A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Notes
This week’s exercise is much more free than those from previous weeks. I will give you relatively little guidance. Instead, your goal in this exercise is to let yourself be inspired by the visual. For this work, I have created a fairly random formal map. In the flowchart shown below, you will begin at letter A, then you may move to any box you wish as the arrows indicate. The piece ends after you move to the coda.
In the chart, these are blank white boxes. The true inspiration comes from filling those boxes in. If you feel like being truly creative, select nine pictures, paintings, or other pieces of visual art and insert them into each box (except the coda). In the place of the coda, put a photo of yourself. If you don’t want to fill in the lettered boxes for yourself, there is a good random way to fill them. Follow the link below, which will take you to a page with nine random photographs from Flickr. These will be organized in a 3×3 grid. If you wish to print these photos, you can save them from grid screen, but you will not be able to save any larger formats. You may, however, click on them to get larger images and then use print screen to get large versions for your use. Simply insert the photos in the grid as organized below and you have an image map.
There is no guidance for this piece, as you will each be inspired in a different way depending on what pictures you insert. You can stay on each photo for as much or as little time as you like. You can move about the map us much as you like before ending the piece. This is completely up to you.
As a side note, this exercise is inspired by a work by Joseph Klein titled Images.
Find Photos Here – http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
Henry Purcell – Dido’s Lament from Dido and Aeneas
The Composer
Henry Purcell was born in 1659 in London. As a child, he sung in the choir at the Chapel Royal and showed a natural talent for composition. In fact, his talent was so pronounced that it would be fair to think of him as a compositional prodigy. His first published work was a song written when he was eight years old. When his voice broke and he could no longer sing in the choir, he was hired to various positions, eventually becoming the composer-in-ordinary for the violins at court. Despite his position, Purcell mainly composed sacred vocal music period at this time. Purcell was extremely prolific, gaining a reputation as England’s greatest composer (a position some believe he still holds). His career reflected this success. At various times he held positions as the organist of Westminster Abbey and the Chapel Royal, as well as composer to the court. Unfortunately, Purcell died at the young age of thirty-six, but not before leaving a massive catalog consisting most of vocal works, many of which rank among the greatest music ever composed in the English language.
The Work
Dido and Aeneas was an example of baroque opera. At the time it was composed, opera was a fairly new art form. The first work considered to be a bona fide opera was composed in 1600 by Jacopo Peri. In the time between that first composition and the premiere of Dido and Aeneas around 1688-89, a fairly uniform structure had been established for the composition of operas. This consisted of isolated songs, or arias, surrounded by declaimed or half-sung sections, which were called dry recitative (or recitativo secco in Italian opera), that served to move the dramatic action forward. In this way, arias served a role similar to soliloquies in spoken theater. As a nod to the Greek tradition that inspired opera, most operas also included a chorus that served to comment on the action of the drama.
Like most operas from this period, the subject of Dido and Aeneas is drawn from classical storytelling. The libretto is an allegorical adaptation of a portion of Virgil’s Aeneid. It tells the story of Dido, the queen of Carthage, and her marriage to the Trojan Aeneas. A sorceress wishing to bring the downfall of Carthage plots to trick Aeneas into leaving for Italy, believing he has been ordered by the gods, then destroying his ship in transit. Aeneas falls for the plot, and upon telling Dido he must leave, she relents. In her sorrow, she slowly dies, leading to the end of the opera.
The aria featured in this post is the final aria of the work, popularly called “Dido’s Lament.” This aria is what is called a ground bass aria. The primary distinguishing feature of this kind of aria is the repeated bass line that is featured throughout the work. The ground bass line in this aria is designed to be symbolic of Dido’s death, featuring a slow chromatic descent. Lines moving by descending semitones were and are often used metaphorically to depict death.
The section you will hear in the recording features the aria as well as the preceding recitative. In baroque practice, recitative was accompanied by a semi-improvised basso continuo. Basso continuo was a feature of baroque music that consisted of an ever-present accompaniment consisting of a monophonic bass instrument, usually a cello, and a polyphonic instrument of some sort, usually a harpsichord, though occasionally an organ or lute. The bass line in these parts would be written out with figured bass that the keyboard or lute player would use to improvise harmony.
I have included the lyrics below. Notice the way Purcell uses the ground bass to depict the descent into the cold ground. Baroque music can often seem cold and technical (see Vivaldi and Bach), but Purcell’s music here is both touching and tragic, reaching a distinctly grand level as the opera comes to a close. Enjoy listening to this performance, recorded at the Proms in 2009.
Recitative
- Thy hand, Belinda, darkness shades me,
- On thy bosom let me rest,
- More I would, but Death invades me;
- Death is now a welcome guest.
Aria
- When I am laid, am laid in earth, May my wrongs create
- No trouble, no trouble in thy breast;
- Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate.
- Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.
“Batter my heart…” – An Exercise in Text Setting
I would like to start this post by stating that this exercise may be difficult for a beginning composer. Text setting is at once the most natural and most potentially complex thing a composer will do in the process of working on a piece of music. Every speaker of a language has some sense of the intricacies of the accent patterns that go along with the way that language is spoken; however, not everybody is able to translate those easily into a musical context. This difficulty for the composer is much like what a poet considers when choosing words to fit an accent pattern, identifying where accents fall based on how the word sounds and matching it to the desired aural outcome. To practice, this exercise will take you step by step through setting a text. This is just one way you can set a text to music, and I admit this is not the only way I set text while working on a piece. This is also most applicable for situations where you are working with a text that was not made specifically for music and that cannot be altered significantly to fit your needs (as opposed to a song where you or someone else wrote the lyrics intending them to be sung).
Preparing to Compose
Before you begin working on any musical setting of a preexisting text, you should do some preliminary work analyzing the text. For the purposes of this exercise, I will provide examples from a work I composed in my first year of college. The text for these samples will be from a poem by Walt Whitman called “Facing West from California’s Shores.” This poem is from his largest and best-known collection, Leaves of Grass.
(As a preliminary matter, I advise all beginning composers to only work with text from the public domain. This includes essentially all poetry published before 1923, as well as a limited number of items published after that date. This cutoff year only recently began moving again at the end of 2019, so realize that the use of most texts written in after 1923 will require getting permission from the author before your work can be publicly performed.)
FACING west, from California’s shores,
Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,
I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity, the
land of migrations, look afar,
Look off the shores of my Western Sea—the circle almost circled;
For, starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of Kashmere,
From Asia—from the north—from the God, the sage, and the hero,
From the south—from the flowery peninsulas, and the spice islands;
Long having wander’d since—round the earth having wander’d,
Now I face home again—very pleas’d and joyous;
(But where is what I started for, so long ago?
The first thing that can be helpful in preparing to set a poem is to break the text into accented and unaccented syllables. This is something that comes naturally to some people, while others have a more difficult time. The method that works best for me is to recite the text while keeping a beat and feel what syllables naturally fall on a downbeat as you speak naturally. Your natural inclination (as long as you are speaking your native language) will be to place accented syllables on downbeats. Most English speech can be grouped into sets of two or three accented and unaccented syllables (this group is called a “foot” in poetry). Therefore, if you find that there are more than two unaccented syllables between successive accented syllables, then you have probably missed an accent. There are also a number situations where syllables can be treated as either accented or unaccented. To illustrate this process, I have divided the first line of the poem into syllables and made the accented syllables bold.
Fac-ing west, from Cal-i-for-nia’s shores,
As you can see, this is a very simple line with accents falling regularly every other syllable. Not every line will be this simple. Identifying these accents will assist you later in establishing the rhythm of the music when you set the line melodically. [As a side note, syllables should generally be written to divide a word the way the dictionary has them divided for ease of reading. Changing this may seem intuitive to you, but the dictionary’s method of the dividing the word takes legibility and pronunciation into mind, and a singer reading the text will find it easier to follow if you stick with this norm.]
The other preliminary analysis you should do is to look at the high-level organization of the poem. Many poems are divided into stanzas in a way that allows you to craft the form of the piece around the poems divisions. Some, though, like the one above, are not so divided, or they are divided in a way that does not conform with how you may want to construct your piece. In these situations, it is a good idea to craft the form of your piece according to significant places in the poem where there is a sudden, significant, or important change of tone, location, subject, or perspective.
In the present text, the clearest division of this sort is conveniently marked by semi-colons. This demarcation using punctuation is matched by a change of tone and perspective as the text shifts from introversion to a metaphorical description of a journey around the world. Based on this formal design, one approach would be to craft the piece into three sections, one for each of the sections of the poem. In my setting of the poem, I altered this slightly. As suggested, I use a form with three sections, but I started the middle section one line before the semi-colon, using the line “look off the shores of my western sea, the circle almost circled” as a transition into the “voyage” that follows. This was merely one way that the form could be adjusted to make the setting more individualized. Don’t be afraid to avoid obvious solutions if you have a good reason to try something else.
This macro-level analysis is also the time to identify points in the work where you may want to have climaxes and text painting. Identify poetic themes in the text that can be associated with musical motives or themes. Find significant moments that can be used as “pillar moments” for the piece. (“Pillar moments” are an idea introduced to me by Elainie Lillios that denote moments of significance where the text or organization of the work demands a sudden dramatic musical change, such as a sudden change in texture, tempo, dynamic, or harmony.) This should be the time when you start thinking of musical ideas for both the vocal line and the accompaniment.
Writing the Melodic Line
There is very little I can say about the actual musical setting that won’t indicate a preference for a certain style of writing. For this reason, take the following pointers with a grain of salt. Also remember that these are merely one way to approach composition.
In composing the melodic line for your text, use your pre-compositional analysis to guide you through constructing a line that will work through your work’s larger form. I recommend starting either with contour or rhythm. If you begin with contour, try marking places in your text where you believe changes in tessitura may be desirable to match the “pillars” and climaxes you marked in your macro form. Also think of ways to accent the text setting notes you took. For example, words like “rising” and “flying” have clear potential for text painting using tessitura by having your singer go higher in their range. Other words, like “death” or “deep” have potential for the opposite painting. Identify these moments and chart a general contour for your melodic line. I like to use graph paper for this process.
When establishing a rhythm, use the accent patterns you established in your preparation to chart a rhythm. Try making accented syllables fall predominantly on downbeats, though certainly not on every downbeat. If this starts sounding monotonous, try having them syncopated, but use longer durations to give them an agogic accent. Placing accented syllables on downbeats or in accented syncopation makes the text sound natural and the line easier to sing. If the poem uses repeating accent patterns, it is a good idea to identify some rhythmic motives that can be used later when constructing complete melodies. If you are working with a poem in a rigid verse structure, like blank verse, which generally uses iambic pentameter throughout, you can establish a variety of workable rhythmic motives that fit the predominant accent pattern in the text, then select appropriate motives to represent thematic ideas you identified in your earlier text analysis.
There of course may be situations where the text calls for awkwardness or discomfort, and unnatural placement of accents on weak beats or unaccented upbeats can be effective. Keep the performer in mind when making this decision, and when in doubt, be cautious about writing anything that is too rhythmically awkward for you to sing yourself. After you’ve written a rhythm for the text, try reciting it in rhythm to see if anything sounds awkward. If this effect isn’t desirable based on what you want for the context of the work, consider whether you’ve placed a strong syllable on a weak beat or vice-versa.
After getting a basic rhythmic outline, I like to make decisions about the harmonic approach I want to take. There are situations where I think of melody and harmony at the same time as rhythm, or I’ll have a melodic idea already in mind that I try to fit the text to, altering the melody as needed to fit the text. Once you have a harmonic space in mind (diatonic, modal, heavily chromatic, atonal, etc.), previous notes on rhythm, contour and form can be used to add pitch to your line, creating melody. As you do so, feel free to adjust your contour and rhythm to match what you decide to use for pitch material. Any rhythmic motives you made earlier can be given harmonic context here, with thoughts about how they will sit over different accompaniments or how they will link together to form complete melodic ideas.
This is also the time to add some basic ornamentation, which will often take the form of adding melismatic passages on soft vowels, inserting non-text vocal embellishments, and other devices extraneous to the basic line you have constructed so far. These can add color and make your line more interesting. You should also make notes in this process on any ideas that come to mind regarding the accompaniment you want to write. When you finish this process, you will have a first draft of a vocal line.
Composing the Accompaniment
This part of composing a vocal work is essentially the same as working with any other composition, except that you have one instrument (or voice, in this matter) that is going to be put in the spotlight for most of the piece. Your construction of the accompaniment should be focused on crafting an effective support for the vocal line you have constructed. The moments when your vocal line is the focus, try to avoid overwhelming the vocalist in your texture. Be sure to provide pitches for reference in your accompaniment that will allow your vocalist to know what their first note is after they haven’t sung for a while. If you have a vocalist in mind, seek their guidance when identifying trouble spots for entrances or places where the accompaniment may be overpowering their available dynamics in a given range.
Try to craft moments of counterpoint, call and response, and harmonic doubling of melodic elements in the vocal line to provide an interesting interplay. Where appropriate, use motives established earlier to highlight subtextual ideas. For example, if the text establishes that the speaker is anxious early in the poem, it may be useful to associate that anxiety with a musical motive. Later, if the speaker is literally expressing confidence, but this is meant to be inauthentic, the use of the “anxiety” motive in the accompaniment (or in the vocal line itself) can express the subtextual anxiety the singer feels despite their confidence.
Most of all, remember that, in most cases, the vocal line is THE STAR of the piece, so your accompaniment should be a support. There are exceptions to this rule, but the human voice is naturally the easiest musical “instrument” for listeners to empathize with, especially when it is singing a text in the listener’s language. There is rarely a situation where a singer while be singing an audible text in support of an instrumental line, as the listener will likely be focused more on trying to understand the singer than listening to an instrumental melody. Fighting that natural inclination is a losing battle in most circumstances, so if you want the instrumental line to be the focus, the vocalist should rest or vocalize on a non-textual syllable like “ah”.
This advice for composing a vocal melody is not the last word on the matter. There are many other ways to approach composing for vocals. This is one method that has worked for me, and I hope it works for you, as well.
An Exercise to Practice These Skills
To practice the methods just discussed, give them a try with the following poem by John Donne.
HOLY SONNETS.
XIV
Batter my heart, three-person’d God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
After you have given setting this text a try (at least making a melodic line), give a listen to the following setting of this poem by the American composer John Adams. The following performance is from Adams’ opera Dr. Atomic. This aria is sung by Gerald Finley as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist at the head of the Manhattan Project, which led to the creation of the atomic bomb. In this scene, Oppenheimer has just seen the completed bomb for the first time, and having suddenly felt the enormity of the consequences that will follow the creation of the bomb, he is overcome with grief. Oppenheimer was an avid fan of poetry, and this poem by Donne was written in his journal near the time of the initial tests of the bomb. This is why Adams chose to use the poem for this moment in the opera. See if you can hear how Adams makes the vocal line flow naturally. What does your line have in common with Adams’ treatment? What do you like about yours more? What do you prefer in his?
Josquin des Prez – Ave Maria…virgo serena
The Composer
Josquin des Prez [Josquin Lebloitte dit Desprez] lived from about 1450 to 1521. Regarded by many as one of the greatest composers of all time, he received great acclaim during his lifetime. Despite this, there are significant gaps in our knowledge of Josquin’s personal and professional life, as is common for composers from this time period and earlier.
Josquin most likely grew up in northern France, between Paris and Brussels, probably in or near Saint Quentin. Through his early career, he served René, duke of Anjou, as a singer and composer, moving on with many of the other musicians in the Duke’s employ to serve King Louis XI in the 1480s. In the following years, and through much of his remaining career, Josquin worked in Italy, taking posts in Milan, Rome, and Ferrara. His final post has been clearly documented at the church of Notre Dame in Condé-sur-l’Escaut, where he served as provost from 1504 to his death in 1521.
Along with anecdotal accounts of Josquin’s reputation as a reknowned composer and musician, documentation of his professional life also shows he was financially successful throughout his career. For example, researchers have found that during his tenure as maestro di cappella (“chapel master” or choirmaster) to Duke Ercole I d’Este in Ferrar in 1503, he received the largest salary in the history of the chapel, largely motivated by the duke’s desire to benefit from the musician’s glowing reputation.
As is typical for the notable composers of this period, Josquin primarily composed vocal music, the majority of it religious. Musicologists are fortunate that the the works of Josquin have been relatively easy to find compared to many other composers of the time period, largely thanks to the composer’s fame, which led to extensive publication of his work. Ottaviano Petrucci, the first printer of polyphonic music, published three volumes of his masses, totaling 18 works. There have also been dozens of confirmed motets and chansons by Josquin, several of which included instruments (a fairly uncommon practice at the time). I say “confirmed” works because his popularity was something of a double-edged sword.
Following his death, many publishers scrambled to publish his work (a practice repeated throughout history for other famous artists, authors, and composers). The less scrupulous of these publishers also distributed the work of other composers under his name, hoping to capitalize on his popularity. As a result, researchers now have to be skeptical when examining works attributed to Josquin after his death.
The Piece
Ave Maria…virgo serena was composed sometime around 1485. This work is an example of a motet, which at the time referred generally to single-movement polyphonic vocal works with religious Latin texts. Like previous generations of composers, Josquin wrote vocal lines that strove for clarity and fluidity in contour and form. His works have clear tonal centers and tuneful melodies. The texture of the work, though often involving somewhat dense counterpoint, is always handled carefully to allow for clarity so the text can be understood, though sometimes only with great effort. Josquin is among the earliest generations of composers to consistently focus on depicting the meaning of the text through the music, using devices like shifts in tessitura, melodic contour, texture, and harmonic construction to elaborate on the emotions of the words.
This work opens with what is called imitative counterpoint, which is characterized by the introduction of the same melodic line in each of the four voices of the ensemble, one after the other. This process repeats until the last voice enters, after which the counterpoint becomes more free as it leads to the end of the phrase. This is followed by a brief call and response, leading into a section of rhythmic unison. Notice throughout this section and the rest of the piece how the accented syllables of the text are accentuated both through tessitura (using higher pitches) and through agogic stress (using longer durations on accented syllables). In particular, pay special attention in this work to how Josquin uses the shift from polyphonic (contrapuntal) texture to homophonic (chorale-like) texture for specific phrases, such as “solemni plena gaudio” (full of solemn [or great] jubilation).
These techniques and devices are used throughout this short, lovely work, illustrating the craft that made Josquin the master of his day. Try to take the time to listen to the piece multiple times, first listening casually, then paying greater attention to the details pointed out above. Then try following Josquin’s use of these devices throughout the rest of the work. Look at the phrases Josquin chooses to accent, and ask yourself why he chose to do so.
This page has a great translation of the text with a breakdown of the overall progression of the work’s texture along a timeline:
http://www.mhhe.com/socscience/music/kamien/student/olc/42.htm
A transcription of the score of the work (without text) can be found here:
http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/b/b2/IMSLP20932-PMLP48553-ave_maria_josquin.pdf
Commercial Recordings:
Information Drawn from:
Burkholder, J. Peter, Donald J. Grout, and Claude V. Palisca. A History of Western Music. 7th ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2006.
A Little Bird Told Me – An Exercise in Composition
The composer Olivier Messiaen is perhaps best known for his love of bird song. He wrote several works that were partially or totally based on his own personal transcriptions of bird song that he collected throughout his life. One of the best examples of this is the aptly titled work, Catalogue d’oiseaux (1956–58), which literally translates to “Catalog of Birds.” Let’s take a quick look at how Messiaen handled this material. Here is the call of the black-eared wheatear:
Song of the Black-eared Wheatear
Now here is Messiaen’s composition built on his transcription of this bird’s song:
As you can hear, he doesn’t just use the song literally in the piece. In reality, he could not imitate all the small tonal variations on a piano, as bird songs do not fit strictly in our musical tuning system. However, from time to time, you can hear the little chirping motive of the bird played out as he transcribed it. The rest of the piece is then derived from that motivic kernel.
_______________________________________________________________________
For this exercise inspired by the start of spring, wait for a pleasant day this week, then go to the park or a local forest with a music notebook or some loose staff paper. Find a fairly quiet location without too much human-made noise. Take about ten minutes to just close your eyes and listen to the smallest sounds around you. Listen to the sounds of animals moving in the trees and bushes. Pay close attention to the sound of the wind as it blows past your face. When you feel yourself starting to hear things that you didn’t notice before, things that were too quiet in the background, listen for the sound of birds. Select one bird’s song and focus on it. After several minutes of listening, silently sing the bird’s song back in your head. When you feel you have a good idea of how the bird sounds, do your best to transcribe the basic melodic line of the song. If you have perfect pitch or have done a lot of ear-training, you can try and transcribe it exactly. Otherwise, do a loose transcription, focusing mainly on writing an accurate rhythm and loose melodic contour, then fill in the pitches as closely as you are able. Don’t worry about being perfect with your transcription.
Repeat this process two more times. When you finish, you will have transcribed three samples. Go home and do your best to play these samples on an instrument of your choosing. Select your favorite of the three transcriptions and compose a short (1-3 minute) piece for a solo instrument based on the bird song you selected. Think of how Messiaen approached his composition based on the black-eared wheatear. Try to avoid using the transcribed version of the song verbatim too often. Get creative with ways to use the bird song. Try using just the rhythm in places. Try turning it upside-down or backwards. Try stretching the length of each note to make the melody slower. Feel free to add unrelated material from time to time, but try to make sure you never go too long without using the bird song somehow.
Enjoy!
A Piece a Week 