The overlooked things make a big impact.

First off, sorry posts have become less frequent I am BUSY, This month has brought the Rite of Spring, Till, Rosenkavalier, Liadov, Lanza, Bedrossian, Messiaen, the list keeps going.  BUT, here today is a post.

So this post will be in two parts and comes from two places, Grisey's Accords Perdus and Messiaen's Appel Interstelliare. That is a big bite of horn music, also both quite different from each other. In many ways this post is a continuation of two other posts Faking it, and The Little Things. I am sure this post will say something by itself, but the is a great deal of ideas and thoughts I will be building on from the previously mentioned.

First off, this idea I have that an exceptional performance of any kind of music requires a few things.

1. Knowledge of the style and score.
2. Knowledge of the composer as well as their idiosyncrasies when it comes to notation. (For example we Know Bruckner and Mahler marked their music VERY heavily compared to others. The same is true with composers now a days. Though with modern notation less is left to "conventional knowledge", but there are markings etc. that remain rather consistent in various styles.. see point 1.).
3. Validity of the publication. This has two big points. First, the quality between publishers is vast... some work heavily with composers and we can generally assume that the marking there in are valid markings. Though, others are not as consistent and full of errors (this also applies to music from other era, but the wide range of publishing venues currently complicated matters a bit more). Second some composers more than others are known to constantly revisit their music (Boulez for example) to make changes. So, is the music you are working from the current one, or is it a photocopy of the first draft that became heavily revised. This may seem like a big thing to bite off, but I believe that this kind of responsibility is needed to bring accurate and purposeful interpretations to listeners.
4. Quality collaboration. This is the byproduct of all of the above, we all have different ideas, hopefully built on experience and education, someone may have the missing piece of the puzzle. 

So when we consider all of the above what does it all mean. 

REAL WORLD EXAMPLES!

Example 1 from Grisey's Accords Perdus 

So, quick thing to be said. Accords Perdus is a work for two horn based on the natural harmonic series of many horns. The end result is you have varying degrees of microtonality, when you consider and actually take the time to analyze the microtonality the piece becomes more complex sonically, and in turn more interesting. It is one thing to just get the pitches on the page but Grisey gives us much more to consider. The same way we analyze Beethoven's music to know the harmonies the same thing applies here, that is the analysis of the score. SO to example 1. We see that both horns have marked an E eighth flat, one could possibly assume that this is a moment of unison between the two horn. BUT (there wouldn't be a post if there wasn't a but) if you take time and compare harmonic 7 on the SI horn (the upper horn is currently using SI horn to get the E eight flat. The part is not in SI, just the use of SI horn will give the appropriate pitch) and harmonic 10 of the FA horn you would find out that the natural intonation of those harmonic series would place the pitches not in unison but actually ~17.5 cents apart. This kind of thing happens often in the work so one has to take time to really figure out what is going on, so that it can be conveyed to the listener in an obvious way.

I will be back later with part 2 which will talk about the last two points from my list of 4 in regards to Messiaen.

Cheers.

Still here, still horning

Sorry for the lack of posts but life has been busy the past few weeks travelling between Chicago and Cleveland one week and Chicago and Calgary the next. That being said work on Stockhausen has not slowed and new ideas and concepts are filling the air as I practise.

To elaborate on that I have been busy conceptualising Nebadon for the last few week since I have a great majority of the technical demands under my fingers it is time to really get into the heart of the work. An interesting thing about Nebadon is that it is a work by Stockhausen where he does not retain the same absolute control over the performer that he does in many of his other works. There are next to no dynamic markings of any kind, instead we are left with the instruction that the horn is to be always present over the recording. Now in once sense this does direct the player to perhaps force things or to limit their dynamics even though the horn is amplified, we as the performer need to be very aware how we are interacting with the tape part in regards to register and the natural carrying power (as well as how they respond to amplification).

Luckily this is not my first rodeo, I have performed several amplified works in the past and am slightly comfortable knowing where I need to really produce a great deal of sound and where I can lay back. This ties into an earlier post as well in regards to studying the electronic part, more often than not in a work like this there will be moments of very dense sound, and moments where the electronic part is more transparent. Taking this into account and since Stockhausen is allowing the horn player to have some freedom this has been a focus for me, where can I find conventional musical elements that I can highlight.

The next challenge has been the analysis, anyone who is friends with me on Facebook saw posts I made with photos of the score heavily marked in pencil crayon trying to pull apart Stockhausen's music. This really aids me in gaining an understanding of what is going on. In addition, since this has to be memorized I can't over emphasise the importance of knowing this work inside out and backwards.

It took me some time but I was able to unlock some brief moments of the work (I will elaborate on this in a later post) and it never continues to amaze me that a work that appears on the surface to be so overwhelmingly complex is in reality, extremely systematic, and simple.

Moving forward, and why deadlines matter for me.

I have my first real deadline for the project and it falls at the end of January. This will be the first time I will work with someone on Nebadon, which I am excited about. The importance of this, and why from a week of work I chose to write about this is as follows. Having this deadline forces me to conceptualize the work in a complete manner. This is because the person I am working with KNOWS their stuff, and for me to stand on my own two feet I need to do certain things to prepare.

1. Score study
2. Recording Study
3. Large scale and small scale analysis
4. I need read much much more about Stockhausen, his music and, the practices around its performance. (So if anyone who reads this knows about articles or such, send them my way)

Reflecting back now that I have started playing the work is how important the first three steps really are. The electronic part to Nebadon is really interesting and very complex, and the horn part takes turns playing the same material or slight variations of it. As the piece progresses the voices pull apart material wise, this fact became something I focused on in detail this last week while trying to find ways to replicate the effect of the electronics on horn. As well, this kind of interaction will play a vital role in the large scale structure of the work.

The final step is something that was stressed by conductors during my graduate work at DePaul, and I am always very happy it was. The more we can get inside the heads of the composer and environment (culturally, socially, etc.) the more we are able to find details that would otherwise be glossed over. (Next time you listen to a Viennese octet really try to find the humour in it which is always fantastic since it happens in such interesting ways).

I have some other exciting projects coming up as well! Grisey’s – Accords Perdus, Globokar’s Dos a Dos, and more!