Horrors

In Between for orchestra
Yale Philharmonia
Julian Pellicano, conductor
12/6/18, Woolsey Hall, Yale University, New Haven, CT

In Between

In Between (for orchestra)

performed by KrisAnne Weiss (voice) and Sonja Thompson (piano)
Westminster Hall | Minneapolis, MN | SourceSong Festival 2019

SourceSong

Like That Time – for voice and piano

Narration: Virginia Woolf, from BBC radio broadcast (“Craftmanship”), 29 April 1937

Duration: 9:50

Instrumentation: chamber orchestra (1-1-1-1, horn, harp,
piano, 2-2-2-2-1), tape, and electronics

Written for Royal Academy of Music Performers
Michael Alexander Young, Conductor

A Eulogy to Words is a multi-media composition for chamber orchestra, pre-recorded electronics, and tape, featuring the audio document of Virginia Woolf’s BBC Broadcast from 29 April 1937 (“Craftmanship” from a part of series called “Words Fail Me”). The Society of Authors in London, who hold rights and ownership of this document, had granted permission for me to use this recording in my composition. A Eulogy to Words was premiered at the Royal Academy of Music’s Composers Platform concert on 21 November, 2012. Below is the transcript from the surviving audio file:

…Words, English words, are full of echoes, of memories, of associations. They have been out and about, on people’s lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fields, for so many centuries. And that is one of the chief difficulties in writing them today – that they are stored with other meanings, with other memories, and they have contracted so many famous marriages in the past. The splendid word “incarnadine,” for example – who can use that without remembering “multitudinous seas”? In the old days, of course, when English was a new language, writers could invent new words and use them. Nowadays it is easy enough to invent new words – they spring to the lips whenever we see a new sight or feel a new sensation – but we cannot use them because the English language is old.

You cannot use a brand new word in an old language because of the very obvious yet always mysterious fact that a word is not a single and separate entity, but part of other words. Indeed it is not a word until it is part of a sentence. Words belong to each other, although, of course, only a great poet knows that the word “incarnadine” belongs to “multitudinous seas.” To combine new words with old words is fatal to the constitution of the sentence. In order to use new words properly you would have to invent a whole new language; and that, though no doubt we shall come to it, is not at the moment our business. Our business is to see what we can do with the old English language as it is. How can we combine the old words in new orders so that they survive, so that they create beauty, so that they tell the truth? That is the question.

And the person who could answer that question would deserve whatever crown of glory the world has to offer. Think what it would mean if you could teach, or if you could learn the art of writing. Why, every book, every newspaper you’d pick up, would tell the truth, or create beauty. But there is, it would appear, some obstacle in the way, some hindrance to the teaching of words. For though at this moment at least a hundred professors are lecturing on the literature of the past, at least a thousand critics are reviewing the literature of the present, and hundreds upon hundreds of young men and women are passing examinations in English literature with the utmost credit, still – do we write better, do we read better than we read and wrote four hundred years ago when we were un-‐lectured, un-‐criticized, untaught? Is our modern Georgian literature a patch on the Elizabethan? Well, where then are we to lay the blame? Not on our professors; not on our reviewers; not on our writers; but on words. It is words that are to blame. They are the wildest, freest, most irresponsible, most un-‐teachable of all things. Of course, you can catch them and sort them and place them in alphabetical order in dictionaries. But words do not live in dictionaries; they live in the mind.

If you want proof of this, consider how often in moments of emotion when we most need words we find none. Yet there is the dictionary; there at our disposal are some half-‐a-‐million words all in alphabetical order. But can we use them? No, because words do not live in dictionaries, they live in the mind. Look once more at the dictionary. There beyond a doubt lie plays more splendid than Antony and Cleopatra; poems lovelier than the Ode to a Nightingale; novels beside which Pride
and Prejudice or David Copperfield are the crude bunglings of amateurs. It is only a question of finding the right words and putting them in the right order. But we cannot do it because they do not live in dictionaries; they live in the mind. And how do they live in the mind? Variously and strangely, much as human beings live, ranging hither and thither, falling in love, and mating together. It is true that they are much less bound by ceremony and convention than we are. Royal words mate with commoners. English words marry French words, German words, Indian words, Negro words, if they have a fancy. Indeed, the less we enquire into the past of our dear Mother English the better it will be for that lady’s reputation. For she has gone a-‐roving, a-‐roving fair maid.

Thus to lay down any laws for such irreclaimable vagabonds is worse than useless. A few trifling rules of grammar and spelling is all the constraint we can put on them. All we can say about them, as we peer at them over the edge of that deep, dark and only fitfully illuminated cavern in which they live – the mind – all we can say about them is that they seem to like people to think before they use them, and to feel before they use them, but to think and feel not about them, but about something different. They are highly sensitive, easily made self-‐conscious. They do not like to have their purity or their impurity discussed. If you start a Society for Pure English, they will show their resentment by starting another for impure English – hence the unnatural violence of much modern speech; it is a protest against the puritans.

They are highly democratic, too; they believe that one word is as good as another; uneducated words are as good as educated words, uncultivated words as good as cultivated words, there are no ranks or titles in their society. Nor do they like being lifted out on the point of a pen and examined separately. They hang together, in sentences, paragraphs, sometimes for whole pages at a time. They hate being useful; they hate making money; they hate being lectured about in public. In short, they hate anything that stamps them with one meaning or confines them to one attitude, for it is their nature to change.

Perhaps that is their most striking peculiarity – their need of change. It is because the truth they try to catch is many-‐sided, and they convey it by being many-‐sided, flashing first this way, then that. Thus they mean one thing to one person, another thing to another person; they are unintelligible to one generation, plain as a pikestaff to the next. And it is because of this complexity, this power to mean different things to different people, that they survive.   Perhaps then one reason why we have no great poet, novelist or critic writing today is that we refuse to allow words their liberty. We pin them down to one meaning, their useful meaning, the meaning which makes us catch the train, the meaning which makes us pass the examination…

A Eulogy to Words

Recorded by the Syracuse Singers under John F Warren.

Verdigris Ensemble ION Composer Competition Winner (2021).
1st prize in Warren County Summer Music School's Composer Competition (2022).
3rd prize in The Choral Project's Composition Competition (2020-2021).
Selected for the SCI Summer Student Mixtape (2020).

Oaks And Roses

Bird Song uses natural phenomena of just intonation, which often have led to just intonation being ‘problematic’ and disregarded, as primary techniques. Specifically, it explores how pure stacked Pythagorean 5ths lead to comma discrepancies and subsequent acoustical beating when enharmonic equivalents are reached. It demonstrates how the beating from the comma can be used not only on a melodic level, but on a rhythmic level too. The compositional techniques are greatly inspired by La Monte Young’s The Well-Tuned Piano (Young, 1987), in which he emancipates commas by using them throughout the 5 hour long piece to characterise the work, and introduces the concept of playing in time to acoustical beating (Gann, 1993).

To achieve controlled beating, my composition uses a series of stacked pure 5ths building on F. The material begins with sine tones tuned to fundamental F giving a pure, clear sound. As the piece progresses, a sine tone of A, a third, slowly shifts frequencies, introducing the sensation of beating before settling. Then 5ths are introduced in alarming clusters. At the end of the introduction an E# is introduced, which causes acoustical beating against the F. It does this because the stacked pure 5ths cause the 12th 5th, E#, to be 23.46 cents higher than the F (Sabat, 2018, 16), a Pythagorean Comma . In equal temperament this would sound simply as an enharmonic equivalent of the same frequency, since the temperament narrows each of the 12 5ths, compromising purity but eradicating this comma. In Bird Song, this beating becomes established as a pulse, and vocalised melodic motifs begin, in time with this ‘pulse’, tuned justly to the fundamental F.

I wanted to explore ideas of organicism and nature and so the lyrics are about birdsong. According to a study by Emily Doolittle, Hermit Thrush birds tend to sing in harmonic series (Doolittle, 2014). Moreover, bird’s timbres, melodic patterns and imitation in their singing draw parallels to human music making. I feel that linking pure harmony and aspects of just intonation to birds makes the composition appear rooted in nature, and thereby more accessible. 

The style of the piece is quite theatrical, like a song and dance piece. This is due to the steady pulse of the beating, which invites synchronised movement, and could be further re-enforced with percussion like a tambourine. The notion that the pitches are tuned to a natural system and that the physics of sound determines this rhythm makes the pulse incredibly powerful, as the elements of the piece are linked strongly and organically. Further exploring the work as a theatrical spectacle, I wrote the lyrics in Italian as I feel it connects to connotations of opera, which originated in Italy. The lyrics seem to fit beautifully in the Italian language too. 

The composition also has a folky feel, with lots of similarities to Western culture ballads. This is due to the repetitive motifs and lyrics of the vocalists, the improvisatory feel of the simple melodies, the sine tone drones and fairly simple overarching harmonic schemes. Furthermore, topics of folk songs are also often rooted in nature and in portraying purity. The folk genre is associated with a sense of society but also comfort and home and integrating these connotations into the composition helps to make it accessible.

Bird Song demonstrates great potential for how musical pitch and rhythm, which often become isolated as separate elements, could be linked and developed. If just intonation is further explored and commas are emancipated, it could make performance of music much more powerful and wholesome, and responses to music could be greatly magnified because of it. Particularly in theatre and opera, dance could be linked to pitch’s natural determination of rhythm and pulse, embodying the experience of natural harmony.

Bird Song

2020 : Performed by members of Dal Niente
Instrumentation : Flute, Electric Guitar, Cello, and Piano

Saoco [2020]

Iannis Xenakis: ”…I think that the music that I write is not important for most of the people. It is like an island. …maybe after my death [people] will be more interested in what I have done during my life. But that is not a problem because I cannot do anything else. I am writing music…”

Nisi was composed for hornist Adam Unsworth, motivated by his highly personal approach to the horn. It is dedicated to composer Iannis Xenakis to commemorate his 90th birthday (May 29th, 2012), inspired by Xenakis’s singular spirit, his totally unique sonic palette, and the uncompromisingness of his ideas. Xenakis truly was and is a musical island unto himself. It’s materials are drawn from several of Xenakis’s works, notably Eonta (1963-64), Anaktoria (1969), and N’Shima (1975).

All of the electronic sounds of for Nisi are drawn from horns, in most cases from Unsworth’s own instrument(s)–recorded together at Cornell University in 2011 and 2012–with the exception of several “vocal” sounds derived from the sung text, “in vanum laboraverunt” (“labor in vain”) from Claudio Monteverdi’s Nisi Dominus (from Venetian Vespers, 1610) that appear in the last coda.

Nisi ["nee-see"] (Island) for horn and live electronics

Ringing frequencies rise and fall - wave upon wave cascade in diaphanous layers of trembling drones and calling guitars. We are traveling through the eye of the needle. Ambient music for an unsettling time.

Eye of the Needle

A Processional for the Dispossessed - watching as your one life recedes and an uncertain future awaits - only the circling gulls are witness to your passage. Modular and software synthesis with acoustic, digital and analog electronic instruments.

Crossing The Waters

Described as “a force multiplier with more talents than time” (PATRON Magazine), whose music is “alternately celestial and dark” (John Schaefer, WNYC New Sounds), Anuj Bhutani is a quickly emerging composer, performer, vocalist, and producer whose music often features visceral grooves; ethereal, meditative spaces; a combination of acoustic instruments and electronics, narrative depth, and genre-fluidity. 
He is pursuing his bachelor’s degree in composition at University of North Texas and received an Undergraduate Research Fellowship to study and write about musical process/glitch in the music of David Lang under the guidance of Dr. David-Bard Schwarz. Since 2019, Anuj has also served as the Undergraduate Vice President of UNT Composer’s Forum. His primary composition teachers have included Andrew May, Sungji Hong, Drew Schnurr, and UNT Composer-in-Residence Bruce Broughton. He also holds a BA in Psychology from UT Austin, where he graduated with High Honors and a Presidential scholarship in 2015.

Oaks And Roses

Anuj Bhutani

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