Zugunruhe continued…

So now my piece is finished, and I’ve rather neglected this blog, but I promised I’d write more, so here it is. 

It’s the first time in quite a while (nearly five years) that I’ve written a piece and been happy with the result; previously I’ve finished a piece and thought, “well, its ok I suppose, but I wish I had another week to change that bit”.  There has been some of that this time round, but much less than normal.  I’m my own harshest critic, so its inevitable really.  

The workshops have been really great, and haven’t thrown up as many problems as I’d expected.  I’ve kept the extended techniques that often characterise my music to a minimum, which may have made life a lot easier, but there are so many notes in this piece that to add lots of extended techniques as well would have been too much.  That said, this piece is concerned with a kind of ‘information overload’, as I mentioned in my last post, but that comes from the density of information presented all at once, rather than the type of information.  In other words, at the opening, there are many gestures and harmonic ideas superimposed, in such a way that each one is almost unidentifiable.

Throughout the opening, more jagged gestures begin to come to the fore, and move around a limited harmonic framework, before blurring into a moment of aural cleansing.  In other pieces, I would consider this a ‘moment of clarity’, where the harmonic ideas behind the piece are presented in their simplest form, usually a chorale.  To an extent, this is also the case with this piece, but the chorale is blurred into the the glissandi gestures.  

Thats all I want to say about the piece itself, as I said before, I’m not keen on blow by blow accounts of pieces, its never a good as just listening to it!

Steven

Hi Rob, I’m quite pleased you’ve asked a couple of questions to get the whole thing started; I was in a bit of a quandary about it, being a few weeks into the project!

My piece, Elusive Tangibility V: Zugunruhe, is the penultimate part of a cycle of works, beginning with Elusive Tangibility I: Lone Shade for clarinet solo, and through gradually increasing instrumentations to Elusive Tangibility VI: Pyroclastic Drift for orchestra.  Each piece is based on the same harmonic procedure of expanding chords, and also on the idea of something that can be seen, but has no physical presence we can touch, such as ghosts, steam, and fire.  This ties into my obsession with timbre and also my penchant for very diffuse orchestration. 

I originally came across the term “Zugunruhe” in an article in The Guardian a few weeks ago.  I’ve been interested in unusual words for some time now, and just how specialised and/or underused a word can be.  You can read the whole article here. 

Zugunruhe actually means “migratory restlessness”, or “the migratory drive in birds”.  Firstly, I just thought it was a great word, which had all the gravitas that a title needs, but also being unusual enough not to lead the listener into the piece too much, and finally with a definition that could lead to interesting music – after all, many documentaries feature panoramas of huge flocks of birds in flight, and its always very striking.  In response to Mica’s post, I had actually seen that documentary, but I’d completely forgotten about it until I saw that video – its just amazing, a bird that can imitate whatever’s around it, including a camera!

I’m not generally a big fan of programmes in my music.  Although much of my work has an extra-musical stimulus, there is almost never a direct ‘storyline’; but a particular gesture in the piece might correlate to an idea in the original stimulus – in this case, the concept of migratory restlessness in birds.  At the focal point of my piece, for instance, there is a series of glissandi gestures that evoke a flock of birds forming constantly evolving shapes in the sky.  I’ve found a youtube video of it, but unfortunately the best I could find was an advert for a well-known lager brand, here.

The workshop a couple of weeks ago was great, and helped me to consolidate some of the ideas in the piece, particularly in the opening, which features the most dense and complex material in a deliberate ‘information overload’ which gradually draws itself into focus.  Since the workshop, I have rewritten the opening section wholesale, to keep the same density of material, but with more subtle orchestration than before. 

I think that’s enough for you all to digest for now, I’ll post again soon with some more details about my general approach to composition.  I’ll try to keep it brief next time!

Steve