Tag: Alarm Will Sound

Categories
Music Music Theory

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:

CC#DEFGABb

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!

Categories
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:

Miles and Chandalier
Miles Brown
Miphy
Mike Harley playing the bassoon.
9
The top of the show. Alan Pierson playing “A Day in the Life.”
My instruments
Conversation between Lennon, Berio and Stockhausen
Robert Stanton
Robert Stanton rehearsing as Stockhausen
Lennon, Berio and Berio
John Patrick Walker as John Lennon and David Chandler as Luciano Berio
One note
Stockhausen discussing Sri Auribindo
Riots
Lennon in front of image from civil rights riots
Stimmung
Performing Stockhausen’s Stimmung
I arranged these songs for my wife to sing.
Courtney Orlando accompanied by Erin Lesser in Luciano Berio’s “Michelle II,” his setting of The Beatles’s song.
Michelle
More Michelle
O King
Images from “O King”
Barrigan
Jason Price as Father David Barrigan
Jackie O
Christa Robinson as Jackie O
Bernstein
Mike Harley rehearses his role as Leonard Bernstein
Sinfonia!
Conducting Courtney Orlando’s arrangement of the third movement of Berio’s Sinfonia
There would be prejudice
Recreating Yoko Ono’s attempt to remove prejudice by wearing a bag
Swoon
The ladies swooning over Lennon
Stockhausen
Robert Stanton as Stockhausen
Categories
Composers Music Thoughts Trombone

Canzonas Americanas

Canzonas Americanas

I’m a little behind on this. Canzonas Americanas with music by Derek Bermel, was released last November, and since then it’s received decent reviews. The Guardian says Alarm Will Sound plays with “panache,“and Anne Midgette of the Washington Post placed the album in her best of 2012. (And the consumers on Amazon and iTunes seem to like it as well.)

The recording contains all music of Derek Bermel, including the title work Cazonas Americanas which was written for the LA Phil in 2010, Three Rivers (2001), Continental Divide (1996) and Hot Zone (1995). In addition to AWS, the album features vocal performances by Luciana Souza (Grammy award winner) on Canzonas, Kiera Duffy on At the End of the World (2000) and Timothy Jones on Natural Selection (2000).

I like that the trombone actually gets some work in Derek’s music. In Three Rivers the trombone is part of the funky, lugubrious, dissonant line that occurs throughout the piece.

Three Rivers - Excerpt 1

The part is entirely playable on tenor trombone with the exception of one low B that happens towards the beginning but has a feel that is very well suited to the bass trombone.

The trombone also participates in the smoother, quicker cascading passages (one example is at 1:30, the trombone has a more prominent role in the subsequent entrances) that recur.

Three Rivers - Excerpt 2

There are also good times to be had for the trombone in Canzonas Americanas. Check the first movement for things like this:

Canzonas Americanas - Mvt 1

This passage is part of a pretty densely scored section. I found I had to play fairly loudly to be heard (c. 1:40):

And the third movement has a nice passage where the brass joins the fantastic electric guitar/bass part:

Canazonas Americanas - Mvt 3

The rest of the disc is just as interesting. Natural Selection  is written in a way that makes the ensemble sound bigger than it is. The trombone range is wide: in the third song “Got My Bag of Brown Shoes” it goes down to pedal F and as high as E at the top of the treble clef (with some other “as high as possible” pitches). The first song, “One Fly,” reminded me of the fly episode of Breaking Bad, so I give you the Bermel/Breaking Bad mashup.

Bonus: Derek also arranged some Conlon Nancarrow for Alarm Will Sound that we recorded for our album a/rhythmia. Lots of trombone work to be done in this one too. The opening looks like a no brainer for the bass trombone. The trombone should hocket with the bassoon to form the boogie woogie piano part. If you have short arms like me you can end up doing damage to yourself trying to play all those low C’s on a tenor trombone.

Study 3a - beginning

But just a short while later in the transcription the trombone part has a duet with the trumpet that takes it up to E flat at the top of the treble clef, a decidedly un-bass trombone lick.

Study 3a - Trumpet duet

The challenges make it fun. Do your best to enjoy it if you ever have the chance to work it up.