Project 12: My Text Life, Part 2
I was able to see Mt. Hood from the apartment today—I still can’t believe I live here!
Welcome back! In Part 1 of this week, I talked a bit about putting the text together for Week 4’s project with Bassless Trio, an exciting new music ensemble comprised of soprano Lisa Willamson, saxophonist Joshua Thomas, and cellist Cara Cheung. The piece, Quite Like the Quiet, is part of a series of commissions Bassless Trio is putting together which are written from the perspective of non-human objects and animals during quarantine. My installment is from the perspective of the Portland metro, and the post today is going to dive into the music!
Writing Scene 1
In this piece, the first step I took was to work on any sections where the other musicians would be speaking. The majority of these moments take place in the first vignette (seen in full here), when everything is at the peak of activity.
The words in bold are actual train sounds I wanted to include, the parenthetical interjections in (italics) are phrases I imagined as “people sounds,” and the rest is the inner-voice of the train.
As mentioned in Part 1, each vignette follows a similar structure (sounds, description, reflection, statement of purpose), so I knew musically the work would be constructed as a sort of theme-and-variations set. Narratively, this first scene is the loudest, busiest, and most active of the work—everything would be on fully display here, only to be stripped down in later scenes.
Opening pages. For some groups I write the ensemble members’ names instead of the instrument names.
Wanting to start the listener right in the middle of the chaos, the ensemble starts on a unison beat with a rather dissonant texture, the vocalist popping off early on her own for a moment before the second hit from the musicians. In this way, the opening feels a bit chaotic but strong.
The second measure breaks out into a series of shameless text painting gestures - the vocalist imitating a steam train, the cello’s low, slow scratch tones imitating a construction scene, and the slap tongue from the saxophone punching out a percussive punctuation. A strong gliss from the cello sets off the vocalist’s line as the saxophone and cello swell beneath her. I use a shorthand notation for the saxophonist to rapidly noodle on the three provided pitches, creating more measured chaos in this opening section.
To work in the spoken text, I gave the saxophonist plenty of time to both speak their line and to give a breath of rest before playing once more. While the cellist has to speak and play at the same time, the gesture is simple and slow; if the cellist is uncomfortable playing and speaking at the same time, they can hit the dyad, shout the line quickly, and then continue the gliss, and it will be just as effective a gesture.
While the score doesn’t reveal this, I made sure in the parts to notate how many beats the speaking part should last with the appropriate notehead and a bracket above the speech box. In this way, I can make the direction absolutely clear to the performer without making the score appear cluttered. I also further clarify when a speak part should end by including a rest after the box.
I also had the unique challenge from the saxophonist of including a quote of the riff from “Careless Whisper.” For the text, I just needed to allude to the fact that hearing “Careless Whisper” would be a natural occurrence near a train stop, where busking musicians would be working a crowd. I worked allusions to the melody into the vocal line, first the general direction of the pitches, then the rhythm. When she finishes her line, the saxophone dovetails the gesture and performs the quote.
Writing Scene 2
In this scene, I wanted to show how different the city felt during lockdown. Living right in downtown, there was a marked difference—the interstate bridge, usually backed up bumper-to-bumper traffic, was nearly empty; the usually bustling sidewalks were devoid of dog-walkers, business people rushing off to meetings, and even the houseless populations that frequent the area near us had been moved elsewhere by city officials. Every sound felt louder, but lonelier.
The interjections from the other musicians are gone from the text, replaced only with silence. The only interjections that remain are the sounds of sneezing later on (which I used in a similar rhythmic setting to the train’s “choo-choo”s to tie the sounds together). The “quite like the quiet” refrain also appears much earlier, leaving the train with its thoughts for a longer, uninterrupted stretch.
In the music, I thin out some of the textures that first appeared - now the cello’s jackhammer is performed on one string rather than two, the saxophone’s slap-tongues appear less frequently, and the various interjections are now replaced with silence. The vocalist carries through as before until the “quite like the quiet” motive returns, much like the trains continued to run despite their sudden drop in passengers. The final result is a bit unsettling—familiar, but empty and a bit awkward.
Writing Scene 3
One of my goals in this piece was to address a bad habit I’ve been working to break in the past year. In my writing, I tend to have everyone playing all the time (I blame this on my percussion background; I hated how boring our parts could be and vowed to not make such unsatisfying parts when it could be avoided). Particularly in smaller ensembles, it can be tempting to use everyone all the time to thicken the texture and make the ensemble feel bigger than it really is.
In addition to addressing this bad habit, it also worked programmatically to have everything thin out in this scene, when the train is no longer moving through the city. Having the vocalist on her own, then accompanied by largely unpitched sounds for the first half of the scene provides a stark contrast to the chaotic opening, and has the added benefit of giving the cellist and saxophonist a chance to rest midway through the work.
In mm 144-151, I employ a texture in the instrumental lines I’ve been playing around with in recent years that I’ve come to really enjoy. For wind and brass players, nearly all of the articulation styles they employ require the use of the tongue to execute, but they can also create a “pulse” using their diaphragm—creating an artificial articulation by briefly increasing the volume of the otherwise sustained note. For string players, who have a variety of different articulation styles with the bow, I use vibrato as a way to create a brief pulse (similar in effect to the diaphragm pulse). The string player keeps the bow speed constant, but—rather than using vibrato throughout the note—they use a quick, exaggerated vibrato pulse and then no vibrato; this creates a subtle, but effective way to make sustained textures a bit more frenetic.
Writing Scene 4
The beginning of this scene more closely mimics the opening. A few spoken interjections return, and the energy is full-to-bursting once more. A few noticeable pauses and absent textures appear, however, alluding to the precarious “return” we’ve experienced in recent months of quarantine.
As I looked out my window this week, I marveled at how busy and backed up the roads are again—the city attempting to make life as normal as possible—yet how quiet downtown remains. Shops are still boarded up or permanently closed down, there are still less people walking outside, and most people are still trying to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible. Where some people are attempting to return to life as normal, the reality is much more uncertain. We have no idea what “normal” is going to look like after the dust has settled.
To me, it makes sense that a train—whose primary role is to allow people in one place to get to another place—would be disturbed by a city that no longer feels like one ecosystem, but many individuals keeping to themselves. As a composer, I share a lot of the same anxieties and fears expressed by the train in this text. Musicians provide a place for strangers to gather, listen, travel somewhere together, and—regardless of how disparate their lives are from one another—leave with an experience they now all share. It is a job that can be difficult in the best circumstances, and made even more difficult by the realities of 2020.
In a piece largely comprised of leaps, registral and textural contrasts, hockets, awkward pauses, largely independent lines and interjections, the only true unison in the piece arrives at the end—on the word together.
Check back on Monday to read about how Week 5 turns out! Wishing you all a happy Wednesday!
