Project 12: Bear With Me
I’ve seen so many rainbows since moving to our place in Portland - this one over the weekend was particularly spectacular!
About Week 6…
The piece we’re collaborating on deals with the loneliness and isolation of routine, as well as some of the personal insecurities that dictate—and are sometimes exacerbated by—the routines we follow.
Like many composers, I do my very best to stick to firm deadlines as closely as possible. With this project in particular, the goal was to write one piece a week, and for 5 weeks I did just that! Sometimes, however, a piece grows beyond the scope of the original vision for the project, and the collaborators involved have a choice to make: Is the deadline or the new scope of the work more important? If it’s the deadline, you scale back to what you can accomplish in that timeframe. If it’s the new scope, you readjust the timetable.
Election week proved to be a lot more stressful and distracting than I had anticipated when I first planned these projects out. My wonderful collaborator, percussionist-composer Marco Schirripa, has been very understanding and patient as I worked to catch up on his exciting project for found percussion and theatrics! Between the stress of election week and with our collaboration proving more ambitious and involved than we originally planned, we’ve continued work on the piece in the past week, and hope to finish up his project soon!
I’ll be sure to post again about this unique work once it is completed!
Wrap-Up: Missouri State University Cello Club
A few weeks ago, I had the wonderful opportunity to chat with the students of the Missouri State University Cello Club, run by cellist, teacher, and music theorist, Dr. Daniel M. Ketter. I have had the pleasure of working with a number of student groups over the years, and you can always tell from talking with the students when a teacher has really worked to create a welcoming, friendly, and supportive environment—and it is absolutely clear that Dan has fostered such an environment with his students! The MSU students I talked with were very obviously an energetic, fun, bright, and really friendly group—and it made it all the more exciting to be writing for them!
The piece they commissioned was to act as a kind of “Cello Club Anthem,” something the group could play at the beginning or end of every concert for the next few years. As such, we talked for quite awhile for the kinds of things they all enjoyed about Cello Club and what kinds of music they thought would best represent them—acting as a kind of audio-summary of their ensemble.
One of the important distinctions they made was that they were a club, not a society (unlike the “rival” Violin Society at their school!). They were a down-to-earth group of people wanting to play music together and “nerd out about cello.” The current ensemble members range from freshman through masters students, providing a sizeable range of difficulty levels to work with. The ensemble also covers an impressive range of music, from Bach to Giacchino, and their own listening habits included Cardi B, Miles Daivs, David Bowie, and “Newgrass” music.
They wanted a piece that was both melodic and rhythmic, and could include some techniques found in folk music (such as “chop”). Dan also requested that bariolage be included somewhere in the piece. Cello Club also wanted to make sure that the piece had some moments where all the registers of the cello were used at once, and included some moments for them to be creative—and that every part had something fun to play. Finally, they mentioned that they all use to hike or grab dinner together, and that they all have pride in their school (whose mascot is a bear). Overall, they wanted something fun, uplifting, communal, and infused with non-classical music elements—and I was ecstatic to comply!
Excerpts:
After asking for opinions from my Twitter colleagues, I decided to include a few MIDI excerpts of the works I’m writing! Each week, I will post a private track on Soundcloud that you can access through the blog post. Each track will have excerpts that accompany the sheet music examples given below!
While MIDI is not the perfect way to listen to these pieces, I hope you can enjoy these short excerpts from the work I’m collaborating on with these awesome performers and musicians! Whenever live recordings become available, I will be sure to link them on Facebook, YouTube, Soundclound, Twitter, and on my website as soon as possible!
The opening of this piece highlights the incredible range of the cello ensemble. Starting with a closely-voiced unison, the cellos create a quiet but frenetic texture with circular bowing—moving their bows from near the bridge, through the ordinario playing position, up to the fingerboard, using a circular motion to maintain the bow’s contact with the string throughout the gesture. This swells into a dramatic glissando, tearing the chord into a wide voicing that spans nearly 4 octaves. After a few more dramatic glissandi, the cellos return to a close voicing for a brief moment before landing on another widely-spaced sonority. This last voicing is once again made frenetic, both by a dramatic forte-piano, and with an exaggerated vibrato that gets faster throughout the fermata. This energy helps to catapult the ensemble into measure 11, a groove-based section with colorful interjections and short melodies.
In measure 27, we get our first vamp section. I put two of these into the piece to give the ensemble the opportunity to try improvisation. Whether they improvise something for 2 bars or 32, the simple accompaniment of col legno battuto (hitting the string with the wooden part of the bow) on an F pedal provides plenty of wiggle room for a variety of styles, harmonic areas, and techniques before launching the ensemble back into the piece—this time, returning briefly in minor.
This slower section, while brief, allows the ensemble a chance to play something lush and romantic, giving cello 3 a longer moment to shine with the melody. While the end of this section is quite a challenge due to the extremely high register, the rallentando helps to give the players time to find their notes—and, with the eighth note figure being played in isolation, each cellist can lead the rallentando in their own time. Nearly every part gets the chance to play at least two different types of textures in this section, allowing for the individual tone color of each player to change what would otherwise be a rather static accompaniment figure. It also creates a very conversational relationship between each of the voices, as they react and mimic one another throughout the section. The molto vibrato fermata from the opening section returns, prepping the listener for the return of the groove in measure 58, and another section for improvisation.
At measure 74, the ensemble returns to close voicings and are set off in pairs rather than fully-independent parts. The use of bariolage here is simple, using open strings as a drone over which the ensemble starts to split apart in register. The rhythm that appears here has served as both melody and accompanimental ostinato, but now serves in the foreground of this section, acting as a repetitive, but driving force towards the finale. Cellos 3 and 4 use their open strings to start descending downwards, Cello 4 jumping down to the lowest strings just before the arrival, as Cellos 1 climbs ever upwards. The arrival at measure 82 (not pictured here) uses the textures of the slower section, now at a far quicker tempo, to gradually bring the cellos back to close voicings once more.
This last section uses simple chop patterns to create a complex accompaniment as the melodic material from all of the previous sections appear, now combined in new ways and in quick succession. This culminates into the first true tutti gestures since the very opening, ending with a powerful few measures of the pervasive rhythmic motive and a final hit in which 4 distinct timbres (high ordinario, a snap pizz, a col legno battuto hit, and an open string ordinario) sound in a final unison that spans a complete 4 octaves.
Wind-Up: Penguins!!
If you are unfamiliar with these fabulous animals—or would like a smile today—click here for a great video!
This week, in addition to wrapping up Marco’s piece, I will be working on a new work for solo flute with Dr. Elizabeth Robinson!
Elizabeth has an absolutely wonderful series of commissions for solo flute that all deal with quirky and unusual animals (called “Whimsical A.F.”), and has asked me to write a piece about Rockhopper Penguins! Most of the people who know my music are already familiar with my animal-inspired piece, Suite-Ass Cycle—so I think we all know this will be a fun project week for me! Elizabeth has tackled all kinds of interesting and technically-challenging works, so I can’t wait to get started!!
Happy music-making everyone!
