Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost

[lukeottevanger]

You can on the CD, at any rate. It's a surprisingly loud sound, a combination of bass drum (in deep resonance) and tam-tam (in rich harmonics).

(The sudden activation of all possible piano harmonics also sounds quite 'spooky' - when teaching beginners the piano it's good fun to include this effect at some point along the way when demonstrating the little 'haunted house' type pieces that usually crop up when they reach A minor. I once managed to make the pupil scream and fall off her chair with a well placed pedal accent  Well, you have to do something to enliven the boredom  )

Guido, it's from near the end of the second section of the piece - the trumpet hits a D flat, as you see; the music then focusses on this D flat, then D flat + G, before subsiding to that startling page where Benjamin tries to find ever quieter sounds - ping pong ball dropped in a glass; newspaper ripped at ever decreasing volumes. This in turn leads into those haunting chords which start the third movement.

[lukeottevanger]

I doubt you can actually hear that properly in that situation.

No, I must give you credit - I thought you could hear it clearly (as I just said, though when I said 'it's a surprisingly loud sound' I wasn't specifically meaning here but as a general effect), but listening back to check it's not as clear as I'd remembered, though you can make it out. This is partly because the tempo is so quick here that the piano thud simply becomes 'one' with the thud of the pizzicati in the strings.

[lukeottevanger]

The most remarkable example of this I can think of is in that famous recording of Part's Fur Alina by Alexander Malter, but this is not in the score of course.

BTW, I don't have that recording - where does this audible pedaling happen? It could be done so as to make a sort of sense, I think - this piece, in itself a highly significant one, has one of the most 'significant' pedal markings I know of, and it would make sense to make this even more audible to the listener. It's a pedal release though, not a depressing of the pedal.

[Guido]

The peddle sound happens at the end of the second to last line.

[lukeottevanger]

Thought so - that makes sense. As I said, this is a significant piece - Part's first tintinabular work (though not  purely so) and also the work with which he broke his compositional silence of a few years. And the pedal lift at the end of the penultimate line is also significant in that it marks the end of the pattern-making of the music till this point (phrases increasing by one note each time, then decreasing), and in that it's where Part choses to gently-but-firmly disrupt the tintinabuli 'T voice' (triad voice, left hand) with a C#. Part obviously felt the beauty and weight of this C# and the pedal lift that reinforces it deeply - he marked the manuscript with a flower at this point. So it doesn't seem wrong to me that a performer should choose to lightly emphasize the moment somehow as you describe.

[greg]

Well, listening to Elegy and Ascent was quite an experience. A very original sound world to me- the only thing like it that i can think of is something contemporary by Ades- although i wouldn't be surprised if it was also influenced by George Benjamin (and not just the effect), though i've never heard his music.......

i suppose you wanted a real tam-tam sound in MIDI..... if the program you used doesn't have it, that makes me feel horrible since i've written for the instrument but have had to use the sound for cymbals only, because they don't have a sound for tam-tam.

The bass drum sound REALLY nice- is that the standard sound? What I do in Noteworthy, for an orchestral bass drum sound (instead of drum kit), is something i learned from opening a midi file on the internet- in fact, it's the last movement of Mahler's 10th, and you really need a good sound for that.
this is what i do: use the taiko drum setting, the write a cluster in the bass clef. E F G A is good enough. There's no comparison.....

I wonder if such a thing could be done with the tam-tam sound? I might have to experiment with that........ 

[Symphonien]

...I'd imagine that a composer such as e.g. Lachenmann (about whom I have little knowledge), who shares Sciarrino's interest in usually-ignored sounds would use this technique too ....

Just wanted to chime in to confirm here that Lachenmann does indeed make use of the depressing of the pedal in Ein Kinderspiel (Child's Play), specifically the 7th piece "Schattentanz / Shadow Dance". The piece consists of an insistent rhythm using only the top two notes over a cluster of strings held open in the lowest octave of the piano for resonance. Towards the end, the rhythm degenerates into a series of isolated attacks accompanied by bashing the pedal simultaneously, then just the pedal by itself repeated ad lib. The last page of the score is attached.

A video on Youtube of a pianist playing the first (Hänschen klein) and last (Schattentanz) pieces of this set can be seen here.

[lukeottevanger]

Well, listening to Elegy and Ascent was quite an experience. A very original sound world to me- the only thing like it that i can think of is something contemporary by Ades- although i wouldn't be surprised if it was also influenced by George Benjamin (and not just the effect), though i've never heard his music.......

Thanks, Greg. I don't know who it sounds like - at least two composers, though, because the two pieces are completely different! I like to think they both sound like me, though - Ascent in particular is composed entirely using the modal technique you've seen me going on about on this thread, and has many similarities to my recent piano pieces.

Benjamin is a composer whose scores I know much better than I know Ades', so any influence would more likely be from him than from the latter - though not the pedal sound. Though I'm able to find examples elsewhere, that's just a technique that I know works from my own playing. However, the contemporary composers who I'm aware of with even more similarity to this piece - though vastly superior, more sophisticated - are, as implied above, Jonathan Harvey (e.g. try his Body Mandala CD for some wonderful contemporary orchestral writing with similar philosophical concerns and a similar symbolic use of gesture) and Horatiou Radulescu (who's also got interests close to mine, and whose piano music uses spectrally derived modes in a way that reminds me of mine - I can only wish!). I think you'd love both these composers.

i suppose you wanted a real tam-tam sound in MIDI..... if the program you used doesn't have it, that makes me feel horrible since i've written for the instrument but have had to use the sound for cymbals only, because they don't have a sound for tam-tam.

Yes, it's a disappointment, that one. But then most of the MIDI instruments are just as bad!

The bass drum sound REALLY nice- is that the standard sound? What I do in Noteworthy, for an orchestral bass drum sound (instead of drum kit), is something i learned from opening a midi file on the internet- in fact, it's the last movement of Mahler's 10th, and you really need a good sound for that.
this is what i do: use the taiko drum setting, the write a cluster in the bass clef. E F G A is good enough. There's no comparison.....

I wonder if such a thing could be done with the tam-tam sound? I might have to experiment with that........ 

Re the bass drum - each instrument you hear on this MIDI mock up was 'recorded separately' and treated to a little enhancement in a wave editor before being recombined (that's where the problems with coordination in the 5/8 happened). In the case of the bass drum, I simply applied a lot of reverb to the standard bass drum sound, on which a trill otherwise just comes out as a lot of very fast but still distinct repetitions with no blending at all.


*****

@ Symphonien - thanks for that! Nice to have my suspicion confirmed! I'm sure I've heard of this piece, too, perhaps as played by Ian Pace 

[Symphonien]

@ Symphonien - thanks for that! Nice to have my suspicion confirmed! I'm sure I've heard of this piece, too, perhaps as played by Ian Pace 

A quick Google search turned up this page of selected concerts, which reveals that he has performed it at least once in London on 19 August 2000, so it is in his repertoire (along with a couple of other Lachenmann pieces).

[karlhenning]

. . . a trill otherwise just comes out as a lot of very fast but still distinct repetitions with no blending at all.

Oh, yes; I have had occasion to amuse my Maria more than once with that little artifact 

[karlhenning]

I looked over the score again on the bus ride in, Luke.

Now, just what is the trouble? 

[lukeottevanger]

I wish I knew!

[karlhenning]

Allow me to rephrase the question: How may I assist you? 

[karlhenning]

The ostinato in the 5/8 doesn't seem too me to pose any trouble;  I have taken it as read, though, that it is meant to hang in the background, so that the xylophone will be played with probably the softest mallets.  (If that really proves too much, still, it could be recast for marimba, I should think.)

[karlhenning]

Wel, not hang in the background, but quietly drive from the background.

[lukeottevanger]

Yes, you're right there - as long as the rhythm, with the mix of 3-semiquaver groups and 3-triplet-semiquaver groups, as in the 7/8, remains clear.

I think my main worry is to do with scale. Ascent seems correctly proportioned but maybe too short, to me. Perhaps rather 'bitty' because of this. OTOH, this way it matches Elegy fairly precisely, and in any event, I'm not sure how feasible extending the various sections would be.

I think this may be one of those moments of doubt I sometimes have which eventually pass - I'm feeling a little more positive than a few days ago, but still unsure.

[karlhenning]

Anyway . . . you're considering how to end the second piece, right?  I think it is something of a distraction to second-guess, just at present, the present state of the second piece.

You must work in whatever manner you find suitable, so feel free to disregard the following completely . . . my inclination is to suggest that you find a quiet compositional 'place' to discover the end.  You've generated so much work already with the "A to W," that you probably don't want to work too hard at the end.  For one thing, if what you feel you want is an ending of stillness (and I think this is apt, too), you don't actually need a great deal of material for two minutes of closing-out.

Well, perhaps I've just been obscure, so that no disregard is necessary 

I think my main worry is to do with scale. Ascent seems correctly proportioned but maybe too short, to me. Perhaps rather 'bitty' because of this. OTOH, this way it matches Elegy fairly precisely, and in any event, I'm not sure how feasible extending the various sections would be.

No, I don't think you want to do any 'stretching' here.  I think that the perceived breadth of a 'static' final two minutes is likely to correct any feeling that the overall piece may be too short.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

One question - what is the trajectory of Ascent? Do we reach a summit of sorts in the end? If the sections are links, what is the chain you are creating?

Addition - I see Karl is asking/saying the same thing...

[lukeottevanger]

@ Karl:

I think that may be correct, Karl - as you know, the music will continue to 'refine itself' and reach ever higher, calmer ground until the final single bar of 1/8. And yes, maybe as you suggest, this will provide the balance the music needs.

As far as the final sections go, I know almost precisely what I want, btw, but I've just been fiddling around with a few slightly different approaches to it, including a slightly Lutoslawskian aleatory approach in the 2/8 section, hazy, 'random' little constellations of G and F#, pp.

Thanks for this - it's actually a good dose of reassurance 

@ Johan:

Hang on a minute, I'll dig out an answer for you

[lukeottevanger]

One question - what is the trajectory of Ascent? Do we reach a summit of sorts in the end? If the sections are links, what is the chain you are creating?

This is the relevant section of the little note I sent Karl when I initially sent him the score and sound files; you'll see my usual philosophical/pychological concerns crop up again here  :

Essentially the idea is that the Ascent is as much (or more) metaphorical and metaphysical as it is about mountains, although the latter idea is at the forefront of my mind, and a glance at my avatar shows the mountain I have in mind. The concept is of the ascent as analogous to the search for Self and for the joy of living in the Now - the attainment of the singularity that is the very summit of the mountain and the very centre of our Self. For this reason the piece features modes (of course) of, in turn, 7, 6 and 5 notes, and then their various intersection of 4, 3 and 2 notes, before the final 1-note intersection - the only note they all share, G (at which point, I think, the music will shower into G's harmonics, a whole new family of notes-within-a-note; but that's another story). At the same time metre contracts from 7/8 down to 1/8. The odd number bars (apart from the final 1/8) are underpinned by ostinato rhythms and are propulsive in nature; the even numbers, or at least 6/8 and 4/8, are more lyrical, spotlighting the piano, 'my' instrument; perhaps the movement from one type to another, and between related harmonic areas, gives a feel of '1st and 2nd subjects' and even of sonata form - I don't know, and the question hasn't been at the front of my mind whilst composing.