Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost

[Luke]

Re The Lamb - feel free to pass it on, I'm glad you think it suitable. I wrote it for children, however, so it's a very simple, naive and cossettingly-harmonised sort of thing, not very rigorous at all in any respect. And re your email - as I wrote it for 'private' performance by the children to their parents it's probably simply the case that I forgot to add a metronome mark, knowing that I'd be playing the piano myself. However, being by me, it is of course fairly slow and not at all bound to the metronome. Lyrical, intimate... see what sounds right. One more thing - my fault in score layout but I intended it for three single voices, with the two lower ones supporting the solo one on top. But I am sure a well-balanced choral reading would work just as well, or more so. You could even put more voices on the top line, too, except perhaps where it seems best to retain its solo character.

Re the other... you are a brave man...

[Karl Henning]

The "mission" of Triad is primarily to present the music of living composers, music written in the past 25 years;  secondarily to bring new music into the community.  Along those lines, we like not only to sing challenging music which requires dandy singers    but also music which may be suited to groups of younger voices, to break down any age barrier to new music.  Another aspect is . . . one of the "problems" which the Rep Committee faces is how to craft a program with flow and variety, and we wind up reading a great many scores which, good though they may be, trend to slow, sustained, sweet choral sound.  Now, on the one hand, those descriptors are no great distance from The Lamb  . . . but on the other, there is the characteristic fluid Ottevanger piano accompaniment which is distinct from anything else we've read; and too, we like to find a couple of pieces for either women only or men.

I'm not saying this is the most representative Ottevanger score to float by the Rep Committee, but I think it lovely, and I think that others on the Committee will take a liking to it (and at the least, it will get the name Ottevanger before their eyes, and lodged in their musical consciousness).

I still encourage you to cook up something new!  And knowing your Bartok & Chisholm affinities, I'd especially invite something lively and rhythmic, which (per the Committee's perennial challenge, as detailed above) the group would be especially likely to seize upon.  Witness our recent concert opener:

http://www.youtube.com/v/31b5Ur3pimQ

As to my alleged bravery, I knew that BEWARE OF THE SHEEP was a sign, and the payoff was gratifying.

[Cato]

Hooray for a new Ottevanger work!  The Lamb will undoubtedly be an all-around fave.   

That it was intended for children can only be to its credit!  At such moments I am always reminded of the ending of Magister Ludi (Das Glasperlenspiel) by Hermann Hesse, where at the end the main character, the greatest intellectual of his era, decides to tutor a small child as his vocation.

[Karl Henning]

And I apologize if I have made myself tedious with sharing the Pseudo Yoik video!  It's just that it was such great fun to sing . . . .

[Cato]

And I apologize if I have made myself tedious with sharing the Pseudo Yoik video!  It's just that it was such great fun to sing . . . .

Speaking of "Yoik!"

https://www.youtube.com/v/nXXpqMSNevE

[Karl Henning]

Speaking of "Yoik!"

https://www.youtube.com/v/nXXpqMSNevE

Irresponsible forestry!

[Karl Henning]

As with our Cato's MSS., the content is both rich and agile enough (only part of why I find the reading readily engaging) that, given my less-than-ideal practice of fleetingly episodic dips into the (virtual) pages, I often doubt my grasp of certain mechanical detail ... but is the first item of classical music mentioned--lingered over in detail, I had better say--in pianissimo the Mendelssohn? A wonderful combination of geographically apt (of course) and, because of my present Sonata-dom, an incidental chuckle thinking of Saul ....

Oh!--and let me ask afresh for an Authorized Version of the  Canticle Sonata! For there will be more than one pianist I can play together with, and I am keen to present your piece, and fold it into my repertory.

[Luke]

...but is the first item of classical music mentioned--lingered over in detail, I had better say--in pianissimo the Mendelssohn? A wonderful combination of geographically apt (of course) and, because of my present Sonata-dom, an incidental chuckle thinking of Saul ....

On page 65 or thereabouts? Yes, it is. It's not a piece with any more significance than that it begins to open Vicky's eyes a little, as later in the paragraph. And yes, as I wrote it I was aware of the spirit of Saul watching, misunderstanding, and nodding in approval.

That sonata - yes, it will be done, I find it tricky to pin down the last few bars, that's all!

[Karl Henning]

On page 65 or thereabouts? Yes, it is.

Whew!

And thank you, viz. the Canticle Sonata!

[Luke]

Whew!

Was it not clear? I can rewrite...

And re the sonata - no, thank you!

[Karl Henning]

Was it not clear? I can rewrite...

Perfectly clear, fret not!

[Karl Henning]

Now on p.437 ... will Finn make one trip to the well too many?... 

[Karl Henning]

"I've just come down from the Isle of Skye . . . ."

http://www.youtube.com/v/q2fizeoT22g

[Karl Henning]

Just had a nice chat with Luke (yesterday), all is well, just on the busy side.

[Cato]

For those who remember Luke Ottevanger and his wonderful music, his wife reports that he has been writing a book on "composers and place."

It could be published later this year (?).

[Cato]

For an example to new(er) people of Luke Ottevanger's abilities:

 http://www.mediafire.com/download/inyninnzgci/Elegy+and+Ascent+-+almost+listenable+version.mp3

[Cato]

From 2012:

   

"With Luke Ottevanger's approval: you will need to have a copy of the music and the performance for the full effect:

Around Fern Hill Score

    - Score

    Performance of Around Fern Hill

    - Performance

    Cato's Analysis of Around Fern Hill

     
 

A Walk Around the Music of Around Fern Hill


    If you ever had any doubts about the major-minor system's ability to retain its emotional power, then you must listen to Luke Ottevanger's Around Fern Hill. 

    While the work is not written with a specific key, its opening bars dance in a major-key field toying with the ear in various major scales.  One hears the note G ascending over 4 octaves at the start of the work, which begins with a triplet, a rhythmical figure of great importance throughout the composition.  With the exception of a constant C# in the opening bars, we are in white-key land, with whiffs of G major and, thanks to that C#, A and E major.  In bar 3 the triplet descends (G6 – A5 – A4 (the numbers refer to the octaves)) to give us one of those fleeting hints of a major scale (A-E-C#-A).  But these are only whiffs, as the composer has no intention of allowing us to linger for long in such a deluding land.

    I should mention at this point that I first "listened" mentally to the work from the score alone, and had no idea that the title came from a poem.  Deducing that the markings ("Stanza I") meant that the composer obviously had a poem in mind as the background for a particular section, I simply concentrated on the story which the music told by itself, and discovered the composer's source of inspiration only at the end, where the poem appears in full at the bottom of the last page.  Certainly the music alone provides a powerful experience of emotional mystery.

    And that mystery begins to arrive in various ways: with our ears accustomed to a tentative brightness in the ambiguity of these major keys, the composer also grants us music of a slow contemplative nature with the chiming, ticking rhythms of bells and clocks (which will persist, with increasing difficulty and dissonance, as the piece tells its tale).  Yet our contemplation is disturbed by the nature of the meter (7/8) and by the music insisting on assorted arrhythmic arpeggios (bars 3-5).  Finally in bars 6-19 we hear in 3/8 the tolling of bells in the distance (the chord E-B-E followed by an A and D-G) in the left hand, while the right hand "dances" merrily in the churchyard with triplets of various kinds.

    But in bar 20 things become ominous: the rhythmic complexity in the dance increases, with dissonant major 2nds appearing.  The leaping G's from the opening 2 bars reappear, as does that descending triplet (G6 – A5 – A4) in bar 22, which ends with another ascending triplet (G3 – A4 – B5).  Bar 23 gives us a quick B-minor hint of a severe change in mood, as an F# appears for the first time with the C#: and then the shock of bar 24!  That single F#, a simple semitone lower than G, heard alone at first, becomes the root of a minor-ninth chord (F#-D-B-F), whose sudden emotional impact is Gesualdoan, similar to the famous chord used by Arnold Schoenberg in Pelleas und Melisande (at Cue 8, p. 16 of the study score) where an F natural underlies a first inversion D minor triad with a G# spread over several octaves.

    The appearance of the F# has added a melancholy, if not ominous, atmosphere to the music (bars 25-30), which attempts to keep dancing up and down a quasi-G scale (with that augmented 4th C# ).  But the F# is now in the bass, at times with the C#, and prevents a major mood from taking over.  As proof that dissonance can be very poignant, listen to the tolling continue (bars 30-38) with a syncopated and divided G major 7th chord against a C#-E# in the bass: and is that dance on the quasi G-scale now more of a C# minor experience?  A 3-note motif (F#-D-F) provides more tonal and emotional ambiguity, and leads back to the dueling dance of scales (G vs. C#).

    At bar 39, the music attempts to "play" in 5/8 time, but with ever more pain or bewilderment, and leads into a variation of bars 30-38.  The divided and syncopated G-major 7th chord now rings against an F-B-D in the bass, and that 3-note motif now descends directly (Gb-F-E, bar 45) rather relentlessly.  The opening octave leaping triplet returns at the end of bar 50, but now descends down 3 C naturals to announce a transition to a new tension between C and the C#.

    For above the triplet-dominated, wandering-the-hill music on modes of E and C#, a melismatic theme on C arises in the treble, a theme masked and hinted at in the previous sections (e.g. the theme in bars 25-26, in the middle voice in bars 32-38, and then in the treble in bars 39-43).  Now unadorned, the theme emphasizes C, with Bb at first the only point of interference, and with the time expanding by a single 16th note over bars 51-54, the theme rises to G, only to be joined unexpectedly in a cluster with E#/F#.  It is as if the tolling sounds in the background have now chosen to speak directly: at times a ding-dong-ding pattern of three is heard, as in those earlier 3-note motifs of F#-D-F and Gb-F-E.  Grace notes echoing the opening triplet are heard throughout the bass in this section (bars 50-62).  Diminished 5th sounds in the bass (C-F#, E-Bb) prevent any rest, and provide a point of comparison, as the opening G modality is now changing to octaves of C# in bars 55-56.  Conflicting with the C# is the melismatic C/Bb theme in the middle voice, ending on D in bars 59-60, despite the tremolos on C# echoing around, and a punctuating E/F high in the treble.

    And then a pause, and again the leaping triplet appears, now on C natural, and the time has changed from 7/16 to 7/8.  But by bars 64-65, the triplet now intones the C/C# (now spelled Db because of an Ab tonality in the left hand) tension, and the melismatic theme attempts a return in a variation in the treble.  A flourish on Eb minor ambles by, and then the tolling of diminished fifths with the Ab-Eb accompanies a long melisma on a C scale, a sort of double minor with a Db and Gb.  The melisma often uses triplets in keeping with the rhythmic motif established in the first bar, and hearkens backward to the "dancing" heard in bars 9-22: and so bars 63-77 can be heard as a shorter, more dissonant version of the opening 24 bars, where the shock of the single F# in bar 24 is now replaced by an Ab pentad (Ab-Bb-Db-Eb-G) with a high C echoing away. 

    In bar 78 the triplet figure descends to announce a sort of B mode, and we now hear a variation of the earlier part of the work (bars 25 ff.), but with more stumbling around the hill (compare bar 26 with bar 80), and more anguish: compare that earlier, insistent 3-note motif of F#-D-F with its variation in bars 86-87 as F#-D-Eb/F, and listen to the tolling transform into clusters, with minor seconds sprinkled about (e.g. bars 81, 93-95).  The 5/8 section (bars 93-97) is very similar to its earlier appearance (bars 39-43) In bar 99 ff., the 3-note motif, now changed to Gb-F-E in the middle voice, struggles against an Eb ninth in the bass and a painfully chiming G major 7th chord with an added C above it.

    The 3-note motif is also emphasized in subtle, almost unconscious ways in the middle voice: listen e.g. to bars 104-105, where the middle voice begins its triplets with E-Gb-F, while bars 106-107 begin with Gb-F-E and E-F-Gb respectively.

    And as clusters of notes reach upward in the treble (bar 109), perhaps as symbols of desperate, useless clutching at the surface of the water of memory, the gravity in the bass reveals a swallowing sea, using that diminished 5th  of G-C# from the opening as a tremolo leading to a deep G/A finale, while the last manifestation of our poor 3-note motif is heard in the middle voice.  Seven notes ring out in the final bars, from that G/A in the bass to an E/F in the treble, not unlike the finale of Schoenberg's Erwartung,  where the music both descends and rises to "swallow" the character at the end.

    I mentioned to the composer that the use of the "scratchy" recording of the poem reminded me of the unusual novels of W.G. Sebald, who often included fuzzy, "faraway" photos to accompany his themes of lost memories.  The result is that the work is successful on various levels: the music could stand alone without the poem, in the same way that the poem has stood alone.  Yet together one experiences a quite different third dimension of meaning, as if the music were the poem's deepest unconscious.

    Finally, the title of the music is Around Fern Hill, and may explain many of the circling figurations in the music, as if these and the other motifs and themes are the sounds when one walks around Fern Hill.


Addendum: Google Books has a preview of The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald, an example to illuminate my comment above.


http://books.google.com/books?id=m5Kgh-3OVBYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=W.G.+Sebald&hl=en#v=onepage&q=W.G.%20Sebald&f=false

Addendum from 2023: one can ask not only where Fern Hill might be...

...one might also ask who Fern Hill might be!   

[Luke]

For those who remember Luke Ottevanger and his wonderful music, his wife reports that he has been writing a book on "composers and place."

It could be published later this year (?).

Next year, but otherwise, yes. Of the book, more later. I think its subject matter will interest some people on this board. But as far as explanation for my six (?) year absence from GMG go (and Leo, you are responsible for luring me back in) the operative paragraphs are these. Please pay particular attention to the words in bold:

Sometime in 2011 I wrote a piece of music for what turned out to be the last time. Stopping composing was not a choice but simply a fact: the flow of fantasy and invention that composition requires had been dried up by the exigencies and stresses of everyday life. 

...

Not being able to compose began as a sorrow, a kind of grieving, but it developed into something of a physical pain. The mental blockage had no outlet; the pent-up creative urge had nowhere to go. A vicious circle was created, one in which stress and anxiety were both the cause and the result of my composer's block. I began to feel a sense of deep shame in myself for having lost my creative abilities. I retreated and retired from online musical discussion groups in which I had taken so much joy and stimulation over the years. Slowly, awfully, disgracefully, I cut off contact with kind and generous musical friends because I felt too much shame in having to repeatedly report on nothing but a constant lack of compositional success. Wounded by my own failure, I isolated myself—and failed worse than ever. 

All requiring editing, but you get the gist.

Good to see you all 

[Karl Henning]

Next year, but otherwise, yes. Of the book, more later. I think its subject matter will interest some people on this board. But as far as explanation for my six (?) year absence from GMG go (and Leo, you are responsible for luring me back in) the operative paragraphs are these. Please pay particular attention to the words in bold:

All requiring editing, but you get the gist.

Good to see you all 

Warmly reciprocated.

[Karl Henning]

Stopping composing was not a choice but simply a fact: the flow of fantasy and invention that composition requires had been dried up by the exigencies and stresses of everyday life. 

I get it. I have not felt much motivation to compose for some little while.