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Pearl’s Universe of Topics


Kofi Agawu’s Music as Discourse famously sets out a limited ‘Universe of Topics’ for eighteenth-century Western art music (2009: 43). [1] Likewise, Pearl arguably has its own topical universe, shown in Table 1, which draws both from those familiar within Western musical practice going back to that era, but also from more specific sources coming, in some cases, close to quotation. Among the eight archetypes listed, some are eminently pictorial in nature, others perhaps indexical, yet they were all conceived intertextually to some degree, and are arguably therefore, topical. I set them out below with detailed descriptions and list the main sources and models of which I was openly aware during the composition process. (Many others could, of course, be cited, and different listeners’ awareness of the topics is by no means contingent on knowledge of these pieces in particular.) While it can, at times, be hard to draw distinctions between these eight topics (it was often my deliberate strategy that they overlap, intermingle, and evolve from one another), the presence of sung poetry helps, I hope, to guide listeners as to their more specific significance in context.


As stated above, these topics can further be linked with Ryan’s storyworld theories and components, and suggest the environment, affect or emotional status and characterization of the poem’s narrative action. Indeed, it was my hope that, where the cut-down libretto extracted from the full-length poem leaves gaps in the details of the narrative (such as in terms of the protagonist’s environment and inner experiences) the music steps in to fill them, ‘by invoking a dimension of depth, of interiority, borrowed from the responses of our own bodies as we listen’ (Kramer 1991: 112).

Table 1. Pearl’s Universe of Topics. To view and/or listen to the highlighted examples, hover the mouse over the links. Bar references to the full score are only given where a corresponding example is not provided (when an effect is too reliant on its orchestration to be shown in reduction).

Topic Name

Description and Use

Source(s)

1. Early Music [2] 

Perhaps better defined as a broad ‘umbrella’ topic (cf Agawu 2009: 93), this includes several interrelated sub-topics to suggest the narrative's setting in the distant past as follows:

  1. ‘consort’ string-writing
  2. plainsong and recitative
  3. aria (sometimes accompanied by a neo-‘baroque’ obbligato instrumental solos)
  4. chorale aria
  1. Purcell, Fantasias; Consort Music by Byrd and Williams Lawes
  2. Hildegard of Bingen
  3. J.S. Bach Passions and Cantatas, especially BWV82
  4. As above, especially BWV158: ii

2. Lament

Though partly encompassed by the above, this topic has special importance given the wider mournful nature of Pearl its allusions to early music. Although evocations of the Baroque lament do occur, through sighing gestures, descending melodic and bass lines (including falling chromaticism), other types of elegiac writing can be found, for example, in what I consider the ‘tragic’ phase of the piece (bb. 164-92), during which the orchestra (in the ‘tragic violin theme’) and chorus (‘lament chorale’) comment on the Jeweller’s grief and Pearl’s death as if from afar.

Cantatas by J.S. Bach on elegiac subjects, including BWV12 ‘Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen’ 
Debussy, Pelléas et Mélisande, especially the tragic orchestral interludes

3. Sinking

Growing directly from the descending lines above, this effect becomes a topic in its own right in the depiction of the Jeweller sinking ‘into heavy sleep on the ground’ with lines literally sinking from extreme treble to bass.

Grisey, Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil

4. Rising

While perhaps rarely described as a topic, this category of material (or compositional device) has many precedents in the larger Western canon. [3] Prompted by the poetic line ‘Suddenly my spirit rose from that spot’, it is used in direct opposition to the sinking figures associated with both mourning and sleep above, to convey a rousing excitement towards a climactic moment of arrival, expressed through rising motives and larger scale ascending phrases. As discussed later (see Harmonic-Narrative trajectory), this effect can also be discerned on a structural level, in the form of a large-scale background ascent that governs the teleology of the piece's harmony and voice-leading (bb. 343-504 in Figure 8).

Luther Adams, Three High Places: iii. ‘Looking Towards Hope’

Knussen,  Where the Wild Things Are, ‘Sea Interlude 1’

Kaner, Hansel and Gretel: A Nightmare in Eight Scenes: Scene 3, bb. 144-166 (dawn chorus)

5. Journeying

The depiction of travel (often in the form of riding) is a prominent pictorial topic in much nineteenth century repertory (from Schubert’s Der Erlkönig to Wagner’s ‘Walkürenritt’), and as in those cases, is depicted here through fast flowing figuration with a stronger sense of pulsation (mostly in 2/4 and then 6/16) and quicker harmonic pacing than elsewhere in the work .

 

Knussen, Higglety Pigglety Pop: ‘The Ride to Castle Yonder’

Adams, A Short Ride in a Fast Machine

Nineteenth-century models incl. Schubert's Der Erlkönig etc.

6. Uncanniness

Also an ‘umbrella’ topic, this is a set of related musical effects that evoke the uncanny qualities of the Jeweller’s encounter with Pearl in his dream-vision, as follows:

  1. Shimmering
    Used throughout to depict the ‘gleaming’ images in the poem, this effect openly pays homage to Rued Laanggaard’s Music of the Spheres, which features frequent depictions of bright light through high string tremolandi on diatonic cluster chords in evocatively titled movements (e.g. ‘Like Sunbeams on a Coffin Decorated with Sweet Smelling Flowers’). In Pearl the phrase ‘and she shone’ prompts a near-quotation of the Laanggard. (Both are shown in the link on the left to aid comparison.)
  2. ‘Otherworldly’ tunings
    This effect has multiple sources and is one I also explore when depicting dreams in my clarinet quintet, At Night (see Kaner 2023.) Overtone-series chords containing a flattened seventh partial are used, but rather than receiving bass support from the ‘correct’ fundamental implied by the chord, another pitch (or pair of pitches) is placed below it, designed to generate a degree of resonance yet also an uncanny sense of instability. (See also Figures 6 and 7.)
  3. Blurring
    This is achieved largely through heterophonic choral writing behind the solo baritone (‘ghosting’ in my notes) and passages of heterophonic string writing (e.g. bb. 370-73 and 382-86, not shown here), creating a haze around the musical foreground, often with a very slow harmonic rhythm to suggest a sense of ‘suspended time’ (c.f. Almén 2013: 64).
  4. Rumbling
    Not directly prompted by the poetry itself, this material grew compositionally out of expressions of unease in the bass in the lament topic, and the use of the low register that occurs at the end of the sinking topic depicting the Jeweller’s descent into sleep. From there it subsequently arguably evolves into a distinct class of its own (perhaps suggesting an eighteenth-century Sturm und Drang topic), that plays various important structural roles in the piece, as its main source of long-term harmonic tension, and the ‘darkness’ against which the shimmering textures are often heard as a way to foreground them.
  1. Rued Laanggaard, Music of the Spheres; Ligeti, Lontano
  2. Kaner, At Night: i. ‘The Land of Nod’, bb. 203-258; Abrahamsen, Schnee and Let Me Tell You;  Vivier – Lonely Child
  3. Benjamin, Sudden Time
  4. Beethoven, Symphony no. 6: iv. ‘Donner. Sturm.’ (e.g. bb. 19-33); Debussy, Nocturnes, no. 3 ‘Nuages’, [9]-end

 

7. Heavenly Joy

Also best understood as an ‘umbrella’ topic or 'environment', this encompasses the following:

  1. Diatonicism, modality and quasi-tonal ‘added’ chords in the chorus
    This material was devised to depict the ecstatic joy expressed by Pearl and the heavenly chorus, in which the sung harmonies and lines employ diatonic collections. Shifts to other modal/harmonic areas are achieved through, as in much comparable liturgical music, smooth voice-leading and common tones.
  2. Quasi-modal aleatoricism
    At the climax of this broader topic (b. 504 – not shown here) the choral singers independently perform plainsong-like melodic fragments, all of which employ diatonic modal collections. However, false relations occur across them and in the orchestra, forming a rich 12-note vertical.
  3. Plainsong in unison/octaves
    Quasi-plainsong is performed by the chorus (and soloist), but now in unison/octaves to imply a sense of unity through shared faith.
  1. Alfred Desenclos, Messe De Requiem (especially ‘In Paradisum’)
  2. and c. Jonathan Harvey, Come Holy Ghost

8. Wave

Described as ‘water swirling madly’ in my initial plan, this topical effect is used only briefly to depict in more detail the Jeweller’s blocked attempt to ford the river between himself and Pearl, drawing on picturesque precedents in many ocean-themed works where the full range of the orchestra is used to depict a large, loud ‘sweep’ before dissipating into a much quiet texture in the bass.

Ravel, Miroirs, ‘Une barque sur l’océan’ (e.g. nos [7]-[10])

 Debussy La Mer: iii. ‘Jeux de vagues’, [37]-[40]

[1] Initially for mid-to-late eighteenth-century classical music, but he then expands this (citing both Grabócz and Mirka) with examples of the topical universes of Liszt, Mahler, Bartok and Stravinsky (Agawu 2009: 41-50). ↩︎

[2] This label is intentionally vague; the musical language employed is deliberately unspecific in terms of the era it refers to, emphasising the timeless quality of the poem’s narrative, thereby perhaps mirroring the effect of its translation into contemporary English. ↩︎

[3] Beyond those listed here, one clear example from the wider Western canon might be Chopin’s Nocturnes, whose B-section climatic ascents (and subsequent descents) are examined in some detail in Wintle (2006: 101-109). ↩︎

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