrument is an arresting visual effect. Lachenmann’s output sets an important precedent for critical encounters with any instrumental mechanism.

For Liza Lim, expansion of musical vocabulary into the realm of noise is a conscious reaction to the destabilising experiences brought on by the Anthropocene. She frames the subversion of conventional playing methods as a ‘radical idiomaticity’ – to embrace all types of sounds by ‘both following and pushing against the natural resonances and resistances in instruments’.¹⁵ If pitched-focused music epitomises a certain period of human achievement, then noises represent the prehistoric soundscape as well as that of an uncertain future that we must soon reckon with. Noises allow different instruments and objects to communicate through a common sonic language.¹⁶ In the last movement of Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus (2018), this language is decidedly not human. While the movement opens with a tentative melody improvised on kazoos, ‘this trace of human voices is finally subsumed by a chorus of spinning waldteufels, creating the inhuman chattering and ratcheting noises of an amplified fish-world’.¹⁷ At rehearsal C, a brass trio consisting of horn, trumpet, and trombone then enters with a strange ‘fish call’, imitating the waldteufels. Each instrument’s short utterances are coloured with a variety of noises. The horn plays notes stopped percussively with the tongue while the trombone’s tone is distorted with simultaneous singing. These ‘noisy’ techniques, along with placement in the extreme low register of the instruments, disguise the pitch content of the notes. Within the larger texture, the brass and percussion music now share a liminal zone, where the distinct origins of the sounds no longer define the listening experience.

Expanded Roles

Composers also experiment with instruments in a more conceptual way by adopting an inclusive view of things previously deemed ‘non-musical’. These objects and sounds are usually considered residual by-products of music-making or external to music performance altogether. In other words, composers can first expand the definition of what is musically ‘useful’, then arrive at innovative sounds by way of a broadened instrumentarium.

To examine this approach, let us first look at musical instruments in the context of other objects. Consider a spectrum of increasing ‘playfulness’ with tools and toys placed at the extremes (Figure 4.1). Tools are designed to be used in a few prescribed ways in order to help humans to complete a specific task. An electric drill has different speed settings and various sizes of drill bits, but all components serve the intended function of creating holes in a surface. Toys, on the other hand, exist to enrich our sensory experiences. While they can have suggested modes of play, the most captivating toys also allow for infinite variations of use and open-ended objectives. A set of blocks might be advertised for a specific result, yet in practice, children almost always ignore the instructions in order to manifest their imaginations.¹⁸ With conventional usage, musical instruments occupy a space on this spectrum somewhere between tools and toys. There are many accepted ways to play musical instruments; furthermore, the interpretive and creative will of musicians creates ambiguity in terms of what is ‘proper’ use. Yet there remain clear boundaries with what is ‘non-musical’, as well as a specific task: to perform music, and in the Western classical tradition, to execute written scores.

Figure 4.1 Conceptual rendering of musical instruments in relation to other objects.

What defines a ‘tool’ versus a ‘toy’ is not the material object itself but how it is used.¹⁹ Children often transform adult tools by subverting their intended usage: a collection of drill bits can be anthropomorphised into toy soliders with a single twist of the imagination. In a similar way, composers have the ability to deliberately place audience perception of a sounding object along this spectrum. The transformational factor here is the attitude of playfulness, where even serious activities are done with a sense of flexibility and enjoyment. This creative stance ‘reambiguates the world … mak[ing] it less formalized, less explained, open to interpretation and wonder and manipulation.’²⁰ In other words, playfulness allows for an experimental approach, where tools, toys, and everything in-between can be made musical.²¹

A loudspeaker is usually seen as a piece of electronic equipment that passively transmits other sounds or music. Composer and sound artist Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri takes advantage of the mechanical properties of speakers, arriving at a radical re-interpretation of the object. In a series of sonic sculptures created in collaboration with Pe Lang, numerous miniature speakers are suspended from thin nylon threads, emitting intermittent clicks. The largest and most notable rendition, Speaking of Membranes (2014), has a cumulative sonic effect of popping corn kernels or a herd of bubbling sea creatures. Upon closer observation of the mechanical system, one realises that the speakers are activated acoustically, without any electronic input. The speaker membrane transmits a ‘crackling impulse’ when the attached string rubs against a rosined wheel that is turning very slowly.²² Papalexandri-Alexandri’s approach to the speaker is subervise challenging the basic idea that a speaker needs electricity to have any meaningful application. Her work deploys playfulness as a disruptive method, ‘revealing the seams of behaviors, technologies, or situations that we take for granted’.²³

Any inclusion of such ‘found objects’, such as these experimental settings for the loudspeaker, brings layers of conceptual meaning to their respective contexts. One must also remember that this act has audible consequences, as each object generates a unique set of musical parameters. Even though the sounds in Speaking of Membranes are lacking in pitch content, each click has a particular timbre, duration, and dynamic. This information affects orchestration decisions – to determine the number of speakers needed to create the desired effect, as well as their spatial arrangement.

When composers incorporate toys into an instrumentation, the silly aspects of play collide with the seriousness of the concert experience. As a result, these pieces can take on heightened political meanings. Mauricio Kagel’s highly theatrical Match (1964) uses common associations of toys and games to guide the narrative drama. Scored for three players, the percussionist acts as referee for an imaginary ballgame between two cellists. While the cellists exchange blows with a dizzying array of advanced string techniques, the percussionist attempts to control their behaviour through silent gesturing and musical interjections, many of which come from sound-making toys.²⁴ The sonic signatures of these toys represent different psychological tactics employed by the ‘referee’, ranging from bullying willpower (blowing police whistle), to blasé encouragement (twiddling a Chinese clatterdrum), to leaving it up to chance altogether (throwing a set of dice). Kagel’s noisy trinkets in Match are not completely divorced from the act of innocent play. But as props of the musicians’ interactions with each other, the instruments also ‘become symbols of the performer’s power.’²⁵

For Hannah Kendall, the music box’s image as an innocent toy is key to its power as a ‘polarising technique’.²⁶ Mechanical toys such as the music box are highly approachable, ‘mesmerizing because they are frames of the otherness, because they are tiny worlds that operate by their own condition’.²⁷ With soft dynamics and a twinkling timbre, the music box is Kendall’s ideal envoy to subtly insert ‘otherness’ into a Western classical framework. In addition, its mode of operation defies traditional virtuosity as a necessary component for contemporary music. It is operated with a simple turn of the crank, semi-automatic, and requires no specialisation.

In Where is the chariot of fire? (2021), Kendall uses the music box to embed ‘You are my Sunshine’, ‘Carrying You’, and the spiritual ‘Deep River’ within an orchestral texture. These songs are set in conversation with Lemn Sissay’s poem ‘Godsell’ (from which the title is derived) and its violent imagery of plague, fire, and betrayal. The music box’s initial contribution is an ironic statement, where the pianist plays the two cheery songs against an angular cello solo and ensemble utterances of increasing agitation. The final appearance, executed by a violinist at ‘slow-medium turn speed’, is more poignant but still veiled. ‘Deep River’, with its references to the horrors of slavery, is presented underhandedly to the listener – through the music box’s soft, pleasant sound and in harmonic dissonance with surrounding textures. The object’s innocent reputation and unassuming timbre work in tandem with the songs’ simplicity (monophonic/diatonic) and semantic meaning. These facets serve Kendall’s ‘creolisation’ of the orchestra in both musical and political ways, subverting its ideals of optimal resonance and high-brow complexity while also reminding audiences of alternative histories and overlooked peoples.²⁸

Sounds themselves have functional or playful associations that can be interpreted along the aforementioned spectrum. For example, all musicians create sounds from practical tasks that are not necessarily part of the music: the clatter of marimba bars as they are unhinged from the frame, the cacophony of an orchestra warming up, the rhythmic inhalations of cueing pick-up beats, and so on. Composers readily use these ‘found sounds’ from players, instruments, and musical accessories as creative fodder.

The three intermezzi in Hans Abrahamsen’s Schnee (2008) magnify and develop the process of tuning. Each interlude slightly lowers the pitch of an instrumental subset, causing microtonal relationships to proliferate within the overall ensemble of nine players. As a result, the music increasingly deviates from standard equal temperament tuning. Using a seventh-partial cello harmonic as reference, Intermezzo I first asks the horn to adjust their pitch accordingly, ultimately sustaining a ‘tuning A’ that is 1/6 tone lower than usual. The trio of strings (violin, viola, and cello) then spends several seconds (de)tuning their open strings to the new A before continuing onto the next three canons at this lowered pitch. The subsequent interludes depict practical details of string and woodwind tuning, respectively. In Intermezzo II, the strings replicate a common practice of checking tuning using octave harmonics, while in Intermezzo III the instruments tune using their lowest note (piccolo) or notes with the most open and closed fingerings (E♭ clarinet). The final canons (‘5a/b’) showcase the results of this process, with three distinct layers of tuning. The pianos remain at equal temperament, piccolo and E♭ clarinet are 1/6 tone lower, while violin and viola are 2/6 tone lower. The canonic syntax of Schnee is an optimal environment to audibly perceive this pitch ‘smearing’, given the motivic imitation that occurs between instruments at original pitch and those that are altered. Thus, the mundane task of tuning informs both large-scale formal and long-term pitch structures.

The striking sounds of Sky Macklay’s Choppy for reed quintet (2017) are informed by a gesture that is equal parts mundane and mischievous. After a boisterous introduction, the oboist and bassoonist are asked to remove the reed from the instrument and ‘throw reed into the water near the surface/causing chaotic bubbles and gurgles’.²⁹ A small container of water is a normal tool of the trade; all double reed players have it nearby to prevent their reeds from drying out. While most musicians might only think to blow bubbles into the water as a joke, Macklay’s knowledge of this sound comes from her experience as an oboist in free improvisation and open score settings.³⁰ Codifying this act of ‘playing with the reed water’ using precise rhythms, relative pitches, articulations, and expressive markings, establishes its musical potential. Macklay integrates this ‘intriguing, unwieldy, and exciting’ sound by pre-emptively orchestrating it, following spectral ideas of acoustic resynthesis. Immediately before the appearance of the ‘reed water music’, the single reeds (B♭ clarinet, bass clarinet, alto saxophone) rapidly cycle through fingering patterns while overblowing, creating a similarly high-pitched, gargling texture. With the image of choppy waters in mind, Macklay literally brings in agitated liquids and takes them through a compositional process of ‘creatively orchestrating the ways that those waves clash and distort each other’.³¹ The irreverent humour of Choppy further reinforces the role of playfulness in experimentation.

Conclusion

The appearance of so-called ‘extended’ techniques in a piece rarely shocks or surprises the listener today. After all, ‘Musical play and playful music take shape in the spaces that open up between sign and sound, instruction and execution, the probable and the implausible, the permissible and the imaginable.’³² In an age where almost anything can be converted into digital data, these spaces for experimentation are wide open. That an instrumental technique deviates from convention is less interesting than the why, a composer’s individual reasons for taking a certain approach. Whether it is pursuing virtuosity or giving voice to previously oppressed ideas, investigating these motivations allows each kernel of sound some context for greater meaning. In addition to invaluable input from performers, experimental instrumental practices develop in dialogue with a variety of subdisciplines, including non-Western traditions, film music, installation/sound art, and free improvisation. An organological approach to composition challenges the social hierarchies embedded in music-making, turning associated highs and lows into fluid, transitional zones. Violins are free to explore high frequencies exclusively through noise or fulfill the musical roles of a ‘low’ instrument through Kimura’s technique of subharmonics. Papalexandri-Alexandri’s speakers take on literal and metaphorical lightness, while Kendall’s music boxes bear a heavy burden of meaning. Subversion of traditional instrumental practice, then, is simultaneously protest and play.

Listening List

https://shorturl.at/jDHL5

In a handbook of composition, one of the best possible ways to explain how composing functions in practice might be by means of a musical composition itself. For this reason, my contribution to the present volume is a four-minute piano piece entitled Uncovered Grave which was composed in a single night with this intention. Composing music happens in many different ways, with each work being a fresh adventure to evoke the sounds and music in our imagination. This chapter outlines the creative work involved in writing a self-contained piece and demonstrates the process in a way that may be found useful and relevant for a student of composition.

From Film to Idea

Uncovered Grave was inspired by a short documentary film, Never Forgotten by Max Škach, depicting the UK Czech Embassy’s extraordinary project to visit every single UK grave of Czech soldiers who fought in World War II. It is extraordinary how much of an impression a short film can make. This exquisite documentary – unshowy, factual, colourful, modest, and endlessly fascinating – created real a stir inside me. The different life stories, the contrasting cemeteries, the varying styles of gravestone and inscription, the changing seasons, landscapes, and times of day unfolded hypnotically in shots of great beauty. As I returned home, the image of one particular old grave being uncovered would not leave my mind. I began by making some hasty notes for the music before starting work:

The work was indeed written at close to a single setting: it was composed throughout the night of 28–29 July 2021. Contrary to rumours, composers do not get much inspired when composing: it is a hard slog, basically – about as romantic as digging a ditch. Sometimes, however, the urgent impulse to catch something in sound can result in fresh music. This is what then happened. I sat at my piano, heard the piece in my head, played it, and worked it out on paper in a single sitting of about 6 hours.

People sometimes imagine that a composer writes their music in the order you hear it. In reality, that is the exception rather than the rule. Many composers in the past sketched their works in all kinds of different orders. The great Russian composer Igor Stravinsky remarked that openings were often the last things he wrote, reasoning that ‘one must know what one is introducing’.² I, too, have rarely found myself able to write my music in the order you finally hear it when it’s played. Often a new piece has to be assembled by its composer rather like a jigsaw or a mosaic, from the loose fragments which are all one can get down at first. Selecting from those fragments, discovering where each belongs and what its function is, defining the musical context, refining, and editing, and re-editing. It all takes time and thought, and above all, close attention to the sounds in one’s head. This continues at all times of the day and night, even whilst doing something else.

From Idea to Sketches

For a more substantial piece, my process usually occurs over four distinct stages. The initial sketching is often very visual and often involves making designs, mixing words, images, and music, often in several colours, on small white boards so the shapes can easily be adapted or erased. The next stage is the hardest to talk about. I improvise, partly on paper, partly in my head (often on walks), and partly on the piano. This can go on for a long time, as I struggle to find the sounds the piece needs. This is combined with some very systematic and technical working out of these ideas, and it eventually results in a scrawled rough draft of a ‘short score’, usually on only two or three musical staves. This short score will go through many further revisions and refinements. Eventually, once I am certain everything is as it should be for the passage concerned, I copy the final version neatly into the final full score, with all the music for each instrument in its definite form. With some composers, each of these stages will be quite separate. For me, and especially in the case of an orchestral work, all four stages are often happening repeatedly (even simultaneously) for different parts of the piece.

The stages of Uncovered Grave were slightly different; in its rapid evolution over the course of a single night’s work, I began with a sequence of different types of improvisation:

1. 1. A first improvisation ‘set’ at the piano, clarifying general moods and textures.

2. 2. A second improvisation ‘set’ at the piano with pencil/pen and manuscript paper to hand, at right angles to the piano. This stage was chaotic and largely produced disjointed fragments that were mostly discarded (Example 5.1).

3. 3. Multiple pages of improvisation in writing at the manuscript paper, with only occasional reference to the piano. Again, many disjointed fragments were produced, with only a very few retained from the previous stage, but certain ideas began to solidify as material was gathered together (Example 5.2).

Example 5.1 Early-stage sketch from Unknown Grave.

Example 5.2 Mid-stage sketch from Unknown Grave.

Working on a piece so intensively and quickly feels somewhat akin to slalom skiing – the general direction is fairly clear but can be altered by the details of each move being decided at high speed in the excitement of the moment. At any point, a faulty choice of pitch, rhythm, or register could derail the entire enterprise. But at the same time, a sense of exhilaration, creative exuberance, and imaginative release is produced which is not, in my experience, found in any other human activity.

As harmonic and melodic elements appeared to start stabilising, I began to form a document which I term the ‘pre-final draft’ (Example 5.3) as the structure of the piece started to come together. In spite of the messy surface, this is close to the final form of the piece in terms of both musical material and the order of events. What is not finalised is either the tempo – there is no metronome mark – or the question of durations which, although fully indicated, are understood as being completely approximate at this stage. A comparison between the draft (Example 5.3) and the final piece (Example 5.4) will show that the durations of the final score in many cases changed considerably. Pedalling, though of great importance to the texture of the work, is not notated at this stage either because I know it so have no need to notate it yet, or because it is not yet finalised.

Example 5.3 ‘Pre-final draft’ of Unknown Grave.

Example 5.4 Julian Anderson, Unknown Grave (2021).

Arrows abound, frantically linking bits or changing their order as material gets shuffled around and new ideas unexpectedly arise. In the final manuscript ‘fair copy’, any remaining details are apparently finalised, mainly through several further play-throughs at the piano, testing the weight and time needed for each melody and resonance to articulate properly and with the appropriate lilt (what jazz musicians term ‘feel’). I say that details are ‘apparently’ finalised since there is one detail which I change spontaneously when playing the work now: the G♯ in b.5 is now repeated before the playing of bar 6 – an extra bar (of 3/4) was added for this purpose, which has been amended in the published score; it will remain, since without it the piece seemed wrongly paced.

From Sketches to Score

I often think about music in terms of harmony, and this element drives much of my creative process. This is not an analytic chapter, so microscopic detail on this issue is not covered, but some remarks on this area may help clarify my intentions in this sketching process. It is clear to me that I could never compose a satisfying piece at fast speed without reference to some framework, however intuitive. As far as I am aware of it, I conceive of harmony not merely as static chords but as the ebb and flow of tension from the start to the end of the work. This may be generated in various ways, but in my music, acoustics supplies the key. Consonant intervals – by which is meant simple intervals low in the harmonic series – are contrasted with more dissonant intervals much higher up in the harmonic series (or to all practical purposes, contradicting the resonances of the harmonic series) and with clear, tensely inharmonic resonances.³ In addition to such ebbs and flows of tension, the music will at certain points relate to some kind of tonic pitch.

In Uncovered Grave this works as follows: bars 1–5 are entirely built from the lower overtones of F♯, with the F♯ a minor third below the lowest note of the piano as a theoretical unheard fundamental. The presentation of these lower overtones is necessarily in equal temperament and is often deliberately misleading as to their true derivation. This is in part to render in sound the sentiment of being lost, of searching for something, as mentioned in the score. In bar 1, the opening figure sounds as if it is in C♯ Dorian. The following bars enlarge the harmonic field but never state F♯ as an explicit tonic: E remains the lowest pitch of these bars, which in this context is no kind of possible tonic. G♯, a 9th or 18th harmonic of F♯, is used from bars 5–6 as the junction to the following harmonic area (bb.6–11), derived from the overtones of a theoretical G a whole tone below the lowest pitch of the piano. Again, the presentation is deliberately misleading and similarly avoids any feeling of tonic G, though it is implied as a possibility in bar 9. Here the lowest pitch is D, and there is also a strong feeling of D as a possible tonic in these bars, as the pitch classes employed read thus: D-E-F-G-A-B-C♯-D. F♯ and G fundamentals underpin most of the rest of the music, the tensions between them generating the above-mentioned harmonic ebb and flow. Bars 15–18, where in my imagination the grave is finally uncovered, are clearly overtones from the F♯ fundamental, which cedes to the G gradually around bars 22–3; C♯ (a low harmonic of F♯) also stakes a claim as tonic around bars 23–4, especially with the split octaves at bar 24. The sudden piano at bar 25 onwards returns to overtones of G in rocking figures referring to the bowing of the head as a mark of reverence for the deceased (a gesture observed many times in the film which prompted this music). Of course, it would be possible to analyse the pitch content of this work quite differently. I am merely articulating thought processes and techniques employed whilst composing, inasmuch as I am conscious of them.

Mention should be made of the melodic figures from bar 30 to the end, which are derived from the earliest surviving Czech melody Savtŷ Vaclav (‘Saint Wenceslas’). This early medieval chant, which I have personally known since I was a child, has long held great ceremonial importance in Czech culture and is thus appropriate to conclude the music. These beautiful melodic figures were much on my mind as they were also key ideas in my Symphony No.2 ‘Prague Panoramas’ (2022) which was in progress throughout this period. Unknown Ground, although a short work, thus relates distantly to preoccupations in one of my major works of this time. Like many composers, I often find that pieces written contiguously feed off related ideas. Though it must be added that, just as frequently, the next piece is as different as possible from its predecessor. As in any composition – of mine, at any rate – there are also associations with other music or areas of culture. The opening musical idea was somewhat reminiscent, to my ears, of Leoš Janáček; specifically, the Janáček of his piano piece On an Overgrown Path (1900–12). It is not a quote, nor an allusion; merely a point of reference for the type of figuration employed. Some of the bell textures might recall an innovative piano piece by George Enescu entitled Carillon Nocturne – the final movement of his Third Piano Suite, Op. 18 (1916) – simulating with astonishing, almost sonographic realism the tolling of monastery bells at twilight.

Listening List

https://soundcloud.com/schott-london/anderson-uncovered-grave/s-Ix8lrvvdpGq