BOOK OF CHORDS
In this book, which is the first one I have done, I am trying to unfold the essence of my musical writing by showing the main material of my compositional work - chords, found on the internet. Through captivating the expressions inherent to this material and crucial to my work, by other means than musical writing - photographing and text writing, I have been able to dive deeper into the profound characteristics and possibilities of the chords in my musical writing. The texts are written in english, german, swedish, norwegian and french. Words to me taste, smell and express so differently in different languages, and it was impossible for me to find the right words in only one language. So I kept the languages that felt most congruent to the expressions of the chords and added an english translation at the end of the book.
The book presents a collection of chords that are special to me. I "found" each chord through listening to recordings of amateur and professional singers and choirs on the internet. I look for harmonic moments that are familiar, but which have been given a special or unusual intonation, intentionally or not. I am attracted to the way that small differences of intonation interact with the overtone spectrum characteristics of the human voice. The chords in this book are moments from these performances that I have analysed and transcribed.
These chords have been central to my compositions of the past decade, especially in pieces for larger forces such as orchestras, choirs, and large ensembles. Some chords appear in several pieces, others only in a single piece. I continue to make more chords. In one sense this book serves as an articulation of The Technique of My Musical Language, to borrow the phrase from Messiaen. It shows my approach and helps decipher chords from my pieces. I hope it may also inspire other music makers in the way they think about harmony, composition and listening. This book is intended for musicians of all levels and to be read in the classroom or on the beach.
I see myself as a photographer, taking audible pictures, millisecond long moments that are special for me. I “photograph” them so I can experience common musical materials such as the minor third interval in a new way. These well-worn musical elements have become overly familiar for me. I want to cast them in a new light to reaffirm them and discover anew their expressive possibilities. I find this through analysing the intonation of the recordings of voices. And that they are voices is important: the distinctive spectral qualities of the voice trigger for me a sense of the human, and of human imperfection. As I listen to these chords, I am aware that within the microtonal haze is a familiar musical element that has passed its expiration date, and that carries a sense of tragedy.
Photographer Sally Mann’s work The Perfect Tomato presents a girl standing on an outdoor table with her arms stretched out. The table has various things on it including several tomatoes, and beside the table sits a father with a younger child on his lap. What I find special about the picture—and this relates closely to my work—is that the only object brought into sharp focus are the tomatoes; the father and younger child are indistinct, and the girl is blurred, which turns her into a hazy angelic figure. When looking at photos that are partly focussed and blurred, our attention is usually drawn towards the parts that are sharp. But in this case our focus is centred on the blurry standing child; the tomatoes, though sharp, are largely insignificant. The relationship between the tomatoes and angelic girl is like the relationship between the minor third and the overtones in one of my chords: in my music, the real focus is on the haze of spectral impurities.
I use the software Audio Sculpt1 to view, analyse and process the chords I find. I then use the software Open Music,2 a visual programming language based on Lisp, to transcribe this analysis into musical notation. This process of transcription involves making microtonal approximations to make it performer friendly. Both programmes were developed by Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM).
The dynamic level of each note is an essential feature of these chords. This is different to our usual sense of chords. When a classical music theory book introduces the student to a diminished chord, or a jazz theory book to a flat 9 chord, the notes are given without dynamics. Here, the relative weight of dynamic for each note is critically important to the quality of the chord. Dynamics are not notated here through using words such as forte and piano, but rather visualised in colour. The loudest notes are in purple, followed by red, black, and different shades of grey for the softest notes. Each chord typically features around 24 pitches. At first glance, it might look like a random assortment of quartertones. Once played, however, the relative dynamic weightings make apparent a distinct microtonal haze around a familiar harmonic sonority.
The chords in this book are divided into fourteen expressive categories. The names of these categories are diverse; my approach to classification was not systematic or procedural, but rather based on personal association and feeling. I have written short texts and poems to try and capture in words how I hear the quality of each category of chords. This is supplemented with photos of water I have taken that likewise attempt to signify characteristics of these chords; it may be idiosyncratic, but I see parallels between the different feelings I get from diving into water, with its range of temperatures and colours, and the different feelings I get from these spectral chords. The photos are taken from above and underneath the water trying to visualize the expression and feeling of a certain chord group, imagining bathing in these chords, and feeling their qualities on the skin.
REFLECTION
In 2019, I began to wonder, how can I translate the expressions inherent in the chords, which is what concerns me the most, in order to document the essence of my work? It was important to me that musicians of all levels could understand the subtle differences in the expression of the chords.
On the one hand, I have experienced that immersing myself in water has a similar effect on me as listening to chords. There are temperature differences and color differences that are perceived to varying degrees. In a chord, there is a framework like a skeleton that represents the most important tones, then there is the flesh around it, the somewhat less important tones, and the skin, the most delicate tones that are only perceptible in the spectrum. Similar to the skin of a human, they make a chord to a characteristic sound that can be directly perceived. Although the skin of a human makes up only a fraction of our body, it is the first thing we perceive as the surface. The same applies to the overtones; they reveal to us which instrument is being played or which voice we perceive.
Furthermore, when immersing oneself in water, there is the sensation of the surroundings, where after a few milliseconds to seconds, one can sense the extent of the water and light of that particular day. Similarly, when listening to chords, it takes a few milliseconds to seconds until I can fully perceive the expression and uniqueness of that particular chord. Additionally, there are chords that make you feel like you're bathing in them, while others remain at a distance. I have also tried to translate this into the images. Some were taken above the water with a Panasonic Lumix DMCTZ90, and others were taken underwater with a Fujifilm XP. The chapters "MEDUSE" and "LA PLUIE AVANT QU’ELLE TOMBE" were captured with an IPHONE 13. At the time of taking all the pictures, my body was in the water.
For four years, practically every day when I was at home on Gotland, I went down to the sea to visually capture the expression of a group of chords. Or rather, I was searching every day to see if I could find a similar or even the same expression just on that day. I took my cameras, put on my bikini, and went into the sea. Mostly around 10:30 when I take a break from my work, or in summer in the afternoons when I went swimming with the children.
All the pictures in this book were taken at these three locations.
In hindsight, I've adjusted color contours to get even closer to the expression and color of a chord group. Depending on the proximity of the chord, I zoomed into the water or into the sky. The images for "PETROLIO", for example, are highly zoomed-in pictures of an early November evening. Since the chords for "PETROLIO" seem like streaks to me, a somewhat unclean layer over a surface, the pixels thus form the streaks over the sky, just as I hear them in the chords for "PETROLIO".
L’UN
Je n’arrive presque pas à parler
silence assez bref
Car chaque mot doit être arraché
Extirpé
Silence assez bref
Et alors
Quand le mot est là
Quand le mot est dit
Il est si lourd
Silence assez bref
Oui qu’il m’alourdit encore
Silence assez bref
Et me fait sombrer plus bas encore
L’AUTRE
C’est comme ça
Les mots deviennent lourds
Fosse, Jon. Je suis le vent, "Scène ouverte" (Montreuil: L'arche, 2010), 14-15.
Words, to me, become large stones of imperfection and miscommunication, and how could I possibly describe with words everything that comes close to the expressions of these chord groups?
In a writing course in 2021 with Merete Morken Andersen, I learned to write without correction. I learned to jot down thoughts as quickly as possible, even if not beautifully. After a few days, I went through the texts and sorted out the ones that didn't really correspond to the expression of the chords or seemed to long or with too many words. What remained were small jewels or aspects of an expression that I then tried to arrange as musically as possible. The result were the poems found in each chapter.
I remember a late summer evening when I took the pictures for the chapter "MEDUSE". The sky was like a water surface, as if diving underwater and looking up. You could feel the deep calm before the storm. And my youngest daughter pulled a jellyfish out of the water and looked at me very questioningly, startled, and knowing at the same time. And she had exactly the expression on her face that I was looking for and found in the chord group. A special moment, because so unexpected. In the book, you'll find the pictures of the sky from that very evening in the chapter "MEDUSE". A sky that gave the feeling of being a jellyfish underwater. And at the same time the precarious situation of women/meduses "today" through the lense of Hélène Cixous.3