Michael Clayville

Pitch Patterns in Steve Reich’s “Clapping Music”

Post author By mich5812
Post date March 9, 2013
No Comments on Pitch Patterns in Steve Reich’s “Clapping Music”

Clapping Music

Alarm Will Sound will perform Steve Reich’s Clapping Music on the 16th at Stanford. (If you don’t know the piece, see here.) It will be a full ensemble performance of the piece with Steve Reich, the man himself, clapping along. Steve has never done the piece in such a way before, and quite possibly it’s the first time it will ever be done with such a large group. (Though it has been juggled before.)

Practicing it got me thinking about my past experiences with the work and particularly an anecdote that I vaguely remembered from a music theory course. What I recalled was that there was a way to map notes to the rhythm and as the pattern phased against itself it would line up in significant ways.

I did the most logical thing for me: I contacted Gavin Chuck, AWS managing director (and music theorist extraordinaire) and Alan Pierson, AWS music director. A lengthy (strange) email exchange ensued: Alan pointed out that there are twelve eighth notes in the pattern which can be mapped to the chromatic scale. Gavin took it a step further:

Gavin I

Geeky mathematics aside the short of it comes down to… yes, there exists a pattern. If we map each beat (rests included) to the chromatic scale we get this pattern:

which is a D minor scale starting on the seventh scale degree and including the raised seventh. OK, so what next? If we continue to map the subsequent patterns the same way we end up with all the other minor keys (natural and sharp seventh scale degrees included). Now, we can look at the way each key lines up with our original minor scale by noting which “beats” line up. I’ve done the work for you:

Table

I’m not sure if it’s much more than a novelty but I took a few minutes and created a score highlighting the common pitches. Enjoy!

Tags Alarm Will Sound, Clapping Music, Common Tones, Composers, Minor Scales, Music, Music Theory, Steve Reich

Music NOVUS Trombone

Novus Residency At Dickinson College – February 12-17, 2013

Post author By mich5812
Post date March 4, 2013
1 Comment on Novus Residency At Dickinson College – February 12-17, 2013

Parable - Ravens

Novus had the great pleasure of being in residence at Dickinson College last month. It was a week of incredibly productive collaborations and interactions with students and faculty. We talked to the choir about blend and balance, performed and gave feedback on student compositions, collaborated with the Department of Theater and Dance on two pieces, worked with the brass students and much, much more.

Flight of the Four Kings

Flight - concert Dance Rehearsal In Rubendall-3

Dance Rehearsal

In Flight of the Four Kings, the trombone quartet written for us by Chris Brubeck, we collaborated with dancers from the college. Several months ago we sent a recording of the piece to Dawn Springer at Dickinson. Dawn selected dancers and developed choreography to enhance the music. This semester Sarah Skaggs, director of dance at Dickinson, took over the work and spearheaded an incredible performance.

Oedipus at Colonus

Oedipus-3 Oedipus-1

Another exciting collaboration was on Robert Pound’s Oedipus at Colonus. Several years ago Robert composed incidental music for the Sophocles play for which the work is named. He chose to write for oboe and harp, and trombone quartet because of their links with ancient instruments. For this production Dickinson professors Sherry Harper-McCombs and Karen Kirkham led college actors in performing excerpts from the play to go along with Robert’s music and even had students construct masks for the performance. Benjamin Farrar, another Dickinson faculty member, did lighting design for this as well as the entire concert. Meghan Levy, a Dickinson alum, created images to be projected during each segment.

A highlight of the performance was Classics professor Marc Mastrangelo’s delivery of Oedipus’s curse of Polyneices. Here’s a clip from the tech rehearsal:

We also took the piece to the college library where we performed excerpts, the composer discussed the construction of the piece, Marc talked about the importance of the play and students recited lines.

NOVUS_Oedipus_20130214_7489

Classes

With Choir Composer Readings

We spent much of our time at the college when we weren’t rehearsing talking to students in various classes. Other than the work we did with the choir, composition and brass students, we also talked to a music theory class about Webern’s Langsamer Satz, a music appreciation class about life as a musician, and middle and high school band students about everything from the trombone to practice habits to careers in music.

Final Concert

All this hard work was capped off with a concert on the final day. The students performed superbly and Novus filled out the program with works by John Orfe, JacobTV, Eve Beglarian and Webern. Thanks to everyone at Dickinson who made this possible starting with everyone mentioned above and also: Stacy Rohrer, Keith Novak, Amy Wlodarski, Blake Wilson and Blanka Bednarz.

Photos

1969

It’s been a long two weeks. I was busy with NOVUS and a week-long residency at Dickinson College, a concert for the opening of a new hall at Messiah College, Alarm Will Sound and two intense days at the Eastman School of Music, another day in Rochester to do a masterclass for students at the Eastman School, back to Messiah College for a recording session with their brass ensemble, two more days of teaching and another recording session at Messiah. I hope to write about most of these things but I’m going to start with the one that’s easiest to compile my materials on: 1969.

1969 is Alarm Will Sound’s multimedia concert event that focuses on that year. Particularly, it centers on a meeting that could have happened (but did not) between John Lennon (“left field pop music writer”) and Karlheinz Stockhausen (“left field avant garde composer”). We’ve performed the show more than a handful of times now including at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall but returning to it is still exciting. The powerful images and music from that one year give me goosebumps every time. I took some pictures from this production: