Notes on works by DC Meckler in reverse (approximate)
chronological order. Updated/revised Jan 2009
b
a c k to DC Meckler music index page
for 2 trumptes, horn,
trombone and tuba, 2008
total duration about
8 minutes
in five movements
I. Tuba Melody c.
2 min.
II. Open at Night c. 2 min.
III. Duet Objects c. 2 min.
IV. Chorale c. 1
min.
V. Dance Fanfare c. 1.5 min.
I. rhythmically loose and lyrical tuba solo
against a rhythmically intricate grid
II. open (unmuted) trumpet (or flugelhorn or
cornet) accompanied by muted quartet
III. a jaunty duet of horn and trombone
contrasted with a more reticent trumpet duet
IV. a chorale (the source of a lot of the pitch
materials in the other movements)
V. dance-fanfare finale
A note on mutes for
the second movement: desired mutes would include a Harmon mute, stem removed, for
the first trumpet, a straight mute for the horn, a cup mute for the trombone,
and a straight mute for the tuba. If a
tuba mute is not available, it is acceptable to play the second movement
without a tuba mute. Other types of
mutes may be used at the performers’ discretion.
Metronome marks are
only suggestions and different tempos may be chosen to suit the expressive
purposes of the performers.
The Dance-Fanfare
movement may be played as a stand alone piece; the Chorale and the
Dance-Fanfare may also be played as a piece.
piano solo, 2007
unspecified duration (no specified rhythms)
After composing a
great deal of music that has rhythm as its primary interest, I decided to
compose a piece that had no specified rhythms at all. This is a contemplation of piano voicings and it is also an
attempt to reclaim the major triad as a neutral sonority free of functional
tonal implications, a quixotic quest.
This piece is also a response to Gavin Borchert’s delightfully spare
piano piece Bosquejo, and it is dedicated to him.
First performance:
Jude Navari, Cañada College, Redwood City, California, 6 October 2007.
for
clarinet, cello, piano and percussion (drum set), 2007
about five minutes in duration
Program
note
Undercurrent
is a study of repetition, both of regular phrases and irregular fragments of
phrases. The undercurrent may be of
strangeness or normalcy.
Far
too many analytical comments
This
is one of my more explicable pieces, as I constructed it through very conscious
decisions. Most of my pieces are a bit
more mysterious to me.
The
piece was sketched out in about two hours, so it came very quickly. I think it is all in response to the pop
songwriting class I taught in the spring semester of 2007. I just have certain issues about
repetition. There is one extreme, the
normal classical to Brian Ferneyhough range, in which repetition is vital but
often disguised. At the other end,
there is minimalism. In between is pop
music. I can't bring myself to write a
genuine pop song because of the repetition issue I think.
This
is my "instrumental song" solution to the problem. Instead of repeating an idea AAB, I delay
repetition, ABB. This is a useful tool
that I am using more and more in my music.
Also, the two contrasting parts are of vastly different dimensions. The A idea is only three bars of 5/8. The B idea is a full-fledged eight bar
phrase, with two sub-phrases. (The
opening 19 bars of the piece could be considered ABCBC, if the sections are to
be of approximate equal dimension, but that is not how I thought of it.)
After
stating this 8-bar phrase twice, I then go to work on the second four bar
phrase (“C”), using a fragmentation and repetition technique. First I use 7/16. Then it gets interesting as a way of returning to the dimension
of the eight bar phrase. The piece
repeats a recent AMAZING discovery of mine that 11+9+7+5 = 32 = 4 X 8, so by
repeating the first 11 eighth notes worth of material twice, the next nine
twice, and so on, a four bar phrase maps into an eight bar 4/4 phrase or
section, although it has a sense of changing meter. The piece concludes with several statements of this technique,
and finishes with retrograde statements in canon.
The A
idea returns but is not really developed, only transposed and extended through
repetition.
I
thought it was an interesting mix of materials being transformed through simple
rules. The insistent
eighth-eighth-dotted quarter-dotted quarter rhythm of the B section keeps it
all rather coherent.
I have
rarely followed conscious rules of phrase construction, but this piece was a
deliberate exercise in that. To
construct the main material of the piece, the eight bar B phrase, I started
with a simple one measure idea.
The
spark behind this idea is probably from the Spanish world music fusion group
Ojos de Brujo. Something stimulated my
imagination about writing a bass line.
So my initial idea is an octave leap followed by a major seventh
fall. (A touch of a Spanish Phrygian
mode.) This sets up the primary
constructive tension for the entire phrase, large intervals versus small, the
big intervals of an octave and a seventh, but also the half step between D and
Eb. The last note of the measure leaps
up a major ninth, to F. The initial
idea is repeated with a slight variation, as the F is raised up to a G. The third measure scrambles the
materials. The half step is at the
beginning (A-Bb), then the leap, then the big fall, a major ninth. The fourth measure is a yet another
permutation of these basic elements. We
start with a falling octave, than a minor second, and then another minor
second. The materials are always
changing slightly, but the basic constituent element elements are always the
same.
To
construct the second four bar phrase, similar ideas are used. The first measure transposes the basic idea
up a half a step, to Eb, so on the large-scale of four measures, the harmonic
constituents relate very much to the small details of the first measure. The first measure extends the pattern of growth,
as the leap up is now a tritone plus an octave, so we've gone from sevenths,
octaves, ninths and tenths. For the
second measure, the pattern collapses back down to the ninth. The third measure very much parallels the
third measure of the first four bar phrase.
It starts up a perfect fourth, but instead of falling to the last note,
it rises up a minor third. The fourth
measure also is a parallel construction, except that the last interval is not a
minor second but a minor third.
This
minor third becomes a good marker.
Ending on G also sets up an interesting parallel when we return to the
first note of the entire eight bar phrase, D.
That falling perfect fourth is paralleled by the falling perfect fourth
at the end of the first four bar phrase connecting to the beginning of the
second bar phrase, (Ab-Eb). The two
four bar phrases each have a nice shape and the second four bar phrase has a
climactic note.
For
several years now I've been working on pieces of rhythmic complexity, but I
have been lacking in clearly motivated tempo changes. Staying in one tempo for the duration of a piece is sort of like
staying in the same key. I was very
happy to be able to gracefully incorporate a meaningful tempo change in this
piece.
If I were
to give labels to each section of the piece it would look like this:
Ø
the oracle/fanfare (5/8
idea)
Ø
the presentation of the
eight bar melody.
Ø
A repeat presentation
of the eight bar melody.
Ø
The return of the
oracle/fanfare
Ø
a development section
(the 7/16 idea applied to the second four bar phrase)
Ø
Punches
Ø
the development section
extended
Ø
A repeat of the
development section now featuring a drum solo, with punches
Ø
the return of the
oracle/fanfare
Ø
Piano solo -- new
material in a slower tempo that is soon flipped into double time. In the 7/16 idea.
Ø
At the golden mean of
the piece, a sort of recapitulation, a statement of the transformed second four
bar phrase (mapped into an eight bar phrase by repeating the 1st 5
eighth notes twice, the next 7 eighth notes twice, etc).
Ø
another version of
that, this time transposed, and the reverse pattern of fragmentation, 11+9+7+5.
Ø
the return of the
oracle/fanfare
Ø
yet another version of
the second four bar phrase mapped into an eight bar phrase (m 126), broken into
11+9+7+5 fragments.
Ø
yet another version of
the second four bar phrase mapped into an eight bar phrase, retrograde, broken
into 5+7+9+11 fragments. (m 134)
Ø
a statement in
retrograde and in canon.
Yet
another set of labels: a b c b c a c’ d
c’ c’’ e e’ e’ e’ c’’’ c’’’ a c’’’ c’’’ c’’’
Coming
up with the title:
"Undercurrent" was my original impulse. I liked it because it suggested that there
was something going on beneath the melodic, groovy surface. Then I thought of "Undercurrent
Construction" as a way of the reinforcing the notion of a hidden mechanism
generating music. I chose to go back to
the one-word title just out of simplicity.
piano solo, 2007
duration about 6 minutes
Rocinante is the hero's horse in
Cervantes’ Don Quixote. The Sonata
Rocinante is in four sections. The
first is Rocinante as described by Cervantes: lean (sparse), bony,
unpredictable and at times hesitant.
The second section is Rocinante as viewed by Don Quixote: muscular,
powerful, heroic. The third section
returns to the rhythmic trickiness of the opening; it is the game of the
writer. The fourth section returns to
the sweep of the second as it collects and integrates impressions of what has
gone before; it is the view of the reader.
1. The
Horse
2. The
Rider
3. The
Writer
4. The
Reader
The second section is marked "very flexible tempo with rubato." I do not think that is redundant. "Flexible tempo" means exactly that, and I use rubato in the traditional sense of freedom in the relationship between the two hands. A suggestion of the effect is already notated with the septuplets (mm. 51, 53 and 55), but I do not intend those to be rhythmically exact. Suppleness and fluidity should rule here. All metronome marks are general suggestions and may be adjusted.
The first section is Steve Reich
meets Haydn. The rhythmic spacing of
the repeated eighth notes follows a pattern of 3-4-5-4-3-2. This pattern is treated flexibly throughout the
piece. Within this section, simple
canons generate the material. The pitch
material comes from the superposition of major and minor triads (producing
major seventh chords) which is extended to the superposition of third- related
seventh chords in the final section.
The second section draws on a
12-tone row implied by the pitch materials of the first section. The left-hand plays one hexachord and the
melody, in octaves, plows through the complementary hexachord. Generally, pitch relationships are casual
and flexible.
The third section was created with
a technique I call "fragmented polyrhythm." I created a melodic line in 9/8.
The line itself has strong implications of a 3/2 polyrhythm.
To accompany the melody, I used a 4+3+5
pattern (at the level of sixteenth notes – itself highly ambiguous).
This source object (the melody
plus its repeated accompaniment figure) has its own rhythmic interest, but it
is only a starting point, as it serves as the basis for one more layer of
rhythmic manipulation. To develop it,
the object is repeated several times and then rebarred in 5/8. Each 5/8 bar is repeated once or more. That becomes the foreground of the
music. It is sort of a cubist view of
the underlying musical object. You
never quite get to hear it straight:
The fourth section melds several
of the pitch and rhythmic ideas of the first three sections. I have chosen inconsistent notation for one
detail. At the very end (in measures
179 and 182) I notate dyads as G-D# and A #-C double sharp; earlier (measures
170 and 171) in a similar situation I notate those pairs as G-Eb and Bb-D. This is obviously eye music only, but I
think of the earlier example as two clashing tonalities and the final statement
as being resolved into one very bright tonality.
Each section presents material
that could be developed at greater length, but I chose to reflect the brevity
of most of the chapters in the novel.
Why “sonata”? This piece has more to do with the simple
forms of the Cage Sonatas and Interludes or Scarlatti, rather than
Beethoven. It also could be considered
as a four-movements-in one-movement sonata (just like Liszt!) -- motific first movement, lyrical second
movement, scherzo third movement, hybrid rondo variation form fourth
movement. Given the succinct duration,
perhaps “sonatina” would be more appropriate.
~~DC Meckler
. . . reading your history should move the
melancholy to laughter,
increase the joy of the cheerful, not irritate the simple,
fill the clever with admiration for its invention,
not give the serious reason to scorn it,
and allow the prudent to praise it.
Advice to the
"author" from a character in Don
Quixote, Edith Grossman translation, page 8.
b
a c k to DC Meckler music index page
medium
voice and piano, 2006
various durations; not intended to be performed as a complete cycle
Mining Song
c. 4 minutes, notated range D4-A5 (optional F5) (complete score pdf file)
Dust Light
c. 5 minutes, notated range C4-E5
The Dog Song (Fine Leaf Canine Guests)
c. 2 minutes, notated range Db4-E5
Imperative Song
less than a minute; a cappella, small range freely transposable
What Is Force?
c. 2 minutes, notated range D4-Eb5
Findings
c. 2 minutes, notated
range B3-G5
Masks
c. 3 minutes, notated range D4-G5
Cake Opinion
c. 2 minutes, notated range C4-F#5
Tin Can Island
c. 2 minutes, notated range C4-E5
The Albion Deity Thing
c. 8 minutes, notated range Db4-E5
(All songs may be
transposed. Any individual song may be
performed by itself and any selection of songs may be performed in any order.)
I
love setting text! Words have their own rhythmic and timbral life.
They are my friends and I want to play with them. But to find a text
worthy of setting that has space enough to be set, that overlaps enough with my
own worldview, that is hard! Not to mention issues of permission,
respecting the poet's intentions, and all that. So I created a pool of
potential song texts by reading German poetry into an English-language speech
dictation program. The results have
only the vaguest sense of sense, but much of the rhythm, assonance and
alliteration of the original is preserved.
For example, the program transcribed the spoken word input of
"Dichterliebe” as "an actor leaves." Even with this computer-generated text, I become charmed by the
near-sense it makes, and I am reluctant to change it too much. I edited the grammar as little as possible,
but I did replace some proper nouns and adjust subject and verb agreement, and
freely selected and rearranged the more interesting bits.
An
example text is "The Dog Song."
THE
DOG SONG (FINE LEAF CANINE GUESTS)
Dalton does in the dew,
the time boasts its own.
The laughs when we see a big lab
hold me engrossed in sod.
Canine today he got Monk's ass,
dust society's knock next mass;
dead as I was signed,
an ultraviolet hide of floss.
In
dome by state buildings, gold in them.
Malt cuts in my bins,
and fine leaf canine guests evolve;
fine leaf canine guests.
COMPLETE TEXTS and Additional Comments
Short Program Note
The Albion Deity Songbook sets
near nonsense texts that I created with an English-language speech dictation
program misinterpreting German poetry.
These texts are rich enough to give me musical ideas from their sounds,
rhythms and near meanings, and the songs are a playful investigation into relationships
between words and musical meanings.
Premiere Performances:
Mining
Song
Alexis Lane
Jensen and Sara Jobin, piano, First Unitarian
Universalist Church, San Francisco, CA, 14 April 2007
Dust
Light
Harriet March Page, Goat Hall, San Francisco, CA, June 22 & 24, 2007
The
Dog Song
Harriet March Page, Goat Hall, San Francisco, CA, June 22 & 24, 2007
Imperative Song
Meghan Dibble, Goat Hall, San
Francisco, CA, June 22 & 24, 2007
What Is Force?
Meghan Dibble, Goat Hall, San
Francisco, CA, June 22 & 24, 2007
Tin
Can Island
Meghan Dibble, Goat Hall, San
Francisco, CA, June 22 & 24, 2007
The Albion Deity Thing
Harriet March Page, Goat Hall, San Francisco, CA, June 22 & 24, 2007
Cake
Opinion
Meghan Dibble, Cañada College,
Redwood City, California, 6 October 2007
Masks
Meghan Dibble, Cañada College,
Redwood City, California, 6 October 2007
theater
piece for 4 actors with incidental music; synthesized audio recording;
performable by 3 clarinetists (2006)
premiere performances: directed by Linda Hoy;
Cañada College Flexible Theater, Redwood City, California, 23 March - 1 April,
2006
piano
solo, 2005, 2 pages
duration about 3 minutes
A
moody depiction of a gently restless sleepless night. A subtle 2 v. 3
pervades the rhythm as the pitches, in particular orders, pass by, although the
piece owes more to Thelonious than to Arnold. (It is a very simple, even
naive, 12-tone piece for the most part.)
The piece was initially created for a dance production, House:
Stability/Fragility, and was intended to depict sleepless hours troubled by
the recurring worries of adults, as compared to the nightmares of children. A simple video:
First
performance: Ann Yi, Cañada College, Redwood City, California, 6 October 2007
for medium voice
and piano, 2005
(written vocal range C3-G4; may be transposed)
duration about 5 minutes
Shakespeare's Sonnet 51
Thus can my love excuse the slow offense
Of my dull bearer, when from thee I speed ––
From where thou art, why should I haste me thence?
Till I return, of posting is no need.
O what excuse will my poor beast then find,
When swift extremity can seem but slow?
Then should I spur, though mounted on the wind ––
In winged speed no motion shall I know.
Then can no horse with my desire keep pace;
Therefore desire, a perfect'st love being made,
Shall neigh, no dull flesh in his fiery race,
But love, for love, thus shall excuse my jade ––
Since from thee going he went wilful slow,
Towards thee I'll run, and give him leave to go.
Program note for Speed
No Motion
Speed No Motion is a setting of
Shakespeare's Sonnet 51. The poem
concerns the infinitely fast desire of a lover riding a horse with finite
speed. This is particularly evident in
the line, “In winged speed no motion shall I know.” Musically, this idea is translated into somewhat static harmony
(limited, except at the very end, to six pitches that allow C minor, Eb minor
and Gb major triads, and there is a frequently present Bb pedal) and a
constantly shifting sense of meter. The
piano part serves as a somewhat uncooperative steed to the vocal line. The vocal part is generally in familiar
meters such as 4/4 or 6/8, but the piano part consists of fragments of unusual
polyrhythms. At the end, when the lover
gives his horse “leave to go,” the piano part is dismissed as well.
percussion (3) and piano, 2005
duration: between 3-4 minutes
Percussion
1: damped cowbell, suspended cymbal, bass drum (kick drum)
Percussion
2: high woodblock or clavé
Percussion
3: Vibraphone
The
manuscript was discovered in an imaginary tunnel connecting Cuba and the
Balkans. The first section is in 5+5+4;
the short beat becomes the long beat in the next section, which is in
4+4+3. The idea repeats, reaching 3+
3+2 in the middle section. The process
reverses and the piece ends back in 5+5+4.
Sort of a Gary-Burton-like tune.
It is an essay in metric, not tempo, modulation, and it is very cute and
groovy.
First
performance: Adesso (Luanne Warner, Rick Kvistad, and John Burgardt,
percussion, Josephine Gandolfi, piano), Old First Church, San Francisco, CA, 17
Feb 2006
audio recording on CD; performable by percussion (2) and piano (2), 2005
duration: about 19 minutes
Music for HOUSE: Stability/Fragility was composed by DC Meckler in close
collaboration with choreographer Diana Evans Cushway. The overall work is
a non-narrative dance theater piece that includes texts written by Skyline
College students working with poet Katherine Harer.
Premiere performances: The Skyline College Dance Ensemble's 2005 Spring
Dance Concert, 5-6 May.
tenor
voice and piano, 2005
texts by Robinson Jeffers
Duration: each piece about 6 minutes; about 12 minutes total.
May be performed as independent pieces.
Vocal ranges (sounding): Shine,
Perishing Republic, D3 - B4;
Shine, Republic, C3 - B4
(B4 including falsetto; A4 full voice)
Shine, Republic may be transposed to suit the performer’s
interpretation.
The
texts are from The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, edited by Tim
Hunt, copyright © 1938, renewed 1966 by Donnan Jeffers and Garth Jeffers, and
are used with the permission of Stanford University Press, www.sup.org.
The
two settings are rather different in personality. The first, Shine, Perishing Republic, is consistently
organized with a melodic motive, but is rather rhapsodic and episodic in its
continuity. Shine, Republic is a
single texture with smaller details of text painting confined to the vocal
line. Both settings set off their last
lines by a change in texture; the texture of the second piece is suggested by
the closing texture of the first piece, tying the two works together. The
poetry of Robinson Jeffers is not known for its optimism, but “Shine, Republic”
is a slightly more hopeful poem than its predecessor, “Shine, Perishing
Republic.” The earlier poem ends with a
reference to “the trap that catches [the] noblest spirits,” and so in the
setting of the second poem, the singer soars above a rhythmic cage in the
accompaniment, evading, maybe even transcending, the trap. The rhythmic cage consists of repeated
fragments from a large polyrhythmic structure.
It has touches of both barbarism and civilization, neither a good thing
in Jeffers’ cosmos.
Technical comment on the rhythmic process for Shine,
Republic
I first created a polyrhythmic structure of seven against four (seven 16th
notes against four 16th notes). The
seven pattern is a minor triad in second version, and this pitch material never
changes. The four pattern is a single
note in the bass line. Putting this
pattern in 5/4 meter, I then simply applied a descending scale pattern to the
bass note. This structure was then
fragmented by taking the first 10 eighth notes of duration and repeating it,
the next nine eighth notes of duration and then repeating it twice, the next
eight three times, etc. I then ran the
process in reverse, from two up to 12 eighth notes. This structure then was rebarred in 4/4, and the melody projects
that meter.
First
performance: 21 May 2006, Alec
Jeong, tenor, Keisuke Nakagoshi, piano; Fresh Voices VI Festival, Goat Hall
Productions, Thick House, San Francisco.
two
pianos, 2004
in six movements; duration about 14 minutes
movements 3 (duration about three minutes) and 5 (duration about two minutes)
can be played as independent pieces
LOUD
MUSIC is the inverse of a Baroque suite –– instead of six movements in
contrasting meters and in the same key, the six movements of LOUD MUSIC are all
in the same meter (7/4) and are harmonically quite free. The initial impulse behind composing LOUD
MUSIC was to create some background music for myself while I puttered around
the house –– I wanted the pulse of rock, but with a few more twists, turns and
formal surprises. The occasional
appearance of a straight quarter-note pulse is certainly an idea lifted from
Balinese gamelan gong kebyar. (I enjoy LOUD MUSIC, but my studio is no
more tidier, so while LOUD MUSIC energizes my puttering, I cannot claim that it
boosts house-cleaning effectiveness.)
(two
versions)
SA chorus, two horns, harp, piano, 2004
SATB chorus, two horns, harp, piano, 2004
duration: c. 11 min.
text by Robinson Jeffers
In
most of his poetry, Robinson Jeffers manifests a clear preference for nature
over humanity. The irony or paradox of
his poem "Natural Music" is that if one listens through humanity's
noise to the voice of nature, the voice one hears is one described in human
terms. The irony is reflected on
several levels of my setting of this poem.
The opening texture, a polluted green-black harmony, accompanies a
simple diatonic melody. A key line of
the poem, "divisions of desire and terror," might refer to the
churning polyrhythms or chromatic intervals, those chosen divisions of the
octave––these divisions desired by the composer, and one hopes not a terror to
the performer.
The
instrumentation was suggested by the Brahms piece for women's chorus, horns and
harp. I performed one of the horn parts
for that piece in the 1980s, so the combination was long in my mind. Also on my list of compositional desires was
to write a piece for the fine voice of my wife. This poem was a natural for these musical desires. Using the untempered harmonic series on the
horn certainly seems to be a representation of the "natural." The harp too seems somehow natural next to
that black beast of 19th-century technology, the piano. This piece contains "artificial"
atonal structures, the natural, unmediated harmonic series (physics singing
itself!), and that cultured middleground, the (tempered) diatonic scale. Much like the poem itself, this piece is a
two-eyed look at humanity––hunger-smitten cities, yes, but also individuals
that love. I wrote this piece without a
commission or any immediate hope for performance. I wrote it to reflect on some
of the emotional extremes of the day, from the news of our violent political
worlds to the much happier and much more private world of delight in my
marriage. That phrase, "divisions
of desire," seems to resonate with the mood of today. We have divisions that we desire (choices of
intervals and rhythms) and we are divided by our different desires, the driving
engines of political conflict that lead to terror.
"I will open my dark saying on the
harp." Psalms 49:4.
Short
program note: Natural Music
represents various kinds of natural and human music through contrasts of instruments
and voices, and atonal and modal music.
Within the instruments, raw nature might be represented by the natural
harmonic series on the horns, a pastoral, humanized nature might be associated
with the harp, and the piano could represent civilization and its
complexities.
Premiere
performances:
14, 15 & 22 May 2005, in Oakland, San Francisco and Berkeley. Voci
Women's Vocal Ensemble; Heather Heise, piano; Erin Vang & Beth Milne,
horns; Dan Levitan, harp; Jude Navari, cond. Performances supported in
part through Subito, the quick advancement grant program of the San Francisco
Bay Area Chapter of the American Composers Forum.
2
soprano voices & piano; no text; 2004
duration: about 3 1/2 minutes
could also be performed by any combination of flute, oboe, or clarinet
(clarinet & oboe, 2 flutes, etc.)
This
piece develops the diatonic melody later used in Natural
Music. It is a study in imitative counterpoint and in balancing
atonal and diatonic pitch material.
SA
chorus, piano, 2004
duration: c. 5 min.
Written
for Jude Navari and the Voci women's chorus
While
this piece does not use the text from the poem, it was inspired by the
frequently anthologized Robinson Jeffers poem, "To the
Stone-cutters." Although poet
Robinson Jeffers has a generally bleak view of humanity's fate in the world, he
does take minor solace in some small acts of human culture. In terms of the age of the universe, both
before and after humanity's existence, we humans have not been around for long,
nor will we be, yet "stones have stood for a thousand years." Our ultimate impermanence is not of
immediate concern, especially when we realize that "immediate" can be
defined in terms of centuries. This is
not paradox; it just reflects Jeffers' unusually long historical perspective. My own bit of ephemeral stonecutting is to
etch various pitches in time. The poem
refers to the solace that comes from old poems; I certainly enjoy the solace to
be found in "To the Stone-cutters."
However, since many of the lines have such a strong music of their own
("eat cynical wages") I would have difficulty choosing a setting for
them. In Wind & Stone, I
chose to set not the words but one of the ideas of the poem, that of the
elements of nature weathering and wearing away our words and works. Aleatoric effects are mixed with precise
rhythms; the meter consistently alternates between 9/8 and 3/4, to suggest the
expanding and contracting of the stone in response to heating and cooling by
days, nights, and seasons.
Short
program note: Rather than setting the text of the Robinson Jeffers poem
"To the Stone-cutters," Wind & Stone elaborates on one of
the images in the poem––the elements weathering away carved stone.
Premiere
performances:
14, 15 & 22 May 2005, in Oakland, San Francisco and Berkeley. Voci
Women's Vocal Ensemble; Heather Heise, piano; Jude Navari, cond.
Performances supported in part through Subito, the quick advancement grant
program of the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of the American Composers Forum.
solo
piano, 2004
Stonecutter
Old Poems
duration:
each piece, c. 4 min.
These
pieces are a musical response to the frequently anthologized Robinson Jeffers
poem, "To the Stone-cutters."
Some of the response is general–– Stonecutter etches pitches in
time; some of it can be interpreted as rather specific. It would not be too much of a stretch to
connect the group of dark pounding chords with the thought that the sun will
"die blind and blacken to the heart." Both Stonecutter and Old Poems use a consistently
alternating 9/8 - 3/4 meter. Old
Poems is an interesting combination of polyrhythm with that 9/8 - 3/4
expanding and contracting meter. The
pieces may be played separately.
for vioin, cello,
piano, 2003, 42 pages.
2 movements, about 21 min.
I. A Hazardous Similar Harmony
II. Dust & Desire
Analytical background notes for performers
Meter
The meter is a consistent 12/8 grouped in a 3 + 2 + 3 + 2 + 2 throughout both
movements. (The opening 42 bars of the second movement has been re-barred in a regular
3/4 as a sanity-preserving tactic, but the underlying music follows the 3 + 2 +
3 + 2 + 2 pattern.) This large measure is sometimes felt as 5/8 + 7/8;
alternatively, it is sometimes grouped as 8/8 + 2/4.
Pitch
The harmonic environment for the piece is generated by E major, C major and F
minor triads. These do not function in a given order, with an implied
progression in one horizontal dimension (a.k.a. "time"). Instead,
these three triads are associated with particular registers: F minor (low
register), C major or minor (middle register) and E major (high register). This
approach is loosely based on three ideas. [1] Arab music, as it modulates from
mode to mode does not just change pitch and interval content; register is an
implied part of the Arab modal system. [2] A very loose interpretation of the
idea of "spectral" music, music that uses compositional materials and
methods based on on extremely detailed studies of acoustics and interactions in
the harmonic series. The stack of F minor (low register), C major (middle
register) and E major (high register) forms a synthetic or altered harmonic
series. Somewhat related to this pseudo-spectral approach is the notion of [3]
prolongation. Having long resisted the Schenkerian interpretation of tonal music,
I have to admit that I am beginning to hear some pieces, particularly Brahms
& Chopin, in this way. Or at least some pieces seem to explore the
registral resonances of some grand fundamental vibration, some deep Ur-Klang
unique to each piece. I have not been a slave to this E/C/F system, only
generally following the general nature of it. These ideas served as some of the
input to the piece; the outcome may of course be quite differently perceived by
a listener.
One
practical consequence of this harmonic environment is the structural opposition
between the pitch classes of G and G#, as well as the alternative spellings of
G# and Ab.
The
proto-origins of the piece may not have made it far enough into the piece that
they would be apparent to the listener, but they do inform some of my pitch
choices. My first consideration about a piano trio is that to the instruments,
violin and cello, can play to the perfectly in tune, while the piano, with its
equal-temperament, has this forever compromised tuning. (I would think that in
a piano quintet, this ought to be less of a problem, because the four string
instruments probably have enough vibrato going on to provide a sufficiently
deep bath of micro-tuning.) Some just-tuning advocates claim that the
equal-tempered piano sounds awful to them. I do not feel that way, but since
listening to lots of world music, I do hear equal-temperament as arbitrary;
lovely, yes, but arbitrary, a grand compromise between Culture and Nature. So I
began thinking of the two sources of materials for the piece being perfect
fifths from natural harmonics and the fifths of the strings of the violin and
cello, and those approximate major thirds of the piano, exemplified by one of
the more ugly sounds in music, the augmented triad. Choosing the highest string
of the higher instrument, the violin's E string, and the lowest string of the
lower instrument, the cello's C string, accounts for the high-register and
mid-register triads as well as the C-E-G# augmented triad. To bring the system
together, the pseudo-fundamental, F, is supplied a fifth below by the piano.
The unadorned origins of the piece are on display in the interlude in the
middle of the first movement, and further discussion is in the interlude in the
second movement.
Form
The form in both movements is basically ABCABC. In more detail, it is
A-B-C-interlude-A'-B'-C', in which the theme group returns are developed,
condensed or expanded, and the interludes of both movements are similar
material. The variation/alteration is much more pronounced in the second
movement.
10/24 June 2003
Premiere
performances of the first movement:
The
Picasso Ensemble: Susan Brown, violin, Karen Andrie, cello, Josephine
Gandolfi, piano
Sunday,
April 25, 2004, Sesnon House at Cabrillo College
Saturday, May 1, Palo Alto Arts Center
for
viola, cello, piano, 2 perc, 2003, 26 pages.
4
movements, about 23 min.
Chocolate Prelude
audio demo 3.2
MB wma This synthesized demo substitutes an organ sound for the viola
and cello parts. (I dislike most string samples!)
I. Chocolate Prelude c. 4 min
II. The Permanence of Gardens c. 5 min
III. Compost-modernism c. 8 min
IV. Balances Upon The Leaves c. 6 min
This Quintet starts
off with groovy feel-good harmony (Chocolate
Prelude) and concludes with a quiet but intense meditation that dissolves
the metric and pitch systems of the piece (Balances
Upon the Leaves). Each movement has
a moment of quiet or at least stillness, and these culminate in the fourth
movement. Those moments of stillness
are framed throughout the piece by a consistent metrical pattern in 14/8. Any meter is of course a rickety bridge or
structure trying to span but only floating on time. And that constructedness is fundamentally what the piece is
about. The second movement is entitled The Permanence of
Gardens. Of course, gardens are
anything but permanent. Their forms may
persist, but they require tending and active human engagement. Perhaps the rhythmic form and pitch-space
structure of this piece are the permanent (humanly constructed, so not so
permanent) aspects of this garden, and it is the duty of the violist to tend to
the sound quality of each note . . . the listener's attention is also needed
for the piece to be fully realized. The
third movement, Compost-modernism,
is intended as a humorous scherzo, but bringing different styles and musical
textures into close proximity is also a way of pointing out the contingency of
those ideas. In Balances Upon the Leaves, the rhythm patterns are stretched out
past the meter, and it collapses; the strings are de-tuned but play natural
harmonics, so the intervallic content is contingent on physics and not so much
on culture.
for SATB chorus, piano
4-hands, 2002, 17 pages.
also available for SATB
chorus with string orchestra
text by the composer
about 5 min.
When I was a
child, every three months or so my father would begin conversation at the
dinner table with the question, "Davey, what day it is today?" The right answer (rarely given) would have
been, "It's the Solstice" or, "It's the Equinox." Definitions and explanations would
follow. Solstice Carol pays
homage to that family memory as well as the geophysical reason for the
seasons. The piece also alludes to
somewhat older cultural patterns that are the origins of today's carol
traditions. The text for the carol is here.
I will also arrange a brass accompaniment one of these seasons . . .
After spending years composing Apollo 14, I felt a great sense of
relief when I connected all the dots and had a continuous piece of music. To celebrate, I decided I would compose a
completely irresponsible piece of music, one that had no obligations of
harmonic or melodic consistency or even stylistic coherence, and one that I
could knock out in a few hours. Conversation
Piece was the result. I did decide
that the one move toward consistency or coherence would be to use a 9/8 3+2+2+2
meter throughout. I found this to be a
lot of fun as I veered from style to style, and I began to wonder why Brahms
and other 19th century composers (or even Bach!) did not use asymmetrical
meters. Thus began a series of short
studies in meter with wide-ranging approaches to style. It occurred to me that in the years of
composing Apollo 14 material, I never thought to write in 14/8. I suppose I rejected that as being inaudible
numerology. Several pieces in 14/8 soon
followed:
My Bundled Dances, in 2+2+3+2+3+2, is
playable as it stands, but it would be a promising candidate for an arrangement
for piano 4-hands. The tempo of the
fast sections in this synthesized demo (3.8 MB, wma) is
several clicks faster than any human ever need play the piece.
AABA,
in 3+2+2+2+3+2,
is a brief study in this wonderful and therefore common form, juxtaposing and
repeating several small ideas. A
detailed view of the form would be abcd abcd eeee abcd (synthesized demo, 2 MB, wma). The repeats are often exact, but there are
some small variations in some details.
This is somewhat inspired by common Native American approaches to
repetition and micro-variation in music.
Quintet, described elsewhere on this webpage, is again
in 14/8, and all four movements are 3+2+3+2+2+2. An audio
demo (3.2 MB, wma) of the first movement is available.
I have continued working with asymmetrical meters in my Piano Trio
(12/8 consistently divided into 3+2+3+2+2 in both movements) and Two Pieces After a Poem. The first of the Two Pieces After a Poem, Stonecutter,
begins with a 6/8 introduction but soon establishes a 15/8 3+3+3+2+2+2 (synthesized
demo, 3.6 MB, wma). The second
piece in the set, Old Poems, is also
in 15/8, but with a 2+2+2+3+3+3 pattern.
(The poem referred to by the title is "To the Stonecutters" by
Robinson Jeffers.)
for SATB chorus, alto
flute, percussion (marimba, Vibraphone), piano, 2002, 17 pages.
text by Lordes Sian
about 6 min.
Black Cat was created through the Poetry and
Music at Skyline Project. This project
selected three professional composers to set poetry written by Skyline College students. The program was organized by the Creative
Writing Program and the Creative Arts and Social Sciences Department. Conductor Patricia Hennings conceived the
idea and got it started, in cooperation with Katherine Harer of the Skyline
College English Department.
The process started for
me when I received a pound and a half of poetry in the mail. After reading through the pile, I selected
about 10 poems for my short list, but almost immediately I settled on
"black cat," based on its mood and musical qualities. The poet, Lordes Sian, is also a member of
the Skyline College Choir. Commissioned by Skyline College with
support from the Lane Family Charitable Trust, the Skyline College Partnership
for Excellence, and the Skyline College President's Innovation Fund.
First
Performance:
4
May 2002, Skyline College Theater, San Bruno, CA. Skyline College Choir, Jim Yowell, director, Dawn Walker, flute,
Ward Spangler, percussion, Richard Rogers, piano.
Program note
Many of the ideas in the piece Black Cat come
from the poem "black cat" by Lourdes Sian. A primary image is that of a melodic line that 'wends' from
section to section of the chorus.
Anything that wends suggests chromatic movement to me, and since it is a
black cat, I think dark, complex harmony is called for. A good way to manage highly chromatic
complex harmony is to use a now antique system of composition from the
20th-century, serialism. The choral parts
are in general not ordered by any 12-tone row, since cats are not known for following
rules. The dodecaphonic material is
mostly in the accompanying parts. This
is my second serial piece, and the first to use the gamut of serial tricks:
symmetrical hexachords, M5 mappings, rotations, etc. Another musical resource that is found in the accompaniment is a
musical gesture that rises and falls (or falls and rises) according to the
contour and rhythm of a motive from Bach's Magnifi-cat. (The Skyline College Choir performed the
Magnificat in their previous concert.)
This musical idea switches back on itself or forms a gully, depending on
its orientation. The key sonority for
the piece comes from the "bell ringer" melody and the harmony that
sets up that melody.
“black cat” is a very fine poem that has great
attention to the sounds of the words, creating a coherent and consistent
sound-world with the words in the poem.
It also suggests movement.
"You wend your way" suggests a downward motion; "you're
the bell ringer" rises; "you are immersed" falls; and "you
reach" again rises.
The poem:
black cat
you wend your way
through purple irises
and red-lipped montebellos
through switchbacks
found in a new made gully
you're the bell ringer
of wild oats hastening
spring
Wind finds you
among tender grasses
[and shy milkmaids
in a single stroke repeated]*
you are immersed
in cat thoughts of nothing
neither pad nor scratch of paws
nor work of hill on sinews
nor warmth pouring over you
in glints of copper and sable
you reach, slip on crumbling rock
cleave the slate of our ease
no matter, you go around
up, over, disappear in portions
to the last flip of your tail
black cat
I watched you from my window
wishing I were you.
Lourdes
Sian
[*omitted in musical setting]
for
cello, piano, and Vibraphone, 1999, 5 pages.
duration c. 6 min.
Bliss is an arrangement of the Accomplishment aria from Apollo
14, A Space Opera. It was musical
wedding gift to my wife MaryLouise, and was first performed at our wedding in
1999 by cellist Hugh Livingston and pianist Josephine Gandolfi.
In May 2001, Bliss was used in a dance piece, Exteriors,
choreographed by Diana Evans Cushway; the duet created for Bliss was a
collaboration between Diana and Lisa McKean.
Accomplishment is an introspective aria in which Alan
Shepard reflects on his satisfaction at walking -- and golfing -- on the
moon. Musically speaking, the accompaniment
rocks back and forth between two harmonically ambiguous diads (a minor 7th and
a major 6th). As the melody floats over
this background, the harmonic interpretation changes. The harmonic stasis corresponds with Shepard's situation -- after
you have gone to the moon, where else are you going to go? Portions of the aria seemed to musically
represent contentment and happiness, so I was moved to arrange this music for
my wedding.
First public
performance
17 March 2000
Old First
Church, San Francisco
by members of Adesso
Victoria
Ehrlich, cello
Rick Kvistad, percussion
Josephine Gandolfi, piano
for flute (piccolo),
Bb clarinet, violin, cello, piano; 2000. c. 5 minutes; score 18 pp.
Commissioned by the
American Composers Forum
First
Performances
2 May 2000, San Francisco State University, Knuth Hall
9 May 2000, San Francisco School of the Arts Theatre
Earplay
Tod Brody, flute
Peter Josheff, clarinet
Ellen Gronnigen, violin
Beth Vandervennet, cello
Hubert Ho, piano
Deirdre McClure, conductor
Comments on Rebound
Rebound is a light little piece. Since I have a
moralistic streak about pieces that are just more cholesterol in the arteries
of new music, I wanted to record some thoughts about some of the ideas in the
piece. (As if additional verbiage would
somehow cancel out the sin!) Factors in
the background of the piece include my work on an opera and my experiences in
teaching world music.
The title
comes from a label I gave to a sketch for some music for Apollo 14, A Space
Opera. The sketch was called
"Leaping and Bounding," as it depicted (possibly) the astronauts at work
moving on the surface of the moon.
Currently, the material is used for such a scene in the opera, but it is
accompanied by a very chromatic bass line that is in an altogether different
time signature (5/8) and it is also accompanied by a recurring rhythmic device,
so the overall effect is one of complexity.
Since I am re-using this material, “Rebound” seems to be an
appropriate title.
As I have been teaching world
music, I find that some of the examples that I play are remarkably simple yet I
can listen to them over and over again with undiminishing fascination. I wanted to try my hand at creating a simple
musical object that it is interesting enough to be simply restated several
times. Thus in the opening 43 bars we
hear just two ideas. The first idea is
played against itself in transposition, but other than that, there is little
development. This simple statement of
themes with only the slightest variation in orchestration is a personal
experiment with simplicity. This music
is cut-off by some five-note chords fading into each other. These oracular chords are meant to be
somewhat mysterious and musically somewhat unsatisfying. I have often written music that has a
large-scale double structure (such as ABCDABCD). This is a very small instance of that, along the lines of abA'
B'. The composer Lutoslawski often used
this form in which the first part is an underdeveloped statement of materials
that are more fully developed in the second part. That is the case here.
The second A section is tied to the original opening materials by the
dotted eighth sixteenth eighth rhythm and similarities in melodic contour and
interval content. (There is a more
subliminal motific pitch-set connection but I do not regard it as
compositionally or analytically significant.)
The A' section features polyrhythm, also probably an influence from my
world music contemplations. The
polyrhythm is enlivened by a Scotch snap -- a musical taste of mine that dates
from my earliest music. The 6/4 bar is
also split into a 4 + 2 pattern, sort of a very weak small-scale tala. Another layer of polyrhythm is introduced
with the eighth-note triplets, which are first grouped into threes, coinciding
with the quarter note, but soon are grouped into fives. The A material is blatantly
restated again and again, much as in the beginning. There is a crossing of the materials when the five-note chords of
the b section suddenly are applied to the prevailing melodic shapes of A (m.
82). The polyrhythm is also displaced
by one dotted quarter. This suggests an
entire line of development to explore this, but I am rather more interested in
the collision of these two materials suddenly bringing the piece to a close
with an ever accelerating rate of harmonic change. The piece concludes with an abrupt coda that features an entirely
different sort of material, a lyrical violin solo. (It actually has been heard before, as the bottom voice in the
3-voice texture first heard in mm. 8-10.)
Finishing a piece of music with a new idea always intrigues me. So the form of the piece might best be
labeled as abA' [B']c, where the brackets show that the B section harmony is
fused onto the melodic and rhythmic ideas of A.
~~dc meckler, Feb 2000
for
SSSAAA chorus with piano and percussion, 1999, pages. 11
duration about 7 minutes
The
full-length version of Bright Love was first performed by the Peninsula Women's Chorus on their Spring
2000 concerts. The last section of the piece was a part of the 31 July 1999
wedding ceremony of MaryLouise and David Meckler.
The
text was adapted by the composer from an essay by Susie Bright
("BlindSexual" in Susie Bright's Sexual Reality: A Virtual Sex
World Reader; Cleis Press, 1992, pages. 150-157). The essay suggests
that love is about passion and is not about an abstract principle. The music illustrates a three-phase process
of coming to this understanding. The
first section of the piece sets the text while limited to a 5-note pitch set;
the second section loosens up a bit and allows a second transposition of the
five-note set to be used. The third
section 'gets it right,' abandoning the principle of limited transposition,
using free transposition, auxiliary notes, and inversion. As in much of my music, musical ideas and
feelings are explored by refracting them through a variety of styles and
textures.
The text for Bright Love:
I
might fall for
I might fall for you
I will follow
I will follow you,
into flames not principle
lick of flames,
flames not principle
into flames not principle
potential loss, betrayal,
the walk, what you can do
potential loss, fire, betrayal,
potential fire.
I
might follow
I might follow you
If potentially not necessarily
into flames not principle
into personal flames not principle
the walk, what can you do
might fall for follow you
the walk, what you can do
might fall for follow you
In the moment
the moment after
this is this is what is memorable
for many moments after.
Dave
Meckler, 1999
for
SATB chorus with piano, 1997, 22 pages.
duration: about 9 minutes
Do
I contradict myself?
Very well, then, I contradict myself;
(I am large--I contain multitudes.)
Walt
Whitman, Leaves of Grass
(Recorded
in July 1997, Skyline College, San Bruno, CA, and edited by Andrew Heller of
Location Digital Recording.)
On Contradiction is powered
by three ideas from the text. 'Containment' is represented by the fact that the
entire piece (except when I contradict myself) uses only six pitch classes: G A
B C D and Eb. From this handful of notes, I drew out "multitudes" of
different styles and textures. The idea of the choir as a multitude of
individual "I" voices suggested to me passages of free singing in
which all of the singers chose their own individual tempo or rhythm independent
of one another. The notion of "contradiction" produces a few
dissonant passages, the notes seeming to contradict each other, and more than a
few tricky rhythmic passages, where different layers grind against each other,
seemingly out-of-sync. Another contradiction is in the vowel sounds associated
with "Do" and "I" at the beginning. The piece begins with
what sounds to me like the correct match. The "oo" is a purer sound
and has less energy in the upper partials, and so it is matched to the c minor
triad. The "I", richer in upper partials, is on an implied b minor
seventh chord. In subsequent reappearances of the "Do I" with these
two chords, the vowel-chord pairings are swapped, a sort of contradiction.
If
the full chromatic gamut is a multitude, I'm working with only half a
multitude. But I twist this little hexachord, the container, to spill out lots
of different materials; perhaps not multitudes of materials, but fairly diverse
stuff for an 8-minute, single-movement piece. In the matter of pitch
restriction, I contradict myself with brief rebellions in the piano part and,
more significantly, with the glissandi, which admit infinite multitudes of
micro-pitch classes into the texture.
I
joined the Skyline College Choir when I moved to the Bay Area in 1996. I was
impressed by how quickly the choir learned difficult music and I was inspired
to try composing for chorus. Conductor Patty Hennings and I had a brief talk
about the length of the piece and when the choir would be able to do a new
work. The date was set and, feeling confident with the enthusiastic support of
a great conductor, I happily went to work. As so many American composers do, I
drew my text from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. A college friend, when
I would seem to trap him at the end of a friendly philosophical debate, would
shrug his shoulders and paraphrase Whitman: `Do I contradict myself? I am
large--I contain multitudes.' It was maddening at the time, but I came to
appreciate the wisdom, especially as I tend to compose music that has many
different styles and textures in the same piece. The text gives the audience a
chance to understand why On Contradiction might be such a polyglot
essay.
The
first performances of On Contradiction were given by the Skyline College
Choir in May 1997, Dr. Patricia Hennings, conductor, and Richard Rogers,
pianist. It was a little intimidating to have my first choral work premiere
along side the most performed (and the loudest) war horse of 20th Century
choral music, Carmina Burana, but the weekly pleasures of singing Carmina
and hearing my own music rehearsed has been one of the best experiences in
music that I've had. I am very gratified by the enthusiastic response of the
choir to the new challenges in my piece. Several choir members had never
premiered a new piece or met a composer, so it has been a thrill to introduce
new music to more and more people.
~~Dave
Meckler
22 May 1997, rev 6 Dec 97
piano solo, 1996
duration less than a minute
Container ponders one hexachord for a while and then burns
through its complement. Each piano key
is used only once, so the piece has 88 notes in it. I have sketched out large number of 88-note pieces, but this is
the only one that I really feel is finished.
When I told, in 1987, my composition teacher Allen Sapp of my plan to
write a collection of 88-note pieces, he told me not to make them too long. Complete score pdf file.
Return
to DC Meckler music page
for
flute, Bb clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion, 1996, 38 pages.
duration: about 6 minutes
percussion:
6 high and dry instruments (any combination of bongos, wood blocks, slit drums,
temple blocks, etc.)
high suspended splash cymbal
large suspended cymbal
3 low tom toms
bass drum
glockenspiel (or crotales)
Ah,
the first post-dissertation piece . . . Sirius Melody/Groove Cafe
is a reflection on my time at the University of California San Diego. New
Complexity was very much an issue there and then, prompting grad student
responses covering the range of advocacy, admiration, bemusement, and horror. I
was in the non-practitioner/admirer camp. Brian Ferneyhough often remarked that
the developmental processes he used were quite simple, really, and the
complexity was a result of multiple processes (I am probably misquoting him, or
at least he would put it much more elegantly). After leaving, I felt nostalgia
for the place, and so I turned my attention to applying multiple simple
processes to melodic development. While at UCSD, I had formalized some aspects
of harmony and rhythm, but had used my melodies in an unconsidered way. It was
time to get serious about melody. An aggressive, Post-Modern embrace of the
banal was also part of the UCSD scene; Groove Cafe reflects that.
It also is an impression of sunlight filtering through eucalyptus leaves at the
Grove Cafe, which is near the music department’s seminar room. A sign of my
sentimental side, the piece ends by evaporating to a minor triad.
For
Sirius Melody, I wanted to spin out a continuous melody, not something
that would be heard as simply a theme and variations. The opening material (mm
1-5) is developed in two ways. The pitch material is subjected to a process; it
is simply repeated, but the first, last, highest, and lowest notes are dropped
with each iteration. So, as the material is repeated, it maintains a high level
of familiarity, but the recognition-handles that we are most likely to grab
onto always disappear. The second time through this process (m 29 to the end),
the original melody is chopped in half, i.e. we begin in the middle, go
forward, and loop around to end in the middle. So the process of erosion goes
to work immediately on the features that were previously the most durable. As
in the first pass, the first and last notes are dropped, but instead of the
highest and lowest notes being dropped, they are “tucked in,” transposed down
or up a fifth, respectively. Thus in the second pass, the material evaporates a
little more slowly, and is more unstable at the end. Roger Reynolds once
commented that I am interested in “edges and iteration.” This piece is a good
example in that I’m blurring edges and trying to get away with maximum yet
fresh repetition of material. Two other moves I make: in mm. 18-19, I repeat
and reorder the first six pitches, to provide a little resistance to the
evaporation of the material, and to add a few hooks for pitch memory. In the
second pass, at m. 35, I change the contour to create a larger, more sweeping
gesture (since we have to live with it for several repetitions). The registral
development plays nicely off of the pitch process, in that as the extremes of
the melody are worn down, the registral space expands.
The
rhythmic/metric scheme is simpler. I use a series of values (1121233...) that
denote the number of rhythmic units in a note. The series is not developed
much, except that the long notes tend to be incremented by +1 each iteration,
and the opening and closing (2323) groups get repeated for emphasis towards the
ends. (The rhythmic series grows longer as the pitch row disappears.) This is
played out over a regular metric scheme:
one
bar of 4/4 subdivided in eighth-note triplets; two bars of 5/8 in sixteenths;
one bar of 4/4 in eighth-note triplets; one bar of 9/8 in sixteenths;
one bar of 4/4 in sixteenth-note quintuplets; one bar of 5/4 in sixteenths.
The
rhythmic series is projected on this warped time surface. The meter,
independent of the melody crawling through it, is acknowledged by a color
change on the first beat of the early bars, and by a percussion hit on the last
beat of most bars. At times when the melody is intermittently doubled in octaves,
the doublings kick in and out according to the beat structure.
Groove Cafe was meant to
be a separate piece entirely, the only connection between the two pieces being
that that which was denied in the first (small-scale metric regularity, chords)
was manifest in the second. But all that barely visited melodic stuff available
in the Sirius Melody was too tempting not to use, so the two pieces grew
together.
On
matters of rhythmic interpretation, the pianist is always right. This is a
piano-centric piece. It was written for Sirius, an ensemble populated by the
some of the wizards of subdivision at the University of California San Diego.
To facilitate rehearsal, I recommend that the pianist record the melody
(without the various octave displacements and doublings) and the others in the
ensemble familiarize themselves with the pianist’s interpretation of the
rhythms. (The music is available from the composer.)
Dave
Meckler, January 1997
First
performances
Sirius (Lisa Cella, flute, Pat O’Keefe, clarinet, Mark
Menzies, violin, Hugh Livingston, cello, Sandra Brown, piano, Patti Cudd,
percussion, Harvey Sollberger, conductor)
21
January 1997
Schoenberg Hall
University of California, Los Angeles
13
February 1997
Erickson Hall
University of California, San Diego
14
February 1997
Watkins Recital Hall
University of California, Riverside
19
February 1997
Music Center Recital Hall
University of California, Santa Cruz
22
February 1997
Knuth Hall
San Francisco State University
[25
May 1997]
chamber
opera, 1995, based (with permission) on the short story by Steven Schutzman
86 pages.
soprano, baritone, violin, trombone, 2 pianos, video projections
about 14 minutes
descriptive
notes and video stills
First
performances: UC San Diego, 1995
Virginia
Sublett, The Teller
Orren Tanabe, The Robber
Rand Steiger, conductor
Paivikki Nykter, violin
Karen Park, horn
Richard Gordon, trombone
Ivan Raykoff, piano
Scott Walton, piano
Marita Bolles, production assistance
for
orchestra, 1994, 54 pages.
(2222 422 2perc strings)
duration about 10 minutes
Gear began as an
illustration of the "equipment" of the orchestra: when I set out on a
backpacking trip, I first organize my gear; as I began a journey into composing
for the orchestra, I similarly laid out my stuff. The metaphor soon shifted to
bicycle gears, gears connected by a chain. The teeth of the gears of this piece
can be heard easily enough; the chain I had in mind, the connecting entity
between all these gears, is the listening mind, a thread of consciousness
making some sense of the rhetorical and anti-rhetorical moves in the piece.
Gear was read by the
Berkeley Symphony Orchestra in their Under Construction IV program in December,
1997, St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Berkeley; conducted
by George Thomson, hosted by Kent Nagano
Dave
Meckler, 1995, updated Jan 98
for
solo piano, 1991, 21 pages.
One,
c. 4 minutes
Two,
c. 11 minutes
Stuck Piano One and Two
relates the "stuckness" of individual notes and pitch-class
collections to larger sorts of obsessive behavior. If you asked me about the
piece at the time I was composing it, I would have told you that it was about
various numeric regimes relating repetition and duration to the number of pitch
classes in the sets used, in order to experience an irregular but discernible
harmonic rhythm. When I reflect on the fact that my mother was dying of cancer
at the time I was composing this piece, I realize that it is about a life
force, the body, spirit, and the inertia of the habit of living, of being
metabolically alive. The first piece is all strength and athleticism; the
second piece piece loses its way inside itself, trapped in the maze of itself,
but a spirit rises up at the end, and is released. The ending is the usual
Romantic trope for transcendence, registral brightening, that has been used
from Beethoven to Stockhausen.
Also
during the time of composing this piece, I rented a room in La Jolla. I had a
baby grand in my room (a converted garage) and I spent a lot of time enjoying
the resonance and anti-resonance of the chords I used in these pieces. The
owner of the place, a widow, asked me to help her identify recordings made by
her departed pianist-husband. The literature was mostly Chopin and Liszt,
mostly pieces I had little emotional connection to or with. So this was a sort
of dead music I was exposed to; certain textures in Stuck Piano are
pianistic behaviors perhaps generalized from listening to that traditional rep.
The
pieces may be played separately or together. Sketches exist for two additional Stuck
Piano pieces (Three [Dominant Hegemony], and Four). The score and a
CD of the piece are available from the composer.
Christian
Hertzog premiered the piece and played it several times in La Jolla in 1992. In
1993, Joel Hoffmann gave a particularly vigorous performance of the piece in
Cincinnati.
~~Dave
Meckler [revised 5 May 1997]
Notes after Doubled Variations
Double Variations was composed for the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival
Composition and Contemporary Ensembles Workshop.
Comments
on aspects of the piece:
Form--a
set of parallel variations, the variations being textures, processes, gestures.
Developmental procedures are performed on a theme; in the second half of the
piece, the first theme is forgotten, but the second theme is passed through
same, or similar, developmental filters. The theme is not recapitulated; the
developmental techniques are.
Pitch
is handled in a consistent way. Both themes are 24-note rows, and chords (sets)
are derived from the row in an ordered way. The rows are not inverted or
retrograded. They are rather more like pitch-conveyor belts rather than musical
objects in themselves.
The
approach to handling pitch relates to tempo. The tempo is fairly steady, a
fast
q = 144, but the harmonic rhythm is more flexible.
The
orchestration is very plain. In the context of this piece, ordinary pizzicato
is a special effect. By sticking to primary colors, the piece invokes the basic
phonetic play of traditional orchestration--handling instruments in choirs or
by doublings and combinations.
D C Meckler
first
performance:
23
June 1990
The
Music Shed
Norfolk, Connecticut
Norfolk Chamber Music Festival
Contemporary Ensemble
Arthur Weisberg, conductor
for
violin, horn, and piano, 1989, 26 pages.
duration about 11 minutes
Treffpunkt is a set of
parallel variations. It is a binary form without repeats (AA'). The two
sections of the piece are both based on long melodies. These two different
melodies are long tone-rows and serve as passacalia-like cyclic controls. They
are subjected to the same, or at least similar, variational processes in the
two parts of the work. The variation processes occur in more or less the same
order. In a way, the variations are more of a theme than the themes they vary.
I also think of this in terms of electronic music: the second melody is
cross-synthesized through the developmental filters of the first.
Treffpunkt ("meeting
point," a sign & location in every German train station) implies
several things:
meeting
points of the three musicians playing the music--rhythmic unisons, pitch unisons,
octaves, cadences.
meeting
points across time of the two sections (the parallels of the parallel
variations)
meeting
points with some of the gestures of Romantic music within the serial rules of
the piece
meeting
points between variations in radically different styles. Some of the changes
from style to style take a few bars, while other transitions are instantaneous.
DCM,
15 Feb 89
It
is also about this American meeting things European, from ancient traditions to
contemporary culture. (I liked the vaguely Stockhausenian ring for the title.)
Early thoughts about the piece probably date back to my attendance at the 1986
International Horn Society Symposium in Detmold, (then, West) Germany.
Treffpunkt was written at the
request of Susan Jensen. The first performance was 17 January 1990, Patricia
Corbett Theater, College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati; Susan
Jensen, violin, William Cochran, horn, and Karol Sue Reddington, piano.
Dave
Meckler, May 1997
[25 May 1997]
Return
to DC Meckler
(1987-1989)
a
setting of three poems by A.R. Ammons
for
two sopranos, violin, clarinet (bass clarinet), cello, and two percussionists
So
I Said I Am Ezra (1989, circa 4 minutes)
The
Pieces of My Voice (1987, circa 6 minutes) (one soprano, violin, clarinet, and
two percussionists)
Mechanism
(1988, circa 9 minutes)
This
vocal setting moves from the individual confronting nature (shouting out one's
name into the winds), the individual contemplating death (the scattering and
dissolution of the voice), to the contemplation of objective nature. Mechanism
in particular was influenced by 16th century counterpoint. Mechanism and
The Pieces of My Voice may be performed as separate works.
“So
I Said I Am Ezra,” “The Pieces of My Voice,” and “Mechanism,” from COLLECTED
POEMS, 1951-1971, by A.R. Ammons, are used with the permission of W.W. Norton
& Co, Inc. Copyright c 1972 by A.R. Ammons.
. . . I will confine myself to telling you that I dream of immense
cosmologies, sagas, and epics all reduced to the dimensions of an epigram.
--Italo Calvino
I
am generally interested in combining disparate musics and ideas, and in using
exhaustible restricted systems to compose. I also admire the continuous flow of
some folk music, especially reels and fiddle tune medleys. These interests
combined in this instance to create Brooklyn Reel.
Brooklyn Reel uses a 12-tone
row 12 times. It is always in its prime form, and the transpositions follow the
order of the row. In other words, the second row starts with the second pitch
of the first row, the third row on the third note of the first row, etc. This
is a global process used in the piece. A local process in the piece occurs in
the fast sections (the repeated triplet and sixteenth-note sections). In those
sections, the piece moves through the row by repeating a 3- or 4-note cell,
moving on by adding the next note of the row and dropping the earliest note of
the cell. In other words, we hear pitches 1-4 four times, then 2-5 4x, 3-6 4x,
etc.
Since
the rows are repeated quite mechanically, points of interest come at the
borders of the rows. At these borders, by juxtaposing different transpositions
of the row, new motific material arises. This second-level of motific material
is an epiphenomenon of the mechanical procedure beneath it. Because some
ordered intervals recur in the row, some epiphenomenal motives recur. This
phenomenon of recurrence is directly used in the two breaks from the stream of
repeated cells (m 16-17 and m 22-25), and serves as cadential material near the
end of the piece (m 42-43 and m 50).
Of
course, the reason the piece has the particular sound it does is because the row
is always locally diatonic. In the first statement, pitches 1-7 are the A major
collection, and 7-12 can belong to Bb major, 7 serving as a pivot note for a
kind of continuous modulation. The origin and organization of the row is most
blatant when it starts on F--seven white notes followed by five black notes.
I
came up with the row in working on another piece (Cincinnati Tiles, in
progress) around May of 1988. I first applied rhythms and transposed looping to
it while studying computer music at Brooklyn College in June. I was working on
a never-finished computer piece, Of the White Hands. The thought of a
violin grinding through a diatonic tone-row in an add-a-note fashion came while
I was working on yet another piece (Treffpunkt, in progress). Brooklyn Reel was
completed on 25 October 1988.
DCM,
18 Nov 88
Brooklyn Reel is a
compositional gag, a deliberate misreading of Reich, Glass, Schoenberg, Bach
and traditional (bluegrass) fiddle music. In fact, it is a 12-tone serial
piece, using only the twelve transpositions of the row's primary form. In it, I
try to compress stylistic references into passing gestures. Brooklyn Reel
sings lyrically, pulses minimally, follows a strict twelve-tone ordering, and
hoes down.
Brooklyn Reel is a
compositional miniature, a deliberate misreading of Reich, Glass, Schoenberg,
Bach and traditional (bluegrass) fiddle music. In fact, it is a 12-tone serial
piece, using only the twelve transpositions of the row's primary form. In it, I
try to compress stylistic references into passing gestures. In regard to its
brevity, it is my pleasure to quote Italo Calvino: " . . . I will confine
myself to telling you that I dream of immense cosmologies, sagas, and epics all
reduced to the dimensions of an epigram."
Months
after I had finished Symmetry Jumps, I came across a paragraph in a book
review (of a book unrelated to my piece) that can also be applied to my piece:
.
. . traditional literary scholars might categorize it as a Menippean satire--a
form characterized, according to Mikhail Bakhtin (who knew more about it than
most people), by "an extraordinary freedom of plot and philosophical
invention," "sharp contrasts and oxymoronic combinations," and
"a wide use of inserted genres."
This
description serves the piece well. It pleases me too, because a distant
inspiration for Symmetry Jumps came from Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's
Rainbow, very much a Menippean satire.
The
great freedom of plot in Symmetry Jumps comes within a rather formal framework.
There is one 21-note melody running throughout the piece. In some variations,
it is treated as a whole. In others, only segments of the melody are developed.
These segments are developed in the order in which they originally occurred in
the long melody. In these segmented variations, the segmentation occurs at
different points, so the segments are different in each variation. The beginning
and ending segments are naturally similar, so as the work cycles through its
variations, formal aspects of a rondo can be found.
--Dave Meckler
Phasing (with chaos?),
1993, tape. First performance: UCSD New Music Forum
Remorse Code, 1990, 2 fl,
vln. First performance: reading, UCSD Composition Jury, 1990
Parametric Conversation,
1989, trumpet solo. First performance: 1989, Robert Mulhauser
A
study in algorithmic melodic variation.
Statistical Variations,
1988, English horn solo. First performance: 1988, Heather Stapleton
A
study in algorithmic melodic variation.
Plagioclase, 1989,
clarinet solo. First performance: 1989, Heather McDonald
dur:
c. 4 min
Plagioclase is a short
experimental piece. It is based on a concept I call pitch-class rhythm,
a generalization of harmonic rhythm. I have noticed, in listening to
some pieces, feelings of temporal pushing and pulling that are sometimes not
related to obvious surface rhythms. As a way of investigating this experience,
I have used a complement scheme to relate the cardinality of a set to how many
times it is repeated. A set of 5 pitch classes is heard 7 times, 10 pitches
twice, etc.
Plagioclase
is a mineral, formed within the earth's crust, a product of powerful and hidden
forces.
DCM
1989
Feldspar, 1989, oboe
solo. First performance: reading, UCSD class, 1994, Susan Barrett
studies
of relating set repetition to pitch class cardinality
Two Similar Paths, 1989,
cello solo. First performance: 1989, Gavin Borchert
First Deconstruction in Wood,
1988, percussion solo. First performance: Kevin Ess
This
piece was written for Kevin Ess. He gave several excellent performances
of this work, one of which was interrupted by a fire alarm. The work is,
in a coincidental homage to Cage, 5:44 in duration.
A Recent Mirror, 1988,
tape, 3 actors. First performance: 1988, The Reading Group, Studio
1313, Cincinnati; Charlie Flatt, Maggie Kelly, David Meckler
ADS66, 1988, glockenspiel
solo. First performance: 1989, CCM, Erica Montgomery
A
birthday piece for Allen Sapp.
Ergodic Academic Dodecaphony, 1987, string quartet. First performance: informal reading,
Susan Jensen, Mary Davis, Mark Newkirk, Karen, Cincinnati, 1989
Fast Food Slit Wrists,
perc [snare drum], actor. First performance: Cincinnati,1989,
Lourin Plant, Erica Montgomery
Chases, hammer dulcimer,
viola
Pistachio Reel, hammer
dulcimer, viola