An introduction to Compositions
An Introduction to 8 pieces of Michael Whiticker written between 1988 and 1993
1. In Prison Air (1988) for guitar and tape.
Introduction
The origins of In Prison Air can be found among a number of sources. Not atypically the original inspirations for this piece were put to one side as the music began to assume its own life. I found in the early rehearsals with Swedish guitarist Magnus Andersson that I was witnessing an unevenly weighted contest between the guitar and computer-realised tape, as the guitar fought to assert its identity, and it seemed in retrospect, even its right to exist. The emotional response from all those who heard the early 'workouts' was the same, and it is captured, poignantly, in a line taken from Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol, 'Bloom well in prison-air'.
The initial inspiration was an image of a massive expanse of water upon which I pictured a man afloat in a small vessel. Personally water has a quality of the eternal about it, a timelessness which I have linked to the ancient music of Korea, a particular interest of mine. Much of the music of this ancient culture has survived virtually unchanged since the 15th century, and this, as much as the sound of the music itself, suggests to me the ceaselessness and regularity of an endless stream, an eternal current of sound.
I wanted my piece to suggest that it might be part of a timeless continuum with no beginning and no end. Yet I wanted it also to be largely a virtuosic display for the soloist, a work with a sense of progression, a build up and a release of tension, with an introduction and climax, and all the dramatic qualities that I, as a composer, enjoy manipulating.
Two of the traditional musical forms of Korea, Kasa, a narrative song form, and Sanjo, a virtuosic solo instrumental form, were a strong influence on this composition. The latter, usually featuring the 12 string long-zither the Kayago, accompanied by the hour-glass drum, the Changgo, is an improvisatory six-sectioned form which gradually builds in speed and tension to a very fast final movement. Kasa on the other hand, is a virtuosic display by a male singer with accompaniment. It makes much use of repeated melodic figures, falsetto tones, trills, vibrati, microtonal ornamentation and glissandi. The use of these techniques is a feature of traditional Korean music and I was interested in incorporating them into my work, not merely as ornamentation but as integral elements of its style. The potential of the guitar is such that it was not difficult to take these techniques and utilise them. For example, I have re-tuned a number of the strings of the guitar to take advantage of the possibilities that microtonal tuning offer.
Although the public reference to Korean music culture is intentional on my part, it is not done lightly. In principle I feel that it is more respectful to keep such responses on a personal level, being very conscious of the sacred nature of many traditional cultures, but on reflection it seems relevant in the light of the response people have had to In Prison Air, to reflect on Korea's long history of oppression, trapped as it is between the might of the Asian continent and the ambitions of the imperialists of Japan's history.
A recording of this work can be heard by clicking here
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2. Redror (1989) for alto sax and percussion.
Introduction
Redror, as the title suggests, is a gutsy piece which makes few compromises to beauty in the traditional sense. It rips, snarls and snorts its way through a labyrinthine maze of saxophone noises and percussion cracks. Occasionally revealed is the presence of another world - a gentler pronouncement of the 13- note theme which has haunted the work from its opening minutes.
An intense period of research accompanied the composition of Redror. Utilising available texts, and the knowledge of Dutch alto saxophonist Henri Bok, a number of cassettes and working scores were posted back and forth between Sydney and Rotterdam. The study of multiphonics was of paramount importance to me at this time and although later performers confirmed my fear that each of them would play the given multiphonics differently, the essential effect of this piece - the consideration of unexplored timbres and emotional expression - remains.
I was also keen to open my expressive palette to include elements of jazz and improvisation. Improvisation however not in the traditional sense of there simply being an opportunity for the player to take a solo, but rather in allowing a point to be reached in the piece where the outcome of the musical process is such that only the performer's violent rejection of all attempts to contain the sounds any longer will suffice, resulting in an unrestrained, passionate outburst of blowing! To this end a small section of Redror is freely notated.
Redror was the last substantial work I was to write before heading overseas for a period of research into the music of Isang Yun and the traditional music of Korea. With the break that ensued from composition it is not surprising to note that Redror represented the culmination of a number of intersecting processes.
Most noticeably amongst these was that this was to be my last piece in which the use of pitch and rhythmic series dominated the music. Further, improvisation, which I was becoming more interested in using in my own work, had begun to loom large in Redror. It went a considerable stage further soon after in 1990 with the composition of Jellingroo and in 1991 with Man, Skin Cancer of the Earth.
Rhythmic pulse, which had come to the fore in works such as Miname in 1988 had become openly a feature of my work by Redror. Also, the lyrical writing evident in Redror (see for example the sections beginning at bars 85, 109 and 182) can be traced directly to a number of earlier works - Korokon and Quidong from 1983 in particular. Mention might also be made of the textures offered by alto sax and percussion in Redror. These can also be traced directly to works like Quidong. In particular my love of writing for a huge band of percussion instruments is a prominent feature of Redror.
A recording of this work can be heard by clicking here
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3. Ad Parnassum (1991) for flute soloist, mandolin, guitar, harp, percussion, violin, viola & double bass.
Introduction:
Stored amongst the recesses of a composer's mind can generally be found the plans for a large number of works. Although knowing that they will not all be brought to fruition, the composer is usually content with the knowledge that they will lie dormant, waiting to be brought out, dusted off when needed and slotted into some willing agenda.
The original idea for a piece for flute soloist and chamber ensemble, Ad Parnassum can be traced directly to an earlier work, Ad Marginem written in 1986. The short third movement of that piece, although successful for me in the context of a large four movement work, had always seemed a little aenemic, so I was pleased when the opportunity arose to reorchestrate it and develop it into a completely new and much larger work for the Elision ensemble.
Even under the influence of two very different constraints - one being a complete rethinking of the original material to suit Elision's unusual ensemble and the new shape I was casting it in, as it was now to become a complete work in its own right, and the second being my 1991 composing temperament which was vastly different to that of 1986 - Ad Parnassum is still in many ways a sister piece to the earlier concerto.
Both works take their titles from paintings by Paul Klee, and in the case of Ad Marginem this is not a surprise given the musical references I found in his marine landscape. Klee was an amateur musician of some note and it has been suggested that in Ad Parnassum he was making a reference to the 1723 treatise on music theory and counterpoint of Johann Joseph Fux, Gradus ad Parnassum. While this musical reference in itself is enough to interest me in Klee's painting, I am more fascinated by the constellation of colours and sense of contrast which he employs. With Ad Parnassum however, I made no attempt to attach any program to the music.
A recording of this work can be heard by clicking here
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4. All in Good Time 1989/91 (Fl., clar., pno., vln., cello)
Introduction
Many composers are motivated by political concerns, and in my case the piece I wrote in 1991, Man, skin cancer of the earth, (with its citing of man's abuse of this planet) was certainly politically motivated. Immediately before that work however I had written All in Good Time, and in its case it was the city in which I was living, at a special time in its history, which brought about its composition.
All in Good Time unlike the former work is more a celebration of an occasion than a politically motivated work. It was fortuitous that I happened to be living in West Berlin at the time of the November 9, 1989 opening of 'Der Mauer'. As wall after wall in the eastern part of Europe crumbled it was a time which became locked in the memory as a period of great relief and euphoria. This bloodless revolution demanded an artistic outlet from me. All in Good Time, which I began late in 1989 and completed in 1991 was an emotional response to a momentous experience in my life. I tried to write positive, even uplifting music, something which mirrored my feelings of this period, and, perhaps it was my consciousness of the difficult road ahead for East Germans, that compelled me to include some more restrained sections, laden with melancholy, to balance the brightness and colour of the bulk of the work.
Postlude
To this point in the documentation there has been no preparation for a work such as All in Good Time appearing in my output. It was not the break following the composition of Redror which brought about such an abrupt stylistic change as this sort of style had already appeared in works such as Winamin in 1986.
I actually have a passion for composing in a wide range of styles. Some would even consider it a pluralistic attitude to composition. I enjoy nothing more than the thought of composing a multi-media music theatre piece, followed by a sound sculpture for an art gallery and then a string quartet for the concert hall and in each case being extremely conscious of the audience for whom I am composing. Any concern as to my apparent failing to search for my individual voice through working in one style and even in one genre (such as the concert hall), I have always countered by replying that my voice must include this flexibility. I am actually challenged by changing style and genre from one piece to the next. It keeps me much more alive to what is happening in the world about me.
A recording of this work can be heard by clicking here
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5. After the fire (1991) for solo harp
Introduction
My title is taken from a series of works which the artist Fred Williams painted following a bush fire. What especially excited my imagination was experiencing in his paintings an acute observation of the different states of the bush in the days following the fire and his fascination with the speed of regeneration of the bush. Fire itself is a potent symbol, and not necessarily one that is always associated with destruction. The Aboriginal people used 'burnback' to encourage new shoots to appear from amongst the burnt out undergrowth. This cleaning away of the rubbish and starting of something new is meaningful for me, and symbolic of the mould in which my piece for harp was cast.
After the Fire is intentionally destructive, ridiculing itself as much as all the harp works that have come before it. It is full of the collisions of musical materials and gestures of numerous other instruments and styles. It is cyclic with many of its ideas shocked into action and reaction by the rudeness of its accompanying gestures. Being conceived purely as an exploratory work, it is not 'safe', far from it. If it is in the nature of the harp as an instrument that composers have tended to write 'beautiful' pieces for it, then my piece will shock with its 'ugliness'.
6. Purgatorio/Paradiso (1991) 6 voices and tape
Introduction
Although the suggestive title of this piece and the work which to some degree inspired it - Dante's Commedia - suggests otherwise, I had originally hoped my listener would not intentionally search for a programme in this music. The use of exerpts from Dante's text was largely to provide source material for the singers. A programmatic realisation of his work (I had felt), could only be a massive undertaking of full ballet length.
The Commedia, a Christian allegory with its account of a journey through Hell, Purgatory and finally to the contemplation of God in Paradise, had supplied me with such riveting images on first reading that I felt I should set parts of the text in a piece. However, this piece, Purgatoria/Paradiso was never originally intended to be about the "afterlife" nor any paraphernalia associated with it. It was always my aim to the one hand to write a piece dealing with sounds for their own sake, yet on the other to allow for something of a contemplative, mystical character to be evoked.
As I began to work with the sounds however it was the Dante text that seemed to fit the brief, and as I began to set these words they began to dramatically affect what I was composing.
Hence the appropriateness of the two-pronged title. It is a piece which engenders contradiction and as such the title is also relevant in that it highlights the dualism to be found in my piece: the use of the same singers with the same material on tape and in live performance; the use of adulterated and pure sounds; the use of text and nonsense; the question for me of whether the work belongs in a concert hall or alternatively on the theatre or ballet stage.
On a more philosophical level the dualism that exists between mind and body, particularly in regard to how we perceive music interests me. Do some of us listen substantially with the mind and others with the body? Or, entering into even murkier territory, at what point in a piece and with what degree of foreknowledge (of music, the composer, the piece etc.), does an intrinsically intuitive activity become intellectual? At its most banal, what particularly interests me would be to explore this listener's experience of "turning off" or losing a degree of interest once recognising the piece or process at work creating the piece. Is it a learnt activity? Can the listener be trained out of it?
Both in regard to pitch material and texture an obvious precursor for this work will be found in Stockhausen's Stimmung. Although not denying the apparent similarities between the two works I think there is little to note outside the fact that my work is not the first of its kind - not that that should be of any significance. In this regard - without in any way wanting to denigrate the importance of Stockhausen's work - there are also numerous precursors for his piece.
A recording of part 1 of this work can be heard by clicking here part 3 here and part 4 here.
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Purgatorio/Paradiso: Afterthought
In discussing the music of today, I find the labels 'radical' and 'conservative' almost impossible to apply without stating the context. Radical or conservative for whom? And in what way?? For the composer? his or her colleagues? programming bodies? audiences?? For example, a composition written in 1997 might be taken complacently by one group, bore another incessantly and incense a third because they see it as a retrograde step. It might attract great controversy because it uses the compositional language of last century or it might be radical because it involves the audience in an unusual way. Bearing this in mind, in what context might I consider my work Purgatorio/Paradiso radical?
Does its derivative quality, stemming as it does from the meditative, minimalist vocal works of the 60's, make its appearance in 1992 surprising? Hardly, even though, as colleague Warren Burt noted, where this piece is different is that it is not meditative at all, but rather is cloistered and subversive.
Even my original conception of the piece being performed in candlelight by singers garbed in the robes of medieval monks who make their way to the stage by walking through the audience singing plainchant, might be soon forgotten today. It would then most likely be considered as 'kitsch' but this might make it controversial! - 'high art' is supposed to be a very serious affair! (I also have a vision of the work being performed as a parody of a high mass but the hackles this might raise in your average audience would make that a brave choice.)
What about the use of text? Does it frustrate the listener if a composer uses a text with, what might appear on one level to be, minor regard for its semantic content, utilising it only for its potential as a sound source. Especially if it is a 15th century text translated from Old Italian dealing with the 'afterlife', which the composer then has the temerity to tell the listener he or she should disregard.
Aside from singing, there are many other questionable acts in which the ensemble is expected to participate. For example, they are asked to speak, whisper, breathe and snort to exact rhythms - all of which can embarrass an audience as much as the poor singers!
Perhaps most questionable of all (certainly for the listener's sake), is asking them to sit through a 15 minute piece which does not deviate too far from one constant chord. Open to criticism, no doubt, but "radical"?
In fact is this work in any way truly radical? Well, for me, yes, it has proven to be not only one of the most difficult of works to write, but also a radical departure from my previous works. I spent a good year trying to decide how, given an ensemble of outstanding voices dedicated to new music, one should write for the voice today. Although I have written a lot for singers in the past and feel something of an experienced practitioner of the art, this commission provided me with the opportunity to write an exploratory work, something that would break new ground for me.
It is the incorporation of a tape part in Purgatorio/Paradiso which broke the new ground and also created the most difficulties for me, particularly as it consists of both pure and adulterated recordings of the Song Company, who actually eventually performed the piece live.
7. Between Blue Rocks (1992) for large chamber orchestra
Introduction
The title for my work comes from T.S. Eliot's 1930 poem, Ash Wednesday:
"This is the time of tension between dying and birth
... between blue rocks."
Although there is not an intentional reference made to this poem in my work, I nevertheless felt a personal attraction to the dark mood invoked by Eliot's memories and the religious symbolism he toyed with in his work.
On a more musical level his constant reference to stairways and walking amongst colours attracted me, and as a composer - one who is dependant on variation to propel ideas forward - I related immediately to Eliot's use of "turning" as a refrain:
"At the first turning of the second stair... at the second turning... at the first turning of the third stair... because I cannot hope to turn again."
In my piece, Between Blue Rocks, I make constant use of repetition. The listener does in fact return to each musical idea a number of times. The music appears straightforward, even simple, however the process of repetition of a wide range of variables means that there is constant change and subtle transformation throughout.
The style of much of the work might seem to some to be rooted in that of the jazz big band, but take away the brass and often one notes more than the occasional rhythm and timbre suggestive of a popular music world. The relationship between my work, jazz and rock is never far from the surface, and I can verify this in so far as I would like my piece to be viewed as a homage - albeit a humble one - to the great jazz trumpeter, Miles Davis. My piece, however, makes no attempt to emulate Davis' sound world - even if I was capable of it, it would be an anathema to me. Yet I have listened to his music a lot and it, like so many other musics, might be heard in what I compose. Most essentially for me, Miles liked his jazz a little funkier and rockier than most, and I can own up to liking my "classical" a little of the same, even though genre-wise, and stylistically, this might be worlds away.
And finally my title, for which I'm indebted to TS Eliot, does indeed refer to Miles, not only because of his recent death and the heartfelt and reflective response found at the time in the popular and jazz musical worlds, but also in reference to his "Kind of Blue" period of the early 60's, and the music which he always played, found somewhere between jazz, rock and blues.
Further Influences displayed in Between Blue Rocks
I mentioned in the introduction my interest in Miles Davis while composing this piece yet it also owes a lot to the music of the Baroque era, and in particular Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, a work to which I was listening at the time.
Some of the connections that can be made between the two includes the role of rhythm as a unifying motive; there is little rhythmic variation, both works are pulse driven with continuous semiquaver movement a feature. Both feature the return of thematic materials, Bach's utilising a ritornello ("little return") form and mine a free chaconne. (They might both be loosely considered variations on a set amount of material.)
Both Between Blue Rocks and the Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 have a fast/slow/fast form with terraced dynamics a feature of the different sections in each. Tonality is in strong evidence in both works. In the case of Bach this is largely diatonic, and in my piece it might be thought of as a loose modallity.
As noted with All in Good Time and Purgatorio/Paradiso, the range of styles and genres in which I had begun to work following my period in Berlin and Seoul between 1989 and '91, had become more eclectic, evident not only in the jazz, pop and baroque sounds of a work like Between Blue Rocks but also in my increased interest in experimenting with improvisatory forms. Coincidentally this was happening at a time when I was offered employment for a two year period as Composer-in-residence with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, a position which required the composition of four orchestral piece. A task I hungrily took on. My belief, that the orchestra could be as flexible as my imagination, may not have been completely plausible, but I took it with me into the position nevertheless. The brief required that one of the works should be scored for touring chamber orchestra and be able to communicate with the widest range of audiences. I attempted to satisfy that with the composition of Between Blue Rocks.
The opportunity to write a big orchestral piece to share a progrm with Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms I reserved for the next work in this documentation.
A short excerpt from a recording of this work can be heard by clicking here
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8. Tartengk (1985/93) for large orchestra.
Introduction
Tartengk, my work for orchestra, was begun in 1985 and after lying idle for 7 years, completed only in 1993. The title is an Australian Aboriginal word found in the South Australian area; it means 'a stick for beating time in singing'.
The sound of the word 'tartengk' immediately communicates something to me. It emanates strength and has a certain exotic appeal and, as it came into being on this contintent, assumes a special quality for me as an Australian. When one considers its musical meaning it is also especially apt as a title for a piece of music
A recording of this work can be heard by clicking here
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