Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost

[karlhenning]

Here we are, score and recording to my new piece. Click here for recording.

At last, we have download!  Listening now.  More presently . . . .

[karlhenning]

Just listened to the Sonata in absentia II twice.  Beautiful piece, Luke, well done!  Speaking to the piece itself (or rather, my impressions thereof) and not to actual non-musical events (for the rose is unlike the mulch from which it emerges), the piece has a sweet melancholy (not sweet to any unbecoming excess, and the melancholy is well tempered), it possesses an admirable balance between an entirely engaging rubato narrative (now she sighs, now she sobs, must be some jazz number or other) with a firm sense of the ground it is covering.  I love the pace, I love how capably it commands the timespan.  I love this piece, Luke; I applaud you.

[Cato]

Just listened to the Sonata in absentia II twice.  Beautiful piece, Luke, well done!  Speaking to the piece itself (or rather, my impressions thereof) and not to actual non-musical events (for the rose is unlike the mulch from which it emerges), the piece has a sweet melancholy (not sweet to any unbecoming excess, and the melancholy is well tempered), it possesses an admirable balance between an entirely engaging rubato narrative (now she sighs, now she sobs, must be some jazz number or other) with a firm sense of the ground it is covering.  I love the pace, I love how capably it commands the timespan.  I love this piece, Luke; I applaud you.

Amen!   0:)

If you listen carefully to Sonata in absentia II you will hear Luke's favorite Christmas carol!   

Luke Ottevanger and Karl Henning need an impresario to push their works ahead of these little plinkety-plunk punks getting all the attention, like Turnage and Ferneyhough!   

[Luke]

Karl, I'm very touched by your response to my sonata, very touched indeed. Thank you very much. Cato is right, btw (we chatted about this via PM) - my favourite Christmas carol is hidden inside the sonata, sometimes very close to the surface, for all sorts of reasons. I'm not sure if this is so obvious that it goes without saying, or so hidden-away that it needs pointing out! Actually, both sonatas feature little secrets and not-so-secrets of this sort, not that they are worth discovering...

[Maciek]

OK, so today I've finally found myself in circumstances appropriate for downloading and listening to Sonata in absentia no. 2. Not much I can add to what has already been said. First impressions:

Many beauties in this composition and I was glad to note that while this piece was... hm, "sad", it was not as overbearing in its depressive qualities as the previous one. I'm not sure if I could take another dose of that. The second Sonata seems calmer in that respect. So maybe, if you ever write a third one, it will go even further in that direction, forming a sort of consoling cycle - from the dark depths to (moderate) light (I'm not suggesting, I'm fantasizing)... Even if you don't, I think it's wonderful how the two consiliently converge when brought together.

Scriabin? Yes, but especially so in the 1st Sonata. Here I think I detect a pleasing whiff of Debussy...? Perhaps more than a whiff - though it's all been moulded in a very personal (intimate even) cast.

Not sure why, but page 5 seemed (to me) especially touching. It's probably how the previous, slow page builds it all up.

What is N12??

[I know consiliently is not a word. Or at least wasn't.]

[greg]

Scriabin? Yes, but especially so in the 1st Sonata. Here I think I detect a pleasing whiff of Debussy...? Perhaps more than a whiff - though it's all been moulded in a very personal (intimate even) cast.

Those were the two I was thinking of.

[Luke]

Wha interests me is that both Debussy and Scriabin - and some of Scriabin's Russian futurist followers from what I can tell, e.g. Roslavetz, Protopopov and indeed Wyschnegradsky (Cato prompted that last comparison in a PM)- at times use techniques not a million miles from my modal ones. Debussy, of course, in something like Voiles, which is the locus classicus of form being determined by mode - whole tone throughout, except for the entirely black-note pentatonic central section.  Scriabin, of course, has his synthetic chords, out of which he builds whole edifices, and I suppose these take on something of the character of the modes as I use them, although he transposes them freely; in Roslavetz and Protopopov the scores are annotated so as to show the chordal derivation according to the rather Scriabinian personal techniques each composer derived; IIRC Wyschnegradsky worked similarly...

Maciek - that's a great post, and thank you....it's one I've found hard to respond to because I have been so bound up in these pieces, and because they more than anything else I have written reflect my state of mind at the moment they were wriiten. So, I can't say that your response is 'wrong' of course, but what I can say is that to me, the first sonata is numbed, shocked, bowled-over, its world has been turned upside down....but not necessarily in an unpleasant way - it is a piece shot through with the odd stupefied burst of passion, to my mind. The second sonata, though, to me, is black through and through, except from that 'N12' you asked about, which is where things become ever so slightly more hopeful...

The N12 is just a modal thing, btw - the negation of the two modes used so far - IOW, the three notes not used in the piece until this point. Which is why it is a turning point, I suppose.

[Maciek]

I guess I've mixed what I heard with how I interpreted its meaning - which I'd never have realized, if not for your post. What I hear is that the second sonata is much calmer than the first. I understood the calm as a sign of consolation, but of course it can also mean quite the opposite: the depths of despondency, a sort of total surrender. So don't worry, the music and its moods come across just the way you wrote them. I just shouldn't have tried to ascribe "meaning" to it all. (Well, I guess there's nothing wrong with that anyway, but just wanted to reassure you about the essentials.)

[Luke]

Thanks - I wasn't worried, not at all! Ascribe away! In fact, I was rather pleased that my sonata took on a slightly different emphasis or slant for you than it has for me. Shows that is can work in more than one way. Which fact reminds me of some points made on that very thoughtful thread about musical program which is ongoing. In any case, you are right - there is a kind of stillness to this piece, and lots of implied major mode, especially in that very slow development section; the last page, certainly, has a more positive tinge, too. To me, that slow central section is the process of 'waiting', of trying to hold focus together - that's why I like the effect of the decaying notes that Greg noted, notes that barely manage to make it to the next chord, the music just holding together. But it can certainly be heard in a somewhat rosier light, especially with that Christmas carol floating around there!

[karlhenning]

I owe you some more listens and a subsequently better answer, Luke . . . but your use of the carol is certainly subtle.  Even with Cato's head's-up, my attention was drawn to other aspects, and although I know the carol well, I find myself thinking, Is it in there, really? Of course, it must be.  At any rate, you needn't fear that there is any carol-bludgeoning in operation . . . .

[Luke]

Carol-bludgeoning.......now there's a title!

[karlhenning]

The quintuplets in the second system of p. 4, of course (I see that now).  Probably there are earlier allusions that I cannot [hear] for the trees . . . .

; )

[Luke]

Well, the shape of that 'snow on snow' line is everywhere, from the first notes on, but the longest allusion to the carol is on page 3, second-to-last line, tenor voice, all the original rhythmic differentiation erased. The carol is clearest in those quintuplets on pages 4 and 5, though, as you point out. And then with that 'N12' turning point at the bottom of page 6 the 'snow on snow' line is alluded to a few more times, either inverted or, finally, in retrograde (almost the same thing)

[karlhenning]

Very nicely done.

[Luke]

....where to register this thought? - there ought to be a thread, 'pieces which, as you are listening to them, you think are the finest things in the world'...

If there was such a thread, my entry right now would be Debussy, cello sonata. I'm listening, awestruck; this piece never fails to blow me away. 

[MN Dave]

....where to register this thought? - there ought to be a thread, 'pieces which, as you are listening to them, you think are the finest things in the world'...

If there was such a thread, my entry right now would be Debussy, cello sonata. I'm listening, awestruck; this piece never fails to blow me away. 

The "What Are You Listening To" thread would work.

[Luke]

Nah, that's for any old thing! This is special  Though the violin sonata's on now, and that's not bad either...

[MN Dave]

Nah, that's for any old thing! This is special  Though the violin sonata's on now, and that's not bad either...

Here is as good as any place then. Especially if your fans want to know what you like.

[karlhenning]

And we do.

I sure do like all those late Debussy sonates, aussi.

[Maciek]

Was the Violin Sonata the last piece he completed or am I confusing it with something else? I think it's quite wonderful too (listened to it quite recently when I was checking for any direct link between Szymanowski's violin writing and the impressionists). Hm, I'm not sure if I even know the Cello Sonata...?