Expanding on musical language
Sometimes I worked on expanding features that appealed to me in a particular language through applying them in composition, open via extended improvisation. This was particularly the case when working on the music of Hindemith, where I developed certain ways of moving between tonalities using some of his principles in a loose interpretation. Taking his ordering of intervals by degrees of dissonance (see fig. 9.27), I would build patterns and phrases using the more consonant intervals – fourths and fifths – as primary building blocks, with occasional uses of other intervals (mainly thirds and seconds).
Figure 9.27. Hierarchical relationship of intervals (with inversions). From The Craft of Musical Composition (Hindemith, 1945, p. 87).
The emphasis on fourths and fifths could create an atmosphere that – to me – sounded Hindemith-esque, yet also reminiscent of the playing of musicians like McCoy Tyner and John Coltrane. This then made its way into composing, as I was creating a commissioned composition for a Swedish jazz orchestra 1, 9 min duration. In the main theme, there are phrases that follow this type of emphasis and a way of creating modulations that is reminiscent of Hindemith. I also used short phrases from his clarinet sonata, such as the first phrase from the 1st movement, as a source material to expand on:
The ambition here was not to copy Hindemith’s language, rather to use it as resource for finding musical building blocks. This is also reflected in the result; although there are elements that one might associate with Hindemith’s writing – e.g. tonal ambiguity, sudden modulations, quartal voicings, phrases based on fourth and fifth intervals – there is still a core that is clearly based on my musical choices and preferences.
When writing Dépaysement, a through-composed piece for guitar and piano, I found certain inspiration in Dutilleux’s way of moving between different minor chords in his Prelude en Berceuse. This, to me, created a quality of displacement that resonated with what I wanted to create, a feeling that is found in the title Dépaysement; a feeling of not being at home, in a foreign or different place.
There was also a general inspiration from the harmonic colors of French piano music from the early 20th century, as heard in a passage like this:
One recurring building block that can be noted is the augmented triad in the treble part in different combinations, the same structure that is recurrent in Assez lent from Valses Nobles et Sentimentales. When it came to thematic development, one thing that caught my interest was reading about Dutilleux’ notion of ‘progressive growth’ (Fr. croissance progressive), a compositional technique where motivic cells are developed gradually. Instead of presenting a theme in it’s definitive state from the beginning, Dutilleux often works with introducing elements bit by bit, as a gradual unfolding of the thematic material. As the composer describes it himself, there is a certain influence from Proust and his notions about memory as presented in À la recherché du temps perdu. (Nichols 1994, p. 89). The main concept is that an idea is never fully formed; seen that memory is constantly subject to change, ideas continue to gradually evolve in our consciousness.
In Dépaysement, the thematic material is initially presented by the guitar in a rudimentary form:
This thematic material is then developed throughout the composition, through added cells and transformations, in a way where it’s never repeated the exact same way between different sections. Besides connecting to Dutilleux’s concept of progressive growth, it also gives the music a certain improvised quality, as something that is constantly undergoing change.
As I was writing Meditation (interrupted), a piece for the quartet with en en en, a lot of the musical ideas I had been working with around the same time appeared rather spontaneously; Hindemith-sounding phrases based on fourth intervals, melodies with large skips, polytonal passages etc. An example is also a co-existence of B lydian and Db lydian at times, which give a certain tonal ambiguity to the music. This can be traced back to working with some of the sonorities mentioned earlier, such as the polytonal passages of Tailleferre’s Pastorale in D. However, the melodic language seemed secondary in the piece at large; there was a certain expression that guided the creation of the music, a feeling that is present in the title itself. This expression was also partly inspired by the music of Anthony Braxton, which I was listening to at the time.
[1] Norrbotten Big Band with guest soloist. Since the premiere of piece was postponed, it will be presented in more detail in another context.