gerasterte Dämmerung

In the beginning of April the conductors class of my school did a workshop with a small semi-professional orchestra in Prague and decided to bring a new piece by a composition student with them, to be played in a concert with that orchestra, together with music by Haydn (Symphony no. 8, "Le soir"), Elgar (serenade for strings), and Stravinsky (concerto in Re). I was lucky to be allowed to write this piece for them.

So, a month ago, I went with the conductors to Prague for a couple of days to rehearse and perform that piece. I have now finally got the recording of it, so I thought I'd post it!

It's about 11 minutes long (even though it's a bit shorter on this recording. The conductor (one of the students I travelled with) probably was a bit nervous, so the tempi were a bit fast. She did excellently though and I'm very grateful for all the time and care she gave to this piece. She was awesome to work together with.)

The instrumentation is what was available, i.e. the instruments needed for the Haydn symphony: Flute, 2 Oboes, Bassoon, 2 Horns and Strings. I crafted my piece in some aspects after this Haydn symphony too, for example by a frequent use of solo strings and a vague relationship to the Haydn subject "evening". The parallels to Haydn are negligible though.

Here's text I wrote for the program:

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The title "gerasterte Dämmerung" ("dusk in a grid") refers both to the technique of composition I used and to vague associations with evening or dusk. Dusk (Dämmerung) means here that there are varied degrees of "light", creating transitions from clear lines to blurred contours or obscurity. In order to put this idea into practice, a technique of using harmonic and rhythmical "grids" appeared suitable, which I had first explored in a piece of computer music.

These grids are defined sets of notes and rhythms that are used to approximate an independent, continuous musical line, so that the resulting music follows the general direction of the original line, but consists only of the notes that exist within the grid. This is much like creating a mosaic, where an image is represented by stones in a limited range of colours.

Similarly to the mosaic, where the number and size of different stones at your disposal determines how accurately and detailed you can depict something, the number of different notes in my grids determines how fine they are, and how accurately they can represent the underlying line. With a fine grid (for example all 12 notes of the octave) the music comes very close to the line, whereas a rough grid, consisting only of a few select notes, will change the contour of the line significantly. Like this, changing the fineness of a grid over a musical line will have the effect of either making the result very clear, or blurring it. The concept of rougher and finer grids also applies formally to the piece, where clear-cut blocks slowly turn into more flowing transitions, representing the slowly vanishing contours at dusk.

The line "behind the grid" winds through the whole piece, sometimes dividing into two or more lines for a while, sometimes ruptured by an abrupt change to a different block, but never stopping. As it moves through the various layered grids and is always represented by different sets of "mosaic stones" it constantly changes in appearance. My aim with this technique was to allow me to focus on wide musical gestures, like drawing music with a large paintbrush, while maintaining a strong structural foundation to keep the piece together.

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Here it is then, performed by the Berg Orchestra and Olivera Barac (conductor). I'll be happy about any criticism and suggestions, since I might be able to get another performance of this by another orchestra, for which I will revise the whole piece. (I already know of some things I will definitely change.)

gerasterte-Dämmerung.mp3

I absolutely love the Dark and Mysterious textures you exploit throughout the beginning. You are very lucky to have such great performers. I am not a fan of the modern genre, but I loved this piece. It evoked feelings of tension and confusion, which I am sure you were aiming for. In fact, it is scary in some parts. The use of orchestral colors is great and the entrances of each instrument are very well done. I think the orchestration is very nice. However, the strings and horns seem to have the spotlight.

Great piece! I really enjoyed it!

That is an amazing piece, one of the best I've seen on the forum. Dissonance and contrast in dynamics were used to great effect in evoking thoughts of dusk, and the piece has a very dark and dramatic character. The orchestral texture is amazing, and it's interesting to me that you were able to produce such a brooding sound with a classical-period orchestra. The piece often reminds me of avant-garde composers like Ligeti and Penderecki, but sometimes I hear a little bit of a more traditional sound, too. The way you used the strings, winds and horns together create a very tense overall feeling in the piece, which leaves a strange aftertaste. I think the piece could be used for concert music and film music to great effect. Great work.

wow. see - i really like this...because though its dissonant it is still easy (lack of words) to listen to. Where as, and forgive me Nikolas...but Nikolas' work was TOOOOO much for my ears. It is a great piece nontheless, just, im not ready for that extreme yet. This piece however, its tense but doesnt scare me and make my mind go crazy and cause me to fit. It is well sort out, and pleasant...in its own way.

Great job.

Thank you, maelstromtempest, Voce, and goodridge_winners! I found it quite challenging to work with this instrumentation and you are very right, maelstromtempest, that the strings and horns are quite dominant. I actually had imagined the oboes to come out a bit more than they did and often the woodwinds got a bit drowned out at some places. I've already changed some of the dynamics since the concert, to make the strings and horns quieter when the woodwinds really need to stick out and in the revised score I may cut back on horn usage a bit (in favour of more dominant bassoon parts, for example). I didn't have any experience with such a really classical orchestra before, so the orchestration isn't optimal everywhere. And due to the low number of tutti strings, the "solo vs. tutti" effects in the strings didn't really work out very well either. (I didn't know for sure how many strings there would be playing beforehand.)

Another obvious fault on my part was writing too complex rhythms. I had already simplified them quite a bit, but I really need to go over them again and simplify them more. The problem is that if the orchestra has to concentrate too much on the rhythms, other elements such as phrasing, articulation and dynamics are easily forgotten, plus some passages will sound very timid, as the musicians are too afraid of playing at the wrong time.

Apart from all these (and many more) mistakes of me, it was an awesome experience and I was really happy with the performance.

Oh wow. This is how I like my orchestras to sound like.

I liked this, a great deal. It shows specially clear that you play horn, and I don't know if it was intentional or not but you even did the horn 5th thing near the beginning, and in other parts. There's also some rather interesting quasi-functional-harmony areas which I found were rather nice in between.

About the score and the instrument handling, I think that as it is it's pretty OK. In the recording. However, sure, the flute for example is very difficult to hear substantially, but that doesn't mean it's badly written or anythin'. If you changed a lot of stuff, then I hope you get to test the changes soon to see if they indeed make the thing more to your liking.

I quite liked that you tried to be very precise with the score, even signaling bow technique and such other things which is usually helpful if you want to get an X or Y effect. I do think the horns are REALLY prominent, but you know what? I like it that way. The Oboes stand out also, and I liked the cluster-like moments precisely because the horn/string combination thing, and the woodwind almost in the background.

One thing I liked about this was that the overall texture of the orchestra wasn't really dense, and it had a lot of movement contrasted by many moments where you'd just slowly work tiny motives into an overall cluster-texture. I like that, reminds me of Ligeti.

On the other hand, sorta because of that, save for the moment with the quasi-tonal chord movement, it does sound very 60s.

But curiously, I sort of see you're using the instruments in groups more than combinations, save for the clusters (or tuttis) and such, it sort of seems like there are clear divisions between the groups. Though, it would be silly to say that applies for the entire piece, but I just get that feeling of groups.

And as far as the rhythms, well. Dunno. Some of this I think would've been better off in a sort of half-graphic notation system, like Penderecki's Threnody, though I suppose it would maybe sacrifice a little of the exactitude. But, I suppose you already figured this was the only way to get the effects you wanted, so I won't question that.

But before going into more detail, I'd rather ask if you're happy with what you did, concerning the concept applied in practice? I mean, I saw you tried to use a specific composition method/technique, do you think it worked for the effect? Would you do it again, since you said this was also done in an electronic piece before (the one you posted here perhaps??)

Despite your explanation, the piece to me sounds almost unrelated to it, maybe I don't see how you did it well enough. Like, it'd be nice if you clarified how your explanation fits into the music itself.

Wow, that ending is extraordinary!

Great piece. I feel that's all I can say.

L.

Thanks a lot to both of you, SSC and LDunn. I'm glad you liked it.

Concerning your points, SSC: It's interesting you hear "quasi-functional harmony areas", as it certainly wasn't really planned like that, but I understand perfectly what you mean (and I don't mind it in the least). I can hear certain passages quite traditionally tonal, even though the harmonic system I used for the whole piece has nothing to do with keys or classical tonality. If anything, it could more be compared to Debussy-like mixtures, just not on a diatonic scale. If there's any interest I'll gladly explain the harmonic (and rhythmic) "grid technique" behind this. Maybe the reason why some passages can be heared as functional harmonies is simply because many of my chords have a lot of thirds in them (several of them sound quite "romantic"), everything moves in linear ways, and it's almost never totally chromatic (which has to do with my grids. Regard them as "modes" for facility's sake). It definitely never gets "pointillistic" but always stays very linear, most of the time with only one or two actual "voices". (The end is the only really polyphonic part.)

You are right too that the orchestration is strongly made out of groups. The problem was that to bring out my harmonical concept, I actually needed rather homogeneous chords, so the concept wasn't perfect for such a classical orchestra (it might actually be more suitable for, say, a string-orchestra or organ piece). This is why I couldn't always use the instruments (especially the woodwinds) very idiomatically and also why the piece is quite simple and "raw" in the range of sounds I used. If I did a similar piece again, timbral structures would certainly get a stronger focus, but here I was still experimenting with harmony and line as main focus points, which meant that other aspects were a bit left aside. (Hey, I'm still learning!)

The rhythms were based on my "grid-technique" too and were strongly connected with the harmonies, so going for a different kind of notation wouldn't really have worked. But I know the rhythmical concept is not 100% perfected. This was my first "proper" orchestra piece though and my conceptual ideas took a very long time (it took me several months before I even wrote the first note), so there wasn't much time for it when the deadline approached and lots of things I had wished to do I simply couldn't.

Personally I hear the "technique" I used very well in this piece, but I'm sure not everybody does. But I suppose I would have to explain at least the harmonical technique in depth so it could be understood. But I think that even without knowing it, you can hear some sort of "grids" in different "resolutions" in the form: Passages that break abruptly to something else where there's a very rough grid, passages that move in "steps" towards something new, and more organic parts that move gradually from one thing to another.

The electronic piece I meant is indeed the one I posted here. But I know that it's impossible to hear that they are built on the same technique. This is mostly because in the electronic piece, there are so many different grids at once, in different positions of the room and they constantly change (plus they're not based on a 12-tone system like in the orchestra piece), so that you don't actually hear the technique. It just works as a scaffolding in the far background. In this piece I tried to bring out the concept more clearly.

Gardener - I would be interested in knowing more about your grid technique. If you have time to put a new thread in the lessons area about it that would be great.

Wanted to add that the piece is excellent. I especially enjoyed the microtonal "mistunings" (Ligeti's Ramifications comes to mind) with the string and the Horn reminds me a little of Ligeti's Horn concerto (he uses two natural horms and it is a beautiful piece). It also reminded me of Feldman too -- particularly the spacing of the orchestral groups. Also the ending was extremely satisfactory as it reinforced and clarified just enough the short chromatic ascending and descending runs heard earlier. I wonder did you play with the idea of ornaments as your departure point for motivic material (eg, the mordent at the end, the short chromatic runs up and down as a variatn on gliss/portamentos?)

Lastly, I enjoyed the dramatic arch ( I imagine that was somewhat of a challenge as you develop a very complex series of various tensions and yet avoid it sounding too "gray"). I did reach a point of temporary frustration -- thinking momentarily you were overlong but then you changed the timbre at the right moment and I was so pleased. Please take this as a big compliment because I like a piece that challenges my expectations. Bravo.