We creators of art tend to have, shall we say, colorful ways of saying things. I sometimes become aware of the language we use to describe certain musical ideas to the point where I suddenly understand how ridiculous things might sound to outsiders.
But, all too frequently, the words we do use to talk about what might be happening are absolutely spot on.
I was turning pages for Laura Schwendinger’s Wet Ink, and there are sections of the music where the instruments will perform one line of music, but the line is dispersed amongst the instruments. Schoenberg called it Klangfarbenmelodie, literally sound-color-melody. It’s basically an eloquent way of describing what I just described. Imagine, for example, taking your favorite melody (let’s just pretend it’s “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” for simplicity). A flute plays the part that goes, “Row, row, row your” (i.e. do, do, do, re) and a clarinet joins the flute on “your” and then continues the melody with, “boat, gently down the” (i.e. re, mi, mi, re, mi, fa) and a soprano joins the clarinet on “the” and finishes the phrase with, “stream” (i.e. fa sol). (She might continue on until, “Merrily, merrily, mer-,” and an oboe might join in on mer- and continue with, “-rily, merrily, life is but,” but hopefully you get the idea.)
Anyway, so there are these things in the Schwendinger where this sort of thing happens, except all in quick succession. The piano starts with a sixteenth note F-natural on a downbeat (or something, I can’t remember), the cello plays a sixteenth note C-sharp on the second sixteenth of the beat (or something, but you get the idea), the viola picks up the following sixteenths with G-natural and B-flat, and the violin finishes the following downbeat with an F-sharp. So a microcosm of the music, but imagine something like this happening for at least three beats or so, or sometimes for about one and a half measures.
We kept returning to rehearse these types of gestures, and whenever they came up, we started referring to them as “cascade things.”
Suddenly I feel like I’ve told a really, really long story in the hopes that the story would have a really, really funny punchline. But, I think that this is one of those moments where I’ve now realized that the story isn’t very good, as it now just comes down to, “Oh! By the way! I was sitting in rehearsal, and we kept calling Klangfarbenmelodie ‘cascade things’, and I suddenly become ultra aware of how funny that might sound to outsiders who just walked into the conversation, except I’ve just now realized that it’s actually not very funny at all.”
And now I’ve just realized that I’ve spent the better part of 45 minutes formulating everything up to this point in print, only to discover that this story isn’t very good, but that I’m going to post it to the blog anyway. I hope you’re not too disappointed.
So, anyway. Moving on.
Today saw another fantastic day at the Bennington Chamber Music Conference. Wet Ink is coming together marvelously, and today in rehearsal of my Wind Quintet, I was absolutely impressed with how quickly the music has started coming together. Yesterday we were all worried about trying to figure out where the beat was with notes tied across barlines and nothing happening on downbeats, but today there was a real, organic pulse that all the performers felt.
And real music began to develop today, too! They are all listening to each other, finding the perfect length for staccatos, learning how to comfortably fit five notes into a single beat without making it feel anxious, placing the mordents expressively, finding the most wonderful ways to play distant horn calls, and so much more. I really couldn’t be happier. It all just suddenly feels like so much has just gelled very quickly overnight.
I also got a chance to meet some of the other conference goers at a little get-together over sushi and prosecco. It was really very nice. I spoke to several individuals about their week thus far, told stories about bad page turning incidents (fortunately, I’ve never caused any major disruptions whenever I’ve page turned), learned about where some people were from and what else they do beyond music, and listened to stories about travelling to Venice and Turkey. It was also a nice opportunity to meet the board for a chance to thank them for a really wonderful week. And really, thank-you… for a really wonderful week.
Tomorrow in the Carriage Barn at 4:00pm shall see the premiere of my Wind Quintet and Laura’s Wet Ink in addition to performances by other groups on campus.It’s going to be a great show!