Project 12: Think’st Thou Then By Thy Feigning Guitar Knowledge
Another beautiful week in Portland - even if we have to see most of it from inside!
Wrap-Up: Week 5—Think’st Thou Then By Thy Feigning?
For Halloweek, it was strangely fitting to be writing for guitar—which, while helped immensely by this incredible thesis from Jonathan Godfrey, is still very trick-y for me! However, despite the challenges, it was also a real treat to work with guitarist Jannis Wichmann and soprano, Marie Sophie Richter! The work, Think’st Thou Then By Thy Feigning uses a rather creepy text originally set by John Dowland. In short, the poem describes a woman who is pretending to be asleep so she can avoid being physically intimate with the speaker, who states that—while her rejection is cruel and unwarranted—her vulnerable state makes her all the more desirable. While the original setting of the text is quite light and lively (if a bit melancholy), my setting aimed to highlight the creeping, sinister nature of the text.
The Text
In the first stanza, the speaker highlights both his attraction to the woman as well as her “cold,” and “cruel” nature towards him—and that, in fact, it is her seemingly vulnerable and submissive state that makes her all the more appealing. In the second stanza, he bemoans her deception, further iterating her coldness, “cruel” eyes, and “unkind despite.” The line “While fury triumph’d boldly / in beauty’s sweet disgrace,” alludes to his desire to force intimacy with her, even if it leaves him in the “sweet embrace / of her that loved so coldly.” In the third stanza, the speaker essentially talks himself out of doing more than giving her a kiss, stating that it’s bold enough to do so when she’s defenseless (how…thoughtful??). The tone of the poem overall, by a modern reader, comes across as both yearning and resentful—expressing longing for her even as he calls her cruel, cold, proud, and disdainful.
While the original musical setting by Dowland of this poem highlights the speaker’s dismay (the sighing motive at the end of phrases was often used to portray a “lament” sentiment), I wanted to highlight both the initial peace and growing anxiety of the sleeping woman, as well as—what I considered to be—the real feelings of the speaker: entitlement, lust, and rage.
The Soundbank
A lot of times, when I first start planning a work, I like to compile a list of sounds, textures, and ideas that I think would work well in the piece. For this piece, I wanted to clearly define the role of the guitar and soprano as the two people involved in the text, so they each had their own soundbank.
For the guitar, who would be portraying the woman, I wanted to use 1) a sweet melody with a rocking, almost lullaby accompaniment, 2) repeating, single-line riffs that could be played rapidly but soft, 3) monophonic and polyphonic tremolos (a bit on this later), and 4) a few moments of lush, big chords. For the soprano, who would be portraying the speaker, I wanted to use 1) large leaps, 2) speaking, 3) footstomps, 4) held-out consonants, 5) a few ornamentations, and 6) breath sounds. In addition to the individual soundbanks contributing to each instrument’s character, I knew this would also create opportunity to draw a large contrast between the two—highlighting the emotional distance between the two characters.
Jannis and Marie are both based in Germany, whose note names and registral numbers differ slightly from the system I learned in school. For example, what I call “B” they call “H,” and I would label Marie’s range as “F3 to A5” where she calls it “F to A3.” It took a little back-and-forth to solidify the details, but it is always interesting to learn how these so-called “standard” systems of notation can vary! With the ranges, notation, and language sorted out, I was able to get started on writing the music!
Excerpts
In the opening, I start with the guitar alone. The E bass note and E-to-F# oscillation helps to create a stable place for the ear to return to, even as the B-to-C or -C# motion creates a sense of harmonic restlessness. While the melody that is introduced in measure 4 skews the texture in a lighter, more positive tone, the overall effect creates a kind of uneasy peace. The guitar continues with this idea in measure 12, largely unaffected by the bombastic and melodramatic entrance of the soprano. I tried to incorporate small moments of ornamentation (m 14) and exaggerated versions of the “sigh” motive from the original (mm 16-17) throughout the piece. One way I really enjoyed highlighting the acidic tone of the speaker was to have the vocalist overexaggerate word endings (like in m 14), which had the added benefit of providing percussive accents over the more homogenous, dreamlike guitar texture. The result is quite jarring and dramatic, and creates a rather violent relationship between the powerful writing of the voice and the relatively passive writing in the guitar.
In this section, I use a variation of what is called a “polyphonic tremolo” in the guitar. To quote from the Godfrey thesis, polyphonic tremolos “are a four-note group of the same rhythmic value (i.e. four sixteenth notes, four thirty-second notes, etc.) in which the first note is the bass and the following three are a higher repeated pitch.” Here I employ a few variations on “four-note” groupings, allowing for a melody to come out of the texture by having the guitarist play notes used in the chord from the first beat of the measure. The result is a harmonically stable but texturally rich gesture that quietly descends to mostly open strings. In the voice, freely-spoken text, half-sung lyrics, small moments of ornamentation, and large leaps soar over the descending guitar line—creating a dynamic-but-lush contrast between the voices.
The last measure of this excerpt shows another voice color I used throughout the work (explained earlier in the score): a shuddering breath. While many pieces use rhythmic breathing and exhales for dramatic effect, this “shuddering” variation creates a more textured and unsettling affect—one that, rather than releases tension, creates it.
For the ending, I give the voice a chance to sing alone, employing a few more of the ornamentations and percussive endings used throughout the work. The vocalist ends in a lower, weaker part of the voice as she decays into a long hissing “sss,” before petering out with a final series of shuddering breaths. The guitar returns to the opening material, but strips itself down and ascends upwards, leaving the listener with a final, unsettled question mark.
Wind-Up: Week 6!
This week, I have the absolute joy of working with percussionist-composer, Marco Schirripa! Marco and I overlapped briefly at Indiana University, though it took a few years after we had both left school to start working together! You can find a performance of our last collaboration, a solo marimba piece called Azidoazide, in the library!
Marco is a great percussionist, and a highly adventurous and dedicated performer, so it feels right to be working on something wholly unique for him this week!! The theme of the work is on isolation and loneliness, and will include found objects, movement, and vocalizations.
GO VOTE, if you haven’t already—and then take a nice nap! Wishing everyone a safe and healthy week!!
