Harmonic Practices in Oliver Knussen's Music since 1988: Part II

Harmonic Practices in Oliver Knussen's Music since 1988: Part IIAuthor(s): Julian AndersonSource: Tempo, Vol. 57, No. 223 (Jan., 2003), pp. 16-41Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3878891 .

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16 Tempo 57 (223) 16 - 41 ? 2003 Cambridge University Press DOI: 10.1017/ S0040298203000020 Printed in the United Kingdom

HARMONIC PRACTICES IN OLIVER

KNUSSEN'S MUSIC SINCE 1988: PART II*

Julian Anderson

Songs without Voices, composed in 1991-2, is a set of four pieces for small instrumental ensemble comprising flute, cor anglais, clarinet, horn, piano, violin, viola and cello, lasting about eleven minutes. It follows on naturally from Knussen's Whitman Settings which preceded it, as three of its four movements derive their main melodic lines from purely instrumental settings of Whitman texts from the collection Leaves of Grass.' Indeed the first movement's source text, Soon shall the winter's foil be here, is placed by Whitman in the collection immediately after The Voice of the Rain, the final text of Knussen's Whitman Settings.

The four movements are sharply contrasted in mood and texture. The first is highly changeable, almost manic in its abrupt swerves of direction until it reaches a stable conclusion (depicting the arrival of spring of which the poem speaks). The slow second movement sets the richly evocative Prairie Sunset as a miniature cello concerto, designed for the work's dedicatee Fred Sherry, the then Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society of the Lincoln Center for whom the piece was written.2 The third movement, setting First Dandelion, forms in effect the scherzo of the set, and is extremely rapid and fleeting. The final movement, Elegiac Arabesques, a memorial to the Polish composer Andrzej Panufnik, was originally composed as a duet for cor anglais and clarinet in 1991, using pitch material related to the other movements, and was transcribed and adapted to form a lyrical conclusion to the present set a few months afterwards.

The composer's sketches reveal that the final shape of the work was altered from his original plan. A fifth movement, setting Whitman's poem Broadway, was abandoned, and the order of the second and third movements was swapped. An initial scheme from the sketches reads as follows:

I- Winter's Foil II- First Dandelion III- Prairie Sunset IV- Arabesque V- Broadway

Elsewhere, the composer assembles the key centres for the movements (by this time the second movement was clearly Prairie Sunset, which opens very obviously in B flat):

* Part I of this study appeared in Tempo 221 (July 2002), pp.2-13. (Ed.) This device has a considerable history. Prominent uses of word settings which are sup- pressed through being set instrumentally rather than vocally are found in the output of Berg (the finale of the Lyric Suite setting Baudelaire's De Profundis), several works of Hans Werner Henze and Robin Holloway (Evening with Angels, setting Tennyson), amongst others.

2 Knussen held the Elise L. Stoeger Composer's Chair Award with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center during this period.



HARMONIC PRACTICES IN OLIVER KNUSSEN'S MUSIC SINCE 1988: PART II 17

I- D-G II- B flat III- ? IV- A flat V- B natural

With the final work, we have an almost classical four-movement sequence - virtually a small chamber symphony - with opening allegro, slow second movement, scherzo third and a song-like finale.3 The proportions and mood contrasts seem so balanced and inevitable in the work as published that the idea of a fifth movement seems retrospectively slightly out of place. The sequence of four keys now runs as follows: (I show the four tempi and the final titles, or rather 'after-titles', also):

I- Fantastico (Winter's Foil) D - G II- Maestoso (Prairie Sunset) B flat III- Leggiero (First Dandelion) E [N.B. this is my interpretation] IV- Adagio (Elegiac Arabesques) A flat

The variety of keys that the composer was seeking in planning out his tonal centres for the Songs thus seems to be clearly present, rein- forcing the general contrasts of mood and speed already remarked upon. Like Debussy in his Prdludes, Knussen places the titles of the poems at the end of each movement, between parentheses and preceded by three dots. He thus signifies that this is not programme music, rather a sequence of musical images evoked by certain extra- musical starting points.

F RE E D ES H E R(RY) (Retrograde)

(Inversion on B) \/(Retrograde Inversion)

Example la: Basic pitch sets of Songs Without Voices. 0)w

, 1/ • ,(,

W H

In order to clarify the manner in which this works in practice, the opening movement of the set will be examined in some detail. The poem on which the movement is based celebrates the imminent arrival of spring. This evokes a particularly quixotic form in the music; despite elements of reprise - the flute solo at letter A returns altered in the coda at 2 bars after letter E - the music generally seems to be perpetually changing direction, following no easily categorizeable shape but freely responding to the rapidly altering images of the poem. The basic set of Songs without Voices is a musical spelling of its dedicatee Fred Sherry (see Ex.la). Every pitch of the work is derived from either a linear version of this row (or its inversion, retrograde, etc.) or a verticalisation of the row as harmony from which a vocabulary of transposed inversions is derived (see Ex.lb).

Example lb: Harmonic syntax for Songs Without Voices.

Despite apparent diversity, there are in fact only 14 chords, lettered @ to @due to octave equivalence. W

SKnussen points out that this is also true of the Whitman Settings, which form a similar four movement sequence and which, the composer says, he thought of as a sort of miniature Song of the Earth.



18 TEMPO

'W 'I II III IV V I II III IV V

E E6 iv ...1

I II III IV V I II III IV V

B ,- 'J j'- -i II 11 W (mediator)0

Example lb (continued): Chords of transposed inversion. I II III IV V I II III IV V

An introduction and coda, both marked by relatively stable tonal centers (the introduction on D, the coda on G) frame the poem proper - the main part of the piece, which starts at letter A and ends just before letter E in the score. A sequence of solos spread across the whole ensemble sets the Whitman poem so that it is possible to make a melodic 'short score' of most of the movement following the setting of the words. This is shown in Ex. 2, from which it becomes evident that much of the music's rhythmic agility is the suggested directly by the rhythms and stresses of the Whitman text. Compared to the vocal lines of the Whitman Settings, the word setting here is predominantly syllabic and therefore much faster and more jerky than would be feasible in a vocal setting.

A = 132c.

•e-- "-- .;-

II I r_ •, r '

Soon shall the win-ter's foil be here;

f> .3 f- >f >P <f> Soon _ shall these i - cy li-ga- tures un-bind and melt

Example 2: Part of the instrumental setting of Whitman in the first of the Songs Without Voices. CL The sketches show much detail

1_IA_ of word-setting; the rest can • -3 3•

, P >pp<mf p be deduced from the contexts mp mf P P PP m

without difficulty. A lit-tle while, And air, soil, wave,




, z. mp

Suf - fused shall be in soft - ness, bloom

(cl.) .

(hn.)

mf Hn. L pocof and growth a thou - sand forms shall rise

cor.ang. vc._

~--- 3 3 -- 3 - p

Hn. From these dead clods and chills as from low

(vc.)

mf z nmp •:

3 n np hn.

bu - ri - al graves.

poco meno mosso. =116c. ww. (harmonized)

vn. (harmonized) <> (

mnp espr. 6===ml- 3

m pmf - rp m- mfrm< pocof

all that takes cog - ni - zance of na - tural beau - ty,

ft. /cl. (short instrumental

cl interlude) 2 1%

--3 f keck mf -=- =< ff

Shall wake and fill. Thou shalt per-

pf. (with 8ves)

f> 3 (>)

(ten.) fbrillante 3 3 mf espr.

- ceive the sim - ple shows, the de - li - cate __

- (>) cl./vn.

pizz. Pf /

S > 3 >

g A A etc

<f >mp - poco f mf

mi - ra - cles __ of earth, Dan-de-lions, clo - ver Example 2 (continued)



20 TEMPO

As with Whitman Settings, a main preoccupation of the music is the relating of these linear elements to their harmonic counterparts in the accompaniment' (I put that word in inverted commas because there

is nothing secondary about the complex textures surrounding the solos). The introduction (Ex.3) annuls the distinction between horizontal and vertical by having the muted horn solo stating the primal cell of the work, starting in a kind of D minor,4 simply shaded by heterophonic echoes of its pitches on the strings. The result, coinci- dentally, is curiously redolent of a moment in Britten's largely heterophonic church parable Curlew River - specifically the arrival of the Ferryman (who is characterized by horn solo with heterophonic echoes on viola).5 Such unison or out-of-phase unison echoes or doublings are brought back at the start of the final movement, Elegiac Arabesques, as the transcription of the original duet gradually develops a life of its own. These two prominent passages of unison heterophonic writing remind us that the original sketches contained an indi- cation for a planned 'unison-ish finale' (presumably the abandoned Broadway). The composer may have abandoned the projected fifth movement as redundant when he realised that the fourth movement does indeed start as a 'unison-ish finale', before developing into more variegated textures and harmony.

Fantastico = 66c. hn., muted

str. muted (sul tasto/ norm. )

'II

-----• poco f mp

M etc.

Example 3 Hstr.eterophonic harmony at the opening of the first of thePP Songs Without Voices.

- I-- - - - -

Songs Without Voices.

Aside from such heterophonic passages, the relation between horizontal and vertical is generally achieved by employing the same trans- position levels to the harmony as to the linear cells, so that a cell transposed onto F will be heard against harmony derived from the

4 Also the main key of the Horn Concerto (1994)! The resemblance here is certainly accidental, but in passing it's interesting to note that as a boy Knussen attended rehearsals for the premiere of this opera, which made a deep impression on him (his father was playing double-bass).




transposed inversions on the same pitch. Ex. 4 gives several examples of this from throughout the movement, as well as of other kinds of interaction between vertical and horizontal, generally involving common tones. Whilst sketching Knussen was careful to mark on his transposed inversion table which chords were equivalent in pitch content to each other, so that he can move quickly from one transpo- sition to the next by means of such equivalences, or else simply by means of common tone progressions. Overall, the movement refines the techniques already employed for pitch generation in Flourish and the Whitman Settings, enabling the music to contrast areas of more hectic instability and change than any Knussen had previously

O(F)

3 --

FI FI+V FII

(+ cl.) pfn

3-

3 mf my

chiaro

BI FIII BIII

v9.

hn.

F III

-+ Ab (from BII)

(F)

liriwi

FIV f 3 3

5pf 3 mf etc.

Example 4a: Songs Without Voices, FIV BIV str. pizz.

I, bars 8-13. FV



22 TEMPO

composed with the stability and poise of the coda, as the music settles

gently onto a final cadence (complete with pastoral cuckoos provided Example 4b: Songs without Voices, discreetly on the clarinet!). Even more than the end of the Whitman I, bars 25-35 (reproduced from

composer's manuscript; annotations Settings, the sense of harmonic closure here is a remarkable achieve- by JA). ment in a post-tonal idiom.

mopn.mno ro sso

2.04

WI vk-~

CA. d. -

Jhr~~~ BF~~i~ hn. ~_-----F

I P"O i s~7 / roi r

91 -.9 BE

41r

_L T=

S:Fit Ve,

AL

a,

•._.• ••P - _- .•P • -, - Px.J

?t .

"- -- - -..~-

-- --------

'if, hn. [

vin. ?

1smm

--l~,------- ~ ,? mcr

vk-

= lpiuls E -TZd




-Irt =if elAte

lin.

EmeboieW

33. NJnc-'-_4

FEN yhn.

3336 vla.

Example 4b (continued) viC.

Knussen's Two Organa date from 1994 and owe their origin to two very different occasions, both of which reflect Knussen's involvement with the Dutch new music scene. The first, entitled Notre Dame des Jouets, was originally composed for a two-and-half octave music box which played only the white notes of the C major scale.6 Knussen responded with a piece celebrating the organa of 12th-century Notre Dame, specifically those of Perotin (whose Alleluia Nativitas he had transcribed for wind quintet in 1987, and whose influence had already been in the trombone writing in the first movement of the Third Symphony). It uses a plainsong-style cantus firmus (of the composer's own invention) played in long notes against several layers of faster canonic decoration derived from the same melodic source, with each new voice doubled at a different interval. The reference to Perotin is made explicit in the short coda (from bar 38, letter E in the score): a faster version of the cantus firmus, in dotted minims and dotted crotchets, is played against a fast dance-like counterpoint - a texture known as clausula organum, found towards the end of a verse of organum. The writing here features the rhythmic pattern quaver- crotchet frequently found in medieval music (it is one of the medieval rhythmic modes). A concluding statement of the invented plainsong at normal speed completes the formal parallel with Peirotin organa. The orchestration, made some months later, brings out the multiple layers with greater clarity than was possible in the musical box original, although the range of the whole is still restricted to the range

6 This was one of a series of pieces requested by Ron Ford, the American composer living in Holland, for this musical box, for issue on a CD (VPRO Eign Wijs EW 9413 [Hilversum, Holland 1994]). The device comes complete with paper rolls and a hole puncher, so that the user can compose their own pieces for the box, regardless of rhythmic complexity. Other composers who participated include Louis Andriessen, Reinbert de Leeuw, Richard Baker, Richard Barrett and Ron Ford himself.



24 TEMPO

of the original. It also makes a good foil for its companion piece, intro- ducing many of the same ideas of layeredness and simultaneity which are to feature in a more complex manner in the second movement.

This ranks indeed as one of Knussen's densest and most complex constructions, in some senses a successor to his similarly intense, virtuosic ensemble piece from the 1970s, Coursing. The parallel between the two is reinforced by fact that like Coursing, this Organum opens with a unison melodic line which here, even sooner than in Coursing, sprouts other lines derived from serial operations on itself. However, despite its calm opening, the second Organum is still more compressed and layered than Coursing, packing a huge variety of layering and textures into scarcely three-and-a-half minutes. Paradoxically, for all the precision of its organisation, the piece gives the impression of being free and spontaneous, almost improvisatory. A propos of this, Knussen comments 'I think most examples of good improvisation do fantastical things over a quite rigid, or at least well- defined framework'.7 As with several other works of Knussen since the 1980s, the structural and pitch basis of the piece's strict framework were determined by the circumstances of the work's composition - in this case, a tribute to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Schdnberg Ensemble of Amsterdam, founded by Knussen's close musical friend, the Dutch conductor Reinbert de

Leeuw.8 Two pieces of musical

material are derived from this: Ex.5a shows the first, the musical cypher for Arnold Schbnberg's name used by Alban Berg in his Chamber Concerto. Ex.5b shows the second source set, a musical cypher on the name of Reinbert de Leeuw of Knussen's own devising. The basic duration around which events in the piece are organised is 20 beats long, a reference to the 20th anniversary being celebrated.

A D S C H B E G R EinB E R T D E L E E UW

S____ - o . o - , ' --

Examples 5a and 5b The two pitch sets in Ex.5 provide all the material for the piece. The 'Sch6nberg' cypher is heard in very long note values as a cantus firmus, and slowly accelerates through the work. Meanwhile the cypher based on Reinbert de Leeuw's name opens the work relatively fast as an ostinato and gradually retards across the whole structure. Against these two backbones, two other types of material are heard: a set of virtuosic solos (at one point flourishing into a quartet) for the various soloists of the ensemble,9 and a chorale-like chord progression which floats alongside the other three layers and, as we shall see, is to a great extent dependent upon them.

To deal with the background first: the 'Schbnberg' cantus firmus is heard in three forms, successively the Original, Inversion and Original, with a degree of overlap between adjacent forms so that

Conversation with the author in August 2002.

8 Also a distinguished composer, until he virtually abandoned composition in the late 1970s (not to be confused with the unrelated, well-known Dutch composer Ton de Leeuw). As a

composer, Reinbert de Leeuw is best remembered today as the author of one of the finest orchestral works of the 70s, Abschied. He was also a co-author - along with Andriessen and Peter Schat, amongst others - of the collective opera Reconstructie, a major event in Dutch cultural life in the late 1960s.

9 As an extra game, even the order of the solos was determined by circumstance: for instance the placement of the violin solo near the end was determined by the fact that the player con- cerned joined the ensemble later than her colleagues.




later on in the piece there are often two cantus firmus notes being heard at once. These forms, and their overlapping, are shown in Ex.6 - they have been reduced to a single octave for purposes of clarity, but as well shall see their registration is a crucial element, decided entirely by the composer's instinct, in determining the harmonic context of the music.

Durations in -+ 20 20 19? 13? 13? 10 ? 10 10 34 34 3 33/4 5 54 21/ 2 21/2 3 33/4 201/2

(Durations I in

•J) 15 20 5 5

Example 6: The cantus firmus in the second Organum, with durations shown in crotchets.

Example 7: Form scheme for the second Organum. Ostinati start with notes marked for L . Only the first few notes - generally the first three - are shown of the ostinati. Cantus notes are shown in whole notes - their duration given in j .

Above and below the pitches of the cantus in Ex.6 are a sequence of figures showing the duration of each pitch in crotchets. Although some longer durations are introduced as counterpoint towards the middle, the overall pattern, as explained above, is a gradual acceleration starting from the 'home' duration of 20 crotchets, and acceler- ating over four minutes to a minimum duration of 21/2 crotchets. Two slightly longer durations of 33/4 crotchets precede the final return to the 'home' duration of 20 crotchets, extended by an extra quaver (perhaps symbolic of the continuing life of the Ensemble).

Ex.7 shows the form plan for the entire work, with the pitches of the cantus shown in their octave registration. The changing registers of the cantus constitute a vitally important compositional interven- tion, as the cantus pitches contextualize all other harmonic and

bar 3 bar 5 bar 8

Ostinato (OD) (iE) (OD) (jIEb) , etc. (OE

S etcetc. etc. etc10. J etc.etc.

(D (OD

bar 12 13 bar 15 bar 17

20?( E) Flute solo (20 J)

S(oC#) (OA) etc.

(starts simultaneously Cantus with OA)

(I(ID

e (OD)

bar 21

bar 19 D) - bar 23

(OE) (OD) bar25

etc. W

etc.

cl. solo (20 )

(IE) D) E



26 TEMPO

bar 29 bar 30 (IGO)bar

32

(IG# ) (IC)

V ;M 19 F (OF() 1 (O) (IF) vc. solo (20J)

04- etc. bar 28 bar 31 bar 34 bar 35

bar 37 bar 42

S_ (OA)

(OE -

harmonised) (harmonised)

13V

(fragments of OD, OC# etc.) 13V

(then fragments of IE

bar 36

O B (O G ) (OD)

Quartet (fl., cl., vn.II, vc. ) 10'/j bar 48 bar 49 bar 53 'Cadenza' (20 J) (bar 53)

pf. solo (20

) 15

vn. solo (20 1) 3?

3? / 3?

100

bar58 20 (OF) bar 63 bar 64 bar 66 (1 bar 68

8- (vn. solo contd.) bar

db. solo (20 J)

bar bar 60 65

bar 69 5/4 (O

bar 72 bar 73

5bar

71 21 /2 2?>

(distance between attacks - [from here till end])

5• (held till end)

bar 74 bar 77 all * notes stop here

, *(OD)

O

-

etc.

3

. 3,s 3?

20. ?

hn. solo " (held till end)

Example 7 (continued) (to start of last bar)




melodic activity. A very low pitch in the cantus - like the second pitch, D - provides a deep resonance which colours all the other layers and makes them sound almost like changing overtone resonances of the low pitch (bars 21-29). On the other hand a medium register pitch in the cantus - such as the fourth pitch, C - allows both upper and lower

registers full linear freedom, providing a central anchor for all the

polyphony around it (bars 36-42). The highest pitch is the fifth (B), directly contrasted with a prominent low B-flat (pitch six) in the following section. The registers of both pitches is followed by the rest of the ensemble: the high B corresponds to a flurry of extremely fast

activity in the top register, the low B-flat provoking an eruption in bars 47-8 of low instruments (amplified by timpani, bass drum and tam-tam) which, however, gradually expands upwards to reveal a richer and more overtone-spaced harmony against the cantus note (bars 49-52).

Original

Inversion ,a Example 8a

The retarding melodic ostinato based upon Reinbert de Leeuw's name is constructed from both the original version of the resultant pitches and their inversion. Ex. 8a shows that the pitch level of the inversion is chosen to create an overlap of pitches (especially of D-E) with the original form. This enables Knussen to jump from original to inversion to extend the opening melody. Ex.8b shows the opening ten bars of the work, illustrating the manner in which different pitch levels of original and inversion create an intertwined polyphony which

(O(IE

OD

, (IED

(0E)

(IF#)

Example 8b: Reduction of the first eleven bars of second Organum (slurring omitted). P



28 TEMPO

expands and changes much more than is customary for what is notion-

ally an ostinato. Finally, the retarding process undergone by this layer through the work is shown in Ex. 8c, which lists the incipits of several successive statements - the final statements include octave transpos- itions of pitches in the original ostinato (especially in the violin and double-bass solos) which render it less and less recognizable as such.

? = 120c. bar 1

str.

--00 141 4etc.

mp

bar 48

hn. 1

P = 112c. imperceptibly return to J = 60 bar 60 3

3

etc

ap my molto espr. p sub. m rf

bar h.1etc

bar60db. solo

af > p < pocof P m piut

-1 Example 8c molto espr.

The simultaneous acceleration of the cantus against the decelera- tion of the 'Reinbert de Leeuw' ostinato result in a exchange of roles between the two layers. At the start of the work, the relatively quick ostinato is certainly perceived melodically, whilst the cantus notes are too slow to be perceived as anything other than drones. By the end of the Organum the cantus, on the other hand, is fast enough to be

perceived as a wide-spanning melody (or perhaps an arpeggiated chord, bars 72-76), whilst the ostinato is now slow enough to

generate the actual solos. This structural use of accelerations and decelerations to effect transformations of material across the entire

span of a piece has precedents in the work of Elliott Carter,1o but Knussen's use of it here is in musical context and style highly personal, and its changing harmonic hues are quite unlike Carter.

10 Specifically his Variations for Orchestra (1955) in which two ritornelli - one ascending, the other descending - gradually decelerate and accelerate (respectively) on each of their

appearances through the work.



HARMONIC PRACTICES IN OLIVER KNUSSEN S MUSIC SINCE 1988: PART II 29

(i) flute solo

. - .o .

3 3

(pitches from

S +

. . k previous hexachord

V .are

retained)

3 3 3

(ii)

etc.

clarinet solo

- serial derivation. (both hexachords mixed)

I 6

I5

1. , 5

+.

- serial derivation.-- (both hexaehords mixed)5

Two other layers remain to be commented upon: the sequence of solos, and the 'chorale' harmonies. The solos all stick to the basic duration of 20 crotchets, as can be seen from the form plan. The sequence of solos culminates around a decorative central quartet for flute, clarinet, violin 2 and cello in rhythmic unison, which the composer considers 'a sort of cadenza'" - the ostinato is silent during this passage (bars 53-60). Initially, the solos are the freest and most spontaneous sounding musical layer - the composer refers to them informally as 'free jazz' - and take for their source material a twelve note series which deduced from the pitches in the Reinbert de Leeuw ostinato. As in other pieces by Knussen, these rows are gone through freely with regard to pitch order (Babbitt would call them 'unordered sets'), to generate a modal sequence of pitch fields which actually " In fact scored for the founding members of the ensemble. (Letter to the author, 28 August

2002.)



30 TEMPO

unfolds the total chromatic relatively slowly, and with extreme care for their textural and harmonic surroundings. Ex.9 clarifies how the first two of the solos, for flute and clarinet, derive from their source sets. Following the quartet, the remaining solos (violin, double-bass, horn) become part of the retarding ostinato - and are consequently slower and less elaborate.

The final layer of the Organum to be considered is the harmonic one. As we might by now expect, the harmonies are derived from a verticalization of the ostinato hexachord. This vertical sonority is then subjected to the same process of transposed inversion already observed in Flourish with Fireworks, the Whitman Settings and Songs without Voices (see Ex.10). As with those pieces, so here the chords resulting from transposed inversion are treated freely with regard to octave position and spacing. Crucially, the choice of harmonies in the chorale layer is entirely dependant on the surrounding activity of the three other layers. The composer comments that 'the cantus deter- mines which chord-family is in use at any moment; also to some extent the ostinato in use at any given moment is a co-determinant. The closing stages (post cadenza) where there are sometimes two cantus-pitches and an ostinato/solo to be taken into account meant that the available chords (those containing at least three of the prevailing pitches in play) were very limited.'12

I II III IV V VI transposed I ffI inversion)

@ 1 etc., and transposed onto B, B, A,

and C Example 10: Harmonic vocabulary for the second Organum.

The derivation of the chorale harmony and its constantly shifting interaction in pitch terms with the other layers (especially the cantus) is illustrated in Ex.11, a selective reduction of bars 12-21 covering the first two pitches of the cantus (A and D). Much play is made of common tones between the layers to control resultant verticals between them; scrupulous care is thereby taken to ensure that they relate satisfactorily to each other. Composition in layers has been a commonplace of modern music since Ives. Solving the problem of relating simultaneous layers of musical activity coherently to each other whilst maintaining their audible independence is one of the

12 Ibid.




chief tasks composers are faced with in contemporary music, whatever their aesthetic or style. It touches areas of the work of such otherwise diverse composers as Messiaen, Carter, Ligeti, Birtwistle, Grisey, Benjamin, Lindberg and Wolfgang Rihm. Knussen's Second Organum is one of the finest recent examples, moving with such fluency and naturalness that the listener is scarcely aware of the problem being solved. The four layers interact clearly yet maintain their identity; the strict proportional schemes underneath provide no hindrance to the music's immediacy of utterance or its inventiveness.

J (•P 120 c.)

" 1..Example

11: Interaction between.

harmony is parsed according to the pitch syntax in Example 10. Notes

upper layers are ringed (whether in

7 ,-

I• c m

-t -A -.0,

IL. I' I 1,.-,- --1? 1

layers in the second Organum. The

the same octave or others). Many unringed notes are common with the drone of the cantus firmus.



32 TEMPO

j:2L - T

-

?b .

S-1 f f

|, ,

rl , ., |-

ExampleC 1 c i "

I Fb

-7 VAO-< 41 (O ~)?fp~e~

r-- 3 V4 14 (? I3

Exampe Il~on11 It F- It? In I IOr F

Knussen's most recent major works are both concertos: the Horn Concerto (1994) and the Violin Concerto (2002). Both are multi- sectional forms which play continuously, and both mark a distinct move away from his detailed compositional workings of the early 1990s towards a freer, more instinctive type of composing in which moment-to-moment details are invented spontaneously against care- fully planned formal backgrounds. For this reason, these two works will be considered in a rather different manner from the previous



HARMONIC PRACTICES IN OLIVER KNUSSEN S MUSIC SINCE I966: PART II 33

pieces in these two articles. There are few charts of rotation or trans-

posed inversion for these concertos. Indeed the sketching method

appears to have been quite different from earlier works. Instead of elaborate pre-compositional mapping of harmonic and melodic

syntax, the sketches comprise mainly the plotting of formal schemes, which are then adapted and realized straight into short scores which show little substantial deviation from the final version. There was a small amount of revision to the Horn Concerto after its premiere; at the time of writing, the Violin Concerto is also undergoing slight changes in the light of its first performance in time for the second, to take place in Philadelphia at the end of February 2003.

B A R R T U E L L

Example 12: Musical derivation - of Barry Tuckwell's name.

Knussen had known Barry Tuckwell since childhood, when Tuckwell was principal horn of the London Symphony Orchestra, and had long cherished an ambition to compose something for him. The present piece was triggered by a commission from Suntory Limited for a work to be premiered in the Suntory Hall, Tokyo, as part of a series of composer portrait concerts organized by the late Toru

Takemitsu.13 A horn concerto seemed an ideal way to exploit the acoustics of the hall, and the piece was composed right after the second Organum in about five weeks. The primal cell on which it is based emerges in its simplest form only in the concerto's last bars; like

Songs, this is a musical spelling of its dedicatee's name (see Ex.12). Rotations of this melodic cell were used to determine the pitches in both the opening horn cadenza and the concluding section of the work. It is subjected to decoration to produce much of the melodic material. Aside from that, the pitches of the cell seem also to have

given rise to the overall hue of D minor, characteristic of this piece. This is not to be understood as a conventional D minor, but a personal re-invention of it in the light of Knussen's other harmonic habits such as the use of the all-interval tetrachord (0146) and its inversion (0256) - the latter is especially prominent. However, the fact of their

containing all intervals seems less important here than their being subsets of the octatonic scale, since octatonicism is a very prominent feature of the harmony throughout the work.

The composer explains his change in compositional habits in this

piece: The piece was an attempt to compose almost entirely 'in my head' (e.g. Britten, Shostakovitch) and to see what would happen if I did this. I went for a walk or drive every day, blocking out the next bit in my head (after pre-planning, of course). Hence, over the five weeks it took to write the piece, some surprises occurred.14

The surprises Knussen refers to altered the original plan for the work

considerably. This had consisted of two continuous movements preceded by a short introduction and separated by an accompanied horn cadenza. The second of the two movements was to be a series of variations on a

ground bass, but this device became useful in focussing the structural

progress of the main movement, thus shortening the final part into an Envoi, which provisionally concludes the ground bass variations.

13 The Suntory International Program for Music Composition. Other prominent commissions from this series have included Nono's late work hay que caminar for seven orchestral groups, and Magnus Lindberg's largest orchestral piece to date, Aura.

14 Letter to the author, 28 August 2002.



34 TEMPO

Example 13: Ground bass of Horn ' , Concerto.

The ground bass theme is shown in Ex.13, and consists largely of chains of minor thirds and tritones, outlining diminished sevenths. It is heard in a total of eight versions through the whole concerto, starting at bar 94: the starting pitches are given in the composer's final formal scheme for the work, Ex.14, and clarifies its role in the dramatic sequence of events. This elaborate and detailed explanation should be consulted with the score to hand. It reveals much about the highly original tonal structure of the work, which in fact avoids conventional tonic-dominant structures in favour of keys related by thirds. The dominant (A) is deliberately avoided until the final bar of the work, which thus comes as something of a surprise harmonically.

That the composer should term section B of the form plan 'Night Music' is especially significant. The working title for the piece was originally 'Night Air (Concert Aria for Horn and orchestra)': it is the latest in a long sequence of nocturnal pieces by Knussen. The earliest is his first mature work, the Second Symphony (1970-71, setting poetry by Trakl, Plath and Rilke) which moves from twilight to dawn over a four-movement sequence. The slow movement of the Third Symphony is also a nocturne and, like much of the Horn Concerto, a passacaglia-like set of variations on a 13-chord sequence (rather than a ground bass). Substantial segments of both Wild Things and Higglety Pigglety Pop! (which indeed Knussen revised during this period) fall into this category of nocturnal music as well, and the composer has observed that the Horn Concerto is in some senses a continuation of aspects of the musical world discovered in Higglety. In the Concerto, the aspect of nocturne is more elaborate since, as the form plan indicates, there is an entire section (bars 74-93) of allusions to night music by other composers, notably those which involve use of horn calls. These allusions are quite subtle - even a knowledgeable ear could easily miss many of them, but whether registered as allusions or not, the tapestry thus created serves to heighten the fantastical atmos- phere of the music and provide a ready contrast to the calmer lyricism found elsewhere in the piece.

Curiously, the composer has expressed privately some reservations about the proportions of the piece as it now stands, but it is difficult to hear why. The piece feels ample and natural in its timing and proportions; the Envoi provides the perfect counterbalance to the nocturnal agitations of the main movement, and the surprise move to the dominant at the very end has an appropriately startling finality about it which rounds the work off in a nicely open-ended manner, avoiding the false rhetoric of so many conclusions in recent music.

Knussen's Violin Concerto was completed in April 2002, just before its premiere by Pinchas Zukerman (for whom it was composed) with the composer conducting the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. It forms an interesting point of comparison with its predecessor. It continues the Horn Concerto's move away from pre-compositional harmonic and melodic reservoirs of material in favour of mapping out broader proportions and their relationship, leaving the bar-by-bar composing to contextual decisions freely made on the spot, so to speak. It follows that, as for the Horn Concerto, the sketches for the piece consist mainly of plans for large-scale forms, which the composer relied upon whilst composing straight into short or even full score.



HARMONIC PRACTICES IN OLIVER KNUSSEN S MUSIC SINCE I96: PART II 35

Bars 1-34 Bars 35-73 Bars 74-93 INTRODUCTION Initial Cadenza MAIN MOVEMENT b.l-13 b.14-34 preliminary Evolution of source Exposition of idea 1 (b.14- 20-21) a b codetta tonal basis? (b.1-5) Rotations of this, b.35-50 b.51-62 b.63-73 Night music (ww) source idea (b. 1-6) ending in orchestral Dminor Bmai.-min. DmaJ.r (almost all quotations figuration types flourish (complete (elaboration of or references) (b. 10-11) chromatic, P source idea 1) over sustained 0256

excluded) (F --- G F# (F# - F (implied Dsa-i) D

----- E

EP' D ending in

o146 D# etc. new idea 2)

'S ( B (CIEPL)

'!

OP• .-

Bars 94-115 Bars 116-131 Bars 132-161 Ascending sequential Recapitulation

C development

a b c E' F# G# C E0 Iniia b.94-101 b.102-107 b.108-115 C C# E F# A C i4 s a134-136

superimposed on

C#min. Cmaj. Cmin. Parody of extension of over over ri (ww.,vlns.)

GROUND BASS @La (Fag.) idea (2) (Hped) C

C# C D AtC#

reiterations of ground

Bars 162-181 Bars 182-208 (Recap.) CADENZA ENVOl

(A) 1 " Further

Development h Descending sequential b codetta "development" a b b.137-144 b.145-150 b.151-161 b.182-190 b.191-197

Chordal variant of New melody uniting Chains of all- Dmin. ending in source idea 1 elements of source

F# interval patterns 2nd orchestral idea 1 &

EB & horn antiphony flourish new idea 2 D# (complete

Dmin. Bmaj.-min.

B chrom., Etexcluded) Fed

E,

> D-

e ?rf

Bars 209-221 CODA

Recap. of initial a b cadenza-rotations b.198-203 b.204-208 culminating in unadorned variant of variant of statement of source idea 1 a b and ending on the -/- DOMINANT +Ground Bass - shape in horn

E (concluded)

Example 14 Unlike the previous concerto, this one follows an apparently tradi- tional three movement plan: Knussen entitles his three linked movements respectively Recitative, Aria and Gigue. As the sequence of titles indicates, the main cadenzas for the soloist are in the first movement, leaving the slow movement to bear the brunt of the lyrical melodic

writing in the piece, with the finale a (largely) 6/8 moto perpetuo quite unlike anything else in Knussen's recent output. The playfully humorous, dance-like character of this finale is partly due to its quirky



36 TEMPO

source of inspiration: an old black and white film of a vaudeville clown, Wilbur Hall (a member of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra), performing a series of verses of Pop goes the weasel whilst tossing his violin into every conceivable position between successive phrases of the song - even, at one point, playing the violin upside down behind his back! A fragment of the song is even quoted briefly in Knussen's finale, and the extemely rapid alternations of normal bowing with other playing techniques such as left hand pizzicato and excess bowing pressure are references to the special sonorities heard in this vaudeville act (cf especially the alla burlesca section of the finale).

This places the mood of the music at the opposite extreme from the slow movement, a sort of 'Berceuse elegiaque' - perhaps the most openly lyrical music Knussen has yet given us. It consists of three broad phrases for the soloist with rocking harmonic accompaniment in the orchestra, preceded by an ascending introduction and interspersed with two short intermezzos instrumental of related material. The movement concludes with a further ascent by the soloist, leading to the same high E harmonic which began the concerto to open its finale.

I Recitative

CADENZA 1 EPISODE 1 CADENZA 2 EPISODE 3 CLIMAX/ capriccioso cumulative CADENZA 3

30" "balletic" '-78 2 3 5 8 13 21 high60

85321vn235813 12 3~ 20" r13 85 21 vln.

23 5 , low

1116 85 3 2 5b342 I'05"

1' 45" 40" 50 30"

3: :2 3:2

Speeds

=66, =88 S =88, J! =117

1=117, .=156

- : 5 e.

Example 15

Example 15 gives a typical instance of the composer's compositional pre-planning in the form of a scheme for the first movement adapted from the composer's sketches. It shows the sequence of alter- nating cadenzas and episodes as they unfold in the final piece, together with the approximate timings of each part in seconds.

The form of the first movement is complicated by two factors not evident from the composer's form plan. The first is a sequence of previews of the slow movement melody which punctuate the structure, each slower than the last. Thus the slow movement functions as the culmination of a process of retarding, not unlike the structural retard of the ostinato in the second Organum, so that the opening movement has a multiple layered form quite characteristic of Knussen. Ex.16 shows first the main phrases of the final melody, and then the successive glimpses of it foreshadowed in the first movement.




Adagio J = 56-60c A

F I

MP B

etc., later&

-71

mw o

Example 16a: The slow movement 3 3 melody of the Violin Concerto. f

= 132c. A A etc.

(i) W F

I -13 3 3

sub. mnp dolce mf

etc.

3 3

f

= 80 B

(ii) ,

-5 pp ---- p dolce -f n- pp

A A

(iii) meno mosso (ad lib.)6 3 3

mf espr.

= 60 B

A inverted

(iv) - 6 1

--movement.---• ----

6h_ • menof 6

f ff ><

A inverted



38 TEMPO

The other factor which plays an important part in the first movement from bar 6 of the 'Cadenza 2' section, is the introduction of a fast quasi-ground bass - derived from the all interval set (0146) - utilizing a fast triplet and dotted-triplet rhythm. Repetitions and trans- positions of this persist from this point, with a few interruptions, right up to the climax near the end of the movement. However, both in its rhythmic agility and its interval content, it is quite different in character and effect from the ground bass of the Horn Concerto. The bass lines of the slow movement, on the other hand, with their chains of transposed minor third sequences determining the harmonic changes, have a lot in common with the bass lines of the earlier concerto, although the harmony here is much richer.

The plan in Ex. 15 displays several chains of number series in three sections of the first movement ('Cadenza 1', 'Cadenza 2' and 'Climax/Cadenza 3'). As these suggest, a main proportional guide for several sections was the Fibonacci series 1-2-3-5-8-13-21. This arises not out of any mystical belief in the properties of the Golden Section, but is simply used as an aid to compositional invention on both larger and smaller scales. A reduction of the first section of the work ('Cadenza I'), annotated with numbers, will clarify how this works in musical practice (see Ex. 17). As can be seen, the Fibonacci proportions are not used slavishly: Knussen feels no compunction in drooping phrases across Fibonacci durations, so that the duration scheme will not always be immediately audible. Nor is it intended to be: it's a scaf- folding for the progress of the music, a stimulus for a dialogue with the imagination and instinct of the composer, which is surely how such things are best considered. Fibonacci rhythms also feature promi- nently in the finale of the concerto: here they determine both many of the phrase durations and also the rhythms of the concluding brass chorale which ties the harmonic threads of the whole work together in a strongly directional, even cadential manner.

The harmonic style of the Violin Concerto focusses, like the Horn Concerto, on the free use of the all-interval tetrachords (0146) and (0256). There is some use of transposed inversion progressions on these two tetrachords, notably using the tubular bells' chord at the opening of the work (see Ex. 17) as starting point, and ending with its inversion at the end of the piece. The Violin Concerto is less obses- sively key-centred than its predecessor, but like it nevertheless offers a fresh and personal interpretation of tonally-tinged harmonic syntax with hardly any sense of neo-Romanticism. And as the Horn Concerto used the history of the instrument's idiom in some degree as a compositional factor, so the Violin Concerto openly reflects aspects of the violin's idioms over the past 150 years as a constructive element in the composing. This is especially apparent in the cadenza that opens the work (which perhaps distantly recalls the recitative-like opening of the second part of the Berg concerto), and in the taran- tellas of the Gigue finale.

Overall, the two concertos show how Knussen has evolved out of the extremely strict, detailed compositional techniques of the pieces from 1988 onwards. It is unlikely, however, that he could have under- taken composing with the degree of local freedom evident in these concertos without the background of pieces such as Songs without Voices. The recent concertos are in this sense the direct outcome of the period of strict composition which preceded them. The world they inhabit is the same but the perspective they encompass has shifted from close-up to predominately long-shot. In any case, it's worth pointing out again that the strictness of the early 90s pieces is




not as apparent to the ear as their wealth of colour and harmonic

variety. The real change, to the ear, in the recent works is the wider variety of detail in textural activity, including passages of less immediately detailed textural surface, giving the Envoi of the Horn Concerto or the Violin Concerto's slow movement a new-found spaciousness (although the tuttis in the Horn Concerto are quite as complex and multi-layered as anything in Knussen's earlier works).

Ultimately, whatever the compositional methods they employed, the last 14 years of Knussen's output show a remarkable balance between the composer's instinct and his devising a personal technical

= 66c. 8va

vn.osolo •o

0)ff appass., rubato

colla parte 8 t.bells

I hp., pf. str. pizz.>

orch. s.dr.

(t.bells damp)

Mf >>f

3 hns.

s.dr.

tbnes., bsns., dbs., pf.

fA

in tempo

fi. (flz.), (+pf.) >

-•-

M ff

Example 17: Reduction of the first vc., db.

19 bars of the Violin Concerto's first

movement, showing Fibonacci mf proportions. 2_



40 TEMPO

Example 17 (continued)

7 colla parte

AAaA

sub. menof

2 ww. (+hp.) colla parte

P /

str., pizz. w

cl. str., ww.

hn s., 1sns

5..str

P mm

1 1

hns. , bsnsw

vn.

-M:P--------•

12

sub.p dolciss5

h el flww., hns.

orng WW el

hns., bsns.

F1 I"

P v I




(accel.) - - -------- - - - - - - - - --- = 116c.

14

cresc. mf 3J 2 "1" I

(centre)

a tempo subito 8 = 88 17

Mp2 5petc.

Example 17 (continued) 2 ,

3 J 5 J

means of realizing his musical vision. Strictness or freedom, in the last resort, are questions that sort themselves out according to musical context. The ear remains the final arbiter - and, as I hope is made clear in this pair of articles, Knussen's ear is one of the finest anywhere today. His music is, as his colleague Magnus Lindberg has said, a model of what music can and should be."

Music examples from Songs without Voices ? 1992 by Faber Music Ltd; from Two Organa ? 2002 by Faber Music Ltd; from Horn Concerto ? 1996 by Faber Music Ltd; from Violin Concerto ? 2002 by Faber Music Ltd.

'5 Interview for a BBC4 documentary on Knussen, screened in November 2002 (director Barrie Gavin).



Documents

Harmonic Practices in Oliver Knussen's Music since 1988: Part II