BEETHOVENIANA:
AN EXPLORATION OF INTEGRATED COMPOSITIONAL TECHNIQUES
THROUGH A PRISM OF SONIC MIGRATION
Thesis
Submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the
Degree of
Master of Arts
in Music Composition
Mills College, 2019
By
Asiia Fomalgaut
Approved by:
Reading Committee
__________________________
Zeena Parkins
Director of Thesis ______________________
James Fei
__________________________ Head of Music Department
Laetitia Sonami
Reader of Thesis _______________________
Dr. Chinyere Oparah
Dean of the Faculty
Contents
Chapter 1: Multicultural dimensions of Dance. 6
1.1 12-tone series and the tonal harmony. 7
1.3 The application of a sonata allegro form in Dance. 9
Chapter 2: Improvisation, meditation, and Daydream.. 15
Chapter 3: Plunderphonics and Minimalism in Beethoveniana. 18
3.1 Implementing plunderphonics. 19
3.2 Minimalist deconstruction. 20
Appendix B: Daydream score. 51
Appendix C: Beethoveniana score. 52
Introduction
This thesis paper analyzes the Western traditional and multicultural aspects of my thesis composition Beethoveniana, which had been performed during the Signal Flow festival at Mills College, Oakland, CA, in March 2019. Beethoveniana is an octet written for winds (oboe, soprano and alto saxophones), strings (cello and double bass), percussion (hand drum in the 1st movement, marimba in the other two; piano), and electronics. There are multiple quotes and citations from Ludwig van Beethoven’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra C major, op. 15[1]. The three movements of my composition correspond with the three movements of the said concerto: the first movement Dance is a sonata allegro which features a long improvised introduction; the second movement Daydream, is a slow and meditative informed improvisation of four acoustic instruments and the electronic drone; the third movement Beethoveniana has been constructed with the direct citations from Beethoven’s score in a manner of minimalist deconstruction.
I approached Beethoveniana through a prism of a classically trained pianist, improviser, composer, and conductor who travelled extensively and lived in many different regions of the world. These places are very different and yet all very dear to me and I wanted to share my experiences by transcribing their cultural diversity into a musical language. To achieve this goal, I combined compositional techniques from deliberately disconnected origins and schools of musical thought and aesthetics, such as tonal harmony, 12-tone series, world rhythmical patterns, rhythmic notation, and others. Beethoveniana takes listeners to the sonic pilgrimage of 20th century compositional experiments, touring its attractions[2] without settling on any specific school of musical form and style. The first and the second movements reflect on my personal immigrant’s journey when the boundaries between the aspects of primary and acquired cultures begin to intertwine to the level where a new culture of thought emerges. The third movement Beethoveniana presents a musician’s inner self by imitating both the practice routine of a classical music piece (as if a pianist drills a tricky spot in the score over and over, listens to it from all possible perspectives for memorization purposes), and the brain’s routine of inner listening and interpreting a classical music piece.
The first chapter of the thesis paper investigates the concepts and compositional techniques found in Dance, such as the serial and harmonic structures and its multicultural dance rhythms; analyzes the sonata allegro form of the composition and discusses the relationship between the traditional and rhythmical notations which are implied in the movement. The second chapter reviews the issues of the contained improvisation in Daydream, my presence of a composer and the inspirations behind the score. The third chapter examines plunderphonics as means of music composition, as well as the minimalist and deconstruction compositional techniques that define the finale movement Beethoveniana.
Overall postmodern atmosphere[3] of detached abstraction, emotional absence, and the musical humor create the airy aesthetics of Beethoveniana. The first movement features episodic sequences of multicultural musical elements, which, seemingly, should not mix together but, in the end, they merge without fully belonging to any of the styles. The second movement’s aesthetics evoke Buddhist outlook to the sound meditation inspired by Pauline Oliveros’s Sonic Meditations[4]; and the finale movement is a humorous brisk piece of harmonic and contrapuntal collage.
Chapter 1: Multicultural dimensions of Dance
In the sonic migration of Dance, I’ve encoded embodied diverse music genres that had the most profound influence on me as a musician. The tonal elements of this movement refer to European culture; I think of the serial aspects representing my life in the North America, the tango rhythms give a personal tribute to my parents who had emigrated to Spanish speaking countries; and visiting Arabic dance patterns bring the memories of the Middle East (Israel and Palestine). The choice of a sonata form for the first movement of the chamber composition followed an old European tradition which took roots in the Enlightenment era.
As the first movement of a piece called Beethoveniana, it’s natural to assume that the piece quotes the C-Major concerto for piano and orchestra op.15 by L. Beethoven. However, there is hardly any direct link connecting them: Dance gets as far as musically possible from the Viennese classical aesthetics and Western musical norms. Yet there are four significant clues that the piece references Beethoven’s concerto later. First, Dance is written in Sonata Allegro, just like the first movement of Beethoven’s concerto op.15, therefore at least continuing the Western custom of preservation of musical form. Secondly, Dance begins with a long show-off introduction (as does Beethoven’s concerto op.15 where the orchestra tutti introduce the themes of the sonata) when the drummer improvises solo using the rhythmic patterns which will accompany the music of the movement to come. Then there are two hidden citations of the actual Beethoven’s score (1st movement): the oboe’s “stalking C” element refers to the opening measure of the said concerto, only in my score the first C of the sequence is not transposed down an octave like Beethoven’s; also the first measure of the second theme played by piano solo in Dance cites m. 63, 1st and 2nd violins parts in the score of the Concerto op. 15, first movement.
1.1 12-tone series and the tonal harmony
The presence of 12-tone series in the first movement of Beethoveniana: Dance is not common to the 12-tone music literature. Here it is applied as a spice to the musical texture and to help the process of construction of a musical idea, rather than being the musical idea by itself. Only three instruments, one by one, collect the series during the first theme of the exposition episode. Later the 12-tone series reoccur in elaboration episode[5] and in the coda as an ornamental element, which enhances the variety of moods, textures, harmonies and dynamics of the movement. Alongside the 12-tone, traditional Western harmony is present in both themes, however, the relationships between chords are completely disfigured from all Western customs. The mixing of the 12-tone and tonal music allows the listener to abstract from any emotional involvement with the music, and to keep listening open, allowing the audience to take “expecting nothing and everything” attitude.
12-tone series in Dance:
C – A – G – C#(Dflat) – G#(Aflat)- D#- F(E#) – A#(Bflat) – E – B – D – F#
The drum introduces C, A of the series if the percussion is pitched. Double bass gives 5 tones of the 12-tone series. Cello picks up the task of introducing the remaining 5 notes starting with A#. Piano plays the whole 12-tone series in 16-note triplets in the elaboration episode (mm. 54-75: overall crescendo to the 12-tone-sounding-together climax) and coda (mm. 107-130: overall diminuendo, the dissolution of the piece), repeats them over and over, making their presence prominent. The piano version of the 12-tone series does switch G# and D# to achieve the melodic fluidity of musical canvas, and the comfortability of hand placement over the keyboard. The climax in mm. 76-78, and the beginning of the recapitulation in mm. 79-84 feature all the 12 tones sounding simultaneously. The ending of the piece has instruments drop out of playing one by one, until double bass and cello pluck the open strings G-D-A-E in guitar-like manner, accompanied by piano rolled chords of perfect fourths A-D-G-C-F, thus annihilating both the serial and tonal tendencies of the piece.
1.2 Dance rhythms
The choice of 4/4 meter in the composition often allows flexibility of rhythmic and melodic patterns without intimidating performers when sight-reading the piece. The free rhythms of the first and swinging rhythms of the second instrumental themes of Dance are grounded with the accompaniment of Middle Eastern dance rhythms (basic “awzan”) which are played continuously by the hand drum: wazn bolero constantly shifts with wazn baladi, and they occasionally get stirred up by the wazn malfouf[6]. The base to the piece is given by the Tango rhythms which are presented and retained by double bass throughout the whole movement. In elaboration section the winds (oboe, saxophones) and cello also pick up the nervous tango off-beat rhythms (first introduced by the drum) when all melodic components drop out of the musical canvas while building the climax; in the coda only cello maintains the tango off-beat rhythmic element.
Interestingly, the malfouf rhythmic division of 8 as 3+3+2 is found both in Middle Eastern and Latin American musical traditions, bound together by Flamenco culture. The rhythmical unity of the movement was enhanced by sprinkling the wazn malfouf on the key occasions, such as the bridge between percussion improvisation in the introduction and the first theme of the movement; the climax; and the piano version of the 12-series.
The introduction of a hand drum in Dance serves the purpose beyond simply grounding the relationships between other instruments and elements in the piece: it follows the “searching the void that each of us holds within our individual human frame. With the drum, we search, finding the relationship between our external experience and our inner reality.”[7] The only fast note values in the piece are assigned to the drum: they stimulate listeners’ conscious perception of the instrumental details and create organic urge for the ideas to evolve toward the musical impersonation of the archetypal elements. As Steven Ash describes, “the drum gives us a rhythm to coordinate our senses to, taking us into the realm of magic where we can find our personal timing… As we beat the hollowness of the drum, we can attune our inner world to the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms, finding where they fit into the pattern of life manifesting itself through us.”[8].
1.3 The application of a sonata allegro form in Dance
The introduction of Dance highlights drum solo, resetting the expectation of hearing a classical piece with citations. The solo improvisation starts with two written- in measures, which feature the tango rhythm that will later be played by the double bass. The written pitches are the three C’s like the ones which open Beethoven’s piano concerto C-major op. 15. The improviser is expected to play solo in freely chosen rhythms and speed and is given three written measures to slow down and set the actual tempo of the piece. The written measure 4 contains wazn malfouf in 16th note values followed by two eighth-note triplets which slow down the tempo naturally; measures 5 and 6 repeat the more settled wazn bolero and are sealed with double bar line.
a. Exposition episode
The exposition episode of the sonata form in Dance begins with a six-measure introduction of itself. The double bass plays pitched tango rhythms (as in mm.1-2), and the drum accompanies it with the off-beat tango rhythms in mm.7-10. In m.11-13 the drum supports the double bass modulation by switching back the slow eight-note off-beats to the wazn bolero. The double-bass starts swinging in C minor but after a full phrase of 4 measures (mm.7-10) it modulates to G#7 half-diminished chord with D# base and then jumps right back to C minor in m.13. This creates a sound effect of unresolved harmonic jumps reminiscent of a relaxed and not quite correctly played, buzzed, Klezmer playing. In mm.14-29 the double bass plays only the off-beat eight-note tango rhythms using improvised pitches not fully defined by the composer allowing the mood, the imagination and the skill of the player to either fortify or disrupt the harmonic and textural relations between the cello and the oboe in mm.14-29.
The fragmented first theme is presented by the cello in mm.13-27. The antecedent features the sustained A# as a starting pitch, a new note in the 12-tone series, which, paired with the bass tone C creates a stark dissonance. The A# descends to the D# through D#sus chord motion A#-G#-E-D# in m.14-15, which contains a hidden triton E-A# enhancing the dissonance. The tonic phrase repeats itself in mm.16-17 with the rhythmic variations creating not a harmonic, but a rhythmic contrast. The last pitch of the 12-tone series is ascended toward in the consequent phrase in m. 21.
Oboe interrupts the rich legato cello melodies in mm.14-19 by “stalking” staccato C’s. In mm.22-29 it moves on to “stalking” D’s as a harmonic resolution to an occasional B minor and ten, after the cello introduces the twelfth serial pitch F# it moves again to the parallel D major modulation. However, the harmonic resolution of tension is not fully defined by the composer since the pitches played by the double bass remain improvised intended to surprise the score each time it is performed. By “stalking” D’s in mm. 27-29 the oboe liquidates the first theme.
The bridge is built with electronic live signal processing (the artist created Max patch for Signal Flow performance) where the live recording of the last few measures enters freely in mm.28-29 and is played solo with the descending pitch followed by the fading of the sound until the second theme comes in.
The first measure of the second theme contrasts the mood of the fragmented first theme. Cited from Beethoven’s concerto op. 15, m. 63, measure 30 is played by piano solo (in Beethoven’s score it’s played by violins) in B-flat major. In the context of this sonata allegro B-flat major has no harmonic relation to the D major from the first theme: I intentionally decided to drift away from the traditional tonal relations of Western music where the second theme would have to be written in F# major by the custom.
The thematic fragment introduced by the piano in m. 30 starting with the pitch D is picked up by soprano saxophone starting with F# in m. 34 and C# in m.42. Together with “stalking” oboe’s B-flat in mm.40-41 the movement of the second theme ascends in 7th/aug5 chord (B-flat enharmonically stands for A#): instead of resolving the second theme with coda, the material becomes more and more tense and jumps right into the elaboration episode after the double bar in m. 45.
The second theme is accompanied by the pianist’s left hand altering alberiti bass D-F# and E-F# of the first octave in mm.30-45 independent of the harmony of the melody. The double bass walks through the tango rhythms in these measures supporting the harmonic progression of the thematic fragments. The drum does not play in the second theme in the exposition, leaving listeners wondering until the exciting dance element of the music comes back in the culmination of the elaboration section.
b. Elaboration episode
The processes of Experimental Music emanate from composerly concepts, and those of Free Improvisation arise from performance experience. While both have at certain times appeared to be pursuing parallel but antithetical lines of enquiry their closely entwined histories has made distinguishing the intentions of their respective practitioners from the sounds and musical shapes they make often very difficult for most listeners.[9]
The elaboration episode is almost entirely rhythmically notated. The rhythm and timing define Dance much more than the pitch does therefore the choices of pitches and performance techniques are left to the tastes of the players, but the timing, note values, and dynamics are controlled by the score. Four measures after the double bar the cello swiftly reminds listeners the antecedent and the fragmentation/modulation to D major phrases of the first theme in mm. 50-53. The drum follows the cello in the same measure alternating baladi and bolero azwan every four measures and switches entirely to wazn malfouf in mm. 68-75; while the piano introduces the whole 12-tone series in sixteenth note values wazn malfouf in mm.54-75. The saxophones play jerking tango off-beats all the way through the elaboration while the oboe improvises some of the fragments which rhythmically arrive from the second theme; later the oboe joins the saxophones in unison in mm.62-75. The double bass introduces the sustained malfouf rhythm for the first time in Dance: two dotted quarter notes followed by one quarter per measure. The sustained malfouf rhythmically constructs the climax in mm. 76-78 where all instruments play in unison the whole spectrum of the 12 notes in fortissimo dynamics. Here the oboe prepares the way for the A# of the first theme to burst right in in m. 79. The antecedent of the first theme sounds fortissimo in a unison of the oboe and soprano saxophone with the other instruments playing the 12- tone series, while the piano marches through the suspended chords of the remaining pitches in both hands on the second and the fourth beats of each measure in bars 79-84, and the drum accelerates the march rhythms.
Successful performance of the elaboration section almost entirely depends on the improvisation skills of the musicians who choose the pitches and timbral qualities for the most of it. The elaboration merges with the recapitulation episode since the tonic form of the first theme still technically belongs to the elaboration and is separated from the dominant form by the reverb effect of the electronics solo in mm.84-87.
c. Recapitulation episode
The bacchanalia of the 12 tones sounding simultaneously in mm.76-87 is liquidated by the electronics. After a brief pause, the calming wazn bolero played by the drum sets the atmosphere for the indifferent theme 1 to pick up right from the fragmentation/ and modulation to D major phrases, played here by alto saxophone. The “stalking” element (pizzicato F#) is now assigned to the cello. Immediately and without a bridge, the second theme continues the melodic line in C minor (starting pitch G), played here by the oboe, and followed by soprano saxophone in B-flat major with the starting pitch F.
The piano presents the continuous coda in m.107-130, playing over and over the 16th note value malfouf of the 12-tone series until the end of the movement. The winds occasionally remind the listeners the “stalking” notes which get combined with the scale and the rhythmical elements of the second theme. The melodic fragments played by the winds become more and more scattered and varied. The double bass plays tango rhythms with walking harmonies: D minor – C minor – D minor – B-flat major – A-flat major – B-flat major – C-minor – D-flat major – E-flat major – G minor – F major – G minor. In m.121 the double bass begins to improvise the pitches but preserving the rhythm until the m.125, where it switches the rhythm first to the quarter note triplets, and later to the sustained malfouf quarters in mm.129-130. The cello player improvises pizzicato off-beats from m.99 to the end of the piece, which dissolves itself in m.131 with the guitar string pitches plucked by the strings and rolled by the piano with no pedal.
1.4 Notation
When working on Dance, I’ve encountered problems with using traditional Western notation. Using traditional notation was the easiest way to put together ideas and technical implementations of the music, such as transcribing the embedded dance rhythms into the comprehendible score, however many things could not be explained by the notated score. Western notation, as any other notation of music “does not merely quantize the material, reducing it to simple units but, constrained by writability, readability and playability, is able to encompass only a very limited degree of complexity within those units. In fact, the whole edifice of Western art music can be said, after a fashion, to be constructed upon and through notation which, amongst other things, creates ‘the composer’ who is thus constitutionally bound to it.”[10]. Yet, in Dance not the composer but the players determine a lot of musical decisions regarding the harmony, the texture, and the thickness of the sound in any place where there’s a rhythmical notation. Musicians are invited to improvise the pitches and techniques, and the composer does not wish to interfere with their unique musical decisions.
The criteria of sound assembling had widened the gap between theory and practice, between a thought and its realization that was assigned to a magnetic or digital memory. This had an influence also on the notation of instrumental music, at least in those cases where the conception of a work prompted doubts as to whether a score should provide graphic prescriptions for its performance, or descriptions of the sound result, or, simply and fantastically, should be a form of prognostication, a way of guessing.[11].
I found it nearly impossible to notate electronic live sound processing without prescribing the exact software and providing full details about it. The score of Dance has an empty line where I wrote “reverb” in measures where the electronics would surely need to participate (referring to one of the effects in Supercollider console which I thought to use originally), yet in many other places I left space for electronic artist’s personal creativity. While I could have created a graphic score I decided to leave it up to the electronic artist to process the sound using their preferred software and to use their taste to collaborate, exploring “the nature of experimental improvisation with its combination of the unpredictable interactions of individuals and a focus upon alternative methods of sound production (which emphasize noise as much as ‘conventional’ musical sounds).”[12]. The delicate usage of electronics by Amina Kirby who performed in Dance in the Signal Flow provided much needed support to the instrumental musicians in the group and had contributed to the success of the performance immensely. Amina designed Max patch and had improvised with it freely in the lower dynamic range in the specified spots of the score. The electronics merged in organic unity with the acoustic instruments, distorting the specificity of their timbres. This was accomplished by echoing in a manner of piano pedal the things that acoustic instruments played in the second theme of the exposition, the recapitulation episodes and the coda. Jan Fairley expresses the aesthetics of multicultural and migrant music when describing the BBC World Service ethnographic music programmes:
What one hopes to achieve is compression of time and space, the making of connections between seemingly disparate pieces of music from a variety of standpoints, a criss-crossing of geographical and historical borders and genre with a gamut of world musics in ‘imaginary’ relationships. Out of a huge range of possible references, the presenter attempts to create a narrative that makes sense of tangled relationships that might exist between different cultures, histories, and the musicians who have produced the music. This involves touching on aspects of power relations, hegemony, colonialism, class, race and gender.[13].
Chapter 2: Improvisation, meditation, and Daydream
None of us who compose or improvise music can claim credit for inventing it. Music is a gift from the Universe. Those of us who can tune to this gift are fortunate indeed – we interact with a powerful resource and connect with the billions of musicians who have preceded us, who are with us, and who will succeed us[14].
More and more contemporary composers turn to limited and defined improvisation as a form of music composition. The unpredictability of music performance challenges listener’s ability to connect with the uncertainty of the musical event, and completely improvised experimental pieces aren’t always perceived well by the fans of classical or mainstream music. “Improvised and experimental musics are generally considered to be ‘special cases’ by mainstream aesthetics and musicology because they are not thought to have a direct bearing upon mainstream music making and musical experience.”[15]. It is also quite risky of a decision to leave millions of musical choices entirely to the tastes and skills of improvising performers and yet to claim the authorship to the outcome of the improvisation. Therefore, experimental composers such as John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, Christian Wolf, and many other provide instructions to support the imagination of the players in the improvising ensemble: “freedom in free improvisation can have aspects of both kinds of understanding of the concept, namely the individual’s desire to ‘express’ him or herself, and the acknowledgement that such an impetus may be exploited or undermined or abandoned (however temporarily) in the context of the ensemble.”[16].
The Daydream was conceived as an informed improvisation of no more than four acoustic instruments accompanied by the low-pitched electronic drone throughout the duration of the movement. Musicians played Daydream for about 3 minutes in the Signal Flow performance; however, the piece suggests that it can go on for longer. Here the reference to Beethoven is more symbolic than practical: each acoustic player is choosing a single two or three measure pitch patterns to inform their improvisation (all pitch patterns are taken from the score of the second movement of Beethoven’s piano concerto op.15). Also, each acoustic musician chooses one out of three rhythmic patterns (pulled out from the second movement of Beethoven’s score) to include at least once in their improvisation. The tempo, tonality, speed, dynamic and intensity of improvisation are determined individually by the performers; the conductor doesn’t interfere in the second movement of Beethoveniana. The name of the movement Daydream suggests a smooth and meditative pace of the performance and as stated in the score, “tempo varies freely between largo to andantino. The dynamics varies between ppp to mf”. I strived to create a safe and intimate sonic abode in the middle movement of Beethoveniana where nothing disturbs the ear, none of the centrifugal tendencies of the score call for tension. Still influenced by the classical origin, the semi-notated movement tranquilizes musicians and listeners after the rhetorical conflicts of the first movement and before the finale. In the personal context Daydream is a reference to my desire to seek peace and solace in the midst of travels and practice.
Out of the silence awakens the electronic drone. During the Signal Flow performance, the acoustic musicians playing alto saxophone, piano, double bass and marimba hesitated to enter playing for a bit while listening to and meditating on the singularity of the drone: “sound comes from listening; reception takes priority over production. All of these pieces convert the subject into an objective part of the sonic environment, thus effecting objective objectivity.”[17]. The idea of listening to a drone as a basic idea of musical improvisation was inspired by one of Pauline Oliveros’s Sonic Meditations, which Steven Miles describes as the “verbal instructions for a variety of activities: imagining, listening, mimicking, creating, interacting. As this sequence of verbs suggests, the Sonic Meditations range from works of almost pure subjectivity, to those that require an active engagement with the objective environment, to those that are fully intersubjective.”[18]. Meditation XIII Energy Changes best reflects the meditative experience of the improvisers who engage in playing Daydream:
Listen to the environment as a drone. . . . When you feel prepared . . . make any sound you like in one breath, or a cycle of sounds. When a sound or a cycle of sounds is completed, re-establish mental connection with the drone, which you first established before making another sound or cycle of sounds.[19]
The other feature of Daydream has to do with the extended techniques and preparations, which are all left in the hands of performers. For example, the pianist Na-Young Jung used a trombone mouthpiece on the opened strings of a grand piano during the rehearsals and chose to use drumsticks during the Signal Flow performance. Since there are no specific instructions to players on how and when to prepare their instruments: the instruments in the ensemble may vary with each performance of this piece.
Chapter 3: Plunderphonics and Minimalism in Beethoveniana
Musical instruments produce sounds. Composers produce music. Musical instruments reproduce music. Tape recorders, radios, discs players, etc., reproduce sound. A device such as a wind-up music box produces sound and reproduces music. A phonograph in the hands of a “HipHop/scratch” artist who plays a record like an electronic washboard with a phonographic needle as a plectrum, produces sounds which are unique and not reproduced – the record player becomes a musical instrument… The distinction between sound producers and sound reproducers is easily blurred, and has been a conceivable area of musical pursuit at least since John Cage’s use of radios in the forties.[20]
The composers’ tradition of citing and appropriating existing tunes, sounds, pieces of music into their own composition is as old as the history of music itself. In Western tradition where the concept of musical authorship is protected by the dogmas of morality and law, composers refer to other composers who in turn converted some anonymous tune into a notated piece of music – for example, S. Rachmaninov’s Variations on a theme of Corelli, op. 42, which revisits the whole A. Corelli’s La Folia before it’s followed by a set of Rachmaninov’s variations on the piece’s harmonies, melodies, rhythms, etc. On the other hand, electronic musicians and Hip-Hop artists had turned the existing recordings of sounds and music pieces into the new scores which can be variated deliberately as in the scratch/mix techniques.
Montage, collage, borrowing, bricolage have been endemic in the visual arts since at least the turn of the century. The importation of readymade fragments into original works was a staple of cubism (newspaper, label samples, advertising etc.) futurism and early soviet art. Dada took this much further (Kurt Schwitters above all and the photomontagists) and as early as 1914 Marcel Duchamp had exhibited his bottle rack, a work in which, for the first time, a complete unmodified object was simply imported whole into an ‘art space’. Yet strangely it waited 25 years for John Cage in his Imaginary Landscape No.1 (1939) to bring a gramophone record into a public performance as an instrument – and he still only used test tones and the effect of speed changes.[21]
3.1 Implementing plunderphonics
John Oswald[22] came up with the word plunderphonics to describe the electronic appropriation of existing sounds which belong to other musicians. The questions of the legality of plunderphonics are being argued in Western countries. Oswald explains the difference between plunderphonics and intellectual thievery: “a ‘plunderphone’ is an unofficial but recognizable musical quote. The blatant borrowings of the privateers of sound are a class distinct from common samplepocketing, parroting and tune thievery.”[23] Plunder offers “not just a new means but a new meaning, a dual character”[24] to the quoted and collaged sounds:
plunderphonics is the most consciously self-reflexive; it begins and ends only with recordings, with the already played. Thus, it cannot help but challenge our current understanding of originality, individuality and property rights.[25]
Beethoveniana is a fully notated piece, which is traditionally named after the composer whose musical piece I collaged. In Beethoveniana sound fragments familiar to classical music audiences became the actual score. Instead of writing the completed musical quote of Beethoven’s piano concerto op. 15 movement 3, and later developing variations of it like traditional Western composers would do, I applied Hip Hop scratch/mix and sampling techniques to the sound of the citations. The quoted samples repeat themselves over and over, played by all the acoustic instruments with no electronics in canon in 1, entering on different beats, sometimes with different speed, like a stuck needle on a vinyl record. There are 22 fragments cited from the most random places in the orchestral score of the third (finale rondo) movement of Beethoven’s first piano concerto C major. Beethoveniana preserves the original meter 2/4, the tonality C major, and the first two measures played by piano solo in both pieces. 22 samples in Beethoveniana collide humorously, together like a bunch of mischievous kids fighting over a chocolate, each claiming their unique right over listener’s attention in a dissonant contrapuntal chorus of acoustic instruments. Putting this movement together was fun and easy for me as a pianist: I applied my practice routine of a classical composition, repeating a small amount of notes over and over until the hand learns them in a right position with the correct touch and dynamics, into a compositional technique to create a burlesque finale: in the end, musicians of all races and backgrounds spend their days practicing their instruments and learn the well-known pieces written for their instruments, such as Beethoven’s concertos. Performers’ internalization of a music piece raises a lot of discussion in music pedagogical literature, but it can also become a musical art form with the application of plunderphonics as means of composition.
3.2 Minimalist deconstruction
Creativity exists in the searching even more than in the finding or being found. We take pleasure in energetic repetition, practice, ritual. As play, the act is its own destination. The focus is on process, not product[26].
Beethoveniana is written in a minimalist deconstruction style of almost ritualistic repetition of small amount of musical material and its contrapuntal collage inspired by the fast movements of Steve Reich’s Double Sextet: progressive series of rhythmic and pitch patterns repeat many times over, and the timbres of identical instruments interlock.
As one instrument repeats the sampled phrase over and over, some notes start falling out of the plundered fragment creating sparkling rhythms and syncopations, which surely disrupts other instruments’ playing. The players routinely enter in small seconds with each other and underline all occurring dissonances and rhythmical mismatches After reaching the final twenty-second sample in Beethoveniana, the fragments sound again but with less repetitions if any, and they sound in the reversed order, thus reimagining the binary form of composition: sample 22 is interrupted by fragment 21 in m.192, etc. As the retrospectively combined fragments snowball towards the finale of the movement, the return of the first sample, the aspect of repetition becomes almost unimportant. The rhythms and speed of the fragments variate even more than the first time around, and finally, the first/last fragment appears in reverse order in the winds’ parts (oboe, soprano and alto saxophones) where the quote is played backward from the last of its pitches to the first one.
The first sample in Beethoveniana (mm.1-2) cites the first two measures of Beethoven’s rondo mm.1-2; the last, twenty-second sample of Beethoveniana (mm.183-193) cites the modulation to G major from the C major of the first two bars in mm. 4-5 of Beethoven’s score: essentially a single phrase of Beethoven’s concerto was torn apart by 180 measures of the instrumental plunder and scratch/mix counterpoint to finally find its second half.
Contradictory or colliding musical ideas are often what make a performance seem vital and alive because there is a sense that either fresh new ideas will be sparked off amongst the musicians or that the whole edifice will collapse. Humor is sometimes an important aspect that arises from such situations of musical mismatch and intentional contradiction[27].
Conclusion
I think of Beethoveniana as the essence of the personal experience of world migration encoded in an abstracted musical composition. The three contrasting movements of Beethoveniana display a wide spectrum of collided compositional techniques. The multicultural rhythms become the essential aspect of the first movement Dance: here the collage of rhythmic patterns contributes to the development of the sonata form before the harmony and thematic material. The second movement Daydream displays the meditative run of the semi-improvised musical thought while simultaneously revisiting the melodic and rhythmic ideas of the music of the Viennese Classical musical epoch. The third movement Beethoveniana redefines music citation as a sort of the instrumental Hip Hop/scratch and mix in a minimalist manner instead of chronologically developed variations. It also features deconstruction of music material in a written-through binary form. The connection of Beethoveniana to Beethoven’s first piano concerto score increases with each of the movements by offering more and more clues and musical citations; the quotation turns out to be the main idea of the finale movement of my thesis composition.
I intend to continue to explore musical ways of expressing multicultural merging which involves a personal journey through the continents as well as journeys of my migrating friends and colleagues. I plan to dedicate to them a series of chamber music compositions, which will include the mixture of multicultural genres and will also cite some of their beloved classical pieces. I will continue to use sonata form in each of these pieces, as this traditional musical form is best suited for me to reflect upon the development and transformation of human character in response to external events.
The PDF of the thesis including the complete score is under the link:
Thesis II Stasie FINAL SUBMISSION
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[1] L. Beethoven. “Concerto #1 for piano and orchestra, op. 15” in Ludwig van Beethovens Werke, Serie 9: Für Pianoforte und Orchester, Nr.65. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1862.
[2] Arabic dance music influence, Latin American dance, 12-tone series, defined improvisation, rhythmical notation, deconstruction, minimalism, plunderphonics.
[3] In music “postmodernism marks a development predominantly on a textual level. The new music abandoned the common language of tonality and tonal harmony. Instead, it offered a musical structure that had to be filled by the performer and the audience, thus being open to randomness, change and essentially different interpretations. Ending the restriction of a limited canon of instruments, sound and noise were adequate to be incorporated together with unlimited citations of the musical traditions.” – Randy Brown. “Postmodernism and Music”, YouthWorker, online edition.
[4] Stephen Miles. “Objectivity and Intersubjectivity in Pauline Oliveros’s “Sonic Meditations”, Perspectives of New Music, Vol.46 No.1, winter 2008, pp. 4-38.
[5] Carl Dahlhaus. Schoenberg and the New Music: Essays by Carl Dahlhaus. Cambridge University Press, 1987, p.104.
[6] Maura Enright. Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Music Rhythms: Diagrams and Performance Aids, 2015.
[7] Steven Ash. Sacred Drumming. Ed. Renata Ash. NY: Sterling, 2004, p.68.
[8] Ash, Sacred Drumming, pp. 68-69.
[9] Stephen T. Chase. Improvised Experimental Music and the Construction of a Collaborative Aesthetic. Submitted for the degree of PhD in Music Department of Music, University of Sheffield. December 2006, p. 11.
[10] Chris, Cutler. Plunderphonia. Online edition.
[11] Luciano Berio. Remembering the Future. Cambridge – London: Harvard University Press, 2006, pp. 15-16.
[12] Chase, Improvised Experimental Music, p.177.
[13] Jan Fairley. “An ethnographic analysis of music programmes about the migration of people, musicians, genres and instruments, BBC World Service, 1994-5” in Migrating Music, ed. Jason Toynbee and Byron Dueck. London and NY: Routledge, 2011, p. 170.
[14] Pauline Oliveros. Sounding the Margins: Collected Writings 1992-2009. Deep Listening Publications, 2010, p.6.
[15] Chase, Improvised Experimental Music, p.169.
[16] Ibid., p.4.
[17] Miles, Objectivity and Intersubjectivity, p. 17.
[18] Ibid., p. 9.
[19] Pauline Oliveros. “Sonic Meditations” found in “Objectivity and Intersubjectivity in Pauline Oliveros’s “Sonic Meditations”, Perspectives of New Music, Vol.46 No.1, winter 2008, p.
[20] John Oswald. “Better by the borrower: the ethics of musical dept”, Audio Culture, pp. 131-132, 134.
[21] Cutler, Plunderphonia.
[22] John Oswald. “Better by the borrower: the ethics of musical dept”, Audio Culture, pp. 131-137.
[23] Found in “Andrew Tholl. Plunderphonics: a literature review”, online edition, p.5.
[24] Cutler, Plunderphonics.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Stephen Nachmanovitch. Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art. New York, 1990, p. 45.
[27] Chase, Improvised Experimental Music, p. 107.
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