Vol. 2: September 9 - QuietTunes II: The Echo of an Instant
This week, we look at two works which feature what I call the Music Box Effect (catchy, I know). A music box makes little plinks of sound that can soothe a baby (but usually soothes the very tired parent first). I like to think that it’s the space after the plink that matters, that dead air where you either are appreciating the plink or anticipating the next plink.
In our first work, Schnee by Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen, we appreciate the plink, while we anticipate a plink in hush by Charlie Sdraulig, our second work.
Hans Abrahamsen - Schnee
Hans Abrahamsen is a Danish composer known for snow. That’s not all that he does, but Schnee is German for snow, so this is not helpful. He does, however, do a lot of canons. (A canon is when the same melody is imitated exactly in another voice.) Schnee is nearly entirely canons. The selection here is just the first of three canons in the first of three parts (Hans also likes numbers).
What makes canons interesting is the cohesion that comes from having the exact same material make the entirety of the piece and how you displace them. Schnee has two main materials, just slightly altered. At first, you hear them separately, two long, descending lines which end on an uptick and a pause. Slowly, they start closer in each instance, overlapping and eventually changing places so, at the end, you hear them separately again, but the last melody is first and the first melody last. It’s a methodical, slow, digestible rhetoric. It’s a quiet rhetoric.
The more interesting part, to us, is the sound-world. Abrahamsen creates a soft, spacious atmosphere. The high, airy string harmonics, beating evenly, create a soft bed over which the pianos plink their descents. This plink-ing creates that music box effect, where you hear the resonance of the piano and all you have to focus on is the decay of the plink and the anticipation of the next note. It does get very active in the middle section when the canons are most closely overlapped, but even still, in my opinion, the overall result is quiet, if hectic. This quietness comes partly from the rhetoric still operating and partly from the live acoustic sound of the techniques: that it a weak register for both strings and, while the piano can be loud, the notes are so short here that the space between is more present. I could be wrong in that assessment, though.
Melodically, there is quiet in the shape of descent, as if watching…snow…fall towards the ground, bolstered by the thickening of the tone as the piano leaves it’s brittle high register. The uptick at the end is a flair which denies us that resolution, that finality. It’s a little bump which, though quietly done, keeps our attention. Imagine if there were no uptick: each descent would feel final and the piece would become tedious as we always heard endings yet it just kept going.
So, these three elements, rhetoric, sound, and shape combine to create in us a new listening which focuses our ears on the sound and the unfolding rhetoric and not on some expectational mirage.
Charlie Sdraulig - hush
Charlie Sdraulig is an interesting composer. He’s primarily interested in how players interact, the perceptual limits of sound, and the theater of performance. Those themes are well-represented in this hush for cello and harp, which tasks the players to listen and react to each other in an extremely quiet environment. For the players, the score asks them to hold the bow/stick extremely close to the strings, an amount so that minute spasms of the arm will cause the bow to strike the string, resulting in unpredictable, but soft articulations of the instrument. While maintaining this tense control, they have to listen closely to each other for cues to perform microscopic changes.
Sonically, it’s incredibly quiet and slow, but comes to life when you watch them perform, in the silent theater. You witness the tension and the interaction between them, drawing you into the sound and fostering a incredibly close listening. This close listening mirrors and is opposite the Abrahamsen: you’re drawn into the process of the work rather than some goal, but this process is unpredictable. When a sound does occur, even though it’s incredibly soft, it’s shocking and you live, like in the Abrahamsen, inside the decay of the sound, the Music Box effect, as it lingers over the rhetoric.
Sdraulig’s work is fascinating for its complex, yet very human, focus on interaction. hush is conservative compared to works such as between, which has two chapters of instruction for the players. Many of his works are text based, graphic, or something in between, as they are more instructions than score. The result is incredible, though, and rewards both listeners and players by stretching their ears and their sensibilities.