3. Theory
The scientific scope of this thesis is to explore how I can combine elements from chamber music and classical music, both composing and performing, into a signature sound.
As I wrote in chapter 1. 2., the research on this field is limited. I have therefore divided this chapter into two, focusing on classical music and popular music respectively, describing some of my own influences from both periods and exploring research on the matter.
One problem concerning research for my thesis is the historical aspect of classical music. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was no such thing as the method of Artistic Research. Consequently, I have chosen to rather focus on the historical practices, and how they can influence my own.
Likewise I focus on the practices of bands of today as they concern my aesthetic preferences. Concerning research, I will be looking at research regarding:
-sound signatures, and how combining different artistic roles might affect your signature.
-combining diverse types of genres of music and collaborations between musicians from different traditions.
3.1. Some historical perspectives: Chamber music
This chapter is not meant to be an overview of the history of classical music and chamber music, which would be far too big an undertaking. Instead, I aim to give an insight into developments and directions during certain periods, which I find influence me and my musical language.
As we go to a concert or a festival with classical music today, the expectations are often of a formal setting, where we pay attention to what we wear, to where we give applause, and throughout it all we listen attentively in silence. There is a codex of acceptable behaviour and norms of conduct. The concerts mostly take place in designated venues for classical music or churches.(Walker, 2024, p.302) It is an experience far afield from a concert with the local rock band at your neighbourhood pub, and the musical content and forms might seem stylised and unaccustomed to many. These differences do not only affect the audience, but also the performers, according to Small using his term musicking.
There is something contrary to how chamber music is staged today, because historically, performing chamber music was not always such an exclusive affair.
With the rise of the industrial revolution, a new middle-class was created. In a time without television, radio, computers or smartphones, this new economic class had to make their own entertainment. The printing and sales of literature and of sheet music, thus exploded during the 18th and 19th century. Lijster writes about how “technological, economic and demographic factors” of the time changed the availability of art, affecting the artists and the public both. (Lijster, 2020).
Now, whole families would take to music making. Schubert, for example, was part of a family string quartet, where he himself played the viola, while his brothers and father played the violin I, II and the cello.His early string quartets stem from this time, where the family would perform them. Notable is that neither of the family members were musicians by profession - his father was a teacher, and indeed so was Schubert himself, until the generosity of his friends made it possible for him to survive (although poorly so) without a tenured position, and he could devote himself to composing music full time. (Brown & Sams, 1980)
This lines up neatly with Smalls term musicking, and it seems like the social setting, and relationship between performer, and listener were more closely intertwined. “Everybody” could perform music, and the act of playing together was more important than the autonomous music.
Other images from the time may be taken from the British composer Ethel Smyths self-biography. Moving to Leipzig to study, she quickly immersed herself in the musical society and befriended many of the prominent musical families there. Indeed, as she visits the Röntgen family (into which the aforementioned Amanda Maier Röntgen later married), we get a glimpse of how chamber music mingles with domestic life.
“...a family that could raise a piano quintett among themselves(..). Every violin sonata, every piano trio or quartett printed, would Frau Röntgen or her daughter tackle - the mother’s performance unplaned perhaps, but of a fire and musicality that carried all before it. Their one servant was seldom a cooking genius and always needed supervision, and between two movements of a trio Frau Röntgen would often cry: ‘Line, thou canst take the Scherzo,’ and fly off to the kitchen, Line replacing her on the music stool til eagerly swept off it again. I remember one occasion when dear old Papa Röntgen, (..)complained of the Egg-Dish(...), and his wife said with simple contrition ‘Yes, I know, it is my fault, I ought to have waited to see her brown it… but thou knowest how I love that Andante !’ ”
(Smyth, 1919, p. 160-161)
Chamber music is simply music for intimate spheres, and not intended for huge concert halls, operas or cathedrals.
Not only was chamber music present in domestic situations, it was also present in the public sphere. The cityscape of the time shines through as Ethel Smyth describes a concert she wishes to attend at a local restaurant.
It was a warm September night and the garden was full of burgher families, seated like me at little tables with beer and ham, and listening religiously to the really excellent music - in short it was the Germany of my dreams.”
(Smyth, 1919, p. 158-159)
There seems to be a very inviting and relaxed atmosphere for people enjoying classical music at the time .
The Alehouse Sessions with Bjarte Eiket and Barokksolistene, although performing earlier music than the romantic chamber music I cite, have also been huge successes in many countries. The sessions try to recreate a historical English alehouse. (Eike, 2017).
I hope there will be more initiatives such as these.
As the 19th century begins, a new era is rising within not only music, but literature as well. New ideas and ideals are brought to art. The romantic era introduces focus on human emotion and interest in the personalities of the individual (Maertz, 2017, p. 1-6). As an illustration of how these ideals manifest together with Schubert's music, we can look at one of his first masterpieces, Gretchen am Spinnrade.
With Gretchen am Spinnrade, Schubert introduces a new way of composing music to poetry.
“The miracle he achieved was to match with a reality of music poetry whose depth of human emotion would have appeared to older composers as rendering it unsuitable for song. Two factors are said to have helped Schubert: the late 18th century outburst of lyric poetry, whose outstanding exponent is Goethe, and the establishment of the piano accompaniment with its inexhaustible possibilities of picturesque comment. “
(Brown & Sams, 1982, s. 86-87)
John Michael Schoper writes about Schubert’s songs:
"...Among them the Faust settings have pride of place they were launched with ‘Gretchen am Spinnrade’ (D 118), the work that is widely considered to have articulated a turning-point in Schubert’s approach to song composition and, after it was published in 1821, in the Romantic Lied as a genre, but also because of their deployment of extraordinary musical means to achieve, collectively, unprecedented psychological and dramatic insight into the work…. "
(Cooper, 2017, p. 1)
The song portrays Gretchen in front of the spinning wheel, obsessing over Faust and her love for him. It is a pivotal work in musical literature because:
- The piano is more than a mere colouriser for the lyrics; it is a real equal of the written word, and almost a character in itself. We can hear it depicting objects from the text. The music enhances and expands our understanding of the imagery within the poem.
- The enlightenment ideals of reason and constraint are far away. The song engages fully in sentimental outbursts typical of the romantic era. The harmonisations, melodic lines and figures in the piano, adds layers, nuance, heightens and changes our perception of the lyrics and Gretchen’s emotional state, in a way that makes the music not just a mere commentator of the original poem.
“The piano represents the spinning wheel, but as the song proceeds it gathers into itself all of Gretchen’s changing emotions as she recalls her lover, and the greatest moment is when, under the transported spirit of the suffering girl, the wheel comes to a standstill, falteringly beginning its motion again as she recovers.”
(Brown & Sams, 1982, s. 86-87)
It is not only the original poem with a tune behind it, it is now a new piece of art. The lyrics and the music are here inseparable, completing each other and our understanding of them.
3.2. Influences from popular music
This master thesis is about popular music, where I try to merge chamber music into a band and electronic environment.
I am certainly not the first in blending genres, neither today nor in the past.
“No matter whether in the past music history or today's musiclife, it is not difficult for us to find that the fusion between classical and popular music has been developing, but the degree and manifestation have different characteristics in different eras (Pecknold,2007). This objective existence strengthens the possibility of the fusion of various forms of art. The combination of classical music and popular music has this possibility. Historically, the fusion of classical and popular songs is very common.”
(Li,A, 2024, p.7)
In this chapter, I will mention some of the influences I have from popular music. Most of them cross borders between musical genres.
As I explained in the introduction, I have listened to (and played) many different genres of music during my life. However, some bands and artists are especially important in regards to this master thesis, in that they showed me that it was possible to combine far opposing genres, and by this act create a new sound.
When I was a teenager, I got to hear an album by Norwegian band Gåte. They attracted national attention in the early years of the 2000 by experimenting with Norwegian traditional and folk music, and placing it in a rock/electronic landscape. (Nilsen, 2023)
One of the first songs I heard by them was a Swedish wedding march (Brudmarsch från Jämtland). I had played, sung and heard this song before, but this version was unlike how I had ever treated the same song. Gåte brought the beautiful and melancholy melody into a completely different, progressive rock universe. (Gåte, 2002)
The singer’s (Gunnhild Eide Sundli) strong, folk music characteristics blended and fit so well with the rock band, and I have long held her as an inspiration vocally.
The whole band concept also felt genuine and new to me. It was far more than just putting a folk music violin and singer on a track as a gimmick, (which I had heard in other contexts), it was an integrated, vital part of a total musical vision. I loved the drive and the energy in all the songs by Gåte, as well as the raw emotionality and proximity of the singer, which made me feel I was in a private room with them, despite the often large soundscapes.
A second band that I want to mention is English progressive rock band Muse. I had never listened to a whole album by this band before doing research for this thesis, and I so believe my influence from them has been more unconscious, but nevertheless impactful. I am sure that the few songs that I have heard; the songs that were hits when I was young, left heavy imprints on my musical palette.
These hit songs of theirs (for example the songs Uprising and Plug in Baby) (Muse, 2009 and 2001) had the same raw, emotional intensity as Gåte, but the harmonics were very different.
I did not know at the time, but I later learned that the front figure and songwriter in the band, Matt Bellamy, has a background with classical music, and draws inspiration from late classical and romantic harmonics to create many of his songs. (Baca, 2010 and Nexus strings, 2020) Some of Muse’s songs even directly quote famous pieces: for example I Belong to You (+Mon Coeur S'ouvre À Ta Voix). Mon Coeur S’ouvre Á Ta Voix is one of the most beautiful love arias of all time, and was written by Saint-Saen, for his opera Samson et Delilah. (Muse, 2009 and Saint-Saens, 1876)
Upon learning this, it made a lot of sense that the songs he had written hit me so strongly; Forrige setning er dårlig. the same harmonic progressions that I’ve loved in classical music, were now back in a completely new form. It was also very well-crafted rock, with incredible energy and a clear signature of its own.
In his artistic research, Büchert talks about how two opposing styles of music might hybridise into a third. (Büchert, 2024). This is exactly what I feel that Gåte and Muse have succeeded in. This also means that these bands have used musicking, maybe unknowingly, and challenged their own presumptions about music and the context, as discussed in chapter 2. I have chosen the method of artistic research to explore how I might achieve this myself in a scientific manner, both in regards to composing, to exploring new sounds together, and in bringing musicians from diverse musical traditions together.
These two bands I have mentioned are also great examples of authentic and distinctive signatures of their own. In Muse's case, it’s not only the genres they combine composing their songs. I also associate particular combinations of effects and the way the vocals and instruments are mixed. Bell says that mixing technology can influence a subconscious feeling that people have for the music. (Bell, 2013, p. 208). In chapter 4.3., I will explore ways to set a sonic signature in my sound by processing and mixing recorded material.
I do not limit myself to combining two set genres only. There are various genre influences in all of my songs. The common thread is that all of the songs are inspired by chamber music or chamber music ensembles at various points. The other elements might be drawn from folk music, rock, electronica, jazz and pop.
Some further artists, bands and ensembles I use as inspirations for songs, arrangements, mixing choices, etc are: Jonathan Johansson, Skrillex, Björk, Serpentwithfeet, Flesh quartet, Efterklang, Kronos quartet, Sevdaliza, Fever Ray, Radiohead, and many more.
In regards to my third research question, on collaboration with musicians from diverse musical backgrounds, many research projects touch on relevant questions. Büchert relays how working with musicians from different places and musical cultures impacts how he edits songs after having done over-dubbings of the same song. (Büchert, 2024). Tornquist has written about ways he notates music for classical ensembles, in the borderland between composition and improvisation. (Tornquist, 2008). Haaland shows examples of ways of giving musical instructions to musicians from diverse traditions. (Haaland, 2020).