ROCC 2018

When we study a published score, we might begin by analyzing melodic gestures and harmony. The piano reduction of Jennifer Higdon’s bluegrass-inspired Concerto 4-3 (2007) gives us that opportunity, but it raises several additional issues. Typed commentary in the score sparks questions about the working relationship between composers and performers. Long sections of improvisation challenge traditional notions of analysis and create opportunities for the performers to put their own stamp on the work.
Due to the commentary, Higdon’s piano reduction looks like a relatively clean version of a working copy. At multiple points in the first movement, she writes specific questions to the players of the string trio Time for Three (Tf3), which premiered the work. This suggests a work in process, not a completed score, and provides insight into a continuing dialogue between the composer and the performers.
In terms of analysis, elements of bluegrass are readily apparent in the work, including blistering tempi and a sense of harmonic simplicity. Higdon, however, moves beyond the I, IV, and V chords, which are the harmonic pillars of traditional bluegrass playing. Her use of pedal points, repeated notes, occasional stasis, and parallel chords provide a modern spin on harmonic simplicity. Such analysis, though, is only possible for a portion of the work. Much of Concerto 4-3 is improvised. How, then, should a student or scholar approach analysis? Is it possible to analyze the work without transcriptions of the improvised parts? If the improvised parts change with every performance, how much emphasis or analysis should they receive? Such inquiries can easily spur a lively discussion and debate.
Though the improvised aspects of Concerto 4-3 raise questions, these same aspects allow performers to put their own stamp on the work. The performers participate in the compositional process as the work is presented, adding their unique voice to Higdon’s composed score. Whether or not this limits performances by groups other than Tf3 is certainly up for debate, but what remains indisputable is that Concerto 4-3 (2007) is a work that offers far more than notes.

Beyond the Score: Jennifer Higdon’s Piano Reduction of Concerto 4-3

A growing body of contemporary composers produces audio scores where sound is an integral mediator/translator between the artist and performer. While many musical scores deploy some form of symbolic visual representation of sound, audio scores represent information and instructions in the same domain as the performed product.
This article aims to survey the affordances and limitations of audio scores which employ recordings as their primary means of communication. Within this field, we identify two primary sub-categories associated with the temporal relations between performer and audio score: reactive and anticipatory.
Louis d’Heudieres’ Laughter Studies 1-3 is posited as an example of a reactive audio score. Each performer listens to a different recording on headphones and alternates between vocally imitating and verbally describing what they hear. The performers are asked not to familiarize themselves with their audio scores beforehand; rather, they spontaneously react to the often unpredictable changes and transformations between sounds, lending an improvisatory quality to the performers’ efforts.
A representative example of an anticipatory audio score is Carola Bauckholt’s Zugvögel. In contrast to Laughter Studies, the players’ interactions with the audio score occurs well before the performance. Each player learns to imitate recordings of bird song as closely as possible. Through this process, the recordings provide a multidimensional account of the source material with a specificity that a conventional symbolic representation could only approximate.
These primary sub-categories may be combined and hybridized to varying degrees.
Finally, we propose some further avenues of exploration for creative practice.

An Investigation of Affordances and Limitations in Recent Audio Scores

Drew Nobile has recently discussed the phenomenon of loop divorce in rock music, in which a repeating chord loop seems disconnected from the clear tonal direction of a concurrent melody. In this paper, an expanded conception of loop divorce provides a framework to analyze the chromatic procedures of Tune-Yards, a contemporary experimental pop band whose music relies heavily on looped samples. Analyses of several songs demonstrate the musical versatility of loop divorce when considered in tandem with intonation, timbre, lyrics, and form. The analyses also suggest broader applications of loop divorce in hip-hop and experimental pop.

Writing Wrong Notes: Loop Divorce in the Music of Tune-Yards

The breadth of contemporary music includes an expansion of harmonies, genres, instrumentation, and techniques. With all these options available today, many composers still feel it is important to connect with the audience on a personal and expressive level. The submitted piece Romance for Oboe and Piano attempts to do just that.
Romance features post-tonal materials of modern compositional writing. Some of the compositional techniques included in Romance are octatonicism, more complex chord structures, pandiatonicism, modal, pentatonic, and whole tone scales. At the beginning of Romance, the piano and oboe are treated as two separate entities but as the work progresses, they gradually merge together into a warm, fervent, and unbreakable relationship. To take it a step further, and on a more personal note, this piece is a declaration of my love for my wife (and oboist) Tracy.
Many composers of the 19th–century (the “Romantic” period) sought to create strong emotional bonds with their audience. The desired end result of Romance is one in which materials of modern composition coalesce into a unique, cogent musical work exhibiting the same emotive and impassioned feelings frequently found in music of the “Romantic” era.

Romance for Oboe and Piano

Key words: minimalism, patterns, modules, composition process This project uses my current composition practice, which I may describe as minimalist, as a starting point to develop a forward-looking composition process in terms of more creative and robust means of processing the material, interaction with the context, and means of creative presentation, thus creating a unique and personal creative style that reflects updated contexts of contemporary music composition. This new process is modular with a basis on pattern languages first developed by Christopher Alexander in the field of architecture.

MORPHING PATTERNS, BUILDING MUSIC: A way forward from minimalism in music writing

Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell’s Pulitzer Prize winning opera Silent Night (2011) musically depicts the surprising events of Christmas Eve 1914, when several French, Scottish, and German soldiers along the Western Front declared a one-night truce and laid down their weapons. There is a duality in this historical moment: Although dedicated to serving their countries, these armed units were comprised of individuals who, for a night, forsook duty to their respective causes in order to connect with greater humanity. Similarly, there is a duality intrinsic within this opera. Because this is a musical work about a truce, it forces the listener to engage with concepts of silence (absence of gunfire) amidst sound (music of the opera). Silence has several different meanings (e.g., absence of noise, stillness, omission, being forgotten, secrecy), and this paper examines the various manifestations of silence in this piece, including: Why does silence occur when the main female character enters one of the barracks? What is the silence associated with the “no man’s land” or the neutral space between the battle lines? And what sort of music (or “noise”) does the composer craft to narrate the silence of the battlefield and the other events that unfold? Musical analysis and the exploration of text-music relationships will be included.

The Noise of Silence in the Opera Silent Night

After the Cultural Revolution, China has reopened the door to the world since the late 1970s. In the field of contemporary music, the new generation of Chinese composers has quickly absorbed the techniques and ideas of Western modern and postmodern musical waves. But all these composers are always facing the same question: how to incorporate these Western influences into Chinese culture and thus to express the Chinese identity?
Shanghai composer YE Guohui (1960- ) is one of the most active Chinese composers in the twenty-first century. His most works are closely related to traditional Chinese culture, yet the sound representation is fascinating and modern. In this paper, I focus on Ye’s recent work Drinking Wine by the Stream’s Choice for Soprano and Orchestra (2012). The composition title is derived from Qu Shui Liu Shang, a historical popular party game in ancient China. In the game, the literati sit along the winding stream, and the drinking cup would float from upstream. If the cup randomly stops in front of someone, that person should drink the liquor and improvise a poem. The composition is directly inspired from the Chinese painting Lanting Xiuxi Tu (Gathering at the Orchid Pavilion) and the Chinese calligraphy work Lantingji Xu (Preface to the Poem Collection from the Orchid Pavilion), both depicting this party game of the famous Orchid Pavilion Gathering in the year 353 CE. I am going to show how Ye uses his sound design to reconstruct the scene of this unique cultural tradition aurally.

ROCC 2018

Items in this collection

Beyond the Score: Jennifer Higdon’s Piano Reduction of Concerto 4-3

An Investigation of Affordances and Limitations in Recent Audio Scores

Writing Wrong Notes: Loop Divorce in the Music of Tune-Yards

Romance for Oboe and Piano

MORPHING PATTERNS, BUILDING MUSIC: A way forward from minimalism in music writing

The Noise of Silence in the Opera Silent Night

Music, Painting, and Party Game: Ye Guohui and his "Drinking Wine by the Stream’s Choice"

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An Investigation of Affordances and Limitations in Recent Audio Scores

Writing Wrong Notes: Loop Divorce in the Music of Tune-Yards

Romance for Oboe and Piano

MORPHING PATTERNS, BUILDING MUSIC: A way forward from minimalism in music writing

The Noise of Silence in the Opera Silent Night

Music, Painting, and Party Game: Ye Guohui and his "Drinking Wine by the Stream’s Choice"

Items in this collection