Contrapuntal Forms (2019)
Fugue
Cantus Firmus - “O rubor sanguinis”
Canon
Commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University
Premiere:
October 15, 2019, Taplin Auditorium, Princeton, NJ
Jani Parsons, keyboard
Chris Sies, percussion
Andy Hudson, clarinet
Andy Hall, sax
Tim Steeves, violin
Max Geissler, cello
Recording:
Recorded on October 15th, 2019 in Taplin Auditorium, Princeton, NJ by Latitude 49
Program note:
In polyphonic music, even the tiniest detail must be placed just right in order to support melody and harmony at once. This double role gives each note in a polyphonic passage more responsibility, weight, and depth. Contrapuntal writing depends heavily on the play of consonances—the intervals or chords that act as points of stability in a sonic dialogue of tension and release. Without consonance, the harmonic dimension of the music loses its vitality. Over the past hundred years, however, composers have picked apart the tonal system that defined consonance and dissonance in relation to one another during the heyday of polyphony. Now, perhaps as a result, contrapuntal music is often deemed outdated, if not obsolete.
Contrapuntal Forms is a continuation of my search for a new counterpoint, one that takes advantage of the expanded harmonic and rhythmic realms available to a musician writing today. The three pieces—Canon, Cantus Firmus, and Fugue—are bound not by any programmatic content, but by my singular preoccupation with the art of counterpoint. All three are poly-stylistic, together encompassing about seven centuries of Western harmony. In addition to the predominant Renaissance and Baroque counterpoint, they explore Medieval and jazz harmonies, as well as microtones. Even within a single piece, stylistic shifts redefine the way consonances are perceived.
In composing Fugue, I approached the fugal form as source of inspiration rather than an organizing framework. There is no fixed number of voices, and each “voice” traverses a wide range spanning many octaves. The episodic breaks are usually played by the piano, which covers as many lines as needed. The tritone opening—Bb/A#-E—pushes the tonal trajectory in opposite directions. The piece is faithful to this ambiguity, climaxing in F, but closing in B. The structure is free, but the listener will find many attributes of a traditional fugue: neatly organized expositions, stretti, inversions, retrogrades, and augmentations. The tonal syntax of Fugue is based on jazz harmony, but toward the end it takes a detour to the eighteenth century. This creates a meta-stylistic dissonance which is resolved instantaneously with a deceptive move. Through stylistic “wrong” turns, false entries, and stumbling rhythms, I wanted to create what I consider to be a crucial element of counterpoint (and, for that matter, humor)—a meticulously crafted disorder.
Cantus Firmus is a setting of the 11th-century antiphon “O rubor sanguinis” (O ruby blood) by the visionary abbess Hildegarde von Bingen. The tune is played on Dan Trueman’s bitKlavier, a manipulable digital piano played via a MIDI keyboard, and it functions as a cantus firmus—an unerring melody that anchors the rest of the voices. The cantus firmus accelerates, starting very slowly—each note augmented by a factor of eight—and ultimately speeding up to the original rhythmic profile, played at a lightning-fast, 32nd note scale. The gradual rhythmic diminution of the cantus firmus creates an illusion of something untouchable coming into focus—perhaps this could be heard as a reference to the divinity of Hildegarde’s “ruby blood.” Over the top of this accelerating bitKlavier, the remaining instruments contrapuntally unfold the tune. The harmonic syntax crosses freely between idioms of the Medieval and Renaissance periods. The bitKlavier detunes the notes that do not belong to D Dorian mode by a quarter tone. These notes are initially used to create Medieval “double leading tones” at cadences; as two notes converge on the target notes from below, their greater proximity makes the pull toward resolution even more intense. A furious keyboard interlude takes a journey further into this realm of quarter-tone harmony. Afterward, the second half of the tune resumes and develops into an outrageously busy—and somewhat disastrous—ending.
O rubor sanguinis,
qui de excelso illo fluxisti,
quod divinitas tetigit,
tu flos es,
quem hiems
de flatu serpentis
numquam laesit.
O ruby blood
which flowed from on high
where divinity touched.
You are a flower
that the winter
of the serpent's breath
can never injure.
A canon is created when two or more identical copies of a line are played simultaneously but starting at different points in time. This creates a dense web of lines and a feeling of danger—particularly attractive to me, especially at fast tempi—as each voice perpetually chases after the one that came before. My Canon divides neatly into sections. In the first section, Moderato, five voices follow one another at the intervals of a unison and an octave. Halfway through, another line is introduced and imitated at the fifth. The second section, Andante, is a canon at the third between pairs of voices in imitation. The third section, Presto, enters suddenly at an elided cadence. The voices pile up in successive sixths. This builds to a climax, followed by short, echoey imitations at the unison and octave. From this point on, the piece progresses backward. The Andante returns in an inverted (or upside-down) form. The Moderato is restated, but stripped down to its most basic elements. Despite its petite scale, Canon incorporates a large number of percussion instruments. In addition to adding color, the percussion plays a crucial role in binding the rowdy mixture of lines, creating a lighthearted spirit perhaps evocative of dance music.
Contrapuntal Forms was made possible by a grant from the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University.