Welcome to our New Season!

This is an exciting year for us, with many "firsts". After a trial year, we are officially announcing our blog, which covers current events, interviews, and anything you want to discuss. You will also discover a series of video clips and photos on our website to help you share your concert experience with friends. Help us spread the word!

Our season starts on Wednesday 9/17 at 7:30pm in Grusin Hall at the College of Music, 18th and Euclid. All our events are free, and we always have a reception for you to meet the artists. In addition to featuring our wonderful CU composers, performers, and featured faculty, we also present world-class guest artists. This year, composer Michael Daugherty will join us for a residency surrounding the 10/15 concert, and Alarm Will Sound chamber orchestra will have a residency from 1/18-20 that includes a composer reading/recording session. Many thanks to our private donors, who make our program possible!

- Hsing-ay Hsu

Response to Guitar Hero / Take a Listening Test!

For those of us who are skeptical of the quality of electronic software, please do check out "PianoTech". I am a die-hard acoustic pianist, but even i was amazed at the subtleties produced on an electric keyboard when our friend Hugh Sung came to Boulder a year ago and introduced me to this software. Hugh is a big advocate of technology, and uses a pageturn-free laptop computer instead of scores wherever he goes.

On the other side of the issue, virtual orchestra softwares are much harder to perfect, because they depend on the real-time input of just one conductor to shape the output of a whole orchestra of musicians (whose jobs are to naturally tailor each phrase in endless detail).

Take a listening test yourself at Wall Street Journal article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117832128175492832.html. Click on "listen to the four samples". See if you can tell, for example, the "leaning" of the downbeats in the real orchestra versus the blase uniformity in the fake ones...

- Hsing-ay Hsu

Guitar Hero encourages the consumption of real electronic instruments

I was recently reading the New York Times, and I stumbled upon the article "Turning Guitar Heros into Composers," by Jason Turbow.

Apparently the advent of Guitar Hero and similar video games is correlated with an increase in the consumption of real electronic instruments. This article offers a brief perusal of the arsenal of commercial electronic instruments currently available.

One of the most interesting instruments covered is a micro-tonal device called the Tonal Plexus that has 211 pitches per octave, and offers fingering patterns that preserve the shape of chords of various micro-tonal qualities no matter their key (so your hand shape would be the same for both a justly-tuned C major chord and a justly-tuned Eb major chord).

I also would not miss the video of the fascinating friction-inspired composition called SlipStick, by Carla Scaletti (developer of the extremely powerful sound design environment Kyma, a great piece of software accompanied by dedicated hardware devices called Capybaras, named after the South American rodent), performed on the Haken Continuum.

One of the main problems with run-of-the-mill and older electronic musical instruments is that they often do not provide enough degrees of freedom for musical expression, especially compared with the responsive and complex physical systems inherent in the construction and performance of acoustic instruments. The Haken Continuum and the brilliantly crafted software running in the background of SlipStick clearly exceed the low standards of expression found in most commercial electronic instruments. I think that the Continuum seems to be a righteous conceptual heir to Hugh LeCaine's revolutionary Electronic Sackbut.

- Paul Hembree

Extended Techniques

I've been scouring the web for information on instrumental extended techniques and effects. My focus was to find video clips, or at the very least audio samples, of various techniques, in order to supplement the array of instrumentation books available to most composition students in university music libraries.

My current list of websites is below, and is by no means finished. If you have anything you'd like to add to this list, please contact me at paul.hembree[at]colorado.edu, or simply post a comment. Hopefully we can create a comprehensive list of available resources, and possibly make it a permanent part of the Pendulum website.

What also might be interesting is to discuss the philosophy behind using extended techniques. Some people might question whether it is worthwhile to ask performers to step out of their comfort zone and into a realm of multiphonics, quarter-tone fingerings, bowing in strange places, or sticking bolts and screws into their instruments. I wonder what our CU composers and visitors think.

DMA composer Tim Buckman sent a link to an interesting article (see the bottom of the list) arguing against pushing an orchestra with extended techniques or otherwise just plain difficult writing (think John Adams' Chamber Symphony). I think this brings up an important point - extended techniques, though logically included in the study of instrumentation, probably do not fall easily under the study of orchestration in its strictest sense: writing for orchestra. Many extended techniques will probably never make it outside the realm of chamber music and the solo repertoire, because they are simply to difficult and dangerous to require from members in the sections of an orchestra. I suppose it is simply best to know the limitations of the members of the ensemble you are writing for.

EXTENDED TECHNIQUES:

ALL INSTRUMENTS:
The Philharmonia Orchestra Sound Exchange

This orchestra in the United Kingdom has a great website devoted to education on the orchestra. This website is one of a few online resources that I've found that includes samples of extended techniques on various instruments, and as of yet is the most comprehensive that I've found. Click on "The Orchestra" once on their page to see individual instrument pages.

FLUTE, CELLO, AND PIANO:
Luna Nova New Music Ensemble

This Memphis-based new music ensemble has an excellent classroom resources section on their website, which includes extended technique guides for flute, piano and cello.

FLUTE:
Mats Moller, flute

This Swedish flutist has a comprehensive flute extended technique website that has both samples of techniques and their notation.

CLARINET AND SAXOPHONE:
Jay C. Easton, single reed multi-instrumentalist

In Dr. Easton's composers' information section, he lists two pages that contain audio examples of clarinet and saxophone extended techniques (most of the effects are on saxophone).

VIBRAPHONE:
James Walker, vibraphone/marimba

This short page discusses some of the extended techniques available on the vibraphone, including pitch bending.

GENERAL DISCUSSION:
"Making Noise: Extended Techniques after Experimentalism," by Matthew Burtner, in New Music Box

Though this doesn't contain any audio examples, it is a great article on extended techniques, and even makes mention of attaching tin-foil to the bridge of a violin - a method of creating apparent distortion in an acoustic setting.

GENERAL DISCUSSION:
"Orchestration: You've got to Know Your Limitations," by Ron Hess, in Film Music Magazine

This article provides advice against trying to push the experimental envelope in the realm of film and commercial music. I think this is applies well to orchestra's in general, since extended techniques are probably much safer in the realm of chamber music.

Please post your comments!

-Paul Hembree

New layout

I've redesigned the layout of our blog to fit in an inline frame in our new website. The new website should be up by the evening of June 4th.

-Paul Hembree

Can you super size my circus?

Tonight my wife and I joined over a thousand at Boettcher Concert Hall in Denver to hear John Corigliano’s latest symphony: Circus Maximus. In recent memory, very few new pieces have ever received the kind of attention as this one (John Adams new opera is another). Apparently this piece was commissioned by the University of Texas at Austin for a scandalously large sum of money. It was supposed to be a large work for band – it is that.

The defining element of this piece is the incredible use of spatial writing. Perhaps half the performers in this giant work were spread around the hall. Boettcher was particularly fantastic as it is a completely round hall with unlimited possibilities for staging true surround sound.
This was truly an amazing spectacle. Allan McMurray (celebrated wind conductor) described this as a theatrical piece of music. Quite true… The complexity of textures that were delivered to the ears from so many vantage points offered a truly unique experience. This could not be duplicated with any surround sound system I have ever heard.

I really loved the piece. It had a raw power that I rarely hear outside of Corigliano’s output. Although I am sort of a meats and potatoes, harmony and counterpoint sort of composer, I do enjoy the simple power and beauty of raw sound or even noise. Our auditory environment has become so complex in our mechanized and electric world. This work tapped into that energy and harnessed it beautifully.

Perhaps the most interesting thing for me to think about during the concert was how were others in the audience processing the piece. Much of the piece is ear splitting loud (it ends with a shotgun). Our audience was made up of a mix of ages and I was quite sure that many of them had never heard concerts that were so loud. A few people walked out at various points. At those moments I thought this piece was indeed pushing the boundaries of how outside the bounds of “normal” most audiences can stomach. I thought perhaps everyone was shell shocked and were just politely waiting till the 3rd act when Dave Grusin would perform some Bernstein. I was dead wrong. The standing ovation at the end of the piece was quite immediate and truly earnest. I have never witnessed such a positive response to a new piece of music (and I was present at the premiere of Jennifer Higdon’s percussion concerto). The mastery of this piece is that John Corigliano’s auditory vision is so unique and compelling that a hall filled with average concert goers overcame any inhibition to the “new” and came to instantly love something shockingly different than anything they had ever heard in an orchestral concert hall.
On the right days, new music has an amazing power…

-Dan Kellogg

Training for the Big Time

Last week, I was able to see the CU Wind Symphony perform John Corigliano’s third symphony, Circus Maximus. It’s an incredibly intense ride, and the ensemble brings a very attractive life to it. If you missed them, be sure to make it to the encore performance in Boettcher Concert Hall on Tuesday, April 29.

As we tend to do, the composers in the audience found one another after the show, and bounced ideas around about the work. One of us had a very interesting observation (paraphrased here):

“That’s a piece you only write after you’ve won the Pulitzer.”

A small statement, but one that stopped me in my tracks. The composer in question explained that he didn’t think the massive performance forces and challenging performance conditions required for Circus Maximus could be assembled for anyone less than a world-renowned composer, and he’s certainly on to something. After all, while it may not be Corigliano’s most tonally-adventurous work, it’s a massive, surround-sound, three-dimensional coordination of three different wind ensembles. Chances are not good that such an ambitious work by your average graduate student would be perceived as anything but megalomaniacal, no matter how well-crafted it might be. In fact, I don’t think it’s unfair to say that Maestro Corigliano’s very ability to undertake such a project and find performances is a testament to his immense achievement as an artist.

These ideas, in turn, raise some fascinating questions: Is a composer’s success measured by how big he/she can go? And, perhaps more importantly, do we now equate going big with artistic achievement?

These questions both arise from one of the defining blessings/curses of the composer/performer relationship: we are, more or less, dependent on other artists for the ability to realize our art. The larger your ensemble of choice, the truer this becomes. If we chase this line of reasoning far enough, we can conclude that the very ability to find performances is an attestation to a composer’s artistic merit by the performers. Further, since the audience and musicians alike acknowledge and embrace the performers’ expertise (see “Why I Love Unsilent Night,” 12/11/07), the audience in turn can use the amount of performances as a rubric for measuring musical aptitude: the best composers are performed the most, and the biggest works that can still find performances are the best ones.

It’s at this point that I expect to lose about half my readership. No doubt many will think that this conclusion is far-fetched and constructed around fabrication, and maybe it is. Then again, maybe not. I remember a CU composers’ seminar a while back in which a surprising number of my peers confessed ambitions to score for film, video games, radio and other kinds of wide-consumption media. Certainly, none of them are under any delusions that they'll start their careers in these fields with anything but artless, thankless projects; but still, they're attractive to composers. The appeal of these incredibly competitive and ruthless markets is, at least in part, the sheer number of people who hear one’s music; it’s certainly true that John Williams reaches more people than David Lang, even post-Pulitzer. Even more appealing is that the upper echelon of film composers can do pretty much anything they want. Williams wrote for shakuhachi in Memoirs of a Geisha, Danny Elfman constantly features himself as a vocalist, and Philip Glass can… well, do what he’s been doing since 1980. While our intense attraction to this career is understandable (who wouldn’t love to share big, ambitious music with lots of people?), it also suggests that some part of us (at least among musicians) sincerely believes that bigger is better, and that artistic integrity can be temporarily sacrificed if the end result is ultimate artistic freedom.

However, if we sincerely believe that, how long until our “eyes on the prize” mentality becomes a dangerous myopia? How many low-budget teen flicks and slot machine jingles can a media composer write while waiting for his big break before his integrity and artistry are damaged forever? And in concert music, is it possible that every song, string quartet and chamber piece could become nothing more than an etude, a way to train for the big time when we can finally write our own Circus Maximus? Could we try so hard to write big that the artistry of our music suffers?

Again, this may be overstated, but is also probably closer than we think. Corigliano has done great work with his palate for big sound, but the same ambitions of grandeur also create composers like Philip Glass, John Rutter and Eric Whitacre: composers who draw giant crowds and create giant works but simply do not evolve artistically. I believe that ambition of scope and the desire to reach more people are wonderful ideals, and have led to great works of art. But we as artists must always be wary of the cost, and remind ourselves that for every Circus Maximus there are twenty unperformed symphonies, one of which may have been written instead of the next great string quartet. So much for the big time.

~Greg Simon