The Layers, for chorus and piano

Wow - I've finally finished a work! That doesn't happen nearly enough...

This is a piece for large chorus (split into 6 and 8 voices frequently), and piano. The text is 'The Layers', a poem by Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006), an American poet, and is very complex and moving. I decided to musically touch on a few elements of the text in rather technical terms. The whole idea of 'layers' and the different facets of emotion going on made me conclude that the best musical palette for the text should be rooted in bitonality. I also wrote a couple of themes to tie the piece together (the theme appearing in the bass during the piano intro, and other places in the piece / the lilting theme appearing in the new, fresh section at E [how shall the heart...]), but the main driving motivic element is the 6 note chord that opens the piece. It is in essence one major triad and the minor triad a minor third above. In the opening, in a seemingly 6-4 position, the notes in the chord are essentially B major and d minor. The chorus, when split into six, generally does not stray from the relationship between those two chords.

It's about 10' or more in duration.

Here is the text:

I have walked through many lives,

some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

though some principle of being

abides, from which I struggle

not to stray.

When I look behind,

as I am compelled to look

before I can gather strength

to proceed on my journey,

I see the milestones dwindling

toward the horizon

and the slow fires trailing

from the abandoned camp-sites,

over which scavenger angels

wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe

out of my true affections,

and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind

the manic dust of my friends,

those who fell along the way,

bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn,

exulting somewhat,

with my will intact to go

wherever I need to go,

and every stone on the road

precious to me.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

"Live in the layers,

not on the litter."

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes.

Anyway, I spent a lot of time on this, about 4 months of hard work, and I'm very relieved to see it finally finished. Please listen and of course, any comment is welcome.

from a notation standpoint, it would be considerably better if you either placed the different voices on independant staves, or at least indicated which voices are singing. Your piece starts off and we don't know which voices are supposed to be singing.

It's interesting, from a tone-colour point of view. It's also next to impossible to perform with anything but the highest quality of chorus. So I'll wish you luck finding a good enough ensemble to perform it. It's going to sound great sung by real voices. Those are very interesting textures.

Great piece of music! You should be proud of this.

I like your justification for using bitonality; I think it's great to tie together musical purpose with poetic devices/meaning. However, I will admit that there were some moments when I was not following you harmonically. Take, for example, the passage on page 13. There are a lot of complicated chords splattered all over the piano part. Now I'm assuming most of them come in some way from the bitonal motive you set up at the beginning, and that's fine, but to my ear they sound more like chaos that's not progressing anywhere rather than a meaningful progression that serves to give musical impetus to the piece. There are a few other places like this, and they seem to occur in the same places where I think the piano part gets unnecessarily complicated. I do like the way that you crafted the piano to be a voice/force independent of the choir, but at times its independence becomes a bit overwhelming.

You've used the choir well, as far as issues of voice range and tessitura go. But I fear that some of these passages may be too difficult -- and by too difficult I mean unnecessarily difficult. Remember that most good choirs can sing just about any line you give them, but that the crucial note in each case will be the note with which they enter. In each case you need to make sure that each section can somehow nab the right note -- either from another vocal part or the piano score or some harmony into which they audibly fit.

Those are the comments I have for now; let me know what you think.

You've done a great job!

from a notation standpoint, it would be considerably better if you either placed the different voices on independant staves, or at least indicated which voices are singing. Your piece starts off and we don't know which voices are supposed to be singing.

It's interesting, from a tone-colour point of view. It's also next to impossible to perform with anything but the highest quality of chorus. So I'll wish you luck finding a good enough ensemble to perform it. It's going to sound great sung by real voices. Those are very interesting textures.

I guess a couple of 'unis.' would have helped...! Thanks.

I tried to write it as easy as the chords would allow...most of it is step-wise motion, from the various entrances and exits. The chorus that is supposed to sing this just did a piece by Dominick Argento that has just as complicated chords, but they don't chant on the same notes or move by step like in my piece, they move all over the place in complicated lines and melodies. We pulled that off pretty well in the end, so I pretty much figured this would be ok. But I do understand that it's a difficult piece, definitely. Hopefully, if they don't pick this piece for the chorus reading this year, I'll get it sung someday! Thanks for listening!

Great piece of music! You should be proud of this.

I like your justification for using bitonality; I think it's great to tie together musical purpose with poetic devices/meaning. However, I will admit that there were some moments when I was not following you harmonically. Take, for example, the passage on page 13. There are a lot of complicated chords splattered all over the piano part. Now I'm assuming most of them come in some way from the bitonal motive you set up at the beginning, and that's fine, but to my ear they sound more like chaos that's not progressing anywhere rather than a meaningful progression that serves to give musical impetus to the piece. There are a few other places like this, and they seem to occur in the same places where I think the piano part gets unnecessarily complicated. I do like the way that you crafted the piano to be a voice/force independent of the choir, but at times its independence becomes a bit overwhelming.

You've used the choir well, as far as issues of voice range and tessitura go. But I fear that some of these passages may be too difficult -- and by too difficult I mean unnecessarily difficult. Remember that most good choirs can sing just about any line you give them, but that the crucial note in each case will be the note with which they enter. In each case you need to make sure that each section can somehow nab the right note -- either from another vocal part or the piano score or some harmony into which they audibly fit.

Those are the comments I have for now; let me know what you think.

You've done a great job!

Page 13 - Oh yes, the climax! ;) This will sound A LOT better with, you know, a real piano and a real person playing it! The chords are in fact the same chord over and over again, only played out in different keys, which are determined by the bass notes, which is just the main chord (D,D#,F,F#,A,B), but played as a line. I transposed each chord according to the intervals in the main chord: m2,M2,m2,m3,M2. Anywho, it's supposed to sound chaotic and whatnot. Totally atonal. ;)

Yeah, I agree. I sometimes gave the piano too much, but I felt like it would really hurt the momentum of the certain sections where it builds and builds if I cut down the piano part. I'm not 100% happy with that aspect of the piece.

Well, I did definitely think a great deal about how they would find their notes. But I am very confident that good college choirs like the one this is intended for knows how to find their notes in preparation for entrances. Like I said to QC, we finished doing something really quite difficult, and this would seem like not a big deal after that.

Thanks for all the comments!

God I want to hear this live! It sounds amazing! Sending shivers down my spine. Great work!

Haha good point, even if it's almost impossible for humans to sing, God would definitely be able to pull it off! :( Thanks.

This would be absolutely nice to hear live. Should you get a recording, make sure to post it up!

A neat poem too, reminds me of a more serious version of a text I made some time ago. I think you did a nice job setting it, and as has been mentioned before, the sounds as a whole are sweeeet.

Yes, I too feel that the midi does not do it justice. I absolutely love those sections toward the beginning and the end where the choir has those chords to sing that are written in the whole tone scale. It sounds so icy and gives chills. I particularly like the way you have had them build up through the cresendo. Then the second movement is someting that I can only imagine how amazing it would be live. I love the use of syncopation. Anyway, I think that we could hear so much more and be able to discern more about the piece if it was a live performance. Other than the fact that it may me pretty diffucult to perform, I do not see this piece having a problem getting performed because it is amazing. I also don't really think that it would be too hard to perform if you had a really good choir.

Thanks, guys! I'm glad you guys like it, I was afraid it was too dissonant for anyone to get it...!

For anyone who cares - I have been picked for the Chorus Reading this year!!! I'm ecstatic!! :) This means that February 7th, the Peabody Singers will record my piece! And if they like it enough, they might program it for a concert next year, but that probably won't happen...! But still! I'm very happy to hear I'll be on the reading. 'Tis a great honor.

The two stave homorhythmic choral writing doesn't bother me except that it is not clear how you prefer the men (or women) to divide when encountering three part writing. Of course, when there is two or four part writing, it is clear enough. But at the top of page three, do you want the tenors to divisi? ..or the basses? ..or do you want the men to divide evenly? A simple direction in the performance notes would suffice. In some ways, I actually like that you chose to write it this way because I could easily see what the rest of the men are doing as I read, which for instance, I'm sure would be very helpful with writing like what you have at rehearsal B.

The polychord stuff is reasonably friendly to my ears, but often with this style of music, I must confess that I occasionally find myself unable to appreciate what's going on harmonically. I love many of the rhythms found in the piano accompaniment, which flows very musically. But..

I doubt there are many chiors that could pull this off with solid intonation. While most of your voice leading seems vocally friendly, many of your vertical structures feature intervals of major sevenths, minor ninths and tri-tones, which are by no means impossible to execute, but require singers with very good ears and consistent vowels - (by that, I'm tempted to say that I'm thinking of an experienced ensemble), and not neccessarily a college ensemble that experiences turnover every year. On the other hand, the ranges you have written in seem very college chior friendly.

To be sure, learning to fing your entrance pitch wouldn't be fun with this one in a couple places, but most of the entrances don't seem too bad.

All in all, very enjoyable on paper, but I'd be loathe to want to hear it performed by anything but a very strong chior.

I have been asked to reformat the score for the reading, now that it has been confirmed that I will be read. The reading is in early February, and I will post the mp3 when I get it! Although, it'll most likely be very large...

And I was wondering if anyone else had any comments on the piece?

It is hard for me to find anything to say that hasn't been said. It is really a chilling piece, and it is hard to listen to it without being excited to hear a live performance. When you do get it performed, it's safe to say that no creative person will be left untouched.

I can tell that it was extremely well-planned and thought out, and your creative direction doesn't suffer from it, which is great. Make sure it connects with the audience too, though. Motives are great, but don't use them everywhere just because they continue the motive. Remember to put musical effect behind it.

This is truly a major accomplishment. Well done, Nick!

Well, thanks everybody! And I have the new, re-formatted score here for anyone who cares. I'll replace the old one, in the original post.

Yesterday was the Choral Reading! I should have the recording within a week. We recorded it in a bunch of sections, not all the way through, because it would've sounded awful, because the chorus turned out to be quite an unmotivated group. Ah well. I think the recording will sound fine, once I piece it together! And I had to sing, because there would've only been 1 tenor 2, so I haven't heard it yet. But from within the ensemble, it sounded just like I wanted it to.

The difficulty of it ended up not being a big problem. Once they got a grasp on the musical sounds and language I used, they got most of the notes fine. It was the rhythms that they couldn't do. I've figured that they have good musical memories, just not good musical intelligence, or sense. Once they heard it all enough, it came together.

This looks like an impressive piece which displays a great deal of time and effort. Your score looks very well presented and I think it will sound fantastic when played by real people. I agree that the result is largely dependent on the performers themselves as it is difficult stuff, but hey, you have to push the envelope these days otherwise all people would sing would be Mozart and Handel!

I have 2 questions for you.

1, why do you write in such large bars such as 8/4 etc when you could quite easily put two bars of 4 or in the 7/4 bars you could have a 4/4 followed by 3/4 or in whatever order the distribution is. I say this because, as a technically difficult vocal part, singers really need to feel they know where they are and counting 7 beats is somewhat less natural than say 4+3 I understand it looks rather fancy to use these kind of time sigs, but perhaps you are using them for the visual effect rather than the musical effect and ease of performance?

2. Why do you choose to indicate a chord in the piano to be repeated with the use of a vertical line? Would it not make more logical sense to just repeat the chord as a crotchet as you intend? It seems as if you really wanted to have a modern looking effect added to your score so you decided to add these lines which don't serve any purpose beyond a repeated chord notated in a traditional way. I'm all for modern looking scores, but I think if you cant justify why its there, then it probably shouldn't be there. Maybe you can shed some light on that one, otherwise, I suggest losing it for continuity.

Thanks for the kind words! As to your questions:

1. Let me say first off that whatever is in the score is there because I found it to be most practical given what I wanted to portray - I would never include something that is detrimental to the music or performance simply because of its look. So, the large bars of 8/4 and 13/8 and such are there because I simply did not want the singers to sing those phrases as if they were in akey signature, i.e. no accents here or there. If I had broken them up into smaller measures, I could see where they would put accents. I really just wanted those phrases to be as if someone were speaking them - fluid, equal in accent, and not grid-locked in any way. Besides, the performers got those passages perfectly! :)

2. I chose to represent the repeated chords as simple lines because otherwise, every measure, the amount of sharps in the chords would cause the measures to dramatically shift over. I wanted to minimize this, and the only way I could do that is to not repeat the notes.

Thanks for listening!

You have created a very unique and interesting peice to listen to. Still not sure what I think of it as far as how much I like or dislike, but I definetly listened to the whole thing.

My biggest concern is more of a scoring issue. I have always been told to denote dynamics above the staff when writing for voice, so they don't get in the way of the lyrics. Maybe you were taught differently than I, but it may be something to take into consideration, although I'm not sure how much it'll help, seeing as your vocal staves are close together as it is, and moving dynamics to the top may just cause a similar problem with the lyrics being intersected by the dynamics for the staff below.

Just a thought. Nice work, however.