Plug 2011

This is the week of PLUG in RSAMD. Ten concerts in five days and most of the music being played are premiers by the composers within the composition department. I have two pieces being played both on Thursday. The first is 'Silence, Imperfect Silence' for odd chamber orchestra at 1pm. I say odd because its for flute, sax, 4 singers, 2 pianos, percussion, 2 violins and a viola. It would almost make sense if there was a cello to round it off but nope. The idea behind it is the undergraduates have a module called 'Style in Performance' and in their 3rd year they have to play contemporary music so some of the composition department. This then explains the reason for the odd ensemble. The instruments available were auctioned sorry faily divided between the composers and thats what I ended up with. Considering I wanted flute, sax, 4 singers, piano, percussion, violin, viola and cello I think I did pretty well. Some people didn't get any of the instruments they asked for!
Anyway enough of that back to the gist of this post. So that piece is at 1pm on thursday and the other is at 7.30pm on the same day. The other piece is one you will have heard a lot about if you have been following this blog.... Its Dichroic Light on its second outing! It is once again played by Lydia Whittingham, my collaborator in the composition. If you want a taster of the piece before coming along you can listen to it on my website here.

Below I've embedded the full programme of the festival. I shant pick out certain concerts (apart from my own) to suggest you come to because from the rehearsals I've heard they are all going to be excellent! Tickets for all concerts in RSAMD are available from the box office. https://boxoffice.rsamd.ac.uk/peo/default.asp

Open publication - Free publishing - More glasgow

Dichroic Light Cello Solo

So much for keeping track of the development of the whole piece on here. I liked the idea of it but somehow the time to post just slipped away from me. So this post will be a quick skim over the last month and a half of writing Dichroic Light.

As it stands the piece is completely finished and had its premier last week in Glasgow City Halls as part of Edit-Point inaugural concert. You can see the full score and recording at the end of this post.

Oddly for me a name came pretty fast at the end Dichroic Light. Dichroic refers to a certain type of crystal which splits light into two colours and I thought it was a fitting word to use in reference to the two contrasting sounds that of the pure cello (obviously concentrating on cello sounds) and of the electronics (taking the cello sounds and lengthening them, pulling out certain harmonics etc). This is a lot more than I give away in the programme note but hey I think this is the place to do it rather than in a programme. Hmm I might write a post about programme notes.....
Anyway below is an image from wikipedia article on dichroic glass.



From my previous post the first movement didn't change too much. Below is pretty much a straight transcription of the hand written score seen before. Also the first idea for the 2nd movement is there. This ended up being completely impracticable because of the speed I wanted it at so most of it got thrown out.

mk 2

This is the 3rd version of the score. No changes to the first movement but the 2nd movement has been completely changed again. There are still hints of the previous version but they will go by the next revision. This is the material that the 2nd movement cements itself with.

mk 3

Mark 4 of the score. Once again no change to the first movement but the second is overhauled again with the addition of 4 cellos and removing one note form the string crossing harmonics, Lydia just couldn't stretch to get into the required position. The idea behind these was that it would signify what is happening in the electronics for the player. Each additional cello would simply be playing a loop that was recorded live. The best place to look to see what I mean is bar 123 and 124. Whats played in the live cello (cello one) is quickly taken up by the 3rd cello. The 2nd cello recorded its sample from the start of the movement. The idea that this stemmed from was to create a sense of stasis in that the material used by the solo cello becomes a background texture.

mk 4

Below is mark 5 with the rough sketch of the 3rd and final movement. By this point a few changes have been made to the first movement just to expand it a little bit. The 2nd movement is also very close to its final form. At this point I had a realisation with the electronics that it wasn't going to be possible to record and sync the triplets live. It wasn't through lack of trying no matter how we tried it or how I changed the patch it just ended up sounding like a mess so we decided to record each line individually and I would sync them up in the studio. This posed a challenge of its own getting them to loop without clicking and without speeding up. After quite a few hours of fixing I got it working. The max end of it was simple but effective, all the loops start playing together but with the volume set to -120db then when queued the volume goes up to 0db. When rehearsing we left them running for a while and after about 20mins they started phasing a little but because the movement is only about 5 mins long thats perfectly fine. If I decide to do the same thing again over a longer period of time I'll need to cross that barrier.
The inspiration for the 3rd movement was just Lydia singing when she was tuning. Her voice isn't that of a trained singer and thats exactly why I wanted it. It took a little bit of convincing but eventually she agreed and so the draft of the 3rd movement was written.

mk 5

I wont bother uploading and describing the various versions up to the final one because most of the changes weren't anything major. The last movement was expanded a bit more with more detail added in and the 2nd movement continued to be tweaked. The final version of the score can be seen below.

The biggest problem I came across was the electronics or more precisely deciding to rebuild them. Until this piece I had never really used max/msp so it was a massive learning curve. Some point in the middle of February I realised that even though what I had done worked it was by no means the most efficient or straightforward so I rebuilt it from scratch. This took about 20 or 30 hours over 3 days but ended up saving around 15% cpu usage so was well worth it.

Its just dawned on me I dont think I've spoken about what the electronics are meant to do and how they do it. At the most basic level the effect is just reverb ('gigaverb') but this reverb has both an envelope follower and an eq. The reason for the envelope follower was to prevent the loudest sounds drowning out the quieter ones. For example without the envelope follower the opening notes of the first movement wouldn't let the upper partials hang on during the pause, they would just be drowned out. This idea of the upper quiet sounds within the cello was eventuated using a comb filter specifically the 'teeth' object. The most interesting thing about teeth is that is has a fluctuation setting in it which means that in certain sections it sounds that the note scoops up to itself. Its hard to describe but when you hear it you'll know what I mean. One of the other jobs of the electronics is panning. The idea was that the reverby stuff would sound like its moving from the cello to the back of the room and fade away into the distance, the idea was relatively effective but I dont know completely how it worked out in the live setting (I was sat side on to the stage with my ear quite close to one of the speakers). The final job is sample playback. The second movement uses both sample playback and panning to give the impression that the sounds move to and from the cellist. When the triplet rhythm is played on the cello the sample pans from the cello's position before moving to another point in the room and before all the samples stop they move back to the front position. Again the idea seemed to work but having a speaker in your right ear means you can't quite get the full effect.

I think thats the full run down of Dichroic Light and if you are interested in playing it send me an email and we can talk. In the mean time you can see the score below and hear the stereo mix down of the recording.

Dichroic Light

Dichroic Light - Mov 1 by mwhiteside

Dichroic Light-Mov 2 by mwhiteside

Dichroic Light-Mov 3 by mwhiteside

A bit more electronics

Today I made another version of the score with the details Lydia and I talked about on Friday. Nothing has drastically changed just a few accents, dynamics and sul pont markings but the main thing for this updated is the electronics. I have been concentrating on etting the max patch right for the first two lines of the score to see how the fading will work along with some samples. Thankfully it all seems to be sorted with the 4 channel version working very nicely. You can hear the stereo version of it all attached below.
The samples are made from a recording of Lydia on Friday and a recording of a piano I made about 2 years ago both heavily eqed and with the cello sound granulised. I think these are the sounds I'm going to work with for the moment and see how far I can stretch them to keep a homogeneity in the piece.

Cello Sample 1 with more electro by mwhiteside

First look at score

Today Lydia and I had a quick look at what I've written so far with some of the electronics. The main point of today was to clarify bits of the score (mainly caused by my sketch handwriting!) and to see how it sounded with the electronics as well as a bit of experimentation. The samples below are of bit of the piece with the reverb just in stereo. It worked almost as I expected but not quite. The reverb time needs tweaked and the envelope following needs tweaked a bit more, it sounded like there was too much verb bleeding through when there shouldn't have been any and not enough when there should have been loads. Easy enough to do just change the maths about a little in the patch.

Lydia suggested some things which I hadn't thought of but work really well like ending the opening notes as sul pont. In my mind this blends really nicely with the harmonics later on so its definitely in. Also a few things came to light which I should have realised when I was writing (because I know the physics of it) but didn't, specifically glissing a harmonic trill doesn't work. What I mean by a harmonic trill is moving between the real note and the harmonic in the same position, basically changing the pressure of the left hand.

Overall everything worked nicely and its a positive start to the piece. I think we are going to make this Friday session a regular occurrence or at least as regular as possible to work through it. Hopefully I'll have another version with the edits we talked about today in it.

Cello sample 1 by mwhiteside

Cello sample 2 by mwhiteside

Solo Cello music

I thought I would add a few links to some interesting solo cello and electronics. The first is 'The Room is the Resonator' by David Fennessy. It does what it says on the tin, it tries to make the room the resonator. I have been told it is amazing live and the video doesn't do it justice but you get the idea.

http://vimeo.com/5521797

The second are spotify links to Prés by Saariaho. Its also on naxos online music library as well.

http://open.spotify.com/track/5HJDIlLnIPdvigYRc12w9q
http://open.spotify.com/track/4ni8Af8Ls1GHvAPgU04qVT
http://open.spotify.com/track/0NTHjnUYYZdtaNd9w42vnE

The final link is Sept Papillons by Saariaho. Unfortunately youtube doesn't want to fit in the post width but its the music your after isn't it?



And finally Berio's sequenza 14 for solo cello

http://open.spotify.com/track/5dyaMFa1oiGWKTdSH0Xkar


I will try to keep adding more interesting examples as I come across them but I mentioned two of these last night so lets start with them.

Collaboration part 2

The first week of term is over and I failed to get the electronics started over Christmas but they are well and truly started now. I have decided that the piece is going to be for 6 or 8 speakers but I'm currently doing all the programming with the idea of 6. I have always been of the opinion that instrument plus tape does not work because it constrains the player too much. Watching a player looking at a watch to make sure they start at the right point just seems wrong. I am of the firm belief that players need freedom to play rather than be constrained to a click track because if they are constrained then there is no point performing if why not just sell a CD? Anyway, with that small rant out of the way I decided to make the electronics all triggered by the player using a foot pedal. The score will have trigger points to tell Lydia when to hit the pedal to tell the software where in the piece it is. With this in mind I've given myself the challenge of automating everything and only leaving the final mix up to a second person.

Currently the electronics are mostly based around reverb but not a straight version. The amount of verb will depend on the volume of the playing with the quieter the playing the more verb. This I've managed to do through envelope following and a little bit of maths. I'm thinking of setting different limits on the reverb depending on the frequencies so that a partial within the note of 570 hz will have a longer reverb than that of 300hz. I haven't looked into this yet so I dont know how feasible and effective it will be. There are also going to be more pre recorded samples and created sound but at the moment nothing is solid with that.

Over Christmas and this week I decided that the piece would be roughly 18 mins long with three movements 5, 8 and 5 mins in a roughly arch form idea. The first movement will be charecterised by reverb and building a spectral field (using edited samples of cello sounds to move the cello away from a straight cello sound). The second movement will be a lot faster and ideas based around shepard tones both sampled and live before the final movement returning to a similar sound world as the first but concentrating more on the electronic element. This is my rough plan for the moment and obviously its open to change.

I have embedded the first two drafts of the first movement, they are about about 4min 30 long. The top line is the cello while the bottom refers to the electronics. The solid line represents where in the space of the room the reverb will be coming from, top of the stave = front, bottom = back. Any notes on the bottom line refer to samples. Unfortunately I use A3 paper and only have an A4 scanner but it should be ok.

Cello + Electro Mk 1

Cello + Electro Mk 2

Collaboration part 1

This post is a bit of a catchup with what has happened so far before the more frequent updates.

15/11/2010
We decided on the length of the piece (about 15-20 mins) and that it would more than likely be multiple movements rather than one long one. I've always wanted to use instrument and electronics but have never felt I had the knowledge and the opportunity to but I feel I am better equipped now. Though the idea of doing it was rather imposing.
I suggested to Lydia to have a look over my piece for solo cello '41111' to get an idea of my style and also to have a listen to Kaija Saariaho's solo cello music.
The logic for this suggestion was she has written a piece for solo cello and electronics Prés (Petals) and others for solo cello such as Sept Papillons. Both these pieces I feel are amazing pieces but also have been notated exceptionally clearly (a feeling shared by another cellist I know) and use extended techniques (though can they really be called extended any more?) artistically, because of this I have made the decision to use Saariaho's scores as a textbook for cello notation.

6/12/10
We agreed upon a timescale with the electronics being ready for the first week back after Christmas to try ideas out, by week 4 (around 1st feb) the piece should be almost ready at least in draft form.
After having had a look over 41111 Lydia said she liked certain sections and techniques used, specifically the opening, the strumming, the cello body tap and the humming.


Embedded in this post is the score to 41111. As a side note this piece is being played in Dublin's National Concert hall on 23rd February.

41111

Collabration introduction

For the next month or two I'm going to turn this under used into a public record of my collaboration with a cellist, Lydia Whittingham, to create a piece for solo cello and electronics. The reason for this documentation is that as part of my masters course I have to do a documentation project which I can document in any way. I first of all thought of keeping it private but then changed my mind. What I'm planning to put on here is summaries of meetings with Lydia, drafts of the score, versions of the electronics and possibly rough recordings by her of the piece so far. All this is with the goal of the premier being in Glasgow City Halls on the 16th of March. This may end up being a little bit of an other ambitious time scale but hey, I like a challenge. Plus she has booked studio time to record it around then anyway.

My pieces 2010

Pieces

41111 for solo cello - 11min
Chordal Relations for chamber orchestra - 5min
Echo for wind quintet, mezzo soprano and piano - 8min
Fish and Chips for string quartet - 12min
Fitzwilliam Rag for solo piano - 5min
for Matt Mattera for solo trumpet - 5min
It Just Is for brass quartet - 11min
Laya for piano quartet - 9min
Organic Construct for tape - 9min
Prevalence for percussion quartet - 8 min
Rain for guitar and soprano - 7min
Relations for large orchestra - 13min
Sssh! for flute and guitar - 13min
as yet untitled for chamber orchestra - 12min
Subtle Clarity for solo bass clarinet - 8min
The Wavering Gorge for violin and cello - 6min
Unresolved for solo piano - 3min
Wondering, Wavering, Willing for guitar and violin - 6 min
Youth for tape - 10 min

Total - 161min

Awards

Honourable Mention by International Music Prize for Excellence in Composition
for Wondering, Wavering, Willing
May Turtle Scholarship
Hamilton Harty travel Scholarship
PRSF/Bliss foundation Scholarship
RSAMD Scholarship 2010-2011
RSAMD Scholarship 2011-2012

BBC Proms 2010 Prom 46

I’m just back from my first time at the proms and feel the need to write something about them more than just being a great experience.
My first impression of the hall itself was simply ‘wow’, it just seems right. Yes it is big but not too big, the misty blur that I get from large spaces (the Coliseum in Rome being the best example) didn’t happen, and because it is big I wasn’t expecting it to have such an acoustic. It took a few moments to get used to it but once I did it was perfect, quiet but perfect. When there I went to proms 45, 46 and 47 but am only going to comment on 46 in this entry and 47 on a subsequent one.
The opening to prom 46 with the Philharmonia Orchestra was Mosolov’s The Foundry (1927). Mosolov is a composer whom I have to admit I had never heard of but going on these 4 minutes of pounding industrial music. No don’t think Rammstein simply think the rhythm and sound of the machinery in a steel fabrication plant. There is no beginning to the piece, no tentative inroads on the silence that preceded it simply begins as if it has always been there grinding away or that someone has just hit ‘on’. The most spine tingling moments in the piece are when the 8 horns stand up (rather effective physical movement for the piece) and play a short melody over the incessant mechanical grinding of the rest of the orchestra. According to the programme notes by Andrew Huth The Foundry was meant as the opening to a now lost ballet consisting of a further three movements In Prison, At the Ball and In the Street. I can but hope that it is found at some point to hear what such music would lead into. Somehow I doubt it would be anything like the next piece of the concert, the UK premier and I believe only second performance of Arvo Pärt’s fourth symphony ‘Los Angeles’ (2008).
This piece is the reason I went to this prom and unfortunately it left me wanting and not in the way Pärt’s music usually does. For me Pärt’s music is the kind of music in which you sit in a darkened room, eyes closed letting it wash over you, ignoring everything. Kind of like lying on your back eyes closed in water and letting yourself drift. The piece is very typically Pärt, heavy on the strings, very slow and quite and uses his typical chord spacing to give a typical sound. Unfortunately that’s where it fell down on first listen; it was simply too typical. There was no sense of going anywhere yet no sense of languishing with intention it was caught somewhere in-between the two. Maybe on subsequent listens (at the moment its still available in BBC iplayer for 3 more days) it will be less tedious and I might pick up the drive behind the piece but for a first impression it wasn’t good.
The material did not seem to be strong enough to sustain the attention of the listener for such a long time and was in fact quite disjointed. The best example of this is after the opening section which is interrupted by the timpani comes a scale played in such a way to make me think it is a quote from a Philip Glass piece. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t but it seems so out of place with what has come before and what is still to come that it jars the ear and the mind. Even with this criticism there were moments of very beautiful music, specifically the warmth of the central section with pizzicato strings and marimba.
It was quite interesting to see Pärt pretty much run up to the stage, he is almost 75 yet he doesn’t seem like he is any older than 60 the way he moves!
The next piece was Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (1929-30) played by Jean-Efflam Bavouzet. Its an odd piece that builds from a contra bassoon solo to an orchestral tutti before half a piano comes in. The build up is such that you expect a chord in the highest and lowest registers of the piano but this is impossible because it is only written for the left hand. This lack of the ability to use 10 fingers is due to the commissioner, Paul Wittgenstein, had lost his right hand during the war. Ravel attempts to create the impression of such a chord though but unfortunately Bavouzet ruins it because in the opening flourishes there were quite a few missed notes, this was the impression I had on the night and after a little bit of research (ahh the joys of iplayer and spotify!) my firs impress was backed up. This set up the tone for the rest of the piece, it didn’t quite feel right. It seemed more of an argument between soloist and orchestra than conversation. The orchestra’s rendition of the piece I cannot fault and in fact was so good that the mistakes and problems with the soloist were forgotten about to leave me with a very good impression of the work.
Finally was Scriabin’s The Poem of Ecstasy (1905-8), a piece that I knew existed but had never had the chance to listen to. Unfortunately I found it a little too romantic and long in its tendencies for my liking. This could have been because of the performance or the music itself but I felt it could have been a little shorter. That being said it was great to hear the great Albert Hall organ in the closing chords of the piece vibrating my seat even though I was in the circle which is an unbelievable feeling that cannot be reproduced by any recording.

The Quangle Ensemble

Now that the random info update is done I think I should do an update on my music.

In performance related news The Space Within went down very well at my final Queen's Composers' Concert. My first experience conducting and I quite enjoyed it, I want more! I was surprised how attentive players are. At one point during the rehearsals I remember thinking 'why are they slowing down' and stopping to question what happened. It turned out my mind had wondered and it was I that was slowing down which in turn caused them to! Unfortunately I wasn't able to perform it with the players spaced around the room but I think it worked in the more standard format of everyone at the front. You can listen to it and have a look at the score here and decide for yourself.

Another recent performance was by the Royal Irish Academy of Music's percussion ensemble. A piece of mine called Prevalence. Unfortunately I handed them a rather bad score (I tried something new layout wise which really didnt work)which meant I didn't get an amazing performance but even with that I was very happy with the piece. Again recording and score can he heard and seen here. Would be good to hear any comments on either piece.

Now onto the title of this blog......The Quangle Ensemble!

The name means nothing now but I'm hoping that soon, at least for you Belfast and Dublin folk, it will mean something. Its a new music ensemble that I am currently setting up in Belfast with the help of Mo Doris. It stemmed from the basic idea that arts organisations dont seem to create a business they seem to create a body that eats funding and puts on music (I'm not saying this is always the case or that is necessarily true just my opinion) so to combat that I want to create a business like organisation that doesn't rely on grants. When I say doesn't rely on grants I'm still going to apply for them but I'm trying to work out a way (which I think I have) to make it sustainable after the grants have run out. The plan for the ensemble is to have about 15 resident performers and about the same number of composers. The mix of instruments in the ensemble will be sufficient to create traditional ensembles, modern ensembles and a chamber orchestra when everyone is together with everyone getting paid for every concert they are involved in and signed up to the payment scheme I've come up with.

At the moment there is one concert around February confirmed with the composers (myself, Mo Doris, Ryan Molloy, Marc Tweedie, Ben McHugh and Sean Kenny) and performers (Gascia Ouzounian on violin and Laura McGrogan on Cello). This will first be played in Belfast and then again in Dublin and possible a few other places as well. The first concert will be in December but I'm still working on the players and composers for it. I'm keeping everything under wraps about December at the moment but everything will follow in due course.

Random update

Well calling it 42 is a little wrong because this post wont answer all your questions about life but then will anything? What this post will do is sum up my last few months of inactivity while I'm sitting in Gatwick for the next 8 hours or so.

I'll start with the most up to date thing first; that of sitting in Gatwick. The reason for this is I'm on my way to Milan for two weeks to attend the soundSCAPE festival. I'm looking forward to it but I am wishing I didn't decide to do a late night flight to London to get an early flight tomorrow morning but such is life. I get to write this and I might get some of a presentation I have to do written. A weird thing about soundSCAPE is that the composer in residence is Patricia Alesendrini, a phd composer from QUB and the same composer who had to pull of form the composers concert twice due to her performers I'll health (technically it was the same problem it just happened before the first concert and continued until after the second such is bad luck).

For the presentation I have to talk and give examples of my music for about 30mins or so. I started to look at this about a week ago or so with trepidation but thankfully its a lot better than I thought. Looking through my scores from Quartet No. 1 to Untitled and Relations there is definitely a continuity apart from the obvious obsession I have with Fibonacci. Its quite comforting to find this continuity but slightly annoying that ideas I've had recently turn out to simply be codifications of things I have done in earlier pieces. Some of this continuity was a conscious decision, like in Quartet No. 1 a long note moved by a micro-tone after about 1min is used again in Puddle Wonderful (though the recording doesn't so it that well), others weren't consciously decided upon, like repeated notes on different instruments in The Space Within and Wondering Wavering Willing. But that's just a brief start have to work out where to go form that.

I'm going to out a thanks up here both the PRSF/Bliss foundation and Sir Hamilton Harty Scholarship have completely funded my trip to the soundSCAPE festival. So thank you both.

Last week my name changed, well not changed just extended a little. I graduated from Queen's Belfast with a 2.1 and now have letters after my name! This now means I am on my way to RSAMD next year, not that that was really in doubt because of my offer but its not all confirmed. The only thing that's a little in the air is that of accommodation, paid the deposit but have yet to hear back if I have got anything or not.

Recent music

The other night I sat down and worked out what my output has been this year (from Jan 1st) and I was shocked. I have written around 30 mins of music which works out about 20 secs per day. I was shocked how I have written so much but then I have finished Relations (a piece for stereo orchestra), Rain (for soprano and guitar), The Wavering George (Violin and Cello) a bass clarinet solo and Unresolved for solo piano. Then there is a percussion piece and a guitar and violin piece that I have started to write within the last week. I dont know how this has come about but I think a switch has flipped in my head from wanting to compose to being able to compose. Every piece (bar Resolved) has either had a workshop, a performance or a performance scheduled. The situation I'm in at the moment is amazing until I remember I still have essays to write.

Also in the last few months I have had very good press reviews. The first one for Imagined Notes by Michael Dervan of the Irish Times which you can read here and the second for Puddle Wonderful. First real reviews I've had and I'm very happy with both!

I feel a bit of info about the pieces is needed, I don't normally do this unless asked but for some reason I'm compelled to. Imagined Notes was written for my final electro-acoustic composition last semester and is basically a reaction against what I see as noise music. What I mean by this is music with no overt pitch bass and simply uses real world sounds to create a piece. I know a door closing or a footstep does have a pitch but not in the same was as a trumpet. So the piece was written to lie somewhere in the middle of the noise music and real music. To do this I took recordings of a piano and an oboe and processed them via transposing stretching etc. The transpositions aimed to create a triadic harmony with the same kind of pull and push of tonality so chords were built up with 5ths, 3rds etc. Though terms such as chords should be used even more loosely in this piece than most because the transpositions where never meant to be precise but more to give the impression of tonal harmony which I think I succeeded in doing. Please do comment and discuss I'd be interested to hear feedback and if others think I did it as successfully as I think.

Relations is a piece for large orchestra with double of most things. This is to create a stereo effect for the audience. The piece is also based on one chord (G-B-E-F) this chord is intended to resonate the whole way through the piece of the piano mainly at the beginning and the end as this section is built on the harmonic series of each note. The music swings round the orchestra or bounces across from left to right. Unfortunately hearing this effect isn't going to happen any time soon, I dont think I could pull together an orchestra needed for it, but maybe in the future.

I might talk about the percussion piece a little in a week or two after its completely finished but it is similar to Relations in the sense that it is based on one note rather than one chord and develops in a similar vane to The Space Within, which I conducted in the 3rd Queen's Composers' Concerts and a recording will be up soon.

I think this is the first blog post in a while that wasn't for the reason of bitching, in fact it had no reason behind it I just felt compelled to write one. Please feel free to give me any comments or feedback about my music. Always interested to hear peoples opinions. You can also get some of my scores at Sibelius Music or Emerging Composers Library
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Rhinos and Culture

Tonight I went to see Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco in the Brian Friel Theatre (Queen’s Film Theatre) because I knew one of the people involved. I had never heard of the work or even the writer but I’m glad I went. The basic outline of the piece is, to quote the QFT website, ‘When a rhinoceros charges across a town square and tramples down an innocent pussy one quiet Sunday afternoon, Berenger is unconcerned. However rhinoceroses start popping up everywhere, putting Berenger’s world, as he knows it, under threat. What will it take for Berenger to stand up to the increasing threat of rhinoceritis?.’
The idea of people turning into rhinos is absolutely absurd but also, as is intended, very symbolic (just change the word rhinoceros into sheep). First one character turns into a rhino then his boss before being followed by his workforce, apart from Berenger, who feel a duty towards the boss and follow his every whim. Eventually rhinoceritis takes hold to such a degree that Berenger picks up his telephone to be confronted by the grunting of a rhino, I didn’t ask how it dialled the number, and turns on the radio to hear the same sound.
The most effective part of the work, for me, was not this scene, but the first scene. The first scene consisted of Berenger sitting in a bar with a friend talking about him, essentially, not conforming to the norm. At some point through the scene a rhino stampedes past with all the characters running in to exclaim ‘look a rhino!', or something to that effect, with Berenger sitting uninterested at the table. Berenger’s friend, Jean, after the rhino has passed says three or four times ‘well what do you make of that?’ to Berenger before Berenger takes the topic away from the subject of the rhino. The rhino or a different rhino, a subject of a little debate within the play, then returns and tramples on a cat. The owner runs into the bar screaming, mourning her cat, everyone clusters round talks and Jean says, yet again, ‘well what do you make of that?’
The reason I see this section of the play as the most effective and thought provoking part is that, to me, it sums up modern popular culture. You have the outside event (the rhino), people wanting to comment on an essentially unimportant event (‘well what do you make of that?’) and an outside event becoming the topic of conversation for a whole bar, and in the next scene an office, full of people (rhino trampling cat, woman coming into bar mourning and whaling). Scale this event from an absurd play into a real life situation. An outside event, say a cat stuck up the tree, becomes front-page news people talk about it because it is front-page news. Another situation, big brother, x-factor etc reality tv series, when they are on are all people talk about, they even somehow manage to get decent sized articles in respectable newspapers. So far these are two very banal examples but how about changing the example to a murder in a town 100 miles away or even in the same town? People still seem to react in the same way even though it does not directly affect them, though all sympathies go to any family that has been involved in such an event.
The problem is there seems to be no sliding scale of reaction; it’s either all out bitching, indignation or not caring. This is the reason I do not follow popular culture and news bulletins religiously, though I admit I look at a news site once a day to get an idea of what’s happening. I feel you are as likely to find out that the UK is at war as X celebrity has married Y. People seem inclined to follow the crowd, to become a rhino, in order to talk. But what is the point in conversing if what you are conversing about is ultimately pointless? Why not have a debate about which philosophy is better to live your life by, why string theory doesn’t work or which composer or writer is the greatest to have ever lived? These are ultimately as pointless as the banal subjects mentioned earlier but they require more knowledge than a 5 min read in a crappy 99p celeb magazine and they might in fact lead to a great idea or actually learning something new and interesting.
To me popular culture can be summed up as an oversaturation of utterly pointless information. I need to know and learn enough stuff without filling my mind up with useless things about someone who I have never met and who has probably done nothing of real worth or something that doesn’t and will probably never affect me. I sometimes feel like Berenger lost on a sea of rhinos but unlike him at the end of the play I have never debated becoming a rhino, I have always and hopefully will always just be me. Popular culture doesn’t interest me and do you know what? I don’t care.

As for the play and acting it was very good. If you read this, are about Belfast and are free either tomorrow or Friday head to it. Its only £6 and I think it would be worth it. http://www.brianfrieltheatre.co.uk/rhino.html

Consonance and Dissonance

It was Schoenberg that said there is no such thing as consonance or dissonance any more. This seems like a reasonable statement to make but after almost 100 years those terms are still used with regard to music within that time period. Why? Why do these terms stick with such ferocity into the musicological repertoire? These terms make sense when used of music from before 1900 but with music after 1900 they should barely be mentioned in the same paragraph let alone the same essay! With this said they are still mentioned, even used as points of conversation within an analysis but why? Is it because musicologists do not want to be removed from their familiar phrases or is it because from a young age the musician is taught that consonance is nice and dissonance is harsh, major is happy minor is sad?
I completely agree that the young musician should be taught the fundamentals of harmony and the development from plainsong through to today but the teaching seems to concentrate around Bach and Mozart before commenting on Wagner’s chromaticism it doesn’t push forward any more than that. This in turn means that people try and explain contemporary music in out of date terms. Messiaen’s Les Offrands Oubliées is beautiful but in no way consonant, going on the younger musician’s teaching it is dissonant but its not harsh and unpleasant so this makes them question and leaves them confused. This is a fine example of why these terms should not be used but what can replace them? Unfortunately I believe the only words that can replace them are words that belong to feelings, words such as harsh or pleasant. I have been lambasted in essays for writing ‘such and such a passage feels pleasant’ yet I continue to write such terminology because I have not found anything else that will satisfy me. Feelings are the only true way to describe music, trying to distance the emotion from the sound is not right or even possible in the same way that trying to build a house without adequate foundations. Music is art, art is for emotion so is the best way to describe it not in emotional terms? Music today just is. If it has been written by the composer either with a specific idea or emotion in mind, why try and label it constant or dissonant?

Is that music or just another radio?

The sound of silence is the sound of nature, but the sound of nature is not silence. Silence will stretch on eternally while each sound no matter how long or short is only a micro-sound in the time scale of nature. Does this mean that it is pointless to produce a sound or that sound itself is unnatural? That is like asking is existence pointless or unnatural. Some will say yes to both, some will say yes to neither yet there are some who will argue both yes and no. It is an unanswerable question but all will agree that if something that exists infringes on something else’s existence then the infringer should be reigned in, but not destroyed. This can apply equally to sound as it can to existence.
The cacophony that is modern life infringes on existence. It infringes on nature’s silence because it is pointless. Modern life has become just another radio, tv, mobile phone ring tone in the middle of the street. It has become so cacophonous that people require these constant stimuli, but why? Why can people not sit back and listen to the sound of nature? The cacophony that is produced is, on the grand scheme of nature, pointless. What is wrong with a whispered conversation over a shouted one? A whispered conversation requires more attention but have people become so used to shouting that a whisper is inaudible? Whisper a person's name in a crowd of screaming people and you will be heard by that person, yet scream their name and you wont be. This I admit is a slight embellishment of the truth but it has a grain of truth in it. Someone will pick out the nuance of their whispered name in noise because they are attuned to the voice, the whisper and their name yet a shout would just blend in.
The world and all its noise is but a flash in the silence of nature. If we must interrupt it it should have a point, a well-defined reason for the interruption. Would you barge into a wedding, a funeral or a family sitting together eating in their own home without a reason? No, that is common courtesy. So why should we break the silence of nature unless it is with good reason? There is no need for ring tones as long as a phone as a vibrate function, there is no reason to shout at the person you are trying to talk to if everyone else is talking in a whisper.
The point of this short essay is not to preach but for me to lay down my own ideas, ideas that have changed massively over the last year. I originally wanted to write bold loud music but I have gradually been turning away from that and I think today I have come to see why. Silence is what will become and what has always been. We are a brief cacophonous noise in the midst of this silence. If I break this silence it is to create something, something that I find beautiful or pleasurable not harsh and bold but quite and delicate. This idea has not only become apparent in my dynamics but in my pitches, but in hindsight I feel that it has always been within my pitches. A move of a semi-tone makes me shudder yet a tone feels distant, I think it is my desire to create something that only just fractures the silence bleeding into my pitches but then maybe it is the other way round. Maybe it is the pitches bleeding into the silence. A note is nature and a semi-tone, or smaller, is nature but a third is artificial.
People expect the cacophony of the modern world. This expectation has bleed into music in all its forms. Electro-acoustic music takes sounds from this cacophony and re-interprets them, sometimes successfully but rarely, while main-stream music enforces in someone the desire to turn it up, listen to the drums and ignore the subtly. Would a semi-tone change of one note be noticed in a track by Lady Gaga, Stereophonics or Metallica? I think not. There is a place for this music but it is not at the forefront. The nature of these is full of volume but not full of thought. These voluminous sounds are not constrained to mainstream music but are also in many classical works. Again, there is a place for it in some cases, but not in all.
What I believe I am trying to show myself and any who care to read is that nature should not be broken. A sound should come from nothing and go to nothing; that is the natural order. A sound that is there for the sake of itself has no place in the world. Unfortunately modern life seems to be filled with these sounds. Is that music or just another radio?

Concerts

Three months have gone by and not even one update, I feel ashamed of myself considering the amount that has happened.
October saw the continuation of rehearsals for the opera, there was quite a lot of stress and a few arguments that had to be calmed down but eventually it all worked well for the concert in November. Really happy with how Puddle Wonderful went and managed to get a, rather bad quality, recording of the last night which is up here. All four operas were well received, we didn't fill the place but I think there was about 300 came over the three nights. The week after that the second Queen's Composers' Concert happened. The hall was about 3/4 filled (which again I was really happy with). Afterwards I got quite a few emails congratulating me on the concert. Again the performance of Untitled went really well, though up until the last two rehearsals it wasn't quite coming together so I had to step in and flail my arms about in some kind of uniform pattern and tempo, this helped make it an excellent performance.
After this concert there was a rather large feeling of emptiness upon realising I had no planned performances planned. This swiftly changed when I joined, and was made secretary of, the Irish Composers Collective. Due to this group I now have a performance of Imagined Notes (22nd February) and of an as yet unwritten violin and cello duo on the 22nd of March both of which will be in the National Concert Hall in Dublin. Two days after the latter concert will be the third Queen's Composers' Concert, and the final one organised by me. For this concert I'm conducting The Space Within, a septet written last year for my final composition. It will be my last Composers' Concert because as of September I will be in Glasgow Collage of Music studying MMus in composition. Finally at some point within the next few months I'll be getting a performance of a soprano and guitar piece called Rain, with words by Edward Thomas, written for Becca Hopkins and Declan Keenan. Hopefully more concerts will come my way soon but I think thats a decent amount to be going on with. Though I'm starting to think of organising an ICC concert in Belfast before the end of the summer but that is still a very hazy idea.
I think thats a brief catchup of everything thats happened for anyone thats interested.

Music for Musicians

My first blog in a while is more a musing on art and culture than a random babbling on what I have been doing. This was inspired by a conversation on twitter between @jamiebullock and myself from the question “contemporary classical music = university music?” from @laputean.

This is a topic that has concerned and worried me greatly over the past year or two. Is contemporary classical music simply producing music for musicians (a large number of whom don’t respect it anyway) or does it have a wider cultural place?
In the world we live in everything seems to need a price, seems to need an explicit benefit or educational advance but how does contemporary classical music fulfill this? It has nothing tangible to give other than a pleasurable experience, but because of the musical language used people without understanding or even without the desire to learn to appreciate the tonality manage to let this music pass them by. The price of art can be extortionate or less then the cost it was to produce. The rich will pay thousands for an original piece of art by a famous artist but many will squabble over paying £30 or less to attend a concert. When anyone goes to a concert of modern do they go with the tools to understand it or do they just go to say to their friends in a form of one-upmanship? Even those that go with the tools to understand the music still may not because surely the only person who understands the music is the composer. Anyone that listens will take something different or nothing at all away from a piece.
When Feldman rejected the audience in writing his 2nd string quartet (I believe it was the 2nd) he received the best reception of any of his pieces. Does this then mean that the audience wants to be rejected rather than pandered to? That is something I cannot decide the answer to. Maybe a composers thought process changes to when he thinks like this allowing his own experiences to filter in.
The composer is the only one who understands their own work whether accepting or rejecting the audience, though sometimes not even the composer understands. Music as an art that is there to broaden the mind and be the pot in which ideas coincide whether these ideas be it maths, physics, poetry, philosophy or even another piece of music or art. Every piece is the sum of experience of the composer. From this I feel music can be described as a condensed encyclopaedia or even a wiki where different people can add their spin on it but the essential meaning and experience of the composer is still there.

This was just thrown together tonight. Hopefully I will come back and revise it. I know it probably posses more questions than it answers but I felt the need to put this down and have no problem showing it to anyone that might be interested.

Home

It has been almost a month since my last blog. Since then I have been in Prague, Krakow, Budapest, Vienna, Rome, Geneva and Barcelona. I was planning to try and blog as I went around Europe but that didn't happen. Needless to say it was a really good trip and saw some amazing places. Even found a CD shop in Vienna that sold only classical music and another that was stocked with scores! I was like a kid in a sweet shop! Probably not that big a deal to anyone reading from a big city but Belfast doesn't have these kind of shops annoyingly. The classical section in HMV is rather pathetic and matchets, though great for exams, doesn't stock that much. Ach well, amazon helps. Finding the shop which had cds I wanted gave me the impetus to by them, finally got round to getting Chronochromie and a CD of Takemitsu's chamber music. First introduction to him and I'm hocked. Also went to the Picasso museum, Van Gogh museum and saw an exhibition of Turner's paintings, all amazing in real life.

Anyway, I have been home about just over a week and finally getting back into the swing of things. It took me almost a week to recover and catch up on sleep! The second Queen's Composers' Concert is pretty much organised, posters are being designed, music is being written, will be in the Queen's concert brochure and there should be a mention going up onto the CMC Ireland website soon about it. By the way its on the 25th November at 7.30pm in the Harty Room in Queen's Music Department and its free.

As for the opera its coming on quite nicely. About 1/3 of the way through it with about 3 weeks left to write it piles of time... I hope. I think reading 'Morton Feldman Says' has influenced it a little, or at least my ideas but I will reserve judgment until its finished. I think the dates for it are the 13th and 14th of November.

Just as a final note one of my friends, Daniel Barkley, has just put up his own site http://www.danielbarkleymusic.com/ . Have a look, hes doing continuing blog on how hes writing a Euphonium concerto which looks interesting.

Berlin/Prague

We have decided there is a curse on leaving cities after more than a day. On the way to checking out in Berlin Laura decided it would be a good idea to fall over on her ankels while carring her bags. After which she couldn't carry herself, let alone her bags, so we had to carry her and her bags to the front door, get a taxi and then to the train station which thankfully had a wheelchair. Train journey to Prague was pretty good had individual rooms for 6 people. Was awkward getting down the train with bags to the room but it was good to have a bit of privacy for the 6 hour trip. Sat talking to some Sweds who were in my room, who tried to teach me some swedish (cant remember any of it now) but was good fun.
From the train station to the hostel was, yet again, interesting. Found a porter in the train station and put Laura on a baggage trolley before finding more taxis and taking out money to get said taxis. Took out 2000 koruny but wasn't sure weather that would buy me a bun or a car... Worked out it is about 40 pounds so wasn't to bad. Some of the prices here are about the same as at home but others are really cheap, a loaf of bread for 10 crowns (about 30p). The hostel I'm staying at is really good, Hostel Marabou. Its about 30mins walk from the centre of town but the best thing about it is the atmosphere. Really friendly, really homely and a constant stream of metal music played at most hours on the radio. Def going to come back to it again when I come back to Prague (which I will do).
Went on another free walking tour yesterday. This time gave a bit more because I had more spare change but still not as much as I would have paid for an equivilent tour. Again it was about 4 hours and gave about 800 years of Prague's history, admitidly very condensed and potted but still interesting. Also went on a ghost tour last night, was really cheesy and after the first story I thought it was a waste of money. Though after the 2nd one people in costume started to jump out. If it hadn't been for Lynn and Susie, both rather jumpy, it wouldn't have been that good. Even with them jumping it was ok, wouldn't go on it again and wouldn't advise anyone else to go on it. One of the others on the tour was an austrailian who was travling from aus, hong kong, round europe and back home for 3 months costing him about 35000 austrailian dollars (abotu 15000 pounds!). How he was able to afford it, had a traffic accident a few years ago and broke his back. He got 25000 compensation.
Back in the hostel I sat talking to some English people who were in a rally, to drive from London to Mongolia! It sounds really interesting, think I might look into it maybe for next summer.
Having a relaxing day in the hostel today before getting a night train to Krakow tonight though I really like Prague and this hostel so dont want to leave it. Ach well, can always come back.
Annoyingly haven't had a chance to write much music on the trains, might try and do some tonight while everyone is asleep. Seeing some of the places and modern art around the place is quite useful to get the brain going. If only Belfast had more galleries!
Think thats it for now, till next time.