Henning's Headquarters

[Karl Henning]

Prompted by a Facebook post by an honored colleague (a post so complimentary, I should blush myself near into the wall if I post it here) I've been listening to the Nunc in this latest realization a couple of times, myself.  It feels like the best it's been sung to date.  Man, am I glad I wrote it : )

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

I just listened to the Nunc, too - perfection. Wonderful writing, very natural, with typically acerbic harmonic clashes that rob the music of any easy beauty. I love it. Well done!

[Karl Henning]

Thanks, Johan!

[Elgarian]

Alan, if I might be of assistance, I am keen to assist . . . but I don't want to deluge you with stuff that may be of no particular service to you in your journey.  I could post a score, and write up a few guideposts, if you'd like.  But on the whole (and even though I's the composer, and take some pride in the nuts & bolts), I don't think that conscious awareness of the mechanism(s) is any sort of pre-req for comprehension of the piece.

(There, Karl: that post must have been helpful . . . .)

That's a remarkably kind offer, Karl, but I won't take it up. Partly because I fear the technical side would go right over my head; partly because I don't want the piece to become an object of study, if you get me? (I want to experience it, not to study it); but most of all because I've now listened to it 5 or 6 times (please note there are no other pieces of music that I've listened to 5 or 6 times within the space of 24 hours in recent years), and I rather think I seem to be doing OK. That is, it starts; I listen; I am taken somewhere strange and beautiful (and it remains strange and beautiful no matter how many times I listen); then it ends, and I think, 'Gosh, that's not my territory; but it was strange and beautiful'.

After my most recent foray into Nunc Dimittis today, I listened to Muti's Scheherazade which had arrived this morning in the post. There could hardly be a greater leap of musical imagination required, though I must say there was no clear feeling of a shift in musical stature, which is interesting - even though I was moving from a very unfamiliar and somewhat alien landscape to a familiar and much-loved one. But for the Muti story, see the Rimsky thread in due course.

[Karl Henning]

 Quote from: Elgarian on Today at 01:45:02 PM

. . . partly because I don't

want the piece to become an object of study, if you get me? (I want to experience it, not to study it) 
Completely!

[Karl Henning]

Very nice lunch with C.P. Touched to learn that he remembers [what I have shown him from] White Nights very well. Last we talked of it, the idea was the string choir number (traditionally, the orchestra does one string program each season); we didn't actually confirm that.  It cannot be any sooner than the 2013-14 season (which I knew to expect).

Interesting conversation-let viz. Golijov, as NEC was part of the commissioning consortium for the eight-minute piece (C'mon, Osvaldo: such a short piece, you ought to be able to write your own stuff . . . .)

[Karl Henning]

And: the Three Pieces. Op.34 live on!

[Cato]

I'm a hopelessly inadequate listener when it comes to this sort of thing, Karl. I feel I ought to be able to understand, comment intelligently on the structure, recognise where it's all going and where it came from. I can't do any of that. So I have to stick to what I can say. I can say that I think it's beautiful even though I don't understand it, even though I feel uneasy about it; that I think I might burn it onto a CD so my wife and I can listen to it together; that it leaves me conscious of a curious mixture of beauty and puzzlement that I can't quite resolve. I have no clear idea of where I've been, or where I was going, or where I arrived at the end. The journey was a strange one, with glimpses of something like numinosity - a hint of something 'beyond' that fades in, and fades out (several times), without being graspable.

My emphasis above!

Your last sentence defines what many artists strive to achieve, but too often fail to accomplish.

[Karl Henning]

Thank you both! Wish I could say I knew how it was done, but I'm as fogged as anyone. Deeply grateful when it should happen, bien sûr.

Tangentially: I'm as big a fan of Sheherazade as any. Not meaning to fling any gauntlet, Alan, far be it from yr obt svt.

Here's an interesting factoid, especially given the present discussion . . . and I may have mentioned it before.  When I first began the formal study of composition, with Dr Jack Gallagher at the College of Wooster, probably the very first day in his studio, he assigned me Sheherazade as listening, score in hand.

[Elgarian]

Tangentially: I'm as big a fan of Sheherazade as any. Not meaning to fling any gauntlet, Alan, far be it from yr obt svt.

Here's an interesting factoid, especially given the present discussion . . . and I may have mentioned it before.  When I first began the formal study of composition, with Dr Jack Gallagher at the College of Wooster, probably the very first day in his studio, he assigned me Sheherazade as listening, score in hand.

No, no thought of gauntlets or indeed of comparisons, as such, Karl. I was just recording how it felt - that I moved from Nunc Dimittis to Scheherazade without any feeling of crossing some sort of musical boundary from 'difficult' to 'easy' (even though I was moving from 'unfamiliar' to 'very familiar') - which surprised me a bit, though I have no idea what to deduce from the observation.

[Karl Henning]

I perceive that I have not yet loaded the program of Volcanic Airborne Event onto Instant Encore. High time!

Will see if that can be done easily come Sunday . . . .

[Elgarian]

Mrs Elgarian listened to the Nunc Dimittis today (not knowing who had composed it, or why I asked her to listen). Afterwards, she said she was puzzled. There were several places where she felt it became very beautiful, but then before she could settle into it, the music seemed to abandon the beautiful passage and move off somewhere else. So at the end she felt she'd been shown some fleetingly beautiful things, but had had them whisked away prematurely each time, while not knowing why.

I mention this because it's another reaction that might interest you, Karl - but also because her description articulated some of my own reactions more accurately than I'd managed. Her musical taste is very conservative (even more so than mine). On the whole, she's a great lover of silence, but people like Wagner, Mozart, Tallis, Handel, Rameau and Elgar are allowed across her threshold when the mood is right.

[Elgarian]

Listened to it again twice this morning (8th time?). It is an extraordinary piece, and still, still, it baffles me. I seem to need to try to explain this if I can, though my mode of listening is so naiive that I don't know if I can.

A great deal of my music listening is (presumably like most people's) driven by expectation based on a pattern that I can hear relatively easily (it may takes several listenings to get the pattern in the first instance, but that's OK as long as I do get it eventually). From there on my response is fuelled by a grasp of that pattern, and what it implies about the future; then I respond either to the fulfilment of my expectation (if the music is playing 'safe'); or to the substitution of it by something unexpected but surprisingly fulfilling all the same; or to the shock of something completely unexpected that makes me see the pattern and/or its implications in a new way. There's obviously more to it all than this, but if I think about the process, these are the kinds of shifts I recognise and respond to, as I listen to most of the music I love.

You see where this is going. If I can't hear a pattern, then this sequence of expectation/fulfilment/surprise can't happen. So although I experience the radiant moments of numinosity of the Nunc Dimittis and find them beautiful, my response is more like my response to birdsong than to music. I think this means that I'm just stuck with a rather inflexible approach to listening - that is, there are certain kinds of pattern that I just don't or can't perceive, and I'm probably incapable of changing that. (Or at least, changing it would require such enormous effort that I'm not willing to make it.) The sad thing is that I think I'm only picking up the tiniest proportion of what you've actually put into the music, Karl, and that makes my comments on it of almost no value.

[Karl Henning]

My dear fellow, your comments (and Mrs Elgarian's) are of value a good deal greater than you give them credit for. It is a wonderful privilege for a composer, that someone so thoughtful should share so much of the ongoing process of apprehending the music.

In one of those curious chances, I found a Copland quote last night (don't believe I was ever aware of it before) which expresses something close to my gratitude here:

I admit to a curiosity about the slightest clue as to the meaning of a piece of mine — a meaning, that is, other than the one I know I have put there.

And here, my friend, you are offering more than a mere clue, and I thank you for welcoming me to your listening room.

[Karl Henning]

Listened to it again twice this morning (8th time?). It is an extraordinary piece, and still, still, it baffles me.

Short piece though it is, and though I'm the fellow what wrote it, there are things which baffle (or surprise, or elude) me when I listen to it, myself.

[TheGSMoeller]

Karl, thank you so much for sharing The Passion According to St. John. It is a very lovely and intimate work, incredibly affecting. I love the flow of the piece, and especially the final minutes with the solo female over the sustained voices, quite emotional. I can tell there is a lot of heart put into a piece such as this.

Also, I'm always impressed with your versatility, Out In The Sun is a favorite of mine that I love revisiting, going from that to The Passion... is very inspiring.

Bravo, my friend!

[Elgarian]

Short piece though it is, and though I'm the fellow what wrote it, there are things which baffle (or surprise, or elude) me when I listen to it, myself.

But surely the composer is permitted to feel baffled by aspects of his compositions, Karl - on the grounds that any art that's worthwhile always has components that arise from decisions that are intuitive rather then reasoned; made subconsciously, rather than consciously.

I'm wondering, though, whether I might ponder further some of the consequences of that sentence of mine about responding to it as birdsong, rather than music. Because it in turn reminded me of a comment by the potter Katherine Pleydell Bouverie, who worked in the Leach tradition of studio pottery - that is, she was inspired by the oriental tradition (particularly of the Sung dynasty). But she said, 'I want my pots to make people think people think, not of the Chinese, but of things like pebbles and shells and birds' eggs, and the stones over which moss grows.' So an essential part of responding to her art would be to accept (what Ruskin would call) its 'Naturalism'. And I've discovered over the years that 'Naturalism' (in Ruskin's penetrating and archetypal sense), can be one of the most valuable aesthetic unlocking tools we possess, when we're trying to understand an unfamiliar art form.

I'm reminded of a conversation I had with a friend who was appalled by a small abstract painting I'd bought. But what is it a painting of, he demanded? And I suggested it wasn't an helpful question to ask - it wasn't a painting 'of' anything; it was just itself. When we admire a fine oak tree, we don't ask 'what is this an oak tree of?' We just look at what it is. Well, now the boot is on the other foot, and I'm listening to the Dunc Nimittis with a question, or set of questions, that are as unhelpful to me as my friend's questions were to him. And I'm wondering now whether I should put on Ruskin's 'Naturalism' hat, and instead of blathering about how I listen to music, I might be better served by asking 'How do I listen to birdsong?'. Because when I do listen to birdsong, I'm not troubled by the irregular breaks in the predictablity of the patterns of sound - I rejoice in them. They're part of what birdsong is.

I don't know how effective this approach might be, or where it might lead me (or whether it will lead me anywhere but in circles); but I shall bear it in mind. (Of course I'm not implying that this would take me closer to your musical intentions, Karl, and I'm certainly not suggesting that you're secretly aspiring to be a birdsong-inspired composer! I'm just looking for a way of getting a firmer foothold, myself.)

[Karl Henning]

But . . . we do have parakeets in the home. Just saying . . . .

[mahler10th]

The texts which I have (probably entirely too ambitiously)  selected for the Cantata are:

I.  "The Crystalline Ship" — Leo Schulte

And so the crystalline ship has sailed,
Where you feasted on the soul's hard bread,
With the winds in league
With the seas calm or gale
The crystalline ship must sail
Somewhere
You rested in the soul's long bed,
And dreamed you were alive
On the crystalline ship
With the fish and the birds
And the cook in the galley
Sings to her ears
That water is a three-edged sword,
One for the skin and one for the bone
And one for the spirit all alone,
Who is tempted to splash and thrash
The Pacific of your mind's distress
That the crystalline ship has sailed
Somewhere
You bested the sea and split the shell
With a three-edged sword
Of pain and smiles and a wondering blue,
And now launch a vessel found only in you
Left behind by the crystalline ship.

II.  from "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity (Hymn)" — Milton

No War, or Battails sound
Was heard the World around:
The idle spear and shield were high up hung;
The hooked Chariot stood
Unstain'd with hostile blood,
The Trumpet spake not to the armed throng,
And Kings sate still with awfull eye,
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.

But peacefull was the night
Wherin the Prince of light
His raign of peace upon the earth began:
The Windes, with wonder whist,
Smoothly the waters kist,
Whispering new joyes to the milde Ocean,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While Birds of Calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.

III.  "A Cradle Song" — Blake

Sweet dreams form a shade,
O'er my lovely infants head.
Sweet dreams of pleasant streams,
By happy silent moony beams

Sweet sleep with soft down.
Weave thy brows an infant crown.
Sweet sleep Angel mild,
Hover o'er my happy child.

Sweet smiles in the night,
Hover over my delight.
Sweet smiles Mothers smiles,
All the livelong night beguiles.

Sweet moans, dovelike sighs,
Chase not slumber from thy eyes,
Sweet moans, sweeter smiles,
All the dovelike moans beguiles.

Sleep sleep happy child,
All creation slept and smil'd.
Sleep sleep, happy sleep.
While o'er thee thy mother weep

Sweet babe in thy face,
Holy image I can trace.
Sweet babe once like thee.
Thy maker lay and wept for me

Wept for me for thee for all,
When he was an infant small.
Thou his image ever see.
Heavenly face that smiles on thee,

Smiles on thee on me on all,
Who became an infant small,
Infant smiles are His own smiles,
Heaven & earth to peace beguiles.

IV.  "My Symphony" — Wm Henry Channing

To live content with small means;
To seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion;
To be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich;
To study hard, think quietly,
Talk gently,
Act frankly;
To listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart;
To bear all cheerfully,
Do all bravely,
Await occasions,
Hurry never.
In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common.

This is to be my symphony.

V.  "These, I singing in spring" — Whitman

THESE, I, singing in spring, collect for lovers,
(For who but I should understand lovers, and all their sorrow and joy?
And who but I should be the poet of comrades?)
Collecting, I traverse the garden, the world—but soon I pass the gates,
Now along the pond-side—now wading in a little, fearing not the wet,
Now by the post-and-rail fences, where the old stones thrown there, pick'd from the fields, have accumulated,
(Wild-flowers and vines and weeds come up through the stones, and partly cover them—
Beyond these I pass,)
Far, far in the forest, before I think where I go,
Solitary, smelling the earthy smell, stopping now and then in the silence,
Alone I had thought—yet soon a troop gathers around me,
Some walk by my side, and some behind, and some embrace my arms or neck,
They, the spirits of dear friends, dead or alive—thicker they come, a great crowd, and I in the middle,
Collecting, dispensing, singing in spring, there I wander with them,
Plucking something for tokens—tossing toward whoever is near me;
Here! lilac, with a branch of pine,
Here, out of my pocket, some moss which I pull'd off a live-oak in Florida, as it hung trailing down,
Here, some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage,
And here what I now draw from the water, wading in the pondside,
(O here I last saw him that tenderly loves me—and returns again, never to separate from me,
And this, O this shall henceforth be the token of comrades—this Calamus-root shall,
Interchange it, youths, with each other! Let none render it back!)
And twigs of maple, and a bunch of wild orange, and chestnut,
And stems of currants, and plum-blows, and the aromatic cedar:
These, I, compass'd around by a thick cloud of spirits,
Wandering, point to, or touch as I pass, or throw them loosely from me,
Indicating to each one what he shall have—giving something to each;
But what I drew from the water by the pond-side, that I reserve,
I will give of it—but only to them that love, as I myself am capable of loving.

Where is this Cantata Karl?  I would like to hear my favourite quotation (Channing) put to music, and I would sure like to hear your accompaniment to Leos poem.  Have you posted this somewhere?

[Karl Henning]

That's a work-in-progress yet, John. Still thinking about the scoring in fact.