Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost

[greg]

Where, Greg? Are you sure you didn't have it playing at the wrong pitch, as the staff computer at my work was doing today!  The only extraneous noises I can hear apart from the conductor are a few coughs..

It's most noticeable at 1:24. Sounds like an angry chipmunk coughing and then giving a lecture.


I don't think it's the wrong pitch, because I compared that opening violin line to what I played, and their the same notes. It does seem to have the sound of something slightly sped up, though.

Actually, I'm pretty sure it's sped up, but the pitches just aren't altered enough to notice.

[sul G]

Hmm, doesn't sound that way to me - just like someone coughing (1st clarinet, I think it was) and then the conductor saying 'molto vibrato' to the strings. So, if it also sounds a little fast then perhaps there's something wrong your end. I had precisely this problem on my PC a few months ago. I don't know why, and it fixed itself, but in the meantime I found that if I played files using e.g Quicktime instead of WMP then the problem disappeared. So, you could try that, just to check...

[sul G]

There are a few clicks which enter due to the editing process - these occur because the sound wave isn't smooth.

Yes, that's right. The odd thing, though, is that even when one examines the wave closely one can't see these clicks. If you could I'd have got rid of them (simply 'declicking' the whole file didn't have any effect). But having listened a few more times I think there's a lot more I can do to the file.

[sul G]

Apart from Roger Swann's review (posted earlier) the only other review I can find comes from my brother's blog! So, as he confesses, it's hardly unbiased, but here it is FWIW (he links to your blog, Karl):

Well I'm not the best placed to review Saturday evening's performance of Luke's new work, Elegy and Ascent, what with being a musical ignoramus and a very biased brother. I enjoyed it immensely, though, and his excellent talk beforehand (and our chats), and his reflections on how he reached this point in his artistic development, added a lot to the listening experience. It was fascinating to hear how he had, in the first half of the composition, taken part of a piano piece and redrawn it for orchestra. The original piece was composed using the chance (the drawing of cards) and Luke used a set of rules and his aesthetic sense to thread his way through this in a way that, as he pointed out, could only be his - another composer would have found another route through the chaos and made a different sort of beauty of it. To orchestrate this then, I suppose, added an extra layer of "human intervention" to the original randomness, as of course do the processes of conducting and performing the music. The second half of the Elegy and Ascent was very different but complementary: ordered but complex, and built around many interlocking, subtle and erudite ideas, as is usually the way with Luke's music. I won't say more for fear of sounding like I'm flattering my little brother, and we really can't have that. It would be even worse and kind of irrelevant to say we're proud of him, but...

I do hope that out there on't interweb somewhere somebody competent has done a proper job of reviewing the performance. One thing I have found, though, Karl Henning's blog where he previewed the concert and included Luke's notes. Also, if' you like to read scores, you can find lots of Luke's work on Scribd here (although not as yet Elegy and Ascent, I think). Hopefully in due course there will be a recording to listen to, too.

(of course, if you hang round this thread, you'll have got scores etc. already)

[sul G]

Got to say, I don't know how my stuff got on Scribd, because I didn't put it there; somehow it has all the PDFs that are uploaded to Esnips - does anyone know how Scribd works?

[sul G]

Oh, and the professionally-recorded CD of the concert arrived today. I haven't listened to it yet, and of course it will contain all the snarl-ups which I've tried to get rid of in the file I created. But it may well present the bits that went well in a better light, so maybe I'll be able to make a few extracts if I think it's worth it.

[karlhenning]

Hmm, don't know aught of Scribd. (And YHM, sully!)

[sul G]

Do I? Where? 

[karlhenning]

Do I? Where? 

When you're not cold, you're [ ]

[sul G]

OK, got it! Thought you meant here... 

[greg]

Hmm, doesn't sound that way to me - just like someone coughing (1st clarinet, I think it was) and then the conductor saying 'molto vibrato' to the strings. So, if it also sounds a little fast then perhaps there's something wrong your end. I had precisely this problem on my PC a few months ago. I don't know why, and it fixed itself, but in the meantime I found that if I played files using e.g Quicktime instead of WMP then the problem disappeared. So, you could try that, just to check...

You're completely right. I'm opening it using MusicMatch Jukebox, and it sounds just right. The chipmunks were really sped up sounds of the conductor. Ah, man... sounds so much better at this tempo, too.
I've had that problem with Windows Media player before, but it wasn't exactly the same way. If you open up a certain file type- it's either FLAC or something else, it'll work but just be sped up versions of the file.

[sul G]

Good! That's a relief! Thanks for re-trying. 

[Maciek]

Just reposting some thoughts Luke has already read in a PM (with slight rewordings here and there):

I listened to Elegy and Ascent and have to say I find Ascent simply a beautiful piece. Now, beautiful is not a word I use lightly and there's really very little in contemporary music, even among the output of my favorite composers, that I would describe that way. There are lots of "fun" pieces, and "enjoyable" pieces, and "fascinating" pieces and all that. But beauty is very rare (I'm not saying it's better but... well, perhaps it actually is). And I really think your piece is beautiful, listening to it is a wonderful emotional experience (there's probably something there for the intellect as well but the piece is very moving so I don't really notice ).

This is not to say I didn't like Elegy either. But here I have trouble making out the music clearly because of the quality of the recording. There's lots of detail that I want to hear better and that sort of distracts me from actually listening to the music...  Anyway, my feelings about Elegy are different, it doesn't so much arouse my feelings as much as a sort of curiosity. So the experience is a bit more "abstract", it's more like listening to see "what will happen next".

That difference between the two movements actually makes for quite a rewarding "total" listening experience.

I can't help but feel my description is amateurish and very superficial. I wish I could say something more substantial and with more sense.

It would be great to hear Elegy and Ascent performed by an excellent orchestra! I noted that the ensemble used here had a truly exceptional pianist! No, seriously, his assured, smooth playing really stood out.

Let me just congratulate you on doing such a great job (on more count than one)!

[karlhenning]

Lovely tribute, Maciek, and Luke's music is fully worthy of it.

[Guido]

I have listened to it quite a few times now and I have to say I think both movements are very beautiful in their different ways. The first reminds me of Kurtag, especially Stele or the Grabstein - these small gestures and fragments that somehow fit together to create a far greater whole.

It's nothing like I imagined it - the dangers of MIDI I guess.

[karlhenning]

Yes, useful in some ways, MIDI is to be 'listened past'.

[sul G]

Thanks everyone for all these thoughts. Maybe it's just because I'm the composer, but to me the MIDI file, whilst obviously not 'alive', and though it lacked the all-important last few pages, was a fairly good representation of the piece. Perhaps when one isn't the composer, who has every note of the piece living in his head in any case, the MIDI is harder to 'listen past', to use Karl's words.

I have a few pieces that want to be written. Some of them are no more than instrumental ensembles (I have a long-held, persistent hankering to write a string trio, that being my favourite chamber grouping); some of them come with a few very amorphous 'sensations' attached. And one of them, the White Modulations piece I mentioned here some time in September or October last year, is more fully-formed than that. It's an orchestral piece and right now my thoughts are turning back to smaller-scale groups - but maybe I should encourage myself to think big. Certainly the idea has me hooked.

Yesterday the singing teacher at my school, who is on the board of a fine group of players called Chamber Orchestra Anglia gave a strong hint that he'd like me to write something for them - for string orchestra, to be precise. But that's the merest chink of a possibility at the moment, taken from a snatched conversation in the corridor outside the staffroom! So perhaps it would be best not to think too much about that yet....or maybe I should!

Maybe I should have a poll: should Luke write:

a) White Modulations
b) string orchestra piece
c) string trio
d) set of songs to poems by Franz Werfel
e) Cello sonata
f) something else?

Guido, I shall take your vote for e as read, shall I? 

[karlhenning]

My vote is conditional:

1.) If Chamber Orchestra Anglia demonstrate interest, then a string orchestra piece.
2.) Otherwise, White Modulations

[sul G]

Your vote has been counted and verified 

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

1) I love works for string orchestra - the almost vocal flexibility of the strings, the power and richness of the sound.

2) There can never be enough orchestral Ottevanger.

So - I go with Karl.