Contemporary Ensemble

Jenny and I attended the Contemporary Ensemble on November 14^th at 8:15 pm.  This concert was held at the Hockett Family Recital Hall, and Jorge Grossmann and Jeffery Meyer were the directors.  The instruments that were played at this performance were the flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, violin, viola, cello, bass, harpsichord, and percussion.  Overall, the music that I heard at this concert was far from anything I have ever heard before.  The sounds and beats were unlike what I expected to hear at a “contemporary” ensemble.  When I hear the word contemporary, beats from the techno, country, or pop songs etc. that are widely listened to across various cultures come to mind. Instead I heard beats that were harsh, violent, and abstract.   

The second piece of the program was called Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.  This piece was composed by Lukas Foss, and it included a solo soprano singer, a flute, piano, and a percussion section.  Where do I begin?  This piece was full of surprises and sounds that I have never experienced before.  Similar to the performance, Foss is unlike most of the composers we have learned about in class.  He preferred to create music that did not neatly fall under a classification because he did not want himself or his music to be confined by a label.  Around the time that he wrote this piece he founded the Improvisation Chamber Ensemble at UCLA.  Comparatively, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird demonstrates a lot of similar techniques used in improvisation.  Due to the fact that this composition was composed during the era of the Blues, it isn’t surprising that this piece displays a background in improvisation.  Comparable to Louis Armstrong’s Savory Blues, Foss’s piece also has a melody that is highly syncopated.  His unique use of different mallets, a cowbell, and metal Japanese bowls created for an interesting mixture of sounds.  The melodies he created with these instruments were striking since they are not the typical melodies heard in music nowadays.  The pianist and percussionist played these instruments on the strings of the piano.  For example, the percussionist would run the cow bell across the strings.  This created a somewhat unpleasant sound.  The flute also played a vital role in this ensemble.  It was offstage and out of site for the entire piece, and it represented the actions of the blackbird.  It is intriguing how the flute symbolized the blackbird because when thinking of a bird, they usually are hidden among the branches of a tree yet are still detectable by the music they create.  The vocal portion of this piece was extremely unusual as well.  The vocalist would go from whispering to almost yelling in the same sentence.  This dramatic change in dynamics added to the obscurity of the piece.  

Atmosphere Deroulante, composed by Renato Hanriot, showed many aspects that were similar to pieces composed during the Modernism Age.  Comparatively, The Rite of Spring shows a lot of similarities with Hanriot's piece.  Atomosphere Deroulante is about the unstoppable forces of nature.  The texture of the piece represents this idea quite well.  The piano, percussion, cello, violin, clarinet, and flute did not demonstrate a lot of unity in their melodies and harmonies.  The piano, percussion, cello, and clarinet begin the piece off playing at a very low register.  Then the violin enters followed by the flute.   Similar to the stratification and disjunction found in Stravinky's piece, the instruments in Hanriot's piece are layered as well.  This goes along with the characteristics during the Modernism Age because of all chaos within the piece.   

This wouldn’t be a concert that I would normally attend.  I didn’t enjoy it because the music was difficult to relate to and there was never a steady beat.  Also, the overall tones and pitches that this ensemble developed were not pleasing to my ears.  The percussion instruments, such as the cow bell, would create ear piercing sounds when they were dropped on the piano strings and it would cause me to flinch.  Unfortunately, this performance did not make me want to attend another concert.  I didn’t enjoy the group of compositions in this performance as much as the other compositions I heard at other concerts because it was not soothing.  I prefer to listen to music that is peaceful.

You Raise Me Up

Rite of Spring

The 20^th century displayed many characteristics of Modernism.  Society during this time period experienced a collapse of morality and values, a loss of faith, and had a confused sense of identity and place in the world.  The drastic fluctuating thoughts of the people resulted in a chaotic and futile environment.  Similar to any other time period in history, the artists and musicians were the first to embrace the changes that were happening around them.  Igor Stravinsky, one of the most influential composers during the 20^th century, was able to recreate the struggles that society was dealing with through his music.  In Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, he demonstrates 20^th century aesthetics by tweaking the basic conventions of modernism.   

The conventions of modernism consist of fragmentation, disjunction, and stratification.  Stravinsky creatively produced the song Rite of Spring in which he displayed the society’s struggles through the three conventions of modernism.  Stravinsky embodied society’s lack of morals and values, and chaotic nature through the stratification of multiple groups of instruments. The bassoon begins the piece by playing at a very high pitch, and then an English horn joins the bassoon at the 46 second mark.  For a short while the bassoon will play and the English horn will answer and at the 1:16 mark a violin starts to play by performing pizzicato on the strings.  At the 1:20 mark of the piece more instruments join the bassoon. From this point on the piece becomes very intense.  From minute two to minute three the tempo gradually speeds up and the dynamics gradually increase as well.  During this minute, all of the instruments appear to be “playing to the beat of their own drum”.  There isn't any noticeable unison between the instruments and there is no harmony or melody.  His strategic way of layering the base and the woodwinds created a sense of disjunction between the instruments.  By layering the base and the woodwinds in this way it portrays to the audience that they are not working together, this is similar to the way that the people were acting during this time. 

Throughout part one of the Rite of Spring the pulse is kept constant while the meter is varied.  This can be seen from minute 3:00 to 3:30.  The pulse is the same but when the string instruments begin to play more vigorously and the sound becomes more intense the meter changes from when only the bassoon was playing.  The disjunction of the strings here with the peaceful bassoon portion of the song is drastic.  The inconsistency within the meter and the lack of continuity between the strings and the bassoon represents the hopelessness of society and the anger they were feelings because of their loss of self-identity.  Also, throughout the first three minutes of the song there is a distinct separation between the different parts of the ensemble.  The strings move as one, as do the woodwinds, while the brass works alone.  The sections don't complement each other, but rather take turns taking the lead or fading into the background.   

Stravinsky begins this piece with a bassoon playing by itself.  The bassoon in the Rite of Spring represents a couple of 20^th century aesthetics of modernism.  Normally, bassoons play at a lower register but Stravinsky wrote the song in a way that the bassoon had to play at an almost impossibly high register.  The uncomfortable register of the bassoon portion of this song demonstrates the fluctuating thoughts and feelings of society.  Also, Stravinsky used the convention of fragmentation in the bassoon’s solo by adding grace notes.