1950-present Miscellaneous Chamber Music

Question 1

Name 7 miscellaneous chamber works ca.1950-present.

Answer 1

• George Crumb: Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale) for electric flute, cello, and amplified piano (1971)
• Elliott Carter: Triple Duo for flute/clarinet, violin/cello, piano/percussion (1983)
• John Cage: Seven for flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, viola, and cello (1988)
• Karlheinz Stockhausen: Helikopter-Streichquartett for 4 helicopters & string quartet (1995)
• Osvaldo Golijov: Last Round, nonet for double string quartet and double bass (1996)
• Steve Reich: Triple String Quartet (1999)
• Paul Moravec: Tempest Fantasy for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano (2004)

Question 2

Piece: miscellaneous chamber work by Crumb.

Answer 2

George Crumb: Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale) for electric flute, cello, and amplified piano (1971)

• its inspiration came from the recordings of whale songs
• Although the piece has eight movements, structurally, the piece is looked at in three parts: the beginning “(…for the beginning of time)”, the second part of five variations named after geologic time periods and the third “(…for the end of time)”.
• In addition to instrumentation techniques, performers are asked to wear half black masks. It is highly suggested that whenever possible the performance be done under blue lighting. The cello is tuned scordatura, and the piece requires the use of a grand piano as the techniques required would not be possible on an upright model.
• 1. Vocalise: Sing flute, performer sings into flute while playing
• 2. Sea Theme: “Aeolian harp” performer strums piano strings
• 3. Archeozoic: cello harmonics and chisel on piano strings
• 4. Proterozoic: Paper clip strums piano strings and sing flute
• 5. Paleozoic: Harmonic glissando for cello
• 6. Mesozoic: Glass rod on piano strings
• 7. Cenozoic: Harmonics called whistle
• 8. Sea-Nocturne: Antique cymbals

Question 3

Piece: miscellaneous chamber work by Reich.

Answer 3

Steve Reich: Triple Quartet (1999)

• an exploration of counterpoint and phasing
• a commission piece for the Kronos Quartet
• Triple Quartet is for three string quartets. For Kronos (or any other single string quartet) to perform the piece they must pre-record quartets two and three and then play the quartet one part along with the pre-recorded tape. Alternatively, the piece can be played by 12 or more string players with no tape.
• The title of Steve Reich’s 1999 Triple Quartet informs us not only of its instrumentation but also of the central role mathematical relationships play in shaping the music. “I knew I wasn’t going to write for one string quartet because I’m not interested in one string quartet. For me, it doesn’t have enough multiples of the same instrument. Where’s the second viola and second cello?” recalled Reich in a 2000 interview. Enlarging the ensemble to three quartets (originally, two were pre-recorded) allowed Reich an exponentially greater number of opportunities to create and manipulate interlocking relationships.
• It is a suite in three movements originally inspired by fifth movement of Bela Bartok’s Fourth Quartet; the movements alternate fast, slow, and fast, with thick contrapuntal melodies rising and falling throughout. “Bartók can get more going in one string quartet than I can with three, but nevertheless, I was saying to myself when I wrote this, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to keep that energy going?’”
• Though they are played without a break, sudden changes clearly mark the movements. Like Bartók, Reich is a master of generating complex formal relationships that never, however, obscure the listening experience.
• It is organized harmonically on four dominant chords in minor keys a minor third apart: E minor, G minor, B-flat minor, C-sharp, minor, and then returning to E minor to form a cycle. The first movement goes through this harmonic cycle twice with a section about one minute long on each of the four dominant chords. The result is a kind of variation form.
• Responsibility for “keeping the energy going” falls most obviously to rhythm, but Reich’s signature minimalist use of pared-down, repetitive motives allows for a great deal of interplay among the various musical elements.
• 1. As in the Bartók movement that inspired it, beginning repeated notes put laser focus on the rhythmic relationships, as each quartet pursues an independent rhythmic path. Energy is also created through the transformation of melodic material, from single notes to brief motives then to melodies with a distinct Eastern European ethnic shape, simultaneously evoking Bartók and Reich’s Jewish heritage. As the rhythmic and melodic motives combine and recombine in ever-shifting patterns, the relationships seem to expand from arithmetic to geometric, their cumulative effect a rotating musical cube. The harmonic treatment reveals the influence of Reich’s recent introduction to Alfred Schnittke: “It was as if he was pushing me to thicken the plot and particularly the harmonic language.” He translated this into a harmonic framework based on a series of minor chords separated by thirds; as Reich says: “When you modulate in minor thirds you don’t really have a sense of harmonic movement. You do, however, get a feeling of freshening up the atmosphere because you are changing key.” First, each harmonic section is presented in a different meter, after which the harmonic cycle is repeated with asymmetrical changing meters within each section. Rhythmically the first movement has the second and third quartet playing interlocking chords while the first quartet plays longer melodies in canon between the first violin and viola against the second violin and cello.
• 2. In the second, a sinuous melody in E minor spins out over sustained accompaniment. Both melody and its call-and-response treatment suggest Jewish cantillation. The atmosphere is mesmerizing, yet there is still a sense of fresh energy from harmonic changes, as the mathematical relationships seem to create a kind of suspended musical animation. The slow movement is more completely contrapuntal with a long slow melody in canon eventually in all 12 voices. It stays in E minor throughout.
• 3. The third movement returns to the propulsive repeated notes and the harmonic progression of the first, creating large-scale structural symmetry even while the relative length of the movements - each shorter than the previous - creates a large-scale sense of acceleration. It resumes the original fast tempo and maintains the harmonic chord cycle, but modulates back and forth between keys more rapidly. The final section of the movement is in the initial key of E minor, and there the piece finally cadences.

Question 4

Piece: miscellaneous chamber work by Golijov.

Answer 4

Osvaldo Golijov: Last Round, nonet for double string quartet and double bass (1996)

• “Piazzolla’s bandoneon was able to condense all the symbols of tango. The eroticism of legs and torsos in the dance was reduced to the intricate patterns of his virtuoso fingers (a simple C major scale in the bandoneon zigzags so much as to leave an inexperienced player’s fingers tangled). The melancholy of the singer’s voice was transposed to the breathing of the bandoneon’s continuous opening and closing. The macho attitude of the tangueros was reflected in his pose on stage: standing upright, chest forward, right leg on a stool, the bandoneon on top of it, being by turns raised, battered, caressed.
• The title is borrowed from a short story on boxing by Julio Cortázar, the metaphor for an imaginary chance for Piazzolla’s spirit to fight one more time (he used to get into fistfights throughout his life). The piece is conceived as an idealized bandoneon. Golijov’s string writing captures the quintessential sound of Piazzolla and tango, the moaning wheeze of the bandoneón, at once seductive and sarcastic.
• Last Round is also a sublimated tango dance. Two quartets confront each other, separated by the focal bass, with violins and violas standing up as in the traditional tango orchestras. The bows fly in the air as inverted legs in crisscrossed choreography, always attracting and repelling each other, always in danger of clashing, always avoiding it with the immutability that can only be acquired by transforming hot passion into pure pattern.”
• 1. Movido, urgente - Macho, Cool and Dangerous: The first movement represents the act of a violent compression of the bandoneon. It is a propulsive distillation of nuevo tango gestures and Piazzolla’s rhythmic obsessions.
• 2. Muertes del ángel: The second movement is a final, seemingly endless opening sigh of the bandoneon, a tango elegy both impassioned and reflective, as rich in affect as it is in effects. It is actually a fantasy over the refrain of the song ‘My Beloved Buenos Aires’, composed by the legendary Carlos Gardel in the 1930’s).

Question 5

Piece: miscellaneous chamber work by Cage

Answer 5

John Cage: Seven for flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, viola and cello (1988)
- All of the Number Pieces are titled in a way that readily distinguishes them from the rest of the Cage’s compositions and provides the basic information about the ensemble size and the piece’s place within the series. Each title consists of a written out number (i.e. One, Five, Seven, etc.). This denotes the number of performers needed for the composition.
- In addition to the written number, sometimes there is an added numeral at the end of the title (Two2, Five3, etc.) The numeral denotes the fact that the piece is the 2nd or 3rd piece in the series of compositions for that number of players (i.e. One4 is the fourth composition for a single player).
- All of the Number Pieces were composed during the last six years of Cage’s life, 1987–1992.
- Beyond the obvious titles of these pieces, arguably the greatest distinguishing musical factor in the composition of the Number Pieces is Cage’s use of time brackets to set the musical content within the form. In Cage’s time brackets, the note or notes are placed inside a bracket, and are to be performed within a range of time given in seconds by the composer, and up to the performer’s discretion within that time frame. This allows for multiple overlapping harmonies amongst players and a great deal of flexibility for the performer to shape the melody of the piece.
- There are two kinds of time brackets used in the number pieces. The first is flexible, which means the note can start and end within a time period, i.e. start time = 30”-52.5” and end time = 45” – 1’07.5”. The performer can start the sound anywhere between 30 seconds and 52.5 seconds and then, of course end that same sound between 45 seconds and 1 minute and 7.5 seconds.
- The other time bracket is “fixed”. “Fixed” time brackets do not give a period in which the note starts or the note ends, but gives a definite range within which the sound should happen. For example, a “fixed” time bracket may look like this: 1’30 – 2’.
- There are two periods of Number Pieces and they are delineated specifically by how Cage came up with the lengths and placements of his time brackets. During the first period, from 1987 to 1989, the construction of the time brackets fell into a series of categories based on start and end time spaces (i.e. 15 seconds, 30 seconds, etc.) and where they were placed in the composition was based solely on either Cage’s composerly intuition or his use of chance operations like the I Ching. During the second period, between 1990 and 1992, Cage relied on Andrew Culver’s “TBrack” computer software to come up with the lengths and placement of the time brackets. This allowed the composer to be presented with more complex possibilities within the creation of the brackets, while still maintaining the feeling of compositional detachment achieved using chance operations.
- Each of these time brackets have to contain material, of course, and Cage didn’t stray far from his previous methods of choosing his pitches. Cage had admitted his general disinterest in harmony as such on many occasions and very frequently used the I Ching to help him in choosing which notes each instrument would play, creating seemingly random harmonic and melodic combinations. In the Number Pieces, he uses a similar process to provide the material inside his time brackets, thus combining older and newer processes.
For these pieces, note choices came generally from Cage writing down a range of pitches that will be used for each instrument, for example, the flute’s range may consist of one octave from C1 to B1. Each of the pitches within that range were given a number. He would then use the numbers to consult the I Ching, as to which pitches would appear in each time bracket.
- For example, in Seven, Cage first gave a one-octave range to the flute, then numbered each of those pitches. He then used the processes of the I Ching to select the first tone, say a C, then used the I Ching again to decide if that tone would repeat or would vary. When he went to the next time bracket, he would exclude the C from his choices of pitch and work through the I Ching again using the smaller number of pitches he had left.
- In Seven, each part contains 20 time brackets, all but one flexible. The duration of the brackets is the same, but again, always with one exception. Flute, clarinet, and percussion play single sounds, brackets for strings contain from one to three sounds, and the piano part has three to five sounds per bracket.

Question 6

Piece: miscellaneous chamber work by Carter.

Answer 6

Elliott Carter: Triple Duo for flute/clarinet, violin/cello, piano/percussion (1983)

• A creation of the composer’s lengthy “late phase,” Triple Duo already clues us in to the strain of quirky playfulness that emerges from its complicated high jinks. Indeed, the opening gambit, with its mock warming up as the players metaphorically clear their throats, gives us a spritz of ultra-modernist Haydn. Schiff characterizes the Carter of this vintage as tending “toward an ever-greater lucidity.”
• Triple Duo, for an ensemble of six musicians, is a work, as its name implies, that treats the group as three pairs of instruments: flute/clarinet, violin/cello, piano/percussion (the last group is given a defining structural role in articulating the form). Each of these pairs has its own repertory of ideas and moods, inhabiting its own sphere as defined by timbre, characteristic intervals, harmonic features, and rhythmic patterns. “the woodwinds gurgle, shriek, and coo like a pair of amorous love birds, the strings scrape and pluck comically, and the percussion and piano evoke the more angular variety of free jazz.” This free fantasy involves various contrasts, conflicts and reconciliations between the three duos. At times the duos also join forces to create a larger combined entity (particularly in the unearthly beauty of the central part of the work). Carter’s focus on the material nature of the sonorities in each duo’s “repertory” results in an “engagingly tactile quality.” Over the two-part work’s uninterrupted span of 20 minutes, the volatile ways in which Carter cross-cuts their highly contrasting domains generates an enormous sense of drama and energy. Commencing, with a gesture from the piano, Triple Duo splices together sections we’re used to encountering in a linear progression in conventional classical works. The musical layout resembles pieces from an Allegro, Adagio, and Scherzo that have been “chopped up and pasted together, a fine example of cinematic influence.”
• The piece eventually reconfigures its unusual contrapuntal perspective into an Allegro fantastico finale; “an abstraction and magnification of jazz: ultra-bop.” Carter’s writing for the ensemble reaches a conclusion of delirious joy that stands apart in his oeuvre.
• In a survey of a century of the Pierrot chamber ensemble, the musicologist Will Robin considers Carter’s treatment of his instrumentation “a classic example of Schoenberg avoidance,” evincing “an entirely different kind of mania from Pierrot.”

Question 7

Piece: miscellaneous chamber work by Moravec.

Answer 7

Paul Moravec: Tempest Fantasy for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano (2004)

• Tempest Fantasy (2002) won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize.
• It’s a set of five through-composed tone poems on Shakespeare’s Tempest for clarinet(s), violin, cello, and piano, described by its composer as “a musical meditation on characters, moods, situations, and lines of text from my favorite Shakespeare play”. Moravec writes in a vibrant and complex tonality, thoroughly appropriate to the text’s magical world.
• The three main characters (Ariel, Prospero, and Caliban) are given individual portraits (the first three movements) based on the nature and selected speeches of the three characters after whom they are named. The poetic slow fourth movement (‘Sweet Airs’) was inspired by Caliban’s uncharacteristically elegant third-act speech: “Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.” The 5th movement is a wild Fantasia finale which elaborates on the various musical elements of the earlier movements, and draws them together into a convivial finale.
• The piece is absorbing and virtuosic, heavily influenced by Gershwin in its jazz- leaning harmonies, and it has plain spoken lyricism but with a voice of its own.
• 1. The perpetual-motion opening movement, ‘‘Ariel,’’ comes out of the world of Poulenc. Mr. Moravec peppers the style with some harmonically unmoored passages and by impishly fracturing the phrases.
• 2. '’Prospero,’’ with its ruminative, impressionistic episodes
• 3. the earthy, playfully ominous ‘‘Caliban,’’ with its hints of Prokofiev
• 4. the aptly titled ‘‘Sweet Airs.’’ The finale grows more wild and vehement, and the performance was consistently brilliant.

Question 8

Name 7 composers of works for Pierrot(-like) ensemble.

Answer 8

• Olivier Messiaen: Quatour pour la fin du temps for Piano, Clarinet, Violin, and Cello (1941)
• Milton Babbitt: Arie da Capo (1979)
• Joan Tower: Petroushskates (1980)
• Elliott Carter: Triple Duo for flute/clarinet, violin/cello, piano/percussion (1983)
• John Cage: Seven for flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, viola, and cello (1988)
• Paul Moravec: Tempest Fantasy for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano (2004)
• Steve Reich: Double Sextet for a double sextet of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion (2007)

Question 9

Who is eighth blackbird?

Answer 9

• ## eighth blackbird is a contemporary music sextet which consists of a Pierrot ensemble (flutes, clarinets, violin/viola, cello, piano) + purcussion.