The distinguished film composer, arranger, and saxophonist, John Altman, addressed the series with a wide ranging talk touching on his work with television and film.
In film, John argued, you are a cog within a large mechanism. You have to receive and interpret instructions, which are often imprecise. For example:
‘We want something classical’.
‘We want something with jazz in’.
‘The fourth note is too green’.
Any media composer spends half their time trying to work out what such instructions mean. The degree of success interpreting such instructions ultimately makes the difference between a score’s acceptance and rejection. There continue to be very high profile examples of fully completed scores thrown out at a late stage because of such misunderstandings.
For example, Elmer Bernstein’s (1922-2004) rejected score to Gangs of New York (2002).
John showed how he is used to listening to and responding to directors. He selected, orchestrated and produced all the period music used in Titanic (1997), in response to James Cameron’s request for authenticity. This involved researching the White Star Playlist for the Titanic’s band at the Library of Congress.
John commented that when music is adopted in film it very often is purposeful. As an illustration of this he screened excerpts from his score to Hear My Song (1991), describing in detail the way he rescored the basic thematic material for different ensembles and in different styles. So this created a unity, and opportunities for contrast throughout the picture, and also opportunities for a range of functions. An extended sequence begins with views of traditional dancing, and then completes one portion of the story - the struggle to get Josef Locke to agree to return for one final concert. The director wanted a sense of forward motion from the start of the traditional dancing to the affirmative tone of the closing part of this sequence. So instead of creating a close match between picture and sound (by using traditional Irish music) the decision was made to use a synth track which could link the different sequences together, and emphasise continuity over fragmentation. This decision, arrived at collaboratively, gives a sense of forward motion, unity and coherence to the drama which it might otherwise have lacked.
By complete contrast John described a situation which was altered from the top, and not at all the result of collaborative process. He was commissioned to write the score to an advert for Levis. The agency said ‘classical’ in its brief for the music. The director hit on Vivaldi; an arrangement was made, and the director was delighted. The advert was completed and the ad agency said that the music’s ‘not right’. The music ‘plays the story too much’. They wanted music which gives an ‘overview’ and not a ‘scored’ feeling. Inspired by Kubrick’s musical choices in Barry Lyndon (1975), John looked for something more ‘organic’. The result was an arrangement of the Handel score (Sarabande from Keyboard Suite No. 4 in D minor HWV437) featuring two cellists, Tony Pleeth and Martin Loveday. Reflecting on this, John thought that the right decision had been made: the new arrangement added depth and gravity to the ad. Success followed with awards for the advert, which is illustrated in one version here (it existed in cuts of varying lengths):
In concluding remarks, John observed that the freedom and autonomy of the Hollywood/commercial film composer are in decline. Soundtrack albums are conceived before the scored music. These albums rarely include the original music. There is a tendency to book several composers for major projects, according to their association with certain types of cues (action, love, tension etc). The result is sometimes weak because the score becomes eclectic. An example of this is Shall We Dance (2004): John was initially commissioned to compose the whole score. At a later point in the process, Gabriel Yared was brought in to compose the 'love theme' cues. John was left to handle all the dance-related material and score cues that sprang from that part of the story.
In the last few years, John commented, the music has ‘descended’ to the level of sound effects, in terms of its status, and the possibility of a creative and structural role has been circumscribed.
Wednesday, 9 December 2009
Saturday, 21 November 2009
Canto Battuto and Sam Hayden - Friday 20 November 2009
A visit to Sussex University by the Swiss ensemble Canto Battuto also raised, and illuminated, questions of collaboration and communication between performers and composers.
Canto Battuto were here to perform a cycle for soprano, percussion and electronics by Sam Hayden, entitled 'Actio' and inspired by the work of Roland Barthes.
During the lecture-demonstration part of the afternoon workshop, the performers and composer described the development of a language of electronic treatment for Sam's work.
Martin Lorenz commented that a common problem is the relation of electronics to source. It is either like a 'clone' (slavishly imitative) or too far away and you miss the connection with the source. Sam and Martin found the best solution was a light touch: short delays with an element of randomness, creating a fragmentation which neatly mapped the pursuit of vocal textures, of pure sonic qualities, arising from the fragmentation of Barthes's original text. Sam commented that it took some time to evolve this relationship - the original conception of the electronics' intervention being more aggressive.
Canto Battuto were here to perform a cycle for soprano, percussion and electronics by Sam Hayden, entitled 'Actio' and inspired by the work of Roland Barthes.
During the lecture-demonstration part of the afternoon workshop, the performers and composer described the development of a language of electronic treatment for Sam's work.
Martin Lorenz commented that a common problem is the relation of electronics to source. It is either like a 'clone' (slavishly imitative) or too far away and you miss the connection with the source. Sam and Martin found the best solution was a light touch: short delays with an element of randomness, creating a fragmentation which neatly mapped the pursuit of vocal textures, of pure sonic qualities, arising from the fragmentation of Barthes's original text. Sam commented that it took some time to evolve this relationship - the original conception of the electronics' intervention being more aggressive.
Wednesday, 18 November 2009
Peter Wiegold - Wednesday 18 November 2009
Peter Wiegold’s interest in collaboration is focussed in the question of communication between performing musicians and a creative leader.
He first discussed his song for counter-tenor and piano, A Cause for Wonder. He showed the score which includes opportunities for performer interpretation, including ‘decoration’ and graphic notation.
A moment of particular interest is the phrase ‘Born of maid mary’, heard twice on a single f sharp. The second iteration is freer than the first and the choices that the performer makes are of great coloristic and expressive interest. Peter Wiegold comments, ‘I love it, but you shouldn’t write it down – he’ll do it differently next time’. This creates a new richness. It opens the door – the singer can own it and ‘feel respected’.
Peter Wiegold sees three ways of approaching or seeing composition.
1. The authority of the text. Vertical. Absolute.
2. Open. Democratic. Horizontal. Relative.
3. ‘Third Way’. Line from the centre from which you can spin off.
He argues that this ‘third way’ is not new. It is the basis of cantus firmus composition – a line at the centre from which multiple possibilities can proceed. He sees it as typical of African traditional music, of Miles Davis’s constructions of music from a strong centre.
He sees in Brian Ferneyhough’s music and Steve Reich’s music a commonality: the fixity and lack of room for interpretation. ‘Only since Monteverdi’ has western music been in this condition. Mistakes have no value in Steve Reich. Mistakes can be productive: if you make a mistake, play it again (Miles Davis).
The score is not dead: but it has relative, not absolute value. Before Monteverdi’s time, players who departed from the text were more highly esteemed.
In theatre, there are techniques for developing work which are truly collaborative. Collaboration needs work though. It questions how you hear, and how you express yourself.
The composer must embody what they want; an image; a timbre. Invoke, don’t describe. Avoid 19th Century infantilisation of the performer, beholden to the text. A more adult relation is wanted now.
Bjorn Heile (Head of Dept, Music) commented: ‘in your culture, scores are central; isn’t that different from Ellington, for example, who wasn’t concerned with score production at all’.
Peter Wiegold responded, ‘I’m not sure I’m operating in that culture.’
Peter Wiegold described his collaboration with the National Youth Orchestra. He wrote ‘60%’ of the score in advance, lived with them for a week, and produced a collaborative performance, performed by the ensemble from memory. The work/performance was entitled Bow-Wave, and was premiered in the Roundhouse, London, on 9 January 2009.
Working with his ensemble notes inegales, Peter Wiegold has developed sophisticated strategies for working with top new music players wishing to explore new expressive possibilities for combining notation with structured improvisation. Influenced in part by Frank Zappa, there are signals for harmonising, repetition and solo. The ensemble is a special resource, capturing the essence of western music and invigorating it with new forms of living, creative expression.
He first discussed his song for counter-tenor and piano, A Cause for Wonder. He showed the score which includes opportunities for performer interpretation, including ‘decoration’ and graphic notation.
A moment of particular interest is the phrase ‘Born of maid mary’, heard twice on a single f sharp. The second iteration is freer than the first and the choices that the performer makes are of great coloristic and expressive interest. Peter Wiegold comments, ‘I love it, but you shouldn’t write it down – he’ll do it differently next time’. This creates a new richness. It opens the door – the singer can own it and ‘feel respected’.
Peter Wiegold sees three ways of approaching or seeing composition.
1. The authority of the text. Vertical. Absolute.
2. Open. Democratic. Horizontal. Relative.
3. ‘Third Way’. Line from the centre from which you can spin off.
He argues that this ‘third way’ is not new. It is the basis of cantus firmus composition – a line at the centre from which multiple possibilities can proceed. He sees it as typical of African traditional music, of Miles Davis’s constructions of music from a strong centre.
He sees in Brian Ferneyhough’s music and Steve Reich’s music a commonality: the fixity and lack of room for interpretation. ‘Only since Monteverdi’ has western music been in this condition. Mistakes have no value in Steve Reich. Mistakes can be productive: if you make a mistake, play it again (Miles Davis).
The score is not dead: but it has relative, not absolute value. Before Monteverdi’s time, players who departed from the text were more highly esteemed.
In theatre, there are techniques for developing work which are truly collaborative. Collaboration needs work though. It questions how you hear, and how you express yourself.
The composer must embody what they want; an image; a timbre. Invoke, don’t describe. Avoid 19th Century infantilisation of the performer, beholden to the text. A more adult relation is wanted now.
Bjorn Heile (Head of Dept, Music) commented: ‘in your culture, scores are central; isn’t that different from Ellington, for example, who wasn’t concerned with score production at all’.
Peter Wiegold responded, ‘I’m not sure I’m operating in that culture.’
Peter Wiegold described his collaboration with the National Youth Orchestra. He wrote ‘60%’ of the score in advance, lived with them for a week, and produced a collaborative performance, performed by the ensemble from memory. The work/performance was entitled Bow-Wave, and was premiered in the Roundhouse, London, on 9 January 2009.
Working with his ensemble notes inegales, Peter Wiegold has developed sophisticated strategies for working with top new music players wishing to explore new expressive possibilities for combining notation with structured improvisation. Influenced in part by Frank Zappa, there are signals for harmonising, repetition and solo. The ensemble is a special resource, capturing the essence of western music and invigorating it with new forms of living, creative expression.
Thursday, 29 October 2009
Thomas Buckner on Robert Ashley - Wednesday 28 October 2009
Thomas Buckner gave a vivid account of his work with the American writer and composer Robert Ashley. He began working with Ashley after 'Perfect Lives', the opera which Ashley conceived for television (the work's proportions and internal durations being exactly determined by the requirements of the television format).
Thomas Buckner detects a gradual increase in complexity, over the years of producing new pieces, in terms of the treatments by Robert Ashley of his own original texts, whose declamatory rhythms underpin the compositional basis of each piece.
The rehearsal process on an Ashley piece involves six days working 10 to 6 to develop the characters. At this stage the composition is minimally notated. By the time it approaches performance, accuracy is at a very high pitch and a click track is used to determine the synchrony and timing of the layered speech-based performances. Thus, the working process moves from a framework for musical innovation towards a highly specified and determined outcome so that the audience can experience the piece just as it is on the CD.
For his recent work 'Concrete' Ashley initially excluded himself from the performances, but he realised the piece was flawed without him, so he rewrote it. Being a meditation on age, Ashley appears as the main character and the other performers are projections of his dreams.
Another work, 'Dust', resulted in a collaboration with a Japanese video artist, Yukihiro Yoshihara, who created a mosaic or collage of American TV on monitors above the performers. Simultaneous commentaries and translations illuminated the meanings of the spoken texts for the Japanese audience. Comprehension of text is a key concern for Thomas Buckner.
Prof. Nicholas Till (Centre for Research in Opera and Music Theatre, Sussex) commented that Ashley quite definitely is a writer, in a literary sense, and that his ability to work at both a detailed and realist level, and at an allegorical level, gives his work unique interest.
Thomas Buckner detects a gradual increase in complexity, over the years of producing new pieces, in terms of the treatments by Robert Ashley of his own original texts, whose declamatory rhythms underpin the compositional basis of each piece.
The rehearsal process on an Ashley piece involves six days working 10 to 6 to develop the characters. At this stage the composition is minimally notated. By the time it approaches performance, accuracy is at a very high pitch and a click track is used to determine the synchrony and timing of the layered speech-based performances. Thus, the working process moves from a framework for musical innovation towards a highly specified and determined outcome so that the audience can experience the piece just as it is on the CD.
For his recent work 'Concrete' Ashley initially excluded himself from the performances, but he realised the piece was flawed without him, so he rewrote it. Being a meditation on age, Ashley appears as the main character and the other performers are projections of his dreams.
Another work, 'Dust', resulted in a collaboration with a Japanese video artist, Yukihiro Yoshihara, who created a mosaic or collage of American TV on monitors above the performers. Simultaneous commentaries and translations illuminated the meanings of the spoken texts for the Japanese audience. Comprehension of text is a key concern for Thomas Buckner.
Prof. Nicholas Till (Centre for Research in Opera and Music Theatre, Sussex) commented that Ashley quite definitely is a writer, in a literary sense, and that his ability to work at both a detailed and realist level, and at an allegorical level, gives his work unique interest.
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
Paul Whitty - Wednesday 7 October 2009
Our first speaker, Paul Whitty, is a Reader in Composition, Research Director for Film, Fine Art and Music, and co-director of the Sonic Art Research Unit at Oxford Brookes.
Paul's compositions have been performed and broadcast widely. He has a particular interest in collaborative practice. His ongoing collaborative project Vauxhall Pleasure (2004-2009) with Anna Best consisted of a site event at Vauxhall Cross, London; an installation at the Museum of Garden History as part of their Tempered Ground exhibition; and two performances at Tate Britain.
Paul's talk was called '...i tried living in the real world...': collaborations and collaborative practices.
His collaborative work arose from his interest in other disciplines. While working with choreographers, he realised that there was a mismatch between tradition compositional procedures, and the speed with which a truly responsive composer needs to reformulate and revise when working collaboratively.
New ways of thinking arose in his collaborations with Aydin Teker and Anna Best. In works written for the South Bank Centre, and later Beaconsfield, he researched the environment and history of the spaces used while working intensively with colleagues to produce site-specific work that resonated with these spaces' associations.
The most ambitious of these projects has been Vauxhall Pleasure, with Anna Best, formerly an 18th century pleasure garden and now a major traffic intersection. They fused the arcadian music of Thomas Arne with data derived from the gyratory's traffic control system to generate multiple artistic outputs which reflect the dramatic change in environment. These outputs are: site performance; webpages; installations.
Paul commented that these collaborations have influenced his concert composition work, in which he continues to seek an accommodation between the materials which serve as a starting point (recently the Cesar Franck Violin Sonata for his 39 pages) and his radical methodology.
Paul's compositions have been performed and broadcast widely. He has a particular interest in collaborative practice. His ongoing collaborative project Vauxhall Pleasure (2004-2009) with Anna Best consisted of a site event at Vauxhall Cross, London; an installation at the Museum of Garden History as part of their Tempered Ground exhibition; and two performances at Tate Britain.
Paul's talk was called '...i tried living in the real world...': collaborations and collaborative practices.
His collaborative work arose from his interest in other disciplines. While working with choreographers, he realised that there was a mismatch between tradition compositional procedures, and the speed with which a truly responsive composer needs to reformulate and revise when working collaboratively.
New ways of thinking arose in his collaborations with Aydin Teker and Anna Best. In works written for the South Bank Centre, and later Beaconsfield, he researched the environment and history of the spaces used while working intensively with colleagues to produce site-specific work that resonated with these spaces' associations.
The most ambitious of these projects has been Vauxhall Pleasure, with Anna Best, formerly an 18th century pleasure garden and now a major traffic intersection. They fused the arcadian music of Thomas Arne with data derived from the gyratory's traffic control system to generate multiple artistic outputs which reflect the dramatic change in environment. These outputs are: site performance; webpages; installations.
Paul commented that these collaborations have influenced his concert composition work, in which he continues to seek an accommodation between the materials which serve as a starting point (recently the Cesar Franck Violin Sonata for his 39 pages) and his radical methodology.
The idea of the series
This year, Music, in the School of Media, Film and Music, at the University of Sussex, is discussing the idea of music in collaborative contexts of many kinds in a series of nine research seminars running from October 2009 to April 2010.
The aim of our series is to ask the following overall questions:
- why collaborate?
- what kinds of processes are involved in collaboration?
- what can we learn from collaboration?
Our speakers comprise distinguished practitioners (composers, performers) and theorists who have worked extensively in, and reflected upon, very different approaches to collaboration.
The aim of our series is to ask the following overall questions:
- why collaborate?
- what kinds of processes are involved in collaboration?
- what can we learn from collaboration?
Our speakers comprise distinguished practitioners (composers, performers) and theorists who have worked extensively in, and reflected upon, very different approaches to collaboration.
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