Arts, Faculty of
Music, School of
DSpace
UBCV
Sadaka, Ramsey Hassan
Doctor of Musical Arts - DMA
University of British Columbia
차가운 (Chagaun)-The Book of Ice is a musical composition in four connected movements for flute solo and chamber orchestra. This composition responds to The White Book, a novel written by the South Korean writer Han Kang. In writing The Book of Ice, I am contributing a piece to the flute repertoire that blends pitch-set theoretical techniques and a spectral attitude to orchestration. This was achieved most prominently through combining the intense motivic development of a single hexachord (which I call the “ice collection”) and a focus on rich and shifting instrumental timbre. Combining these two compositional approaches resulted in the constant development of instrumental timbre to reinforce and enliven the gestural language and pitch organization of this piece. Writing The Book of Ice also demonstrates original ways of combining music and text. My purpose for doing this was to take my emotional response to Han’s The White Book and transform it into music. The realization of text through music consisted of text painting and the extraction of individual words and phonemes derived from Han’s novel to expand the timbral palette of the flute.
차가운 (CHAGAUN)-THE BOOK OF ICE for Flute Solo and Chamber Orchestra by RAMSEY HASSAN SADAKA B. M., The Ohio State University, 2014 M. M., The University of Oregon, 2017 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Composition) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) April 2023 © Ramsey Hassan Sadaka, 2023 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled: 차가운 (Chagaun)-The Book of Ice for Flute Solo and Chamber Orchestra submitted by Ramsey Sadaka in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition Examining Committee: Dr. Keith Hamel, Professor, Music Composition, UBC Supervisor Dr. Dorothy Chang, Professor, Music Composition, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Robert Pritchard, Associate Professor, Music Technology, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Dr. John Roeder, Professor, Music Theory, UBC University Examiner Dr. Kevin McNeilly, Associate Professor, English, UBC University Examiner Dr. Paul Frehner, Associate Professor, Music Composition, Western University External Examiner iii Abstract 차가운 (Chagaun)-The Book of Ice is a musical composition in four connected movements for flute solo and chamber orchestra. This composition responds to The White Book, a novel written by the South Korean writer Han Kang. In writing The Book of Ice, I am contributing a piece to the flute repertoire that blends pitch-set theoretical techniques and a spectral attitude to orchestration. This was achieved most prominently through combining the intense motivic development of a single hexachord (which I call the “ice collection”) and a focus on rich and shifting instrumental timbre. Combining these two compositional approaches resulted in the constant development of instrumental timbre to reinforce and enliven the gestural language and pitch organization of this piece. Writing The Book of Ice also demonstrates original ways of combining music and text. My purpose for doing this was to take my emotional response to Han’s The White Book and transform it into music. The realization of text through music consisted of text painting and the extraction of individual words and phonemes derived from Han’s novel to expand the timbral palette of the flute. iv Lay Summary 차가운 (Chagaun)-The Book of Ice is a musical composition in four connected movements for flute solo and chamber orchestra. This composition responds to The White Book, a novel written by the South Korean writer Han Kang. In writing The Book of Ice, I am contributing a piece to the flute repertoire that blends pitch-set theoretical techniques and a spectral attitude to orchestration. Writing The Book of Ice also demonstrates original ways of combining music and text. My purpose for doing this was to take my emotional response to Han’s The White Book and transform it into music. v Preface This thesis is an original, unpublished, independent work by its author, Ramsey Sadaka. vi Table of Contents Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………...iii Lay Summary……………………………………………………………………………………..iv Preface……………………………………………………………………………………………..v Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………………vi List of Tables……………………………………………………………………………………..ix List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………………..x Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………xii Dedication………...…………………………………………………………………………..…xiii CHAPTER 1 Introduction and Background……………………………………………………..1 1.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………..1 1.2 Influences………………………………………………………………………….2 1.3 Literature…………………………………………………………………………..3 CHAPTER 2 Precursors of 차가운 (Chagaun)-The Book of Ice………………………………..6 2.1 “…like evening rain clouds…”……………………………………………………6 2.2 The White Book Series of Pieces and General Comments About Them………….7 2.3 Motivic Development…………………………………………………………..…8 2.4 Precomposed Large-Scale Background Structures………………………………..8 2.5 Harmonic Series………………………………………………………………...…9 2.6 Interpolations………………………………………………………………..…….9 CHAPTER 3 Materials, Techniques, and Concepts in 차가운 (Chagaun)-The Book of Ice…..10 3.1 Form…………………………………………………………………………...…10 3.2 Pitch Structures…………………………………………………………………..10 vii 3.3 Melody……………………………………………………………………...……13 3.4 Harmony…………………………………………………………………………15 3.5 Engagement with Spectralism……………………………………………………16 3.6 Timbre and Orchestration………………………………………………………..17 3.7 Rhythm and Meter…………………………………………………………….…20 3.8 Working with Text……………………………………………………………….21 CHAPTER 4 Discussion of Movement II, “눈 (Nun)-Snow”…………………………….……25 4.1 Brief Explanation of Document Order………………………………………..….25 4.2 Overview…………………………………………………………………………25 4.3 Theme……………………………………………………………………………28 4.4 Variation 1………………………………………………………………….……28 4.5 Variation 2……………………………………………………………….………29 4.6 Variations 3, 4, and 5……………………………………………………….……31 CHAPTER 5 Discussion of Movement III, “눈보라 (Nunbora)-Blizzard”..…………………..32 5.1 Overview……………………………………………………………………...….32 5.2 Section A…………………………………………………………………………32 5.3 Section B………………………………………………………………………....36 5.4 Section C……………………………………………………………………..…..37 CHAPTER 6 Discussion of Movement I, “서리 (Seori)-Frost”…………………………….….38 6.1 Overview………………………………………………………………………....38 6.2 Section A……………………………………………………………………...….39 6.3 Section B……………………………………………………………………..…..40 6.4 Section A’………………………………………………………….…………….41 viii CHAPTER 7 Discussion of Movement IV, “진눈깨비 (Jinnunkkaebi)-Sleet”…..……………42 7.1 Overview………..………………………………………………………………..42 7.2 Section A………………………...……………………………………………….44 7.3 Section D……………………………………..…………………………………..45 7.4 Sections B, C, E, and F……………………………………………….………….45 CHAPTER 8 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….47 8.1 Outcomes.……………………………………………………..…………………47 8.2 Future Directions……………………………………………..………………….48 8.3 Aesthetic Statement…………………………………………...…………………49 CHAPTER 9 Full Score………………………………………………………………………...50 Bibliography………………………………………………………………..…………..………116 ix List of Tables Table 1 The Book of Ice’s overall form diagram…………………………………………10 Table 2 Movement II form diagram………………………………………………………25 Table 3 Underlying processes in Movement II………………………………...…………27 Table 4 Movement III form diagram…………………………………………….……….32 Table 5 Movement I form diagram………………………………………….……………38 Table 6 Movement IV form diagram……………………………………..………………43 x List of Figures Figure 1 The ice collection (initial form)………………………………………………….11 Figure 2 Derivation of each movement’s unique ice collection………………………..….12 Figure 3 List of generative rumbles…………………………………………….…………13 Figure 4 Construction of a clarinet melody (mvt. I mm. 24-25)……………………..……14 Figure 5 Background structure of a flute melody (mvt. III, mm. 21-24)………….………14 Figure 6 Harmonic progression guided by an ice collection (mvt. I, mm. 17-28)…...……15 Figure 7 Harmonic progression driven by interpolations (mvt. III, mm. 11-19)…….……16 Figure 8 Timbral likeness between different instruments (mvt. I, mm. 60-65)…………...19 Figure 9 Use of instruments as filters to modify other instruments (mvt. III, mm. 21-25)..19 Figure 10 Use of timbre to reinforce harmony (mvt. II, mm. 26-28)……………………….20 Figure 11 Abstraction process of text into music (mvt. IV, m. 1)……………………..……24 Figure 12 Structural features of Movement II’s theme……………………………..………26 Figure 13 Conceptual model of the theme and its harmonic progression……………..……26 Figure 14 Derivation of the harmonic progression from the ice collection…………...……27 Figure 15 Background structure of Variation 1……………………………………..………29 Figure 16 The theme as it relates to the hocket-like chords…………………...……………30 Figure 17 The flute melody as it relates to the harmonic progression………………...……30 Figure 18 Interpolated chords at the end of Section Aa (mm. 11-19)………………………33 Figure 19 Section Ab pitch structure……………………………………………..…………34 Figure 20 Realization of the Section Ab’s first ice collection and its complement…...……34 Figure 21 Section Aa’ pitch structure……………………………………………………….35 Figure 22 Section Aa’ interpolations………………………………………………………..35 xi Figure 23 Section B pitch structure…………………………………………..……………..36 Figure 24 Section C interpolation processes in the ensemble and the flute…………..…….37 Figure 25 Breath cloud gesture reduction (mvt I, mm. 16-17)……………………...………39 Figure 26 Comparison of melodies in Section Ab………………………………………….40 Figure 27 Comparison of flute themes…………………………………………….………..41 Figure 28 Comparison of sleet rhythms…………………………………………………….43 Figure 29 Reduction of Section A (mm. 6-14)………………………..…………………….44 Figure 30 Origin of materials in Section D’s flute solo (mm. 35-46)………………………45 xii Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor and mentor Dr. Keith Hamel. His unwavering support, patience, and insightful comments were tremendously helpful throughout the writing of my thesis. I am grateful to Dr. Dorothy Chang and Dr. Robert Pritchard, who kindly agreed to serve on my thesis committee and provided thoughtful comments on my thesis. I also appreciate Dr. John Roeder and Dr. Paul Frehner for their suggestions to improve my supporting document. I extend my heartfelt gratitude to Dr. Paolo Bortolussi, Owen Underhill, Dubravko Pajalic, and the members of the Turning Point Ensemble for realizing the world premiere of The Book of Ice. Their artistry, handling of concert logistics, and constructive feedback on my score truly elevated my music to a high level. For her encouragement to become familiar with the Korean language and apply it to my creative work, I would like to thank Dr. Jiyeon Shin. Our discussions about her language and culture were invaluable in the creation of my thesis. Finally, I am most grateful to my parents for their unconditional love and constant support of my work. Without them, none of this would have been possible. This thesis was funded in part by a four-year doctoral fellowship from the University of British Columbia, and I am immensely appreciative of their generous support. xiii Dedication I dedicate this thesis in its entirety to my parents. 1 CHAPTER 1: Introduction and Background 1.1 Introduction My doctoral thesis consists of two parts: an original composition entitled 차가운 (Chagaun)-The Book of Ice, for flute solo and chamber orchestra lasting about twenty-four and a half minutes, as well as a prose document that contextualizes my piece and discusses its compositional features. The extra-musical inspiration behind my piece comes from the South Korean author Han Kang’s novel, The White Book. In choosing to base my thesis on this novel, I am continuing a series of pieces that share a similar aesthetic and develop compositional techniques that I have been incorporating into my creative practice. The combination of flute solo and chamber orchestra was the ideal vehicle for working out the aesthetic and compositional concerns that will be mentioned later in this document. In reality, The Book of Ice was written for fifteen soloists; it just so happens that one of those soloists was given special prominence. Due to the quasi-soloistic nature of writing for chamber orchestra, I was able to imbue the individual instruments of the ensemble with the rhythmic and timbral specificity of the flute soloist in an efficient manner. This approach to writing instrumental music fits most ideally within my compositional technique, which places great attention to crafting finely-sculpted musical gestures and refined timbres. Writing for flute solo and chamber orchestra also allowed me to best express Han’s text. I imagined the flute soloist taking on the role of the novel’s narrator, while the ensemble presented the moods and environments suggested by the novel. The specific reason for choosing flute as the featured soloist will be discussed later in this document. 2 By writing The Book of Ice, I am contributing a unique piece to the ever-growing body of works for flute solo and ensemble. This piece demonstrates my personal approach to blending pitch-set theoretical techniques and a spectral attitude to orchestration, as well as my original ways of combining music and text. 1.2 Influences There are four composers whose aesthetic and technical concerns had a significant impact on the shaping of The Book of Ice. The first of these composers was Tōru Takemitsu, whose delicate and refined approach to orchestration, timbre, and time permeates this work. His use of silence, which comes out of the Japanese sense of ma1, appears at several key points in my piece. Depending on its placement, this can give listeners either the time to process specific sonic events or impart a sense of tension caused by the expectation of what will happen next in the musical discourse. I also feel justified in not calling this piece a concerto due to Takemitsu’s many pieces in the “solo instrument and ensemble” genre, which include Asterism, Gitimalya, To the Edge of Dream, and A String Around Autumn. The last of these pieces is particularly relevant to The Book of Ice because of the way in which the ensemble is used to reinforce the viola sola. The second composer whose work influenced The Book of Ice was Kaija Saariaho. While she gives a similar amount of attention to orchestration and timbre in her compositions as Takemitsu, her concept of the sound/noise axis dramatically expanded the timbral aspect of my work (Saariaho 1987, 93-94). Saariaho’s music explores timbral dissonance in tandem with harmonic dissonance, and she establishes the continuum of consonance and dissonance through pure sound and noise, respectively. After studying her work in great detail, I realized that noise was, for the most part, absent from my compositional practice. While not inherently wrong, it did 1 While it is a broader concept within Japanese aesthetics, ma in Takemitsu’s music is expressed as the “point of intense silence preceding [sound]” (Takemitsu 1995, 51). 3 leave me with the sense that my music was not as diverse as I would have liked. By incorporating sounds that are more “rough” or “harsh,” the sense of tension and release within the timbral dimension of my music became much more nuanced. As is seen in works like Amers, Maa, Du cristal, and Laconisme de l’aile, Saariaho also has a profound attachment to literature, with which I deeply connect. Alban Berg is the third composer whose work had a significant impact on my The Book of Ice. What is so compelling to me about Berg’s work is his method of creating rigorous background structures to achieve maximal dramatic effect over large-scale forms. To me, one of his most successful executions of this is found in Lulu. Through his leitmotifs (in the melodic and rhythmic domains) and derivations of massive amounts of material from one main tone row, the thrilling musical narrative of his three-hour opera feels inevitable yet unexpected. The final composer whose influence shaped The Book of Ice is Alfred Schnittke. Though his work has a similar sense of rigorous background structuring and drama as Berg’s does, Schnittke makes use of unusual multi-movement forms that emphasize slow movements and contain a summarizing finale. Works that use this form include the Piano Quintet, the Violin Concerto no. 4, and the Cello Sonata no. 1. 1.3 Literature Before contextualizing The Book of Ice, it is important to clarify its hybrid genre that borrows elements from the concerto and the tone poem. This work relates to the concerto genre in that there is a clear instrumental separation of a soloist (in this case, the flute) from a larger ensemble. As opposed to the late-18th-century-to-contemporary conception of the concerto (Hutchings 2001), this piece draws more on the earlier forms of the genre, where the soloist(s) and ensemble are often not in conflict with one another (as in Johann Sebastian Bach’s 4 Brandenburg Concerti). For the most part, the music in The Book of Ice is also not about the flashy display of technical virtuosity. Aside from the third movement, the ensemble plays a supportive role to the flute, whose part is more concerned with articulating sculpted melodic lines and negotiating timbral shifts in and out of air tone. Through its important connection to literature, The Book if Ice also relates to the tone poem. Its main deviation from the typical tone poem, however, is that it does not sonically convey a clear story. This is largely due to the structure and content of Han’s The White Book. While the development of story lines in her novel does exist, it is rather subdued in favor of reflecting on isolated images related to the color white. While I believe that the order of images in Han’s novel is the best one to articulate her artistic vision, I can still derive a sense of fulfillment from reading it in a non-sequential manner. When I consider the many works for soloist and ensemble (as opposed to literal concerti from the late 18th century to contemporary times), I feel that The Book if Ice is close to works such as Takemitsu’s A String Around Autumn, Pierre Boulez’s 1993 version of …explosante-fixe…, and Luciano Berio’s “points on the curve to find…” Beyond the obvious separation of soloist and ensemble, these pieces feature ensembles which are integrated with and support the soloist. This is often achieved through frequent, subtle pitch reinforcements by the ensemble of the soloist’s pitches and a non-dialectical relationship between the soloist and the ensemble. The Book of Ice is also connected to an emerging lineage of works that feature a speaking flutist. Such works include Takemitsu’s Voice; Saariaho’s Laconisme de l’aile, NoaNoa, and Maa; and George Crumb’s Night of the Four Moons. The content of the spoken material in these works range from isolated phonemes to entire words or phrases of different languages. In The Book of Ice, the flute soloist mostly speaks isolated phonemes extracted from the original Korean 5 language version of Han’s novel in tandem with air tone pitches. While extremely short words occasionally appear throughout my piece, the abstraction process I used to cull phonemes from Han’s novel, which will be mentioned later in this document, intentionally eradicates any sense of intelligibility. I feel that isolated phonemes, as opposed to clearly articulated words, make for better sonic material in this piece because there is minimal potential for semantic connections to distract the listener from the musical discourse. 6 CHAPTER 2: Precursors of 차가운 (Chagaun)-The Book of Ice 2.1“…like evening rain clouds…” Text has always been an important source of inspiration within my compositional output. Since I began my doctoral studies at the University of British Columbia, a significant portion of my work has engaged with various works of fiction. Before The Book of Ice, my treatment of a text sought to evoke either the mood of a specific passage, conjure a musical portrait of a character, or do both at the same time. A piece of mine that combined both approaches was “…like evening rain clouds…” and it was composed as a musical response to Anthony H. Chambers’ translation of Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s Naomi. This chamber piece, composed for alto flute, violin, cello, vibraphone, and piano, was inspired by the following passage: Loosened, [Naomi’s] voluptuous hair spread out richly, like evening rain clouds; her rounded flesh formed dimples here and there at her joints. (Tanizaki 1985, 126-127) My piece captures both the sensual mood of the above passage and Naomi’s capricious nature through a rich harmonic language and unpredictable melodic gestures, respectively. To sonify Naomi’s cruel seduction of the novel’s main character, I defy the expectations of the listener at structural points within the musical narrative. On a technical level, this piece also features an early attempt at deriving significant amounts of musical material from a single source. In the case of this piece, much of its melodic and harmonic material can be traced to the opening vibraphone solo. 7 2.2 The White Book Series of Pieces and General Comments About Them My series of White Book pieces currently consists of the following works: 달 (Dal)-Moon, for string quartet; 날개 (Nalgae)-Wings, for chamber orchestra; 파도 (Pado)-Wave, for bass clarinet, trombone, percussion, and violin; and 눈 II (Nun II)-Snow II, for viola sola. Each of these pieces is a strong emotional response to a single text from Han’s novel, and it is from those texts that they derive their titles. I believe it is important to include the original Korean word, its romanization, and its English translation to honor the text’s original language and to recognize the ever-shifting state of romanization systems. There is also the potential for meaning to be lost during the translation process, so keeping the original Korean word will ensure that its nuances will be conveyed to those who know the language. Since The Book of Ice uses multiple texts, the creation of its title required a different approach from my other White Book pieces. The full title of my thesis piece is a composite of a word found in Han’s original Korean text, its romanization, and an English interpretation of it. The word in question is a form of the adjective 차갑다 (chagapda), which means “to be cold, frigid, icy, chilly.” The original title of Han’s novel, 흰 (Huin), similarly uses a single adjective, in this case a form of 희다 (huida, “to be white”). Both titles of these works efficiently frame their respective audiences’ expectations: The Book of Ice is a reflection on ice-related images and The White Book is about images related to the color white. However, neither title mentions a Korean word meaning “book” (e.g. 책 (chaek)). I suspect that the translator Deborah Smith reinterpreted Han’s original title by adding “book” in recognition of the Korean language’s idiosyncrasies. Doing so results in a new title that makes more sense for English readers. With this in mind, I included The Book of Ice as a part of my thesis piece’s title just as Smith invented the title The White Book. 8 In addition to sharing a common source of literary inspiration, my White Book pieces share many of the same technical and aesthetic concerns. These include motivic development, large-scale background structures, the harmonic series as a model for structuring chords, and the concept of interpolations. The gradual emergence of these technical and aesthetic concerns in the writing of my White Book pieces developed into a style and method of composition, all of which converge at the creation of The Book of Ice. 2.3 Motivic Development Motivic development contributes significantly to the melodies, harmonies, and large-scale structures of my White Book pieces. The motifs developed in these pieces range from a simple dyad, as in Moon, to a hexachord, as in Wave. Moon’s motivic dyad is presented melodically, superimposed on top of its transpositions to create dense textures, and foreshadows the two-pitch opening of my earlier art song, Nocturne. The hexachordal “wave” motif of Wave similarly forms the basis of the piece’s melodically-driven solo sections, while combinations of the motif’s transpositions define its harmonic areas. 2.4 Precomposed Large-Scale Background Structures The extension of motivic development from local levels to large-scale background structures began in Wings. Its tetrachordal “butterfly” motif, which also contributed to its melodies and harmonies, was elaborated into an ordered pitch series that defined the piece’s structural arrival points. Likewise, the “wave” motif of Wave was elaborated into another ordered pitch series to create a predetermined background structure. In addition to both of these pieces sharing a similar organizational strategy, the ordered pitches forming their background structures were brought to the forefronts of their musical textures by appearing as melodies. In doing this, I sought to reinforce and, on some level, make more perceptible these pieces’ larger 9 shapes. The placement of a background-structure melody at the end of a piece also acts as a summary of the aural journey that was undertaken by the listener. 2.5 Harmonic Series The remaining technical and aesthetic concerns relevant to my White Book pieces come from spectralism. Among these is the harmonic series (Fineberg 2000a, 85-86), which provides pitch material and a sense of harmonic stability. This is most salient in Moon, where the harmonic series based on G2 acts as the piece’s overall harmonic center and is the source of the piece’s opening motivic dyad. To create harmonic tension, the climax of Moon superimposes overtone components of two different harmonic spectra based on Eb2 and G2. The harmonic series is also used to flesh out harmonies in portions of Moon and Wings. Similar to the last eleven measures of Claude Vivier’s Pianoforte, the overtone components of specific pitches within these piece’s chords are orchestrationally reinforced (Gilmore 2014, 104). 2.6 Interpolations The concepts of harmonic and timbral interpolations (Fineberg 2000a, 108) are used in my White Book pieces to impart a sense of direction from one section to another. Within Moon, one of its sections presents a series of harmonic areas that grow progressively shorter in duration. The coda of Wings uses a process where the full, yet delicate orchestration of a melody gradually reduces down to two instruments. Interpolations also extend to smaller, more local levels of a piece’s structural hierarchy. This can be found where stringed instruments gradually change their bow positions to alter their sound. Keeping timbre in a liminal state allows me to produce a sense of musical motion in tandem with the tension and resolution of harmonic progressions. The blending of timbre and harmony in this way comes from Kaija Saariaho’s concept of the sound/noise axis. 10 CHAPTER 3: Materials, Techniques, and Concepts in 차가운 (Chagaun)-The Book of Ice 3.1 Form The Book of Ice derives its form from four different White Book texts. These texts were reordered from their original placement within Han’s novel as “Frost,” “Snow,” “Blizzard,” and “Sleet.” This ordering of the texts creates a form that “[begins] to endure” (Han 2017, 47) the musical events of its later movements and has an ending that “bears [the] remembrance” (Han 2017, 61) of what happened. While the texts divide The Book of Ice into a multi-movement composition, each movement is performed in immediate succession (attacca) to create a large, continuous form, as shown in table 1 below. Movement I II III IV Text Frost Snow Blizzard Sleet Character Calm, foreshadowing later movements Moderate tempo, somewhat more active Fast, aggressive, toccata-like Calm, recalling previous movements Form Binary form, with each part divided into three sections Theme with five variations Ternary form, with each part divided into two sections Strophic form in six sections Approximate Duration Six minutes Eight minutes Four minutes Six minutes Table 1 The Book of Ice’s overall form diagram 3.2 Pitch Structures Most of the musical material in The Book of Ice relates to a hexachordal “ice” collection, illustrated in figure 1, which is a form of the pitch-class set 6-222. I chose to base most of my piece’s material on a hexachord to allude to the hexagonal structure of the snowflake mentioned in Han’s text (Han 2017, 53). To imbue the ice collection with the sense of chill that Seol-yeong, 2 Groups of pitches mentioned in this document (including the ice collection) are labelled according to the pitch-class set classification system devised by Allen Forte in his book, The Structure of Atonal Music. 11 one of the women mentioned in the novel, resented in her name (Han 2017, 47), I selected pitch-class set 6-22 because it was a superset3 of pitch-class set 4-5. This latter set was used in Wings to represent the butterfly that eventually freezes to death (Han 2017, 49). In addition to these extra-musical associations, 6-22 possesses some interesting qualities: it is an all-interval hexachord and its complement is a transposed inversion of the same set. Figure 1 The ice collection (initial form) Each movement of The Book of Ice is given a unique transposition and ordering of the ice collection’s pitches. The process of determining these collections is shown in figure 2. I first selected transpositions of the ice collection that retained the most common tones to its initial statement. I then rotated each transposition to a pitch found in the initial ice collection. After arranging the six transpositions so that their first pitches resulted in another instance of the initial ice collection, I assigned them to the four movements of this piece’s form. In addition to shaping melodies and harmonies, the order of each movement’s ice collection also defines the background pitch structure governing its internal sections. 3 “If pitch-class set X is included in pitch-class set Y, then X is a subset of Y and Y is a superset of X” (Straus 2005, 96). Subsets of 6-22 include 3-6, 4-19, and 5-30. Supersets of 6-22 include 7-9, 8-19, and 9-12. 12 Figure 2 Derivation of each movement’s unique ice collection The melodic contours that I assign to each movement’s ice collection are derived from superimposing the overtone components of multiple harmonic spectra, which fixes those pitches in specific registers. The appearances of the collection-producing fundamentals associated with these spectra, which I call “generative rumbles,” occur at key structural points within the musical form and share a similar orchestration. As The Book of Ice progresses, the generative rumbles appear later in each movement. Figure 3 lists the generative rumbles in the The Book of Ice. Each pair of measures consists of a movement’s ordering of the ice collection, on the left, followed by the collection’s relationship to two different harmonic spectra. The upper partials of these harmonic spectra have been adjusted to fit within a twelve-tone pitch space, and their fundamentals are defined in the bass clef staff. The connection between the different ice collection forms and their associated spectra was inspired by the day Seol-yeong was born (Han 13 2017, 47). Just as the genetic information of two parents are combined to create a child, I sought to evoke this through the union of different spectra to shape important pitch collections. Figure 3 List of generative rumbles 3.3 Melody The construction of The Book of Ice’s melodies is often related to each movement’s distinctive ice collection. Figure 4 below illustrates the process of creating a clarinet melody from the first movement. After determining a structural ice collection for a melody, it is transposed according to the pitches of its initial statement. After freely removing certain pitches, the remaining ones undergo a process of reordering and repetition. Finally, the melody is further defined by adding other musical details such as rhythms, meters, slurs, and dynamics. 14 Figure 4 Construction of a clarinet melody (mvt. I, mm. 24-25) This approach to melodic construction dominates most of The Book of Ice. However, due to its fast tempo and the need for many notes, the third movement’s melodies were constructed through the intuitive ornamentation of structural ice collections. As shown in figure 5, freely chosen pitches bridge structural pitches defined by a background ice collection. Figure 5 Background structure of a flute melody (mvt. III, mm. 21-24) 15 3.4 Harmony The harmonic language of The Book if Ice is highly chromatic. It largely avoids diatonic chord structures and tonal harmonic progressions. This results from the significant number of chords within this piece that are related to the ice collection, which are either the collection itself or its sub- and super-set forms. Other chords are intuitively constructed to fit the harmonic contexts defined by structural ice collection chords. However, even when chords are intuitively created, the harmonic, or the vertical dimension is often guided by planning out its trajectory in the horizontal dimension. This concept is illustrated in figure 6. Here, two of the eight chords are vertical realizations of the ice collection in different transpositions. Aside from superficial hexachordal and common-tone relations, the other chords have no connection to the ice collection and were freely constructed. After considering the embellishing nature of the third chord, the bass line driving this progression is yet another transposition of the ice collection. Figure 6 Harmonic progression guided by an ice collection (mvt I, mm. 17-28) Through this harmonic logic, the pitch structures mentioned above not only refer to structural pitches of this piece’s many sections, but to the local-level progressions of harmonies as well. This causes many harmonic progressions to be governed by a movement’s ice collection. When the collection is not used to define the movement from one harmony to another, interpolations become the guiding principle behind harmonic progressions, as is seen figure 7. 16 Figure 7 Harmonic progression driven by interpolations (mvt. III, mm. 11-19) 3.5 Engagement with Spectralism Joshua Fineberg describes spectralism as more of an attitude toward music than a rigid application of techniques (Fineberg 2000b, 2). Fineberg also mentions that “the only true constant for [all of the composers associated with spectralism] is that they consider music to ultimately be sound and see composition as the sculpting in time of those sounds that a listener will hear” (Fineberg 2000b, 3). It is along these lines that The Book of Ice engages with spectralism; throughout my piece, there is wide timbral palette and a strong emphasis on transforming instrumental color. There are some ways in which The Book of Ice does not strictly adhere to spectralism. For example, some works within this aesthetic use spectral analyses of particular sounds to define pitch material (e.g. the low piano notes of Tristan Murail’s Désintégrations or the low trombone note of Gérard Grisey’s Partiels). While my piece does relate in some ways to the harmonic series, I did not base any of its sections on spectral analysis of sound. However, “the use of spectra, whether harmonic or non-harmonic, is only the most superficial feature of the music of [composers associated with spectralism]” (Anderson 2000, 7-8). This is not to say that spectral analysis of sound and techniques like interpolations have little importance to spectralism. However, they are simply a means for a piece of music’s sound to achieve the effect 17 of continually evolving in time. In The Book of Ice, the constant, and at times gradual shaping of instrumental timbre (sometimes achieved through interpolations) is my piece’s most important connection to the aesthetic. 3.6 Timbre and Orchestration The development of instrumental sound plays a crucial role throughout The Book of Ice. Its realization through the management of timbre and orchestration is mostly conceived intuitively and on a local level. This differs from the management of pitch, which tends to have preconceived structural implications in both melodic and harmonic domains. In light of this, intuitive, yet deliberate changes of timbre and orchestration enliven this work’s pitch structure, and by extension its melodies and harmonies. Aside from the references to past materials in the fourth movement, the only recurring timbral/orchestrational complex is the generative rumble mentioned above. In addition to being based on both the ice collection and the harmonic series, the identity of this complex is further defined by a specific selection of instruments: clarinet/bass clarinet, bassoon, trombone, bass drum, piano, harp, and all of the bowed strings. Despite the overall intuitive approach to instrumental sound development, there are several recurring techniques used to shape this work’s timbre and orchestration. The first technique is the use of timbral likenesses shared between different instruments. This helps to further bind together the overall timbre of this work. As is seen figure 8, the tam-tam echoes the phonemes of the flute soloist, where the tam-tam’s scrapes and taps abstract the flute’s vowels and consonants, respectively. Another technique is the use of instruments as filters to modify the sounds of other instruments. Orchestrating in this way mimics the processing and diffusion of instrumental sound 18 by a computer and sound system, but in a purely acoustic context. This is most clearly shown in figure 9, where the timbrally shifting pitches of the second violin and cello “amplify” the fundamentals and upper frequency components of the pitches played by the viola. The final technique is the use of timbre to reinforce harmony. A representative passage featuring this technique is shown in figure 10, where the winds play a loud and dense chord. To intensify the tension of this chord, the strings play the same pitches as the winds and subject them to an overall shift of timbre from scratch tone to sul tasto. The trajectory implied by these playing techniques results in moving from a relatively unstable sound state to a stable one. This trajectory also follows the ease of tension indicated by the decrescendo both in the dynamics and in the thinning out of the orchestral texture. In addition to the strings, the tam-tam’s scraping sounds increase the harmonic, timbral, and orchestrational instability of the dense wind chord. While The Book of Ice does not derive harmonic structures from literal spectral analyses, the above techniques demonstrate a strong focus on spectral thinking, timbral transformation, and orchestration; these orchestration techniques contributed significantly to the dramatic unfolding of this work. In the crafting of each moment, pitch and timbre were considered together for maximum effect. 19 Figure 8 Timbral likeness between different instruments (mvt. I, mm. 60-65) Figure 9 Use of instruments as filters to modify other instruments (mvt. III, mm. 21-25) 20 Figure 10 Use of timbre to reinforce harmony (mvt. II, mm. 26-28) 3.7 Rhythm and Meter Generally speaking, and in contrast to the pitch domain, rhythm and meter are freely used to temporally sculpt gestures and to articulate the pacing in The Book of Ice. Aside from the third movement, this piece obscures the sense of pulse, which is largely achieved through the frequent use of tuplets and changes of meter. To imbue a sense of structure to the temporal domain of The Book of Ice, recurring rhythms appear throughout this piece and are tied to words and ideas found in Han’s novel. 21 Rhythms in this piece relate to ideas as disparate as footsteps, the narrator’s deceased sister, and even sleet. Because of their associations to words and ideas that appear throughout Han’s texts, these recurring rhythms take on a leitmotivic quality and undergo large-scale trajectories. This concept was inspired by Berg’s use of the Hauptrhythmus, which is found in works such as Lulu, the Lyric Suite, and the Violin Concerto. 3.8 Working with Text Fidelity is surely our highest aim, but a translation is not made with tracing paper. It is an act of critical interpretation. […] Fidelity is our noble purpose, but it does not have much, if anything, to do with what is called literal meaning. A translation can be faithful to tone and intention, to meaning. It can rarely be faithful to word or syntax, for these are peculiar to specific languages and are not transferable. (Grossman 2007) While the above quotation refers to translation between different languages, it serves as an excellent frame of reference for my practice of realizing text through music. Accepting that fidelity in translating literature to music can be achieved by focusing on tone, intention, and meaning, rather than attempting to realize every detail in the text, is immensely freeing to me: it might be difficult to meaningfully convey “the fine crystals of pure salt” (Han 2017, 47) through music, other images and ideas from Han’s novel have a significant role in shaping The Book of Ice. The resulting representations of text through music come about through evoking the novel’s scenes and moods, which is achieved through text painting and phonemes spoken by the flute soloist. Text painting impacts The Book of Ice on many levels of its musical discourse. On the local level, motions mentioned in the text, such as footsteps and shivering, are evoked through 22 periodic rhythms and bowed tremolo, respectively. By contrast, text painting in a more global sense tends to occur through large-scale formal processes. The first movement’s foreshadowing mentioned above was inspired by “people beginning to endure” (Han 2017, 47). This small line of text, which impacted the entire piece, was musically portrayed by including altered materials from later movements in the first movement. Within the scope of a single movement, the idea of snow falling mentioned in the second movement’s text, and its subsequent recession from the minds of its viewers after it is “soundlessly strewn about” (Han 2017, 53), is evoked through expansion and contraction of harmonic and registral density. In this way, the careful planning of pitch in several dimensions to cover musical space is similar to how the snow in Han’s text completes the “street’s erasure” (Han 2017, 53). Aside from text painting, Han’s words, albeit highly abstracted, make their way into The Book of Ice through the flute soloist’s spoken phonemes. As with my previous White Book pieces, I aimed to keep the timbral component of my thesis piece active through many performance techniques. In choosing the flute as the soloist in this work, I was particularly interested in its potential to produce non-pitched sounds such as air tone and spoken phonemes. In this light, the flute’s “proximity to breathing and voice […]” make it an excellent vehicle to deliver the sonic aspects of Han’s writing (Moisala 2009, 80). To do this, I extracted phonemes from Han’s original text in the Korean language to sculpt the non-pitched aspect of flute-performance technique. Doing this also imparts a sense of the spontaneity and liveliness of human speech (while somewhat maintaining the underlying structure of grammatical syntax) to the flute part. Besides providing musical interest, phonemes from the original text were incorporated in an effort to further bind literature and music beyond the depiction of characters and moods. 23 Figure 11 illustrates my process for abstracting text from Han’s novel into musical material for The Book of Ice. The first step was to take phrases from the original Korean-language text and to examine the components of its sentences. The phrase4 in this figure was extracted from the first sentence of “진눈깨비 [Sleet]” (Han 2016, 59). The phrase was then romanized to make it readable to a wider range of flutists and its salient phoneme structure was identified. The following step shows the extraction of the phrase’s salient phoneme structure, which distills the sonic “essence” of Han’s text into material suitable for musical treatment. Finally, the salient phonemes, which are notated on the flute part’s second staff, are freely assigned rhythms and dynamics. The result is a spontaneous, yet highly sculpted stream of consonants (with occasional vowels) that are played in tandem with the flute’s air tones. In most cases, the distillation of the text is meant to be unintelligible and the filtering of the phonemes through the flute distorts them. However, the characteristic features of the Korean language are retained; the abstraction is like a ghost of the original phrase. 4 Deborah Smith translates this phrase as “There is none of us whom life regards with any partiality” (Han 2017, 61). 24 삶은 누구에게도 특별히 호의적이지 않다. ↓ salmeun nuguegedo teukbyeolhi hoijeogiji anta ↓ s, meu, nu, g, t, b, h, i, j, g, j, t ↓ Figure 11 Abstraction process of text into music (mvt. IV, m. 1) 25 CHAPTER 4: Discussion of Movement II, “눈 (Nun)-Snow” 4.1 Brief Explanation of Document Order Although it might seem counterintuitive, I will begin the discussion of my piece’s finer details with the second movement, followed by the third movement. As mentioned above in section 3.1, the material of the outer movements relies heavily on the inner movements, which is why they will be discussed last. 4.2 Overview The second movement of The Book of Ice is organized as a theme and five variations, where each variation is an involved recomposition of the theme. The main materials of this movement are the theme, its accompanying harmonic progression, and a pointillistic texture that evokes the delicate falling of snow. As the theme is varied, the essential component of it that is retained is its general contour. Table 2 summarizes this movement’s form and figure 12 illustrates the theme’s structural features. Theme Var. 1 Var. 2 Var. 3 Var. 4 Var. 5 Measure Numbers 1-18 19-35 36-47 48-59 60-84 85-106 General Features Theme Against “Snow” Texture Theme Against Chords Hocket-like Theme Theme Against “Snow” Texture and “Improvisatory” Flute Solo Theme Against Chords Theme Against Reduced “Snow Texture” Table 2 Movement II form diagram 26 Figure 12 Structural features of Movement II’s theme The main conceptual model of the theme and its harmonic progression is illustrated in figure 13. While the theme is created through the process of melodic construction mentioned above, the harmonic progression takes a different approach to fleshing out this movement’s distinctive ice collection. Figure 14 demonstrates how the collection, first harmonized in major thirds, undergoes several steps of transposition and inversion to create a pool of pitches. The forms are its original form, its inversion, and its inversion transposed down a minor third. To create richer harmonies, extra pitches were added to the first chord to change it from a tetrachord to different pentachords. The horizontal and vertical composing out of the same ice collection results in an intimate link between the theme and the harmonic progression. This is why, for each section of this movement, they are also transposed together to the pitch levels of the ice collection’s initial statement. Figure 13 Conceptual model of the theme and its harmonic progression 27 Figure 14 Derivation of the harmonic progression from the ice collection As the second movement progresses, three simultaneous processes unfold. These processes, illustrated in table 3 below, relate to the assignment of the theme and harmonic progression between the flute and the ensemble, harmonic density, and registration. Section Theme Var. 1 Var. 2 Var. 3 Var. 4 Var. 5 Theme Assignment Flute Flute to Ensemble Ensemble Ensemble Ensemble to Flute Flute Harmonic Progression Assignment Ensemble Ensemble to Flute Flute Flute Flute to Ensemble Ensemble Number of Chords 3 4 5 6 5 3 Register High High through Middle High through Low High through Low High through Middle High Table 3 Underlying processes in Movement II These palindromic processes are meant to evoke the sense of snow covering musical space and its subsequent receding from memory (Han 2017, 53). In addition to sonically portraying Han’s text, the relationships mentioned above also result in harmony being stretched out into melody and melody being flattened into harmony. It is reminiscent of György Kurtág’s conception of harmony and melody, where the former is the latter, “pressed like a flower” 28 (Varga 2009, 16). To further enrich this complex relationship, the theme and the harmonic progression are subjected to timbral modifications through the approach to orchestration and the playing techniques of the ensemble’s individual instruments. 4.3 Theme After a brief introduction, the second movement begins with the flute presenting the theme against the snow texture, which is articulated by the rest of the ensemble. Although timbrally and rhythmically complex, the snow texture can be reduced down to the first three chords of the harmonic progression. 4.4 Variation 1 Following an appearance of this movement’s generative rumble in measures 15-18, the first variation begins with the theme played by the flute against an unstable chordal accompaniment by the ensemble. At this point, the middle register is introduced and the harmonic progression expands to include its first four chords. Semitonal pitch bends and timbral trills are characteristic aspects of the theme in this variation. During the second segment of the theme, the pitches from the theme are combined to form new harmonies in the ensemble, and the chords from the harmonic progression are ordered in time to create melodic material for the flute. This exchange of materials, which begins at measure 27, is shown in figure 15; the ensemble’s following chords are derived from the remaining pitches of the theme. After this interruption from the ensemble, the contour of the flute melody resembles the theme, but its pitch content is actually derived from the last two chords of this variation’s harmonic progression. 29 Figure 15 Background structure of Variation 1 4.5 Variation 2 The beginning of the second variation marks the complete transfer of the theme to the ensemble and the introduction of the low register. However, the theme is disguised in overlapping chords by the ensemble’s sub-groups to produce a hocket-like effect: the sub-groups are oboe, clarinet, and bassoon; two violins; and viola, cello, and double bass. Another instrumental group consisting of the vibraphone, piano, and harp subtly reinforces the theme’s pitches within the sub-groups’ chords. The upper part of figure 16 illustrates each of the chords throughout this variation, and the theme pitches are shown in diamond noteheads. The figure’s lower part also demonstrates how the chords are built using overlapping pitches of the theme in sequential order. Through this process, I derive harmony from within the melody itself. For example, chord one uses theme pitches 1, 2, and 3, chord two uses theme pitches 2, 3, 4, and so on. 30 Figure 16 The theme as it relates to the hocket-like chords While the ensemble plays the theme’s disguised form, the flute plays a melody reminiscent of the theme’s contour. In reality, the flute melody is a horizontal realization of the first five chords of the harmonic progression. Figure 17 shows how the first three chords of the harmonic progression are freely ordered, repeated, and combined to provide material for the flute melody. Figure 17 The flute melody as it relates to the harmonic progression 31 4.6 Variations 3, 4, and 5 The remaining three variations of this movement follow the same processes as the previous three sections but take place in reverse. Across these remaining variations, the harmonic progression reduces from six to three chords, the theme material and the harmonic progression return to their original assignments (the theme in the flute and the harmonic progression in the ensemble), and the pitch range contracts to the high register. 32 CHAPTER 5: Discussion of Movement III, “눈보라 (Nunbora)-Blizzard” 5.1 Overview Through its fast tempo and aggressive, toccata-like character, the third movement is The Book of Ice’s dramatic high point. This choice of tempo and affect reflect the harsh environment of Han’s text. Table 4 shows the movement’s three-part form and the general features of its sections. In addition to a unique form of the ice collection, this movement’s main materials and processes include ostinato figures, the contrast between sixteenth note and triplet sixteenth note rhythmic layers, registral compression, and progressively diminishing durational schemes. The last two of these processes, which represent another instance of interpolation, are used over short and long periods of time to intensify the musical drama. This movement also makes extensive use of twelve-tone complements by incorporating the pitches classes not included in a section’s ice collection. Though The Book of Ice is not a dodecaphonic work, twelve-tone complementation is used simply as a means to extend my musical material. Section A (nested ternary form) B C Subsection a b a’ [n/a] c d Measure Numbers 1-20 21-42 43-62 63-83 84-96 97-105 General Features Introduction of Main Materials Contrasting Episode Based on Ostinato Development of Section Aa Buildup Climax Coda Table 4 Movement III form diagram 5.2 Section A Section Aa begins by presenting the movement’s unique ice collection. The flute articulates this collection through streams of cascading sixteenth notes, accompanied by percussive attacks and echoing susurrations from the ensemble. When the flute solo ends at measure 10, its material is elaborated by the violins. The elaboration continues the cascading 33 sixteenth notes, and, at measure 15, the pitch material shifts from the movement’s first ice collection to its twelve-tone complement. The violins’ sixteenth-notes are accompanied by the winds, who develop their percussive attacks through a series of chords. These chords, shown in figure 18, were created through a process of interpolations; the top voice descends from A4 to E4 and the bottom voice ascends from C2 to F2. This registrally-compressing chord progression begins with this movement’s ice collection and arrives at its twelve-tone complement halfway through the progression. Figure 18 Interpolated chords at the end of Section Aa (mm. 11-19) Section Ab offers a contrasting episode of subdued energy. The sixteenth note rhythmic layer is now characterized by ostinato figures and is transferred primarily to the viola. The disjunct flute melody capriciously wanders through other rhythmic subdivisions above the ostinato. All of the other instruments flesh out these two lines: the woodwinds echo fragments from the flute melody and the strings add shifting colors to the ostinato’s structural pitches. Figure 19 shows the pitch structure for this entire section. The flute part is composed of transpositions of this movement’s unique ice collection; these transpositions are based on the pitches of the collection’s first iteration. The ensemble material is composed using the complement sets of the flute material. Figure 20 shows the realization of the first collection and 34 its complement. The non-structural pitches of the flute melody were freely chosen to suit its capricious nature while the ostinato is constructed mostly using repetitions of structural pitches. Figure 19 Section Ab pitch structure Figure 20 Realization of the Section Ab’s first ice collection and its complement Section Aa’ returns to the violent character that began this movement and develops its main materials. Figure 21 shows the pitch structure for this section’s melodic material. Like the previous section, this pitch structure is composed of transpositions of this movement’s ice collections and their associated complement sets. The duration of each pair of collections gradually diminishes from seventeen quarter note beats to five. The melodic material is passed 35 between the flute and the ensemble and it focuses on cascading sixteenth notes and ostinato figures. Figure 22 shows the conceptual model for this section’s percussive attacks. These chords were created through a process of interpolations; the top voice descends from F5 to G4 and the bottom voice ascends from C2 to G2. The pitches in diamond noteheads indicate structural chords that are based on the ensemble’s ice collection at that point in the composition. To destabilize the smooth trajectory of these interpolated chords, some of them are played out of order on a local level, but the overall registral compression is retained. The diminishing durational scheme and interpolated chords work together to intensify the musical drama until measure 60, where the musical tension is diffused through the cadence on G across three octaves. Figure 21 Section Aa’ pitch structure Figure 22 Section Aa’ interpolations 36 5.3 Section B The main goal of Section B is to build tension for the climax of both this movement and the entire piece. Several factors contribute to this sense of growing tension: accumulating density, timbral complexity, and a gradually diminishing durational scheme. Similar to Section Ab, this section focuses on two lines: the flute melody and a descending bass line. The flute melody starts out in a fragmented way, but gradually solidifies into an anxious stream of notes. The descending bass line is played primarily by the double bass with elaboration by the bassoon, bass drum, piano, and harp. The bass line descent and the diminishing durational scheme across this section push toward the climax. To add a further intensifying layer of activity to the descending bass line, the double bass’s pedal tones undergo both unpredictable rhythmic pulsations and constant timbral shifts between ordinario and sul ponticello. The primary pitch material for the flute melody and the ensemble, as well as the descending bass line, is shown in figure 23. Figure 23 Section B pitch structure 37 5.4 Section C The arrival at Section C marks the release of the energy and tension that were accumulated throughout Section B. At this point in the piece there is a fortissimo tutti statement of this movement’s generative rumble. The many superimposed rhythmic layers and tremolos are meant to evoke the violent nature of a blizzard. The ensemble’s blizzard texture is interrupted by a series of frantic gestures by the flute. Starting in measure 90, the flute interruptions and the ensemble’s blizzard texture begin independent, yet parallel interpolation processes. As summarized in figure 24, the ice collections used in the flute and the ensemble gradually shift to their complement forms. As the ensemble’s register gradually compresses, its rhythmic layers also increase in duration to give the impression of a ritardando. Once these processes are complete, this movement ends with a short coda that reflects on melodic fragments from its earlier sections. Figure 24 Section C interpolation processes in the ensemble and the flute 38 CHAPTER 6: Discussion of Movement I, “서리 (Seori)-Frost” 6.1 Overview Having finished the discussion of its inner movements, the context has been established for The Book of Ice’s first movement. As mentioned above in chapter 3, section 8, this movement foreshadows later music as a reference to the “people beginning to endure” in Han’s text (Han 2017, 47). Table 5 summarizes the organization of this movement’s ternary structure; the material in Section B foreshadows the inner two movements. This movement, as well as the last movement, uses similar pitch structure strategies to the third movement. Section A B A’ Subsection a b c d a’ b’ Measures 1-16 17-28 29-43 44-52 53-67 68-77 General Features Flute gradually articulates initial ice collection Ensemble plays three melodies based on the ice collection Fore-shadowing of mvt. II Fore-shadowing of mvt. III Recomposition of initial flute solo with a melody from section Ab Ensemble plays two new melodies based on the ice collection Table 5 Movement I form diagram A gesture inspired by the “white clouds of breath [that] bloom from warm mouths” separates each of this movement’s subsections (Han 2017, 47). As shown in figure 25, the breath cloud gesture combines a descending gesture in the vibraphone, piano, and harp with air sound from brass instruments. This structural device introduces the ice collection used by each subsection. The fragmented nature of this movement and the way in which its materials gradually come into being are inspired by the idea of Seol-yeong being born, and the icy atmosphere of the “trees [shivering] off their leaves” is evoked through tremolo in the strings and fluttertongue in the flute (Han 2017, 47). 39 Figure 25 Breath cloud gesture reduction (mvt. I, mm. 16-17) 6.2 Section A The Book of Ice begins with the first generative rumble, which introduces the ice collection that will be transformed throughout the entire piece. This is followed by the flute, which gradually articulates each of the pitches of this ice collection. Although the pitch content is fairly simple, the timbral complexity of the flute’s material is heightened through constant alternation between normal tone and air tones with spoken phonemes. The bass drum, which is reinforced by the piano and harp, supports the flute and its periodic rhythms evoke the footsteps that “tread the frost-covered ground” (Han 2017, 47). 40 The following Section Ab presents three melodies based on this movement’s ice collection. Each melody is given to a single woodwind instrument, and as figure 26 shows, these melodies are constructed according to the principles discussed in chapter 3. Figure 26 also reveals an underlying process: the pitches that embellish each ice collection melody are gradually pared away. The chordal accompaniment in the strings, whose harmonic plan was discussed in chapter 3, features the periodic pulsations of the footstep rhythm. To enhance the tension of this accompaniment’s harmonic progression, different footstep rhythms are superimposed on top of one another to provide a sense of rhythmic dissonance. Figure 26 Comparison of melodies in Section Ab 6.3 Section B After the flute’s timbre stabilizes into normal tone at measure 32, the music shifts its focus to materials from the later movements. Section Bc alludes to the second movement’s theme and its first variation. The contour and pitches of the theme in this section have been modified from the original, but its overall rhythm is the same. Figure 27 shows how the theme as it appears in the first and second movements share a similar melodic construction. The first half of Section Bc is also accompanied by the snow texture in the vibraphone, piano, and harp. While the snow texture is fragmented in the first movement, it is still based on a series of three chords derived from the ice collection. The music that follows at measure 39 contains a more obvious 41 reference to the second movement’s first variation. The varied flute theme now retains the rhythm, contour and internal structure of the original, and its chordal accompaniment in the strings bears a stronger resemblance to what appears in the second movement. Figure 27 Comparison of flute themes The second generative rumble appears in Section Bd and it foreshadows the blizzard texture at the third movement’s climax. This is seen in the superimposed rhythmic layers and the bowed tremolo in the strings. The winds also allude to the streams of sixteenth notes and ostinato found in the third movement. 6.4 Section A’ Measures 53-77 are a truncated recomposition of Section A. The initial flute solo from Section Aa becomes more agitated in Section A’a’ through increased rhythmic complexity, density of musical materials, and number of strings. Though the melodies in Sections Ab and A’b’ differ from each other, they share a similar construction and accompaniment. 42 CHAPTER 7: Discussion of Movement IV, “진눈깨비 (Jinnunkkaebi)-Sleet” 7.1 Overview While the first movement of The Book of Ice foreshadows later material, the final one “bears [the] remembrance” of the previous three (Han 2017, 61). This is accomplished through the juxtaposition of past materials, as outlined in table 6’s form diagram. Each section is different in both its referenced materials and number of references, which are primarily played by the ensemble. In contrast, the flute plays a melody found only in the fourth movement. While it undergoes significant transformation, the melody’s obsessive recurrence acts as this movement’s through line and imparts a sense of a strophic form. Similar to the first movement, the shift from one section to another is signaled by a descending gesture in the vibraphone, piano, and harp. This recurring gesture evokes falling sleet that “leaves cheeks and eyebrows heavy with moisture” (Han 2017, 61). Since memory is a key concept in the text that inspired this movement, I also explored the failure of memory. This was first done through misremembrance, which results in the never-before heard combinations of previous materials. The second exploration of memory’s failure was achieved through forgetting, which manifests itself in two ways. The first of these concerns the overall form and the number of references each section contains. As can be seen in table 6, the number of references from the first to the last section move from four to one. This process of reducing references is also reflected on a smaller scale: the first half of the piece moves from four references per section to two while the second half moves from four references per section to one. The other act of forgetting is evoked through the gradual deterioration of a word found in Han’s text, in this case 진눈깨비 (jinnunkkaebi, “sleet”). Throughout this movement, this four-syllable word is assigned a characteristic rhythm with the general identity of a long duration 43 followed by a short duration and then two medium durations. With each statement of the sleet rhythm, two simultaneous processes take place: as outlined in figure 28, the overall rhythm expands in duration and the syllables of the word “jinnunkkaebi” gradually lose their vowels. Both acts of misremembrance and forgetting evoke the woman’s “knowledge that everything she has clung to will fall away from her and vanish” (Han 2017, 61). Section Referenced Materials Appearance in Mvt IV A mm. 1-14 Mvt I: Section Bc (mm. 33-35; flute) mm. 9-11, 13-14; oboe Mvt II: Var 3 (mm. 48-52; violins I and II) mm. 6-14; violins I and II Mvt III: Section Ab (mm. 26-30; viola) mm. 7-14; clarinet Mvt III: Section B (m. 79; oboe) m. 10; violin II m. 13; violin I B mm. 15-23 Mvt I: Section Bd (mm. 44-47; violin I, violin II, viola) mm. 17, 20, 21; piano, vibraphone, harp Mvt II: Var 2 (mm. 36-43; all strings, harp) mm. 15-22; all strings, piano Mvt III: Section Aa’ (mm. 43-44, flute; m. 45, clarinet) mm. 16-17, 19-21; clarinet, oboe C mm. 24-34 Mvt I: Section Ab (mm. 26-28, bassoon) mm. 24-28, bassoon Mvt III: Section Aa (mm. 11-19; all winds, piano, double bass) mm. 24-29, all strings D mm. 35-47 Mvt I: Section Aa (mm. 4-5, flute) mm. 40-41, flute Mvt II: Var 1 (m. 19, flute) m. 41, flute Mvt II: Var 2 (m. 38, flute) m. 45, flute Mvt III: Section Cd (mm. 98-99, oboe) mm. 39-40, flute E mm. 48-53 Mvt II: Var 5 (mm. 85-89, flute) mm. 49-53, violins I and II Mvt III: Section Ab (mm. 21-25, viola) mm. 48-54, clarinet F mm. 54-66 Mvt II: Var 4 (mm. 60-66, 74-80; all strings) mm. 54-60, all strings Table 6 Movement IV form diagram Figure 28 Comparison of sleet rhythms 44 7.2 Section A After a brief introduction that presents the sleet gesture and this movement’s main melody, the process of combining materials from previous materials begins. Figure 29 shows a reduction of measures 6-14 and the colored boxes indicate referenced materials. The references are arranged as a sequence of events and often overlap one another. They can be presented rather literally (e.g. the violin material mostly retains its pitches and rhythms) or they can undergo freer transformation (e.g. the warped contour of the oboe melody or the new rhythms in the clarinet material). These references act as a backdrop for the fourth movement melody played by the flute, which is accompanied by foot-step rhythm chords in the low strings. Figure 29 Reduction of Section A (mm. 6-14) 45 7.3 Section D This section uses reduced instrumental forces and provides space for a cadenza-like passage for the flute. Its orchestration and general atmosphere recall Section Aa of the first movement with references to the timbrally complex flute part and the footstep rhythms in the bass drum, piano, and harp. The reduced number of instruments results in a different approach to intermingling the materials of The Book of Ice’s movements. Within the flute’s melody, fragments of the previous movements interrupt the fourth movement melody. Figure 30 details the origins of the interrupting fragments. Figure 30 Origin of materials in Section D’s flute solo (mm. 35-46) 7.4 Sections B, C, E, and F The remaining sections of the fourth movement follow a similar strategy to Section A using the materials noted above in figure 29. The flute continues to play variations on the fourth movement melody while the ensemble recalls and combines earlier materials. This process is 46 meant to evoke the way in which the novel’s narrator, represented by the flute, walks through the sleet and contemplates her memories. 47 CHAPTER 8: Conclusion 8.1 Outcomes In writing The Book of Ice, I contributed a piece to the flute repertoire that blended pitch-set theoretical techniques and a spectral attitude to orchestration. This was achieved most prominently through combining the intense motivic development of a single hexachord (the ice collection) and a focus on rich and constantly shifting instrumental timbre. The first six pitches of this piece, which provided the first instance of the ice collection, undergo many deliberate transpositions and reorderings to provide a wealth of melodic and harmonic material. These transformations were also shown to exist at multiple levels of the musical structure from appearing as a fleeting gesture to governing the pitch organization of the entire piece. While interpolations did provide a way to move between transformations of the ice collection (as in the climax of the third movement), the spectral thinking in this piece manifested itself primarily in specific instrumental combinations and their individual timbral developments. Through the use of timbral associations (e.g. the flute and the tam-tam at mvt I, m. 60), chord spacings (e.g. the generative rumbles whose chord spacings were derived from the harmonic series), and transitioning between different playing techniques (e.g. strings moving from sul ponticello to ordinario), instrumental timbre was constantly developed to reinforce and enliven the gestural language and pitch organization of this piece. Writing The Book of Ice also demonstrated original ways of combining music and text. My purpose for doing this was to take my emotional response to Han’s The White Book and transform it into music. As I explained above, Han’s novel shaped large-scale formal processes and imbued each movement with a vivid sound world. Poetic images were realized in my music primarily through text painting. Simpler images were represented on a local level through basic 48 performance techniques, such as the frequent use of bowed tremolo in the strings to evoke the shuddering of trees in the first movement. Complex images, by contrast, were often expressed on a global level. This was most clearly shown in the fourth movement, where memory (and its failure) was evoked through systematically referencing, modifying, and combining materials from previous movements. Aside from poetic images, individual words and phonemes derived from Han’s novel were used to expand the timbral palette of the flute. Delegating this technique to the flute alone also highlighted the flute’s status as the featured soloist of this composition. 8.2 Future Directions Writing The Book of Ice allowed me to improve my abilities in large ensemble writing and gather into one piece the compositional techniques that I explored in my previous White Book pieces. I will continue to elaborate these techniques and seek new pathways for blending music and text as my compositional practice continues to develop. One new pathway of interest is the exploration of a different language’s literature. I began doing this in my konghou (Chinese harp) solo piece, Saying Nothing, and most recently in my erhu (Chinese fiddle) solo piece, Pear Blossoms. Both of these pieces respond to the work of the ancient Chinese poet Li Qingzhao, in this case a poem to the tune “Sands of the Washing Stream” (浣溪沙·小院閑窗春色深). Besides providing extramusical inspiration, Li’s poem also had a significant impact on the construction of these pieces. Spectral analysis of the spoken Mandarin text was used to extract pitch contours, which became important melodic elements in my compositions. Expanding on the use of phonemes in The Book of Ice, this approach considers the sonic qualities of the spoken text as well as the poem’s images and mood. What interests me most about this approach to blending text and music is the fact that a piece takes on the quality of a transcription. In this light, the method of producing transcription-like compositions such as 49 Pear Blossoms and Saying Nothing provides a deeper way for me to personalize works for musicians beyond considering their idiosyncratic performance practices. 8.3 Aesthetic Statement The Book of Ice is currently the strongest realization of my compositional ideals. The rigor of pitch-set theoretical and spectral thinking, as well as the use of text and imagery derived from literature, provided an effective framework for the execution of a large-scale composition. However, the techniques associated with these ways of thinking were only a means for the expression of my creative impulses. Above all, I wish to compose music that is beautiful, colorful, and evocative. 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(      (      (     "  "  "    "   "  "                                                  116 Bibliography Bach, Johann Sebastian. Brandenburg Concertos. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 1997. Berg, Alban. Lulu. Vienna: Universal Edition, 1978. ———. Lyrische Suite. Vienna: Wiener Philharmonischer Verlag, 1927. ———. Violin Concerto. London: Eulenburg, 2019. Crumb, George. Night of the Four Moons. New York: C.F. Peters, 1971. Fineberg, Joshua. “Guide to the Basic Concepts and Techniques of Spectral Music.” Contemporary Music Review 19, part 2 (2000a): 81-113. ———. “Spectral Music.” Contemporary Music Review 19, part 2 (2000b): 1-5. Forte, Allen. The Structure of Atonal Music. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973. Gilmore, Bob. Claude Vivier: A Composer’s Life. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2014. Grisey, Gérard. Partiels. Milan, Italy: Ricordi, 2002. Grossman, Edith. “Narrative Transmutations.” Pen America. 2007. https://pen.org/narrative-transmutations/ (accessed November 10, 2022). Han, Kang. The White Book. Translated by Deborah Smith. London: Portobello Books, 2017. Han, Kang. Huin. Kyŏnggi-do P'aju-si: Nanda, 2016. Hutchings, Arthur, Michael Talbot, Cliff Eisen, Leon Botstein, and Paul Griffiths. “Concerto.” Grove Music Online. 2001. https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/ 10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000040737 (accessed March 31, 2023). Moisala, Pirkko. Kaija Saariaho. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009. 117 Murail, Tristan. Désintégrations. Paris, France: Henry Lemoine, 2004. Saariaho, Kaija. Amers. London: Chester Music, 1992. ———. Du cristal. Copenhagen: Edition Wilhelm Hansen, 1990. ———. Laconisme de l’aile. Hämeenlinna: Jasemusiikki, 1982. ———. Maa. Copenhagen: Edition Wilhelm Hansen, 1994. ———. “Timbre and harmony: interpolations of timbral structures.” Contemporary Music Review 2, part 1 (1987): 93-133. Schnittke, Alfred. Cello Sonata no. 1. Vienna: Universal Edition, 1980. ———. Piano Quintet. Hamburg: H. Sikorski, 1976. ———. Violin Concerto no. 4. Vienna: Universal Edition, 1984. Straus, Joseph N. Introduction to Post Tonal Theory. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2005. Takemitsu, Tōru. Asterism. New York, NY: Edition Peters, 1969. ———. A String Around Autumn. Tokyo: Schott Japan, 1991. ———. Confronting Silence. Berkeley, California: Fallen Leaf Press, 1995. ———. Gitimalya. Paris: Editions Salabert, 1990. ———. To the Edge of Dream. Tokyo: Schott Japan, 1985. Varga, Bálint András. György Kurtág: Three Interviews and Ligeti Homages. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2009. Vivier, Claude. Pianoforte. Saint-Nicolas, Québec: Éditions Yppan, 1985.
Thesis/Dissertation
eng
Music - Composition
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
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Hamel, Keith, 1956-
차가운 (Chagaun)-The book of ice : for flute solo and chamber orchestra
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