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.

Reaching into the bag of tricks.

So this week brought forward some interesting challenges while practicing. One that I focused on and feel that I personally learned from is with being flexible and creative in how I practice material. I have never fallen into a routine of how I practice music, I try to approach things from many angels to find solutions and to make sure I learn and understand the music on a deeper level. In Stockhausen, this has been more of an issue than in other works. The challenge is in regards to how the music exists on a “musical” level and the interaction that is has with the electronics, this poses a few challenges the most notable being:

     How to learn the music so I can accurately start to put it together in small pieces with the tape.

The challenge here is that there are tremendous technical requirements that have to nailed down. Most of these fall into sections that have no tempo markings, are highly rubato or make use of other devices (irregular tremolos, irregular and regular grace notes etc...), and have a very intense inner musical line. This was a situation where I had to reach deep into my bag of tricks.

One success I had was writing my own etudes, the short etudes were mainly based on technical demands. I did try to find and create musical elements that were different from those of Stockhausen’s since I feel that this approach really lets me understand the interaction of all those little black notes. As well, I would isolate cells of notes and place them into an unrelated or changing time signature so I would get different emphases.

Example: 4 notes from a 9 note cell (original order is how they appear in the first measure. Note: these four notes come from the middle of the 9 note cell).

This was a useful tactic this week, one I have underutilized in the past, but it will definitely be more present with this work due to the nature of the music.