One of my lovely readers recently commented on her Facebook status that she wished her college teacher had not played "the screechy music" on the day she had a headache! I couldn't help but smile and ask the source of the accused quasi-musical screams! I suspected the most screechy* of all screechy pieces I have ever encountered - in fact I could hear it in my head as soon as I recalled it.
I speak of Penderecki's extra-ordinary 'Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima' no less! I first heard this in a composition workshop session at Music College back in 1981 and found it disturbing, challenging, riveting, thrilling and horrendous...all at the same time! The piece (written for 52 string instruments) requires its performers to interpret symbols, play on the 'wrong' side of the bridge, deliberately use 'quarter tones', slap the instruments and create textures and tone clusters.
(I had already encountered tone clusters by that time through my brass band experiences. Composer Paul Patterson made quite a 'splash' in 1974 with the highly controversial 'Chromascope'. When he wrote this work for 'Besses o'the Barn' band it was certainly unlike anything ever heard before in the brass band world! Even more reactionary was 'Cataclysm' a year or so later. I had played 'Cataclysm' myself and was intrigued by instructions on my euphonium part to 'play as high/low a note as possible' - and to improvise a 'triple forte' ending! No two performances could ever be the same (shades of the Indian music I wrote about a few weeks ago). I was even 'inspired' to compose my own piece in a similar vein - a massive work for large brass band with 8 timpani, tuned a semitone apart, and a synthesizer! Called 'Creation and Destruction', I wrote it for a college composition competition - only to be disctinctly embarrassed when Patterson himself was invited to 'judge' the contest!!!!)
I'd guess that fewer than one in a thousand music afficionados have heard even a portion of 'Threnody' but an attempt should, perhaps, be made to experience it at least once...even if 'just to see'! I don't think its the type of piece you would ever sit down to enjoy, it would not aid relaxation...and certainly is not the choice to accompany a romantic dinner!**
I was wrong in my guesswork anyway! The (as yet unidentified) piece in question was composed by the great 20th Century French composer Olivier Messiaen (1908-92). I have studied and enjoyed several of Messiaen's works (though I would still consider myself some way below an 'expert'!)
The two things I mostly associate with Messiaen are birdsong and colour:
Birdsong in music is another of those recurring themes. As long ago as Haydn and Mozart, then later Beethoven (in the Pastoral Symphony) composers had written music intended to represent birdsong - followed by Mahler (most notably in Symphony 7) and many other composers - but Messiaen took its use to new levels. An extremely keen ornithologist himself, he encouraged his students to listen intently to the songs of the birds. His 1952 audition piece for flautists wishing to enter the Paris Conservatoire was based entirely on the actual song of the blackbird. Later works such as 'Reveil des Oiseaux' (1953) and (the piece I first encountered of his) 'Couleurs de la Cite Celeste' (1963) feature 'actual' birdsong quite extensively as does, in fact, most of his work from the 1950s onward. (Many tapes of recorded birdsong were found in Messiaen's paraphernalia along with manuscript representations of them in standard notation).
Colour, of course, is another vital ingredient in both Patterson's 'Chromascope' and much of Messiaen's work - indeed it is implied in the very title of 'Cite Celeste'... I was impressed as a young musician with the compositional techniques Messiaen used to 'recreate' the depths of a cave and the way sounds passed through it...I remember him using deep, loud notes or chords, with very quiet 'overtones' or fake-harmonics high above it - almost imperceptible in the soundscape, yet just enough to manage completely to provide that 'depth' and send a shiver down the spine!
In 'Couleurs' and other works, such as 'Des Canyons aux Etoiles' Messiaen actually wrote the colours he was trying to represent onto the conductor's score - to aid the interpretation, however, not to influence the listener... I relate this to the way Debussy put the titles of his, often programmatic, Preludes (e.g. Voiles, La Cathedrale Engloutie, Minstrels etc) in brackets UNDERNEATH the piece...as if to encourage the listener to imagine for themselves before referring to the original intention.
And that brings me back to the brass band again. I'm not sure if it was on the same of my father's brass band LPs (although I'd like to think I am right in recalling that it may have been) on which I first encountered 'Chromascope' sat another piece that tried to represent colour: 'Spectrum' by Gilbert Vinter. This has always been one of my favourite pieces of band music and, in contrast with much of the music I have written about today, it is largely melodic and conventional in its harmonies and structure - and, like the others, well worth a listen!
Like Kate's teacher, when I was teaching I loved to present music to my students that would challenge their accepted ideals, widen their horizons...make them ask questions! I once went too far, I seem to recall...'8 Songs for a Mad King' by Peter Maxwell-Davies was too much for any GCSE group and I learned a lesson myself in class that day!!!
So, the only shame, as far as I'm concerned, was that Kate had a headache on the day in question...maybe she will listen again with a clear head (couple of paracetamol??) and an open mind...and she will, as we all will, find that music can usually find a way to speak to us in that very special way.
*I have to acknowledge there is no such word as 'screechy' but...you know what it means nevertheless!
**fans of the 'Manic Street Prechers' may prove the exception - the Welsh rockers used an excerpt from the piece as an introduction to their track 'You Love Us' back in 1991.
I speak of Penderecki's extra-ordinary 'Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima' no less! I first heard this in a composition workshop session at Music College back in 1981 and found it disturbing, challenging, riveting, thrilling and horrendous...all at the same time! The piece (written for 52 string instruments) requires its performers to interpret symbols, play on the 'wrong' side of the bridge, deliberately use 'quarter tones', slap the instruments and create textures and tone clusters.
(I had already encountered tone clusters by that time through my brass band experiences. Composer Paul Patterson made quite a 'splash' in 1974 with the highly controversial 'Chromascope'. When he wrote this work for 'Besses o'the Barn' band it was certainly unlike anything ever heard before in the brass band world! Even more reactionary was 'Cataclysm' a year or so later. I had played 'Cataclysm' myself and was intrigued by instructions on my euphonium part to 'play as high/low a note as possible' - and to improvise a 'triple forte' ending! No two performances could ever be the same (shades of the Indian music I wrote about a few weeks ago). I was even 'inspired' to compose my own piece in a similar vein - a massive work for large brass band with 8 timpani, tuned a semitone apart, and a synthesizer! Called 'Creation and Destruction', I wrote it for a college composition competition - only to be disctinctly embarrassed when Patterson himself was invited to 'judge' the contest!!!!)
I'd guess that fewer than one in a thousand music afficionados have heard even a portion of 'Threnody' but an attempt should, perhaps, be made to experience it at least once...even if 'just to see'! I don't think its the type of piece you would ever sit down to enjoy, it would not aid relaxation...and certainly is not the choice to accompany a romantic dinner!**
I was wrong in my guesswork anyway! The (as yet unidentified) piece in question was composed by the great 20th Century French composer Olivier Messiaen (1908-92). I have studied and enjoyed several of Messiaen's works (though I would still consider myself some way below an 'expert'!)
The two things I mostly associate with Messiaen are birdsong and colour:
Birdsong in music is another of those recurring themes. As long ago as Haydn and Mozart, then later Beethoven (in the Pastoral Symphony) composers had written music intended to represent birdsong - followed by Mahler (most notably in Symphony 7) and many other composers - but Messiaen took its use to new levels. An extremely keen ornithologist himself, he encouraged his students to listen intently to the songs of the birds. His 1952 audition piece for flautists wishing to enter the Paris Conservatoire was based entirely on the actual song of the blackbird. Later works such as 'Reveil des Oiseaux' (1953) and (the piece I first encountered of his) 'Couleurs de la Cite Celeste' (1963) feature 'actual' birdsong quite extensively as does, in fact, most of his work from the 1950s onward. (Many tapes of recorded birdsong were found in Messiaen's paraphernalia along with manuscript representations of them in standard notation).
Colour, of course, is another vital ingredient in both Patterson's 'Chromascope' and much of Messiaen's work - indeed it is implied in the very title of 'Cite Celeste'... I was impressed as a young musician with the compositional techniques Messiaen used to 'recreate' the depths of a cave and the way sounds passed through it...I remember him using deep, loud notes or chords, with very quiet 'overtones' or fake-harmonics high above it - almost imperceptible in the soundscape, yet just enough to manage completely to provide that 'depth' and send a shiver down the spine!
In 'Couleurs' and other works, such as 'Des Canyons aux Etoiles' Messiaen actually wrote the colours he was trying to represent onto the conductor's score - to aid the interpretation, however, not to influence the listener... I relate this to the way Debussy put the titles of his, often programmatic, Preludes (e.g. Voiles, La Cathedrale Engloutie, Minstrels etc) in brackets UNDERNEATH the piece...as if to encourage the listener to imagine for themselves before referring to the original intention.
And that brings me back to the brass band again. I'm not sure if it was on the same of my father's brass band LPs (although I'd like to think I am right in recalling that it may have been) on which I first encountered 'Chromascope' sat another piece that tried to represent colour: 'Spectrum' by Gilbert Vinter. This has always been one of my favourite pieces of band music and, in contrast with much of the music I have written about today, it is largely melodic and conventional in its harmonies and structure - and, like the others, well worth a listen!
Like Kate's teacher, when I was teaching I loved to present music to my students that would challenge their accepted ideals, widen their horizons...make them ask questions! I once went too far, I seem to recall...'8 Songs for a Mad King' by Peter Maxwell-Davies was too much for any GCSE group and I learned a lesson myself in class that day!!!
So, the only shame, as far as I'm concerned, was that Kate had a headache on the day in question...maybe she will listen again with a clear head (couple of paracetamol??) and an open mind...and she will, as we all will, find that music can usually find a way to speak to us in that very special way.
****************************************************************
*I have to acknowledge there is no such word as 'screechy' but...you know what it means nevertheless!
**fans of the 'Manic Street Prechers' may prove the exception - the Welsh rockers used an excerpt from the piece as an introduction to their track 'You Love Us' back in 1991.
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