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Doublereed Archive - Posting 000014.txt from 2007/12

From: philfrei@-----.com
Subj: [DR-L] Speaking with live (and dead) composers?
Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2007 20:50:39 -0500

There's an amusing paragraph in "The Art of Quartet Playing, The
Guarneri Quartet in Conversation with David Blum" (Knopf 1986).

The topic is on how to interpret two eigth notes (same pitch) both
beamed and tied together (when it seems obvious that a straight quarter
note could easily have been used instead, as far as the notation goes).

From page 73, The Shaping Process

SOYER: I have an amusing story about this. Some years ago I met a girl
who claimed to be a clairvoyant and to have spoken with Dante. I asked
her if she thought she could also speak with Beethoven, and she said,
"I don't see why not. What is it you would like to know?" I wrote out
one of these examples of slurs over two notes and put a big question
mark next to it. Several weeks later I ran into her. "I've just spoken
with Beethoven," she said. "I'm never going to do that again. He was
very unpleasant; he's short, has a rough voice--and I don't even speak
German. But I showed him what you had written and he sang the answer.
It sounded like this: 'uhh-uhh . . . uhh-uhh.'" This girl had had no
musical training and couldn't possibly have known what the notation
meant.

BLUM: So there you have it...

SOYER: Right from the horse's mouth. It's as good an answer as we've
been able to come up with after twenty years.

On the other question, I've heard some pretty chaotic tonal music, and
some very serene atonal. I find it rather short-sighted for someone to
say that people who don't compose like they do are "hiding."

One could make the case that tonality represents a positive assertion
that there is a rational basis for civilization, that atonality
represents an inability to muster the strength of character or resolve
to take a moral stand. But that would be equally nonsensical.

I am tempted to mention two new compositions of mine, being performed
this Friday night, which perhaps go against the grain of
generalizations about tonality and atonality.

1) The Bell Field: for oboe and electronics. Very tonal, pitch material
is limited to A, B, C, D, E & G, a six-note A minor. The background
electronics start as a wind chime effect, but slowly grow more chaotic
as larger and louder bells are added to the mix. As the piece
progresses, the solo oboist is immersed in sound, and reaches towards
higher and higher notes.

2) Carmilla: for a sort of "Pierrot" ensemble (cl, vln, vla, vcl, pno,
soprano), but with a vibraphone instead of a flute. Borderline atonal,
making extensive use of the pitch class [1,2,5], to use Allen Forte's
terminology. Text (spoken and sung) is by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, excerpts
from the fourth chapter of the vampire story of the same name from the
1850's. The music is strongly influenced by early Schonberg, very high
level of dissonance and expressionistic harmonic vocabulary, but the
edges have been softened, to create an altogether serene and seductive,
and hopefully scary, effect.

The names and details of other works on the program can be seen at the
SF Composers Chamber Orchestra website: www.sfcco.org.

SF Composers Chamber Orchestra
Friday, Dec. 7th
Old First Church on Sacramento and Van Ness
San Francisco, 8PM, $15

Phil Freihofner
Albany, CA

>Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2007 14:37:53 -0200
>To: <doublereed@-----.org>
>From: "HAROLD" <harold@-----.br>
>Subject: Speaking with live (and dead) composers?
>Message-ID: <017a01c8375d$305d3480$d31135c9@usuario>
>
> Dear List:
> I had an unusual experience today of meeting and conversing live
with a
>composer who wrote a piece I recorded a few weeks ago and which gave
me such
>anguish ,that it opened a pandorra's box of neuroses I'd thought I'd
left
>behind.
> Very interesting conversation,which the composer seemed to
appreciate.
> His reasoning behind putting his anxieties and anguishes in his
music is
>that music today.he claims,is "hiding"from the contemporary chaos by
>returning to tonality.
> Food for thought?
>
> Which got me to thinking,what would I,as an oboist, query various
>composers if they could come back alive?:
>
> To Mozart:"Wolfgang,why did you have to adapt your flute concerto
for we
>oboists?How about composing a new and different work? "
>
> To Beethoven:"Ludvig, your oboe concerto was lost in a fire .Aren't
there
>sketches or rough copy available somewhere?"
>
> To Brahms:"Johannes,why the C# to hi C# slur in your first Symphony
solo
>for oboe.Don't you know it gives the oboist the jitters?"
>
> And so on .
> Any one out there in oboe or bassoon cyberspace have a query for a
>composer,if we could be bring them back?
>
> Rgds,
>
> Harold Emert
> Rio de Janeiro -Brazil
>
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