Tag: modern vocal music

Caroline

Posted on April 19, 2013 by - Columns

By now, you may have heard that this year’s Pulitzer Prize in Music has gone to Caroline Shaw for her vocal work, Partita for 8 Voices. In the recent past, media and musicians alike would take notice at how that year’s winner stood apart from the dusty old names of previous generations. Shaw, however, appears to have so many non-traditional aspects about her that observers are spending most of their time simply rattling off the reasons why she’s not like all the rest–Zachary Woolfe’s New York Times article seemed to enjoy putting her Twitter-made quote “I don’t really call myself a composer” right up front.

While it is easy to point out the many surface-level differences between Shaw and her predecessors in the Pulitzer clubhouse (She’s young–and a ‘she’–and a student–and a performing instrumentalist–and a singer!), I’d like to take the opportunity to make some observations about the piece itself, consider what makes Shaw truly stand out as a composer, and close with some thoughts on the bigger picture from my vantage point out here in the hinterlands of western New York.
Front Matter

“Partita is a simple piece. Born of a love of surface and structure, of the human voice, of dancing and tired ligaments, of music, and of our basic desire to draw a line from one point to another.”

One might be tempted to take Shaw’s statement about the work’s simplicity as a self-aware ruse, but Partita for 8 Voices is, from my perspective, an intentionally simple piece made up of simple materials. Each movement introduces its elements in a straightforward manner that comes across as being both honest and without embarrassment, much like the artwork that inspired the piece.

The “front matter” of the score, where composers give instructions to their performers, does not go into great detail about the construction of the work, but rather nods in several directions to the various ingredients within the score. Shaw’s clear explanation of the various non-traditional notations in the score illustrates the variety of styles that she chose to utilize, including yodeling, Korean p’ansori techniques, Georgian intonation inflections, as well as Inuit throat games and three different styles of Tuvan vocal practice–xöömei, kargyraa, and sygyt. (Check out this YouTube video of Alexander Glenfield for a demonstration of the techniques.)

Finally, another paragraph in the front matter gives insight into the composer’s mindset–not only about the piece itself, but about her thoughts on the limits of printed notation, the use of recordings as interpretive tools, and her own flexibility as a creative artist:

“The 2012 recording by Roomful of Teeth can be considered an essential part of the score. Many sounds and gestures cannot be notated in a conventional way, and the composer encourages drawing on a variety of sources available with today’s technology to realize this piece with other ensembles in the future. However, no single document should ever be treated as ultimately prescriptive. Be free, and live life fully.”

I. Allemande
The first movement, “Allemande”, does not wait to hint at Shaw’s sense of humor; she begins the Baroque dance suite with each singer handing off square dance calls spoken in rhythm to one another while the lowest bass calls out “two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight” (ubiquitous in dance studios throughout the country). Spoken word soon morphs into the first sung musical statement, sung not with text, but rather with standard IPA vowel nomenclature. Ringing with a very bright timbre reminiscent of the Bulgarian Women’s Choir, the initial material is delivered pentatonically, harmonized in open 5ths and set in two uneven phrases before it quickly fades underneath more spoken word statements. The “fade,” in fact, is one of the points of interest, as Shaw utilizes a subtle yet random intonation fluctuation on the penultimate chord, and a separate but equally fascinating technique that the Roomful of Teeth ensemble created called “e.y.s.” or “eat your sound” (described in the score as “a multi-step tongue filter”).

The movement is divided in two parts–the first, longer section alternates between various iterations of spoken word (incorporating text from “Wall Drawing 305”) and variations on the initial thematic material, while a second section, imitative and lyrical, floats freely over shifting drones before finally closing on what should be a straightforward tonic chord made colorful through slight intonation fluctuations. The Pulitzer panel mentioned that “she changes gears so quickly and so easily, and every turn is so unexpected…”, and this movement is a case in point. Shaw actually uses a very limited amount of melodic material throughout “Allemande”, but two aspects of her style keep the elements from becoming stale–variation (she repeats material but continually varies the textures, key areas, affectations, etc.) and drama (for instance, the transition between the first and second section, starting at 2:39 on the Roomful of Teeth track, is very effective in its use of sung rhythmic counterpoint on top of the first instance of harmonic motion with a scalar bass line).

II. Sarabande
Shaw introduces the listener to a relatively unused vocal technique of scooping a hummed pitch quickly down-then-up as a pick up into each one of a series of lush chords; she describes it as an abstraction of a Korean p’ansori articulation. Under the third iteration of the chord progression in the women’s voices, she adds all four male voices in unison with a simple melodic line (above which at least one singer is to freely sing a twisting obbligato line) which leads to a brash new line by the unison men in a very high register–easily one of the most powerful points in the entire work. The movement ends very quietly but with the addition of a repeated motive of harmonics using a Tuvan throat singing technique.

III. Courante
One could be forgiven if one thought the beginning of “Courante”, with it’s extensive use of quick intakes and exhaling of breath, had erotic connotations, but soon enough the elaborate rhythmic interplay between the breaths transforms into something best described as “air percussion” that creates a groove upon which other ingredients are added. As that groove wanes, we are introduced to the only music not composed by Caroline Shaw–a women’s chorale setting of George F. Root’s 1856 hymn “Shining Shore”. This seeming non-sequitur actually works quite well–it’s a contrast with everything that came before it (especially the relatively quick rate of harmonic change)–and after some metric modulation the groove returns at a much faster pace with the chorale on top. After the groove peaks and disappears this second time, the women both sing higher and with more complex chromatic harmonic progressions than in the entire work combined. The men try their best to start the groove a third time, but soon both quartets vocally collapse and dissipate in a fluttering of quick breaths.

IV. Passacaglia
“Passacaglia”, while programmed last in the series of movements, was actually the first movement Shaw composed back in 2009. Shaw mentioned in the Times article that her thought was, “All I want to hear is just one chord.” She does indeed start with a single chord–a D major triad, to be precise–and constructs a simple yet attractive 10-measure chordal progression that evolves each time it repeats with subtle timbral changes, including alternating chest and head voice between two chords, and asking for the choir to “belt” followed by a “pitched exhale.” As the choir divides from four to eight parts, she quietly shifts the harmony to the dominant (followed by a tasty tritone sub of the dominant) while the voices pull apart from their chorale formation to a slightly more complex texture (including throat singing) upon which the spoken word recitation from Lewitt’s work “returns” until the entire ensemble is speaking on top of each other. Slowly the Passacaglia is re-incorporated pointillistically until a short but brilliant transition using “vocal fry” brings back the initial progression in the tonic key at full volume. I mentioned drama before–this spot is by far the most dramatic of the entire piece–and it creates anticipation for a second climax only to pull back at the last second for a quiet yet unresolved conclusion.

Caroline Shaw, Partita for 8 Voices, "Passacaglia" (p. 48). Used by permission.

Caroline Shaw, Partita for 8 Voices, “Passacaglia” (p. 48). Used by permission.

Roomful of Teeth
Before I come back to Caroline Shaw, I’d like to make mention of Roomful of Teeth. Investigating their website, it’s obvious that they have a very special and unique concept for a vocal ensemble. It’s not often that one finds a list of “experts” who have been brought in as coaches over the years to train the singers in the many techniques that Caroline incorporated into her work. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, from the sound of it I would posit that Partita would not–could not–exist without Roomful of Teeth. In the same way that Duke Ellington could not have made his masterpieces without Johnny Hodges, Paul Gonsalves, Cootie Williams, Sam Nanton, and Harry Carney, I’m going to guess that Caroline would not have been able to write such a work without the support and talents of this special ensemble. I say this not to diminish Caroline’s composition, but more to celebrate the fact that collaboration between composer and performer(s) can be so strong as to allow for the creation of something special like this.

Caroline
When I first heard that Caroline won the Pulitzer, I was pretty surprised—I’ve been trying hard to keep track of living composers for several years now and I will freely admit that I didn’t know her. I was even more surprised, however, when I realized that not only had I heard Caroline play– I’d heard her play a piece of mine. She, along with her colleagues of the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME), performed a movement from my string quartet Speedvisions at Joe’s Pub for a Sequenza 21 concert. I had witnessed Caroline in her element–with an ensemble, playing an inner part rather than soloing out front. If one looks at the lion’s share of her work as a violinist and a singer, much of it is within the context of playing in an ensemble, as a member of a team.

I mention this because of a quote that she gave Anastasia Tsioulcas for NPR a few days ago:

She noted that she sent in the piece for Pulitzer consideration—not that she thought that there was much chance of winning, but because she wanted more recognition for Roomful of Teeth’s work. “I thought,” she says, “‘Well, I might as well see what they think.'”

As I mentioned before, Caroline Shaw is different in many ways from previous Pulitzer winners, but it is the sense of enjoyment in being a part of something bigger than oneself that, in my humble opinion, makes her stand out. We composers are ultimately a solitary lot when it comes to our work—’tis the gig, as it were—but that can also engender a tendency to become myopic within one’s own career path. Caroline belongs to the new generation of artists who seem to thrive in a community of their own making, playing in each others’ groups, and helping and supporting one other because they remember when that option did not seem to be possible earlier in their careers. If there’s anything to be gleaned from this gift to Caroline, it’s that this generation has indeed found its place.

This does not mean, however, that I am content to fold Caroline into that generation as one of many. She may not have the assumed pedigree or portfolio that is typical for recognition at the level of the Pulitzer Prize, but she wrote a musical work that, while indeed “simple,” is also touching, playful, and extremely nuanced in its sense of voice and sense of self. Caroline did not win the Pulitzer because of who she is or where she studied, but for the piece of music that she created, and that should give us all hope.

Sounds Heard: Volti—House of Voices

Posted on June 19, 2012 by - Albums, Listen

The San Francisco-based Volti has been a consistent innovator in vocal music for over 30 years. The mission of the 25-member a capella ensemble is to think outside the box of choral music, and to continue expanding that landscape by commissioning new works and championing the music of living, breathing composers. In its latest CD House of Voices, Volti brings its exceptional musicality to the table once again.

The first piece, by Yu-Hui Chang, uses text from two poems by Billy Collins, U.S. poet laureate from 2001-2003. Both movements of Being: Two Collins Songs address personal awareness of both the mental and physical realms. However, “Shoveling Snow with Buddha” is energetic, employing contrapuntal lines and conveying the conversational tone of the text, while “The Night House” relays more vertical chordal structures with a rich, though more subdued sound.

Ted Hearne’s five-movement work Privilege is the most wide-ranging and dramatic of the pieces on this disc. As the composer chosen for Volti’s 2009-10 Choral Arts Laboratory, he has asked a great deal of Volti in this adventurous work, and they have certainly delivered. The first and third movements use texts written by Hearne himself, from the standpoint of a privileged member of American society, and the texts of the second and fourth movements are snippets from an interview with The Wire producer David Simon that address the income divide between rich and poor, while the final movement, “We Cannot Leave,” is a setting of an anti-Apartheid Song translated into English. The tart harmonies and sinewy lines of this composition seem to be recorded at closer range than the other pieces, bringing a sense of intimacy to the piece, placing the listener very near the ensemble as if in a small, intimate performance space.

By comparison, the works that immediately follow seem almost conservative, although they are no less elegant. In Daglarym / My Mountains, Donald Crockett attempts to recreate the landscape of Tuva by using melodic and text material from Tuvan folk songs gathered by musician and researcher Katherine Vincent. Crockett stays largely within Western harmonic language in this piece, straying only occasionally into a slightly nasal singing technique during the interpretation of carefully chosen Tuvan words. Eric Moe’s The Crowds Cheered as Gloom Galloped Away is a characteristically energetic and effective setting of an equally characteristically quirky choice of text dealing with antidepressants that come packaged with… tiny ponies. It’s disconcertingly whimsical and somber at once. As with the Yu-Hui Chang piece mentioned earlier, Wayne Peterson creates two clear, no-nonsense settings of texts by a single poet—in this case, Delmore Schwartz—in this case about the beauty of art and of contemplating the free-spiritedness of childhood as respite from the pains of contemporary life.

The big finish on House of Voices is the 15-minute tribute to the power of the moon, Luna, Nova Luna, by Volti composer-in-residence Mark Winges. This lush, dramatic work combining Volti and the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir includes a cornucopia of texts with moon references, and really does travel to the moon and back in its range of dramatic contrast and musical language, laid bare by deft combinations of child and adult voices. Winges is obviously extremely familiar with the voices of Volti, and supremely comfortable working in the realm of choral music in general, as if driving a well-loved car that has been in the family for ages.

Within the choral music world this recording might be considered crazy, heady stuff, but to these ears it is first and foremost inspiring, magnificently performed music. Virtuosic? Absolutely. If this recording doesn’t make every composer who listens to it crave to write choral music, and in particular for Volti, I don’t know what will.

Digging Deeper: Singing the Music of Elliott Carter

Posted on December 21, 2011 by - Analysis, Articles

Elliott Carter Applauds his Birthday Concert

Elliott Carter applauds the performances of his music during his 103rd birthday concert at the 92nd Street Y in New York City on December 8, 2011. (Photo by Cory Weaver, courtesy 92nd Street Y)

From a singer’s perspective, Elliott Carter’s works are challenging. Yes, there is a whole bag of tricks a singer can employ in learning this music, from extensive use of Dr. Beat, to charting out pitch relationships, to practicing against pedal tones—all of which are important techniques to learn. And so I try to impart these tools of the trade to my students, hopefully to positive effect. However, it seems to me that the crux of the matter in grasping this difficult and satisfying music lies not in conquering its inherent and unavoidable technical issues. What’s crucial is finding the broader context in which those challenges can be seen not as obstacles to successful performance, but rather as essential musical materials that upon close investigation reveal important information about the nature of Carter’s music itself, its structure, aesthetic, and intent.

Even amongst skilled performers, a commonly heard knock against Carter’s vocal music (and that of other modernist composers) is that the writing for voice is unidiomatic. (Exactly what constitutes idiomatic vocal writing is a topic for a different article. Suffice it to say that to my way of thinking, Berio’s Sequenza III is more closely aligned with so-called “natural” vocal expression than is Mozart’s “Dove sono.” Perhaps Carter’s vocal lines have more in common with the latter.) But the very notion of idiomatic writing, for any instrument, is usually unconsciously tied to the familiar, historic repertoire for that instrument. Having embodied this repertoire, performers sometimes conflate threads of stylistic musical requirements with those of technical efficiency or “performability.” One conclusion frequently drawn from this conflation is a tenet that there exists an idiomatic paradigm for each instrument. Not surprisingly, these paradigms almost always fall within brackets of one or two narrow styles (that differ according to instrument). All of which prompts me to ask: are the virtuosic piano works of Liszt really “pianistic,” or has the repetition of these works, coupled with Liszt’s cemented place in history, colored our view? Does the bel canto approach to singing really result in the optimal vocal sound? Besides, isn’t bel canto a style? And what does that style have to do with the music of Elliott Carter?

Well, not much. And so in approaching new works (or old ones, for that matter), I find it absolutely necessary to forgo such habitual fixations in order to better examine the essence of musical style from the bottom up, for every composer, and in each discrete piece of music. Ultimately, every work deserves to be addressed on its own terms, and performance as a whole undoubtedly benefits from such a modus operandi.

For example, one broad exploration of stylistic essence encompasses how we performers are asked, by the music itself, to handle the passage of time. Musical time seems to manifest itself on a continuum between objective and subjective—that is, between clock-time and our internal experience of time. An extreme example of music that is constructed so as to depend on the performer’s adherence to objective time would be Conlon Nancarrow’s player piano rolls. At the opposite pole, music that structurally hangs on the performer’s mastery and manipulation of subjective time is the gesture-driven music of György Kurtág.

It could be said, for a variety of reasons, that Elliott Carter’s music is firmly planted on the objective side of the time continuum (more on this soon). Conversely, the canon of so-called idiomatically written vocal music (think Italian opera and late-romantic art song) leans decidedly to the subjective side of the time continuum—that is, it allows for and even depends on tools such as rubato and tenuto for its success in performance. And there’s the rub, when it comes to the singer’s approach! Let me illustrate a bit further.

Upon examination of Carter’s vocal music, certain elements stand out which reveal it to be rooted in objective time. Carter’s pervasive contrapuntal cycling of rhythmic material is emergent in the instrumental complement (be it chamber ensemble or piano). The vocal line participates in this rhythmic play to a lesser extent, but when it does, it almost always cycles at a more protracted rate than do the instruments. Acoustic balance is achieved by the clearing of small spaces, often less than a sixteenth-note’s duration, in which the singer must precisely place text. For this element alone, it follows that an accurate rhythmic performance insures better intelligibility of the sublime poems employed (including those of the great Americans Elizabeth Bishop, Hart Crane, John Hollander, Marianne Moore, and Ezra Pound). The use of rubato in Carter is, in most cases, intrusive to both the progress of the music and to tight ensemble.

In addition to these micro-rhythmic intricacies, there is another important characteristic that influences the perception of Carter-time on the macro-level. Rarely virtuosic, Carter’s vocal lines are often slowly unfolding arches that stand in contrast to the concurrently bubbling instrumental lines. Taken alone, the vocal line progresses in regular rhythms. Seldom is there a tuplet to be found. Many “football notes” appear; indeed, the text is sometimes sustained to the point of obscuring meaning (intelligibility of text is, in part, dependent on the listener’s ability to discern the rhythmic properties of language). Perhaps this high-flying, sustained approach to setting text can be viewed as Carter finding yet another way to manipulate the experience of time towards the objective pole.

So, here we have two factors in Carter—the limited practicality of rubato and the deliberate distortion of natural speech rhythm—that pose a conundrum to the well-trained singer, who has absorbed the message that idiomatic (i.e. “musical”) compositions allow for a flexibility in rhythm that will assist her in clearly delivering the text. It’s no wonder that in the face of this incongruity, she resists the apparently fatal barriers to expressiveness and instead bends the music to the familiar paradigm! The result of doing which, unfortunately, might be a performance that either is redolent of Brahms or that betrays the discomfort of waking up in a musical straitjacket.

Finally, then, how is the singer to tease “natural” expression out of music anathema to the bending of time?

One answer lies in unpacking the text to expose another facet of espressivo not always explicit in musical notation: timbre. Think of music as it exists on three axes, where x = time, y = pitch, and z = timbre. On the two-dimensional page of printed music, the inflective instructions of the z-axis appear rather sparse and general when compared to the specificity found in the representation of rhythmic and pitch structures. This is true of all notated music; Carter’s is no exception. However, the presence of a text provides the advantage of a limitless supply of timbral tools for all attending musicians to draw upon, in addition to any specified phenomenal accents and dynamic indications. The expectation is that all performers (singing and non-singing) extrapolate from the inherent sonic material of poetry generated by methods—onomatopoeia, alliteration, anaphora and rhyme among them—that variegate timbre and texture, thus animating the z-axis.

Perhaps the most coloristic components of language reside in consonants, which, in the pedagogy of singing, regrettably are regarded as the ugly stepsisters of vowels. Yet deft management of the shading, rhythmic placement, and duration of an initial consonant (so long as the ensuing vowel starts on time) can highlight a word more meaningfully than any fermata (always placed over a vowel!) could ever hope to do.

Clear diction without rhythmic aberration requires quite a bit of dynamic and coloristic flexibility, especially with regard to stressed and unstressed syllables in artificially sustained phrases. Further, encoded in the syntax of the poetic phrases is a dynamic shape that Carter has clearly absorbed and provided the framework for in both his selection of intervals and rhythmic relationships. This dynamic shape is far more detailed than could be represented by hairpins and accents. Take for instance the first stanza of Hollander’s poem “High on our Tower,” the text for the opening song in Carter’s cycle Of Challenge and of Love:

High on our tower
Where the winds were
Did my head turning
Turn yours,
Or were we burning
In the one wind?

In his setting, Carter indicates an accent (>) over 16 of the 25 syllables. Certainly that does not mean 16 equivalent attacks!

Score Excerpt from Elliott Carter's Of Challenge and of Love

Of Challenge and of Love
Elliott Carter and John Hollander
(c) Copyright 1995 by Hendon Music, Inc., a Boosey & Hawkes company
International copyright secured. All rights reserved
Play sample audio: Elliott Carter: Of Challenge and of Love I. “High on Our Tower”

Sung by Tony Arnold, soprano, accompanied by pianist Jacob Greenberg from the CD The Music of Elliott Carter, Volume 5 (Bridge 9128). Courtesy Bridge Records. (Order from Amazon or download from iTunes.)

This is a clear example of the limits of notation when it comes to timbre. Even when those accents occur in relationship to a specified dynamic shape, it is the text that can singularly elucidate how to execute each discrete accent. Three instances:

1. Exaggerating the [hw] and [w]’s of the alliterative and onomatopoeic line “Where the winds were” immediately evokes wind. Whether it is to be a breeze or a gale is at the discretion of the singer, fully informed by the musical materials that encircle that image.

2. Carter highlights the anaphora of “turning, / Turn” by placing the second “Turn” one half-step above the first. The singer can further reinforce this by intensifying the articulation of [t], especially in the context of the soft dynamic specified in the score.

3. Carter discloses his personal take on how the poem should be read through the sudden rhythmic diminution of the final two lines of the stanza. This coupled with the insertion of both a rest and a large intervallic drop between “one” and “wind” results in a rush of urgent questioning: “or were we burning in the ONE… wind?” Again, the alliteration of two [w]’s appears, but this time requiring a decidedly different affect via both literal meaning and positioning as the final cadence of the stanza. The singer must adjust the energy and texture of those juicy consonants accordingly.

This is but a slice of the rich world revealed by digging deeper into the sonic properties of text. Any singer who continually broadens her timbral palette can free herself of what might otherwise feel like a wooden adherence to objective time. The tightly wound rhythmic structures found in the music of Elliott Carter deserve to be complemented with the utmost creative investment in the oft-neglected parameter of timbre. In doing so, the myriad expressivity embedded in his musical language is unearthed. As in the words of John Hollander, set by Carter in Of Challenge and of Love:

But when true beauty does finally come crashing at us through the stretched paper of the picturesque, we can wonder how we had for so long been able to remain distracted from its absence.