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The concept and method behind my music piece

When creating my music piece I was influenced by Silvio Rodriguez’s  “Nueva Trova”, and strived to achieve a similar metric and timbre in my own piece. Although I suppressed the use of guitar, so typical in his music, and strived to create a musical piece out of a simple mix and superposition of  vocal tracks in the manner of Fredo Viola. And following Wade’s belief that, ‘For variety of timbre, perhaps no instrument is more flexible than the human voice.’ (Wade, 2004 p.45)

Although I had an overall idea of what I wanted to achieve, I didn’t realize any exact planning for my piece and, in the style of John Cage, ‘I improvised … and attempted to write it down … before I forgot it.’ (John Cage in Pritchett, 1993 p. 6). Although not premeditatedly, when creating the piece I was very much influenced by Luigi Russolo’s idea that any sound may be used to create music. Although I didn’t strictly integrate “noise” into my piece, I included the live recording of a horn tune that holds no relation to the piece, in hope of adding an element of indeterminacy (Sansom, 2001 p.29). Furthermore, following the lines of Luciano Berio’s Sequenza (1958), I experimented with the different sounds and qualities I could achieve with my voice alone. My belief is that, as Russolo argued, ‘traditional orchestral instruments and composition are no longer capable of capturing the spirit of modern life, with its energy, speed, and noise’.(Cox, 2004 p.10)

The music score for my piece changed constantly, especially after I started reading about John Cage’s compositional techniques and music, influenced by his Zen philosophy and aiming ‘to rid his compositions of intention and to let sounds simply be “themselves”’ (Sansom, 2001 p.29). Nevertheless, although taking into account these new perspectives on creating music, I tried to maintain the initial direction that my piece had been following as I was afraid that fully integrating this new perspective would leave my piece incongruous.

As it was, I fell back on to using a main vocal track. This track tells a story, in a similar way to Victor Jara’s “Canción Protesta”, or the songs of the trova from Cuba, that ‘do not reflect isolated, individual perspectives. … while the voice is often personal and autobiographical, the song projects common thoughts and goals.’ (Benmayor, 1981 p.14)

The story that my vocal track tells is a nostalgic one, describing the de-ruralization of the place where I grew up. It is a critique of speculation and urbanization in the form of a lament. At the beginning I tried to create an ‘acoustic space’ (Wishart, 1996) by varying the different vocal tracks in intensity and location. In the second half of the piece, the dissonance and ascending tone aim to achieve a sense of disquiet, as defined by Ferguson when he says that an upward-tending tone-series… will almost invariably suggest increasing effort (Ferguson, 1960 p.96) But, despite the melancholy, it also has warmth and affect within. To me, and I hope I have been successful with my creative expression, it rekindles a memory of summer afternoons with the smell of heat and dust and the warmth of the sun irradiating in our skin. But very definitely expresses the distance of this image, as a long lost and past one. I intend my piece to be listened to on a train, by the window, when travelling from the countryside into the city.

Having gained a new insight into compositional techniques, I haven’t been able to avoid developing a discordance within the piece I have created, and in retrospect I would have begun creating it in a totally different way. Not that the creative process that I experienced would have changed. But I probably would have seen much broader horizons in the material I used to create it and in the progression of the melody.

Bibliography

Benmayor, R. (1981) La “Nueva Trova”: New Cuban Song. Latin American Music Review. Vol.2 nº 1 pp.11-44 Accessible HTTP source: http://www.jstor.org/stable/780148 Accessed 16/03/2010 07:17

Cox, C. & Warner, D. (2004) Audio culture: readings in modern music. London: Continuum

Ferguson, D. (1960) Music as Metaphor. The Elements of Expression.  Connecticut: Greenwood Press

Pritchett, J. (1993) The Music of John Cage. Great Britain: Cambridge University Press

Sansom, M. (2001) Imaging Music: Abstract Expressionism and Free Improvisation. Leonardo Music Journal. Vol. 11 pp. 29-34 Accessible HTTP source: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1513424 Accessed 16/03/2010 07:39

Wishart, T. (1996) On Sonic Art. England: Routledge

Wade, C.B. (2004) Thinking Musically. Experiencing Music, Experiencing Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press