Rhythms

The anxiety of starting what could be a pretty major work in my career is starting to take hold.  The fantastic new music sextet Eighth Blackbird has commissioned works from myself and two other composers for their 10th anniversary season.  Yes, I am pumped about this.  Their performances are amazing and they are certainly an important group in the quest to keep "concert music" relevant and interesting to today's society. 

The three commissions have a criterion regarding the titles of the pieces.  The group's name comes from Wallace Stevens' poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, whose eighth stanza reads:

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know

Accordingly, the three pieces are to have the titles "Lucid", "Inescapable" and "Rhythms.

After discussions with the other two composers, it has been decided that I will compose the "Rhythms" movement.  I am actually quite happy with this "assignment" - "Lucid" and "Rhythms" were my choices, and I think the latter will be quite a challenge for me.

I've tried to find out what "rhythmic" music is to other people.  I posted a few questions on the newsgroup rec.music.classical asking a few purposely vague questions:

1. What musical works would you recommend to someone interested in
   listening to something "rhythmic"?
2. What melody or melodies do you think have a particularly
   memorable/distinctive rhythmic profile?
3. Which living composers do you think create music that is interesting
   particularly with regard to handling rhythm?

I thought they were worded pretty clearly.

One response I got was mildly thought-provoking and extremely irritating:

1. All music fundamentally depends on rhythm:  relationships unfolding through
   time.
2. Any interesting melody by anybody.
3. Any composer who writes interesting music.

Hm.  Well, that's not too helpful.  The responder wrote further:

You don't really mean "rhythmically" as a general term here.  You're only
looking for certain specific kinds of "rhythmic interest."  Nevertheless, all
melodies unfold in time, and when and where in time each note in a melody
arrives in time is always fundamental to its effect...You're not looking for remarkable
rhythmic constructions of a kind that we take for granted.  You're looking for
other kinds.

Hm again.  Of course we're all aware that 99.999% of music deals in rhythm (4'33", for instance, doesn't), but I am trying to determine what an audience thinks of when they hear that word and how I can play off of those expectations.

Knowing the performing style of Eighth Blackbird quite well I'm having a tough time deciding whether to go with some knock-your-socks-off type of moto perpetuoso movement or try to delve into another "meaning" of "Rhythms".  I am especially attracted to what Merriam Webster gives as the fourth definition of the word:

4 : a regularly recurrent quantitative change in a variable biological process

I think the idea of a measurable, constant change nested inside an inconsistent process is an extremely attractive prospect and basis for a musical composition.

I'm trying to think of pieces that fit within this description.  Breaking it down into its two components, we get a rather typical musical form for the first half - the theme and variations (regularly recurrent quantitative change), especially of the type found in the Classical and early-Romantic eras. 

The second half I'm having a bit more difficulty with.  What pieces are based upon a variable organic (instead of biological) process?

I decided to investigate whether the pieces I'm familiar with that combine Theme and Variations with some other musical form or process to see if anything was further illuminated.  The finale to Dvorak's Eighth Symphony immediately sprang to mind - the conflation of Theme and Variations with sonata-allegro form is so elegantly done here.  But is sonata-allegro form a variable process?  I guess not but am not quite sure - it certainly seems like a pretty consistent process to me. 

Britten's Turn of the Screw overlays its Theme and Variations onto an operatic plot.  Is this plot a variable process?  Again, I guess not.

At this point, I started getting a headache trying to work all this out.  Perhaps this premise and search is futile for a musical equivalent.  I'm curious to know what any readers think. 

I'll post more as I mull this over more.

Comments

[Tim Rutherford-Johnson]

"4 : a regularly recurrent quantitative change in a variable biological process"

That sounds like a great place to start from! Apologies if this is stating the obvious (it probably is), but one composer who deals in a sort of variable organic process is Ligeti - especially in several of the Piano Etudes, or a piece like Continuum. Don't know if that's what you're after; I'm also reminded (in a different way) of Schoenberg's reading of Brahms - continuing Variation, etc.

[Marcus]

I haven't yet looked at the Ligeti etudes, and you're definitely right about organic processes happening there. It's been a long time since I've visited these anyway. I used to try to hack through them, maybe I'll get a bottle of wine and see what I can discover!

[Steve Hicken]

Congratulations, Marcus! And good luck!

I suppose I have a different reaction than most when I think of rhythmic music--I tend to think of Carter or of the Birtwhistle of Earth Dances rather than pulsation.

[Marcus]

Thank you thank you, Steve! Luck I will definitely need.

And your post is exactly what I'm looking for - What do people think of? I know the most "obvious" answer would be, as you say, music that plays with "pulsation" and I'm wondering whether I should aim my piece to hit on that receptor or go for the Birtwistle/Carter type of rhythmic flux. Perhaps I should just stop worrying and *write*!

[Steve Hicken]

Just "write"?!?! That's what all the pre-compositional stuff is for; to avoid putting pencil to paper!

[Lisa Hirsch]

Whoa, what great news, Marcus! Congratulations.

If I were answering those questions....

1. Music of the Ars Nova. Indian and gamelan music.

2. Hmmm. Beyond all of those sharply-profiled "knocking" rhythms in Beethoven...let me think about this.

3. Messiaen. John Adams. Ooops, Messiaen is dead, so move him to 1. Glass, Reich?

[venicekeith]

Leo Brouwer: modern, rhythmic

[Brendan McNamara]

Congratulations on the commission! We had our wodowind quintet pieces performed together in Cincinnati a few years ago, which is perhaps one of the first times you heard eighth blackbird as well. I can definitely say you would be well equipped to handle writing "rhythm" for them.

Having seen eighth blackbird in their (and my!) developmental stage at CCM, I devoted a good bit of thought to how I would write a piece for them. I think the key to "rhythm" in a group like eighth blackbird is the lack of a conductor, the lack of a need to wrap everything up into one neat package metrically. There doesn't even have to be a "score". I think Cage wrote a late orchestral work (108, or some similar number of performers, and thus the title) where each player has a separate part, but there is no score and no conductor.

I think one of the less discussed but mor eimportant roles of a composer is to provide new challenges to performers. Imagine giving them six parts, each with their own rhythmic profile and conceived to be played simultaneously, yet with the "lining up" of parts left to be completed by the group. You could present eighth blackbird with an opportunity for growth as a great 10th anniversary gift.

[Marcus]

Great to hear from you Brendan - hope you're doing well!

I definitely am interested in the type of writing you talk about, but I don't know if I'm brave enough to try it on such a high-profile commission. Call me a wimp....