Henning's Headquarters

[Karl Henning]

Oh, I neglected to report that Peter Bloom and his Aardvark Jazz Orchestra colleague Dan Zupan are getting together to read Waiting on the Italian Paperwork this Tuesday. They've invited me to "coach" them, though I'm sure they'll get on fine with little interference from me.

[Karl Henning]

[Karl Henning]

This will certainly sound much better in actual performance.

[Karl Henning]

Cross-post. At last, a "repaired" video:

[Karl Henning]

Well, on one hand, I haven't composed anything for a week (say) but, I've gotten those uploads done. Productive.

[Karl Henning]

My piece for soprano and [not-quite-Pierrot] ensemble, commissioned for the Kerouac Centenary. Sung by the astonishing Rose Hegele.

[Karl Henning]

YouTube cued this up for me just now:

Oh, I am proud of this piece.

[Karl Henning]

Had completely forgotten about this bagatelle.

[Cato]

Random revisitation courtesy of YouTube. The text is by our @Cato

Here is the text:

Transformed,
Novembering the bells of God's soul,
Encased,
Unraveling cocoons of vile days,
I knew the purpose of my life.

Evil,
Dictatormenting the hells of my soul
Unswayed,
By slaughtering the worms of vile ways,
I knew the purpose of my strife.

That young girl,
A walking husk burned and enslaved
And burning with future dreams of limbs
gray and bleached!
Can you see her?

That young girl,
A desert rock boiled and despoiled
And boiling with daggered teeth and hands
Weird and wild!
Do you know her?
 
The desert men in the ancient robes
With modern tools for killing,
Burned and murdered the ancient town
Whose modern fools were willing
To believe their promises of mercy.

One desert man in an ancient robe
Sought young girls here for pilling.
Scorned, he captured one certain girl
With soul and mind unwilling
To believe his promises of mercy.

Branded the boys, banded the girls,
For the master lay in silk
With desires for skin of milk,
And the maidens must still his thirst.

Whipping the boys, stripping the girls,
And the maidens cried in vain,
In the tent a man inane
Had a dagger to change their wills.

A maiden of the north,
Of unyielding will,
Spirit of unchanging stone,
And a stone of unchanging spirit,
Remains a cave unknown.
Can you see her?

This diamond of the north,
Of undying strength,
Sneering at unbridled lust,
And a lust of unbridled sneering,
Awaits a time of trust.
Do you know her?

But the master must be obeyed!
To yield she will be made!
Beaten and racked and racked and beaten,
The diamond is cut for the master's hand,
Savaged and clubbed and clubbed and savaged,
The maiden has left for the spirit's land.

For the maiden must be amazed
By worlds that she has raised!
Golden and saved and saved and golden,
The diamond is free from the master's hand,
Savaged and clubbed and clubbed and savaged,
The maiden now lives in the spirit's land.

Fury failed to sway the girl:
Kindness, thought the man,
Will force her body to unfurl,
Kindness, thought the man
Will force her spirit to uncurl,
And then the world is right!

Kindness then the girl did hear,
Trickster, thought the girl,
I'll bring my body to his ear,
Kindness, thought the man,
Has to the maiden made me dear,
And now the world is right!

The dictator of the sands,
Tormentor and master of closed young belles
Now gasps to see the girl's legs smile,
And the maiden holds her breath,
As her legs so swift and with grim delight
Clamp and choke and strangle his neck,
While the maiden holds her breath,
The dictator of the sands,
Tormentor and master of closed young shells
Now gasps to stay alive and scream,
But the maiden brings him death.

Freedom is born from evil's demise,
Purpose is born from freedom:
In the robes of the dead man,
The prince of the sands,
The girl escaped the hands
Of the slavers.

Courage is born from evil's demise,
Constant the need for vengeance,
With the ax of her new soul,
The queen of the sands,
The girl did break the bands
Of the captives.

Roaming the desert and questing for evil,
With knives and fire and guns and ropes
The Great Protector
Did stab and burn and shoot and hang
The demons dancing around her.

Freeing the captives while questing for evil,
With sharks in heart and hands of knives
The Great Protector
Did hunt and stalk and clutch and slay
The devils killing around her.

Saving others,
Cleansing the desert,
Did she save and cleanse herself?
Sisters and brothers,
I am now alone,
I am

Transformed,
Novembering the bells of God's soul,
Encased,
Unraveling cocoons of vile days,
I am the purpose of my life.

Evil,
Dictatormenting the hells of my soul
Unswayed,
By slaughtering the worms of vile ways,
I am the purpose of my soul.


Here follows my essay on his marvelous musical elucidation of my poem: see the score below.

Karl Henning's chamber song From the Pit of a Cave in the Cloud is a poem based upon a "soliloquy" in my novel From the Caves of the Cloud.  I believe the poem stands alone, but since Karl has read the novel, he has a deeper understanding of the narrator.

Karl also knows that I have a theory that the music for a text can become the text's unconscious, a symbolic maelstrom of the text's secrets and drives. Whether he agrees with this idea or not, his brilliant music acts as much more than an accompaniment to the singer's melodies and an elucidation of the text's emotional content.

As an example of the richness of Karl's conception, listen to the very first bar, where the bass flute and the soprano recorder have motifs which almost mirror each other.  Keeping in mind the exotic, faraway desert story in the text, these motifs, and others to come, have a melismata-like aspect to evoke that atmosphere.  Their 5-for-4 figures will be very important throughout the work.  The quasi-A minor aspect of these motifs is accompanied by a quasi-D minor in the flute and horn. The flute offers its own melismatic quality with a 7:8 figure, itself a variation on the bass flute's opening 5:4 figure.  With all the instruments in counterpoint, the effect is idiosyncratic: if one took away the flute, one would have a nearly neo-classical opening, but with the addition of the flute, we have instead something quite original and even combative, in keeping with the unsettling nature of what is to come.

In the soprano's opening line (bars 5-8), listen to how the note D dominates the melody, and with the longest notes given to C, Bb, and Eb, the latter note creating a kind of "double minor" effect.  The flute and recorder offer a variation of the opening bar: the slower rhythmic irregularities in the soprano's line mirror the ones in these instruments, and thereby one senses the tension in this instrumental "unconscious," which was emphasized earlier in bars 2-4 by the horn's refusal to form an octave or perfect fifth with the others, until, after the silence, it and the bass flute play the fifth G-D on the word "Transformed," as if the silence had caused a transformation of consonance from the dissonant chord in bar 4.  This consonant transformation will prove to be fleeting.  Also note how the instrumental music mirrors the soprano's motif for "Transformed, Novembering the bells of God's soul."

A diminished fifth is heard in the voice several times on key words: "cocoons" (bars 11-12), "vile days" (bar 13), "dictatormenting" (bars 20-21), and "vile ways" (bars 29-30, 33-34).  Perhaps the most striking, gasp-inducing effect is in bars 39-40, where the soprano's 5:4 16th-notes on "strife" offer a connection back to the bass flute's opening 5:4 8th notes.  Strife, we realize now, began the song, and promises to continue through it.

Keep in mind that the diminished fifth, or tritone, was once referred to as "diabolus in musica" (i.e. the devil in music) by theorists.  The interval continues to be seen e.g. in the bass flute line (bars 41-47).  In Letter C, listen to how the tenor recorder and voice echo the opening bar, but in a rhythmic variation, and how the quasi D minor is back.  Note also the tension in pausing on the word "future" in bar 49, and then starting with "future" on bar 52, the 3:2 figure and the figure on "gray" in bar 54 both echoing the tenor recorder's forte comment in bar 49.  Such devices give the music a self-referential and very tight structure.  One might be singing of "future dreams" which can seem vague and amorphous, but their music has a definite map!

Another fine example of how tonality is not completely forsaken is heard in bars 63-67 in the bass flute, where E major triplets contrast with G minor ones, an F# minor grouping interrupts in bar 66, until the singer's line "Do you know her?" ends on G minor, the flattened A giving the effect of a "double minor" sound as with the Eb in the earlier pages.

In Letter D, the text describes the arrival of "the desert men" and their violence, and so the horn and the tenor recorder begin an odd kind of march in 8th notes, often in descending triplets.  This downward marching idea is later heard in key phrases from the soprano: bar 78 has the notes Eb-C-A (note the tritone!) for "in the an-(cient)," bar 82 has "for killing" using C#-Bb-A, and bar 83 uses the same notes for the words "and murdered."  The faraway nature of the desert is exemplified by the melismatas which often use triplets, e.g. bars 78-79 for "ancient robes," bar 84 on again "ancient," bars 85-86 on "modern" (N.B. the same Eb-C-A for "whose mo-dern"), and again 94-96 for "in an ancient robe."

But the vocal line contains some marvelous subtleties! It attempts to stay in a quasi- A minor, but now C# and D# often invade, joining the Bb (e.g. bars 83-84). The horn in fact began Letter D on C# (Ab=Db=C#) in bar 72, and its first triplet in bar 75 uses D#-C#-Bb.  So when the soprano sings bars 78-80, 83-84, and 87-88, the C# and D# are tense and exotic additions to the score.  The flute and piccolo offer echoes, presages, and variations in their lines, as well as punctuating C# and D# (e.g. bars 83-84, 87-88).  The singer has an echo herself in bars 87-88, an echo of the opening (bars 6-7): listen to those three notes C#-Bb-A in "fools were willing to believe," with the voice rising a tritone from A to D#, complete with a melismata on the last syllable of "believe."  Perfection!

And then the vocal line becomes ever more chromatic, with slithery minor seconds emphasized, until a long melismata, again on the word "believe" (bar 105), leads to the dissonant climax on "mercy" (bar 110).  The dissonant background in Letters H and I properly lend unpleasant color to an unpleasant part of the story.  In Letter J, the unyielding character of the "maiden of the north" is symbolized by a chanting adherence to the note B, and then rising in tension to D# in bars 128-141.  And listen to how the vocal line keeps the maiden's stubbornness symbolized by tightly hovering around one note in bars 152-162, which will be heard again in bars 185-193.  The tonality is now in the area of G minor, and we hear this, complete with a tritone, in bars 164-167, and 169-172.

The flute's figurations in Letter P remind one of the earlier dialogue between the horn and the recorder in Letters E and F.  Of interest is how the figurations stop on the words "her spirit to uncurl," and how the word "uncurl" is placed on B (bars 213-214), the note symbolizing the girl's refusal to surrender.  The nervously happy triplets return, and, in a great mark of irony, the note B returns in a B major ending to the section in bars 236-238 on the words "and the world is right."

The world is not right, however, despite the desert master's hopes, and the Flutterzunge effect (Letters S and T) for his demise between the girl's legs is highly unsettling, even weird, as if the execution is being observed by birds from another planet.  Music from earlier returns in Letter U, compare bars 75 ff. with bars 262 ff., and the word "evil" is emphasized in a variation of earlier motifs (e.g. compare "with soul" bars 102-103).  I was particularly struck by the descending motif for the words "Purpose is born from freedom" in a quasi-G minor in bars 268-269, which contrasts with the ascending motif for "I knew the purpose of my life" in bars 14-16.  There is also in bars 268-269 a disturbing reference to bars 80-82 and the words "with modern tools for killing" (q.v.), for the new-found freedom from the slavers will not be used to escape far away, but to execute the slavers for their crimes.  And again, in a marvelous bit of aural symbolism, listen to the notes for the word "hands" in bar 275 ("the hands of the slavers") with the notes for "evil" in bar 265. 

These examples show what I meant by the music creating an "unconscious" for the text.

Bars 284-286 bring back our death-dealing friends C#-Bb-A (see bars 82-83) for the words "for vengeance" and "with the ax" and again in bars 290-291 for "girl did break the bands..."  And now, with the slaves freed, the horn calls in Letters Y and Z announce that vengeance is on the march, an ironic reminder of the slavers on the march in bars 111-113.





 

[Karl Henning]

There's a chance it (the Op. 169n no. 12) may be done.

Just got a msg from Eric:
Hi Karl,

I started working on this yesterday, and I like it very much!

I'm curious what your original intention was regarding the performance situation for this. Unfortunately, since I work in a small church where the congregation isn't very musically sophisticated, I'm afraid it would terrify all the old ladies ("both male and female", as Charles Ives once said), because it's so dissonant. That is not a complaint! As I said, I think it's a great piece, and can't wait to have it learned! Did you intend it for service use? Recital use? Both? When I have it learned, I'll play it for the pastor for her take. She sometimes pleasantly surprises me! I've never played a full organ recital, but have thought about doing so for a long time now. Maybe this piece will be the critical spur!

[Karl Henning]

Peter Bloom (right) and fellow Aardvark Jazz Orchestra member Dan Zupan (left) read my two flute/alto saxophone duets: I Dreamt of Reconciliation and Harmony and Waiting on the Italian Paperwork (Throwing Vermicelli at the Wall) this morning. Almost more than either the music itself or hearing it in rehearsal, I enjoyed how much fun the two of them were having with the pieces. I'm not sure just when or where they may play them, but they certainly mean to.

[Karl Henning]

This is the start of a piece called August Haze for flute unaccompanied, which I've decided to compose for Delores August, vrouw van Mijnheer Robert Jan August. This will be Opus 181.

[Karl Henning]

This is the start of a piece called August Haze for flute unaccompanied, which I've decided to compose for Delores August, vrouw van Mijnheer Robert Jan August. This will be Opus 181.

I've written it out to about three minutes now. I'm planning for it to be a seven-minute piece. I may possibly have other, transformative plans for it, but I'll finish this piece first. 

[Pohjolas Daughter]

I've written it out to about three minutes now. I'm planning for it to be a seven-minute piece. I may possibly have other, transformative plans for it, but I'll finish this piece first.

"...other transformative plans"....ooooh! 

PD

[Karl Henning]

About five minutes, now.

[Karl Henning]

I thought I was done for the day, but no, I reopened the toolbox this afternoon.

[Karl Henning]

About five minutes, now.

Long time ago, when I was a green composer, I would generally do some "pre-compositional work" at the outset. Overall, I did quite a bit to (we might put it) manage materials. I don't say that I've entirely given over 'material management.' but there came a time where I was pretty comfortable letting the material do pretty much as I perceived that it wished. I did quite a bit of work on the piece yesterday, and this morning's work brought the piece (as noted above) to the five-minute mark. As I downed tools, I wondered if it really was a piece of music, or if I was just slinging notes onto the staff. I left the house for a brief but pleasantly sociable outing in Somerville, and I lost all sense of that nagging question. I wasn't planning to do any more work, yet, once I was settled back home, I resumed work. I 've finished the piece, and I do think it is music.

[Cato]

Long time ago, when I was a green composer, I would generally do some "pre-compositional work" at the outset. Overall, I did quite a bit to (we might put it) manage materials. I don't say that I've entirely given over 'material management.' but there came a time where I was pretty comfortable letting the material do pretty much as I perceived that it wished. I did quite a bit of work on the piece yesterday, and this morning's work brought the piece (as noted above) to the five-minute mark. As I downed tools, I wondered if it really was a piece of music, or if I was just slinging notes onto the staff. I left the house for a brief but pleasantly sociable outing in Somerville, and I lost all sense of that nagging question. I wasn't planning to do any more work, yet, once I was settled back home, I resumed work. I 've finished the piece, and I do think it is music.

Let me assure you: the piece has a definite and intriguing form!

First, August Haze is a great title: all kinds of interpretations!

The ear catches intervals of fourths and especially diminished fifths in the line as a motif of sorts, giving things a contemplative yet slightly disquieting air, from e.g. Bars 1 and 5 to Bar 82 and all the way to the end (Bars 100, 105-106).  That motif alone - and its assorted variations (e.g. Bars 75 - 76) - serve to unify everything, although other items e.g. the 5:4 sections help that purpose as well.

I have already told Karl that August Haze is an excellent soliloquy both playful and poignant!

I may possibly have other, transformative plans for it, but I'll finish this piece first.

"...other transformative plans"....ooooh! 

PD

Before I saw that "transformative" comment, I had written to Karl that the piece offers the seeds of a concerto!  😇

[Karl Henning]

I've written it out to about three minutes now. I'm planning for it to be a seven-minute piece. I may possibly have other, transformative plans for it, but I'll finish this piece first.

I actually formed two such plans, the first thought I had was to "build it out" into a piece for the Henning ensemble, adding a second flute and (with two prospective members in mind) saxophone and double bass. The second thought which crashed upon me was to use it as a kind of cantus firmus and build it out for a chamber orchestra. Kind of the first thought only bigger still. I've made a start.

[Karl Henning]

I actually formed two such plans, the first thought I had was to "build it out" into a piece for the Henning ensemble, adding a second flute and (with two prospective members in mind) saxophone and double bass. The second thought which crashed upon me was to use it as a kind of cantus firmus and build it out for a chamber orchestra. Kind of the first thought only bigger still. I've made a start.

I think I'll lose the timpani right off, there being a chance that an orchestra which does not have the resources may be interested.