I truly apologize for my online twin being so neglectful, and now that my head is chock full of ponderings from a year of expression constipation, I fully intend to write here more often. I would like to start this year and decade off by a quick recapitulation of activities in my musical life in the past year. I can’t have you thinking all I do is write hockey themes, now can I?
The beginning of 2009 saw the completion and realization of a major composition project for me. As an “emerging composer”, I was asked by New Works Calgary to write a piece for Rubbing Stone Ensemble, to be performed at NWC’s 25th Anniversary Gala in February. It was a tremendous opportunity to work with innovative, high-calibre musicians, and it was technically my first commission to boot. I was beside myself!
The NWC commission emphasized the creation of a Calgary or Alberta inspired piece. At the time the commission was announced to me, it was Summer 2008. News mentions of the Calgary Tower’s 40th birthday started percolating into ideas in my mind as I recalled older photographs of the Tower and how shocked I was to see how its urban surroundings had changed around it. The fast-forwarded image of the city core morphing, changing, growing, and rising around the stoic, immovable tower was an irresistible image in my head, and it gradually eased its way into my musical brainstorming as I searched for an inspirational spark to start my piece. It could work, but how to translate this visual phenomenon into an aural one?
In my typical plodding fashion, I explored a variety of ideas. Many times I was in danger of feeding the aesthetics to the concept lion, i.e. allowing faithfulness to the abstract concept to overrule aesthetic decisions. Typically this seems to happen when a piece of mine is inspired by something extra-musical, and some day I must devote some study into how to avoid this. In the end, I milked the Tower for drops of inspiration in efforts to overcome the horrible blankness that sometimes comes in that stage of creating something from nothing. Along with ponderings about the tower, I researched sounds I liked, listened to music that the musicians said they liked to play, and endeavored to learn more about the instruments I chose that are so unlike my own, the oboe, which were in this case nearly all except perhaps the saxophone.
I devoted more attention to form in this piece that I had in some previous pieces. Form to me seemed most closely linked with architecture in this case. Uniquely in this case, the architectural phenomenon of cityscape transformation had the added dimension of time and change that usually differentiates music and architecture. As I wanted to reflect the changing cityscape that surrounded the unchanging Tower, I chose a passacaglia structure for my form. Experts can’t even agree about the exact definition of a passacaglia and how it differs from similar forms like a chaconne, but the consensus among composers who wrote them seems to be that it involves a continuous theme being repeated while variations happen over top of it. Technically, Pachelbel’s Canon in D was one of these. So, to oversimplify my music translation, the Tower inspired a passacaglia theme that repeated over and over, while variations occurred surrounding it. The 63-second ride in the elevator to the top of the Tower inspired the length of the theme. This proved to be the most major concept-lion feeding, and a frustrating hole that I inadvertently trapped myself in as soon as I made that seemingly innocent decision. I was suddenly bound to make all variations fit neatly into 63 seconds, no matter how they developed. Also, for the passacaglia theme to be present but not dominating (as it would get rather boring hearing the same theme repeatedly ad nauseum…hmm, other musicians don’t do this, do they?), I made its rate of change fairly slow so that the more active variations have less competition. To stay true to the passacaglia concept, the theme had to remain essentially the same, at least in pace, notes, and rhythms. Its tempo was 60 beats to the quarter note, but I couldn’t have the variations always at that tempo or else they would always be slow, or the rhythms would get extremely complex to create the faster rate of change. The only solution I saw at the time was to have tempos that were easy multiples of 60, (quarter=120 so that the passacaglia theme could stay the same but the variation parts be legible and simple enough to read. This need for contrast between the two, and the restricted tempo conversion, seemed to inspire some pretty unrealistically fast passages in the variations, I admit. Despite feeling restricted, I thoroughly enjoyed trying to invent the variations with the challenge of harmonizing with a steady passacaglia theme, and thinking of gestures and material that was idiomatic to the performers’ instruments and tastes.
Towers and cities and elevator rides aside, the piece was eventually created as an aural experience independent from its program notes. I tried to push it from the concept nest and let it fly on its own, but listeners can be the judge of whether I achieved this. One triumph for me was hearing the pianist say that she assumed I was also a pianist when we were discussing how to play some of the more demanding parts. Truthfully I am a piano klutz and had always struggled to write piano pieces since it was often difficult for me to conceive of the interaction and capabilities of two independent hands, so I guess my research must have helped.
Composing a piece and then hearing it is terrifying and elating at the same time. You know all its weaknesses and imperfections, and if it is the first time you are hearing it there may be even more of them than you thought, but you can’t help but be amazed at how more glorious certain parts sound than you ever imagined in your head. And it’s like your child, and hearing it before you reminds you of all that you put into raising it.
