Where Everything Is Music

REVISED:SEE PAGE 2 FOR UPDATED SCORE

Hey guys and gals, I haven't posted here for a while as I was in school and I had all the input I could handle from my teachers. So now that the year is over, I'm here again. Crawling back.....

Anyhoot.....

I started this piece out as something small for myself to practice my part writing with. It quickly mushroomed out into something bigger and much more exciting. I really like the direction this piece headed in. I'm trying to write in a tonal style but stay away from that Rutter/Whitacre vibe. There just some esthetic thing about those two composers(And those like them) that I'm not into. I'm hoping for a performance of this next school year.

The text in particular was the reason for me having so much fun with the piece. It's very evocative and the last stanza just positively SCREAMED at me to set it the way I have.

So as I said.... the first requirement I set out for myself here was to write good lines. I've been singing in choir for a couple of years now and the singability of a line has more to do with how well the piece sounds(To my ears anyway) than anything else. That is assuming of course that you're writing in an idiomatic tonal style, which this piece certainly is.

The second one was to pay LESS attention to form. I'm using harmonies and motivs to tie the piece together. There isn't much literal repetition but the harmonic devices are recycled over and over so I think it gives the piece a nice flow.

Also, I used some closed vowel sounds such as the (n) on burn and the (ng) on playing and wanting.

Here's the text in all it's glory:

Where Everything Is Music by Rumi

Don't worry about saving these songs! And if one of our instruments breaks, it doesn't matter.

We have fallen into the place where everything is music.

The strumming and the flute notes rise into the atmosphere, and even if the whole world's harp should burn up, there will still be hidden instruments playing.

So the candle flickers and goes out. We have a piece of flint, and a spark.

This singing art is sea foam. The graceful movements come from a pearl somewhere on the ocean floor. Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge of driftwood along the beach, wanting!

They derive from a slow and powerful root that we can't see.

Stop the words now. Open the window in the center of your chest, and let the spirits fly in and out.

I suppose 2/3 days is long enough to wait before I bump my own post.... agree?

All right.... I've got it figured out... I'll go post something inflammatory in the off topic forum to drive some traffic to this post.

I like it and I think it'll be great for choir (instead of midi piano... ^_^), I have my doubt if you successfully avoided the Rutter/Whitacre vibe, if so, what steps did you take to not let that beautiful, ungodly, kitsch sound get into your ears?

I listened to your piece and went to your webpage. I enjoyed the pieces with the singer. Any chance you can get her to sing the new one? I even tried to put oohs and ahhs in the piece in sibelius and still couldn't find the right way. I really think without the singers in this, it is hard to judge.

Whitacre does a LOT of those 4th suspensions over chords with 3rds in them. In fact, he uses them in (almost) every piece all over the place. I like the sound of those suspensions so I saved them for a few key moments. The chord on "wanting" and the final chords that close the piece.

Rutter always sounds really cheesy to me. Know what I mean? I think I'm a hair bit more adventurous harmonically than he is.

I think the biggest danger in this style is trying to hard to please your audience. If you do that then the music stops becoming natural. I was going for as much a natural feel as possible.

I think you could still learn a great deal from Rutter's settings.

What I found through-out most of this piece is that I kept being bothered by the actual text setting.

It's not an approach I like. Which doesn't mean it's wrong. It's just not the approach I myself use when setting text to music.

There are obvious notation problems, which we can get out of the way right now: slurs in vocal settings are ONLY used to indicate melismatic passages (one word, many notes). Remove them from the score completely EXCEPT in those places. They do not serve as "phrase markings" like in instrumental music.

Ok, back to the music. I very much like the harmony, though find there are a few moments it doesn't quite serve the text. That's a personal feeling, only.

I found that your tenor part was a bit too consistantly set low. My biggest impression was of a peice written at the piano, in block chords, which was then set to voices. I know you obviously tried to create independance between the voices here, but there are too many places where that "blocky" feeling comes through.

Now, about the independance of voices, here is where we would part ways. I do NOT like the amount of confusion that the independant vocal lines creates. This is not a "classical" text (ie: a text everyone knows too well). In this sort of context I firmly believe it should be the composer's MAIN preoccupation to make the text perfectly clear. This is where Rutter could teach you a few things. You may find his harmony "cloying" (and I guess it can be, but it is circumstantial music: most of it is composed with the intention of being performed within a church service context), however his text settings are always crystal clear, even when there is heavy counterpoint.

First off, thanks so much for taking the time to post some constructive comments. I really appreciate it. Kudos to you sir!

I agree with you on the tenor part. There are a few especially bad spots that come to mind almost immediately.

Hmmm.... it actually worries me that you mention the blockiness. I had a composition teacher tell me that my last choral piece had too much blockiness to it. I'm not really sure how to get around it. What IS blockiness after all?

well, a sense that it is masses of chords, with soprano above, then alto , then tenor and bass...

I guess it's a sort of predictablity to the texture.

a way to break from that is to treat groups of voices mini-groups within the chorus for various lines. like alto and tenor doina line parallel thirds, or have voices respond to each other in a sort of canonic or echo effect.

Ah. I think I understand. Thanks a lot.

I think I might post something drastic in the off-topic forum to drive some people here.....

I revised this piece a bit and would appreciate any comments.

Here's an mp3:

Send big files the easy way. Files too large for email attachments? No problem!

Enjoy!

or...

"Share and enjoy!", as that annoying guy used to say.

a quicky remark: remove the slurs where there are syllables on single notes.

in vocal music slurs should only go over multiple notes on a single syllable.

I thought the whole word was supposed to be slurred when it was broken up over multiple notes. Not just the syllable.

slurs only go over multiple notes that accompany a single syllable

the rule is as follows:

single syllable word on single note = no additional marking (no slurs, no hyphens, no nothin')

single syllable word on multiple notes = slur over the group of notes, and word extension to the head of the last note of the group

multi-syllable words with single notes per syllable = no slurs!! but HYPHENS between each syllable and an extension on the LAST syllable IF it covers multiple notes

multi-syllable words with multiple notes per syllable = slurs on syllables with muliple notes, hyphens between the syllables, and slur and extension on the LAST syllable IF it covers multiple notes

here's an example (albeit a silly one)

It used to be a convention that beamed notes had their beams broken in vocal music when single syllables accompanied them, however, this makes for a rather cluttered score (imagine the first measure of my example with broken beams????), and with more contemporary music also makes beat division more difficult to perceive. It's a convention that's been abandonned almost unanimously.

Hope this helps.

Wellity wellity... you're right. I checked some scores and corroborated what you said. Every singer I've talked to can't stand that broken beam thing. I can't believe they still print them like that.

Thanks for the example. Maybe I'll work it into my next choral piece.