A Child of the Snows: Growing an idea

In the last post I promised some insights into the business of working a small amount of material into a longer section. As I've been working on the piece today, I have just such a scheme fresh in my mind, so let's take a look:

The particular place is in the central section and sets part of the Field poem; the lines are 'Burn on, O star, and be the light/To guide us all to Him this night'. The first thing to note is that we've already got some parameters set out:

• The music will be in a moderate to fast tempo, as it constitutes part of the middle section of the piece
• The chorus will sing the text as the baritone soloist is resting in between entries (I've already divided up who sings what)
• The orchestra will probably be accompanying for some or all of the music, meaning the chorus cannot be at extreme quiet dynamics whilst this occurs.
• The text is optimistic and exuberant, suggesting a lively character and primarily tonal flavour to the harmonies.
• The speech-rhythms of the text will have to be considered when writing rhythmic elements, as well as which vowel sounds will be advisable at extremes of register.
• The music needs to have 'order of intensity' as discussed in the last post, i.e. it needs to  'go somewhere', and illuminate the words.

The last two are, of course, more general and can be applied to most parts of the composition.

Reading through this text was one of the happy occasions when a setting suggested itself immediately.  Here is my original sketch for the soprano and a bit of harmony, scribbled at the piano:

(Click on any graphic to enlarge)

5/4 time gives a pleasingly natural phrase shape to the line.  The upwards leap on the word 'light' seemed to be the best way of highlighting this word, as well as providing contrast with the mostly step-wise motion that precedes it (I trust it will not be too difficult to find this pitch if the rest of the harmony suggests it).  Rising thirds, indeed thirds in general, feature prominently in this extract and as such it would be a good idea to use them in the remainder. The next thing that I write down is the rest of this chord. At this stage, I'm not overly concerned about what voice sings what when writing down a chord in isolation, as voice-leading can be refined later on. I already have a rough idea of the the harmonies which I can 'hear' in my mind, though.

It then occurs to me that it would be interesting and add to the OoI to have the male voices enter in canon a little after the female. Since the original phrase begins on a half-beat this needs to be replicated here too.

Now I fill in the rest of the harmony as well as possible. This mostly involves repeated stabs at the keyboard, changing one note at a time if the chord doesn't sound right. A fortunate occurrence is that often what looks like good voice-leading on the page will be what sounds the best as well. The harmony is quite sevenths-based, which adds a more interesting flavour than simple diatonic chords without placing unreasonable demands on the choir's pitching skills. Possibly my liking of luscious 1930s film-score harmonies is an influence here - Poulenc's Gloria also comes to mind.

The first phrase seems complete for now.  I already have an idea for the second, and, keeping the female voices each divided in thirds, I experiment with how this might produce harmonies before settling on the following:

Again the phrase shape just suggested itself, but it came from a part of my imagination that clearly recognised the classic anticendant-consequent pairing. This phrase mirrors the first, leaping up and then coming down a little.  The triplets keep the rhythmic vocabulary fresh as well as being pleasant to sing the word 'all' to. I fill in the harmonies again, adding a second splash of counterpoint to the male voices to maintain the symmetry and rhythmic motion.

Now to decide how to end it all. I could bring it to a neat finish on G major, which seems to be the underlying tonality of the phrases, or a slightly more exotic version of it, but I want something more interesting and less closing. I work out that by keeping the altos on G (thus also avoiding them having to leap up to close to the top of their range) I can actually lead the whole choir into this:

F minor 7 - you didn't see that coming, now, did you?  I play through it all and perhaps add/remove a few pitches.  Taking a few paces into the other room where Sibelius is open and waiting, I enter it all into the program on full score and listen to the playback before making a few other tweaks to the writing.  But something isn't quite right (other than the MIDI playback). The climax seems to arrive too early. The music needs another phrase, which will have to be a repetition of 'Burn on, O star' to avoid the same problem in the text.  I don't want to push the existing harmonies around much to achieve this, so have to work out how to 'lift' the OoI in this new segment without spoiling the already-written ending. Back to the piano to note down, sans text:

And back to Sibelius again.  After quite a lot of experimentation and tweaking, I come up with this as the (for now) finished product:

There are some substantial changes from the previous incarnation. The male voices now enter separately in two canonic entries (same pitches) whilst the sopranos enter with the tenors to avoid the low B; the one-beat of the word 'Him' is now two as it provides better proportions to the phrase, and as a result of this the male voices extend their rhythmic canon for another two beats. I wasn't sure about this to start with, but I then realised it results in a nice parallel with 'guiding' in the text by having the singers join up again at the end of the phrase. The latter half is now in 3/4 to accommodate these changes. A few divisis are re-allocated to pre-empt having a tenor section smaller than the others.  Dynamics and placing of words are added and refined.

It probably took the best part of forty minutes to develop and refine this little section of less than twenty seconds. I may tweak it again in future, but for now I am happy. Later orchestral material will be added and I will think about what comes before and after, but I now have a 'strong point' in the score to work around.

Pianistic preferences

I am called upon to perform on both digital and acoustic pianos about equally in my working life.  Naturally, I press the keys on whatever is put in front of me without quibble, but if there is a choice I will always plump for a traditional acoustic piano. I have sometimes been questioned as to why, and at times this can appear a counter-intuitive option (I have played some pretty ropey pianos over the years) so I wish to make a case for why the traditional acoustic instrument is, at least in my experience, preferable to modern electronic keyboards.

We must begin by stating that electronic keyboards in general posses the following advantages:

1. They do not go out of tune.
2. If the function is supplied, they can be re-tuned to mean, Pythagorean, modal temperaments and baroque pitch at an instant.
3. They are not susceptible to changes in temperature, humidity and movement in the way an acoustic piano is. In fact the only possible damage from these factors would be water ingress causing short circuiting.
4. They are usually equipped with a moderate-to-wide range of timbral possibilities, albeit synthesised. This is probably the most significant advantage of the instrument.
5. Other useful functions such as transposition and recording capacity are often fitted.
6. They are cheaper to purchase, smaller and more portable than traditional pianos.
7. On high-end instruments, the key and pedal action is weighted in an attempt to imitate that of an acoustic instrument, aiding the traditionally trained player. 
8. They are easier to amplify as a PA system can be plugged directly into the instrument without the need for a microphone.

With all this in mind, one might wonder why anyone bothers with traditional pianos any more. By comparison, they are expensive to purchase and maintain properly, are difficult to move, can only produce one sound 'patch' and have no 'performance aids' other than three pedals and that the stool adjusts up and down.  Electronic keyboards work on the same principle as other electric instruments such as guitars: by creating a tiny sound (in this case small bars which are struck like chimes by the keys) and amplifying it, usually modifying the resulting wave as well. This means that a lot of delicate and temperamental components can be eliminated and replaced by circuitry. So why do I still prefer a 'real' piano?

Firstly, the instrument has a richness and sonority that is impossible to imitate digitally. Chiefly this is due to the effect of the strings vibrating in whatever acoustic space the instrument is played in, but also to do with the fact that the strings vibrate in sympathy with each other. The reason why this is nearly impossible to synthesise is that the additional overtones created thus, which depend on so many multiple factors - the exact notes played and the attack of each, what degree of pedals are being used, what strings may still be vibrating from the previous combination of pitches - that the memory and processing power required to store and activate the sample of each possible combination would be in the range of a supercomputer.  Even then, it is a difficult task indeed to make what is essentially an amplified glockenspiel sound like felted hammers hitting sets of metal strings.  The tone of electric pianos is almost always too fuzzy and boomy by comparison (a common problem with amplified instruments) and lacks the crispness one can get from a well-practiced staccato.  In addition, the percussive effect of the felt making initial contact with the string is difficult to synthesise, often replaced by sound of the plastic key thumping against rubber bearings and electrical contacts.  Pedal action remains a weak area, largely because of the above issue of sympathetic vibration and, on the other foot, so to speak, the fact that an una corda or due corde marking has acoustic implications far beyond simply reducing the volume a bit. I have yet to play a digital piano in which half-pedalling was at all satisfactory, and on most it was impossible as the sustain pedal was considered a binary switch which when on simply added a set amount of reverb.

As an addendum to the above, there are certain pieces which are absolutely impossible to perform on a digital piano as they require this sympathetic vibration as an essential effect. A piece titled simply 'Harmonics' in the fourth book of Bela Bartók's excellent pedagogical series Mikrokosmos is one example, requiring the player to depress keys without them sounding and then allow the strings to be set vibrating when other notes are struck. This simply could not be accomplished on a non-acoustic instrument.

The other, related, consideration is the feedback the player gets from the instrument.  Even the most sophisticated digital key mechanism cannot emulate the action of the 80-or so components that are needed to play even a single note on a strung instrument. When playing a real piano, one can directly feel, even in notes of short duration, something inside the instrument applying force to something else, changing centres of gravity and creating inertia, which provides valuable information on how the note will sound even before the sound reaches one's ears.  Electronic instruments lack much of this vital 'touch' due to there being essentially a short-cut in the action. (For much the same reasons, I dislike driving cars which have too much electronic intervention in the controls).  Furthermore, the key action often lacks sufficient resistance, meaning than when playing fast passages or using the position of one key to find another it is far too easy to accidentally sound the wrong note when passing the hand over it, as well as making chord voicing harder.  All these factors force the player to take time to adapt; whilst the musical results will probably not suffer having done so, it remains that the pianist is essentially learning a new type of instrument.

Finally, another issue which has not been satisfactorily solved by the manufacturers of synthesised instruments: volume. Not the amount of it, for most keyboards and electric pianos have a volume control in addition to touch-sensitive keys which provides more than adequate range, but the guesswork that must be undertaken to find the correct setting.  Of course this can be an advantage, as it allows the relative volume to be adjusted to suit a large or small space, but it is often a source of frustration when the player finds that what seems deafeningly loud to them comes across as feeble at the back of the room. A chief cause of this is that speakers howsoever positioned (usually under the main body or key rack) cannot synthesise a large soundboard reflecting string vibrations in a universal direction. As stated, this is less of an issue when a PA system with large speakers is connected to the instrument - but this instead creates the potential problem of the source of the sound being some distance away from the player and thus not in sync with the action of their fingers. When sitting at an acoustic piano one can always assume, to a reasonable degree of accuracy, what volume any given amount of force on the keyboard will produce.

The pipe organ is, of course, a separate instrument entirely, but has equally valid considerations in the electronic vs acoustic choice. A good full-size electronic church organ is as good as its traditional counterpart, but as far as I can see a small portable organ cannot compete - it'll simply never be as loud without excessive amplification.

On chamber playing

 Last week I spent one of the most enjoyable seven-day periods of the year, at a small town in Wiltshire. This wasn't because I was a refugee whilst my hometown was being looted (that still hasn't happened) but because the town's large private school was hosting the Grittleton Chamber Music Course, and I was signed up for the first week.

This wasn't a professional engagement, by the way. I'd paid to be there (minus a discount for some work on the evening bar, in common with most of the under-thirties) purely on the recommendation by a long-attending friend and subsequent invitation by the course organisers, and purely for the enjoyment of playing and for the group coaching sessions.  It was a very good decision to go. The format of the course is that every morning is spent in two pre-formed groups, each studying a particular piece with a coach, with the rest of the day free. I say 'free', but the idea is actually that you organise sight-reading sessions with other members during this time. Needless to say I did so much of this that by the end of the week I had spent less than six hours of the total evenings and afternoons not actually playing one of my instruments or listening to others in concert.  I was playing for eight of nine hours a day, and this pleased me much despite at one point wondering if my fingers were capable of keeping it up.

Space does not permit a full list of all the highlights - our heroic reading of Schubert's monumental last quartet, particularly on the part of out violist; the late-night attempt at Janacek and Haydn; adding extra notes whilst sight-reading a Vivaldi cello concerto because it wasn't hard enough already; the concert given by the coaches - but one thing I have definitely taken away from the eperience is the vital importance of the person at the head of the group, especially when sight-reading.  It's not something I had actually given much thought to previously.

It is crucial to the success of any group to have an effective leader. It was noticeable how my own and others' technical faculties and the ease of playing seemed markedly better in groups which I felt had a good individual in charge.  In fact, the very best ensembles were those in which all the members were taking a share of the responsibility for maintaining the stability of the playing.  If every player is reliable in such things as maintaining the tempo of the music, matching to a reasonable degree the expressive and dynamic demands, rhythmic precision, and playing with musical expression that reinforces these things, it reduces the workload on the other members, allowing them to expend greater concentration on their own playing. On the other hand, if they must be constantly aware that they may have to react to something unexpected, it affects even the most technically able players because decisions have to be made more urgently and more concentration has to be diverted. It may sound odd, but in effect good intonation is to a large extent determined by how well the group is counting.

It should be remembered that the ability to lead is distinct from technical ability on one's instrument, although the two usually develop simultaneously. I have played with plenty of individuals whose technique was less than perfect but who understood what was necessary to play well in a chamber group (indeed I would - modestly - put myself in this category) with the result that any shortcomings were not an obstacle to the effectiveness of the ensemble. That said, I think that allowing technique to overrule and become an obstacle is the chief cause of a breakdowns within the ensemble, and it is a particular responsibility of a group leader to ensure this is not a danger. In other words, it is much better to scramble those difficult semiquavers and enter the first note of the next bar accurately, on the beat, than try to hit every pitch perfectly, slow up (even if one is not aware of it) and pull the group apart by doing so. In addition, a good technique allows a player to interpret the music in a way that maintains control and communicates with others. A good example of this is in a ritardando - the more accurately the player leading the rit. can place the notes, the more predictable the rate of slowing down is and thus the better then ensemble will hold together. Similarly, when moving off again, a technically able leader will be able to nuance the phrase in a way that indicates the new tempo very clearly to the others.  Obviously, in many cases such things will not be the sole responsibility of the leader, and so every player, however subsistant in the group, must posses these skills too.

Sidetracking a little, an analogy can be drawn here between music performance and driving.  It is the homogeneity and predictability between drivers that maintains (relative) safety, just as it is the same processes that allow a chamber ensemble to play comfortably together. The success of either task is determined by how well several entities can communicate both their intentions and react accordingly. (Come to think of it, this would make a decent-length blog post to elaborate upon in the future).

As a conclusion, I believe that the art of good chamber music playing can, in many respects, be summarised thus: it is the knowledge of when it is permissible to subordinate the group to oneself, and when one must subordinate oneself to the group.