In my last post, I wrote about a new seven-second snippet written by Mason Bates as a sonic logo for the Charlotte Symphony - and I debuted my own first try in the genre; but I knew in my heart that it wouldn't be my last attempt. Sure enough, I now have six total sonic signatures to my name - which, to be honest, isn't that big a deal. That's less than sixty seconds of music! But I have found it to be a really gratifying exercise, especially in writing for full orchestra.
There's not much good reason for me to write for orchestra in general since I don't have sixty-plus professional musicians at my disposal. BUT...we have arrived at a time when it is not so difficult to achieve a somewhat satisfying level of symphonic simulation. Dorico is really beautifully designed software which streamlines the process of creating and notating musical ideas, and combined with NotePerformer, it's possible to generate reasonably good sounding results. And, just to prove I sometimes live in the real world, I even wrote a signature fugue for piano and recorded myself playing it on an actual piano before orchestrating it for virtual players.
Before we get to the new lightning-round playlist, let's reflect a bit on this curious genre: the musical snapshot. Music is hard enough to define, but most people agree that it needs to exist in time. I've written before about what it might mean to "hold an entire musical work" in one's mind as a kind of static object. This light-hearted race through the first movement of Beethoven's 5th (via a miniaturized one-page score) was in part inspired by a comment on the blog about just this kind of experience. But it doesn't really make sense to think of a seven-minute symphonic movement as a snapshot.
The kind of "seven second sonic logo" Mason Bates was asked to write for the Charlotte Symphony is closer to the idea of "music experienced as time approaches zero," though it's definitely more than the kind of single-gesture bump that has become famous on Netflix and HBO. Bates' work is the model for the challenge I've settled on since it invites a real compositional approach while severely restricting the opportunity to develop ideas. It's perhaps analogically adjacent to writing a "novel in haiku" or summarizing an opera plot in 140 characters.
There are a few examples of works from the classical repertoire that flirt with this time frame. From this thread, I discovered a very short song by György Kurtag - less than ten seconds. This Webern piece for cello and piano is about twenty-two seconds. I once made a mashup of four different recordings of Ned Rorem's micro-song I am rose. Though less than thirty seconds (which once meant you could hear the entire song for free via iTunes' demo feature!), it has four distinct phrases and is neatly structured by Gertrude Stein's efficient quatrain, so it actually manages to feel complete - whereas the Kurtag and Webern examples seem like scraps of fragments floating by. Rorem's concision is admirable. Kurtag and Webern just appear to be dropping notes off a table. [However, I have some affection for two under-a-minute Webern pieces: this one, which I paired with a scene from The Andy Griffith Show and this one which I took for a "ride" with a Line Ride animation.]
I mentioned last post that Bates' Charlotte logo evokes "news theme" to my ears. I had forgotten then that I very recently spent a little time orchestrating a news theme demo from the movie Broadcast News. (I do some strange things.) So this may be one reason I associate Bates' work with the genre of news themes and, more broadly, production company themes. I've made a whole "sonic signatures selection" playlist of various examples which come to my mind. The list also includes the Kurtag and Webern examples mentioned above as well as a few other goodies.
Since I was interested in following Bates' precedent to write something which showcases an orchestra (even if mine is a fake orchestra), my main goal was to create some sort of coherent musical statement which uses a wide range of orchestral color. What is perhaps inevitable when doing this is ending up with something that sounds like an excerpt from something larger. If the goal is to evoke the kind of experience one would expect hearing the Charlotte Symphony live, then ending up with an excerpt isn't such a bad thing ("leave'em wanting more!"); but it still made me sad that even in this Tik-Tok world, I couldn't create something that seems completely self-sufficient in so little time. I was proud to write a little three-voice fugue that can be played in seven seconds - but it really just sounds like the closing section of a fugue. Everything I wrote could easily be imagined as part of something larger, although the "static" and "silly" options may come closest to sounding complete.
By the way, the idea of "sounding like an excerpt of something larger" reminded me of this wacky "performance art" concert I read about a decade ago. Among other things, the composer/performer Andy Costello "performed" all of Chopin's Etudes, but:
“he only performed enough of each to make it recognizable, three or four seconds. This was just long enough to engage one’s own memory of each work, and Chopin’s genius became clear: only two seconds was enough to bring the entire etude into focus in one’s memory, so strongly characterized were each." [I referenced this Costello event when I was writing about my work In Season in which fragments of Christmas Carols are used as building blocks.]
If I read that correctly, this involved playing tiny excerpts of twenty-seven pieces over a span of maybe 2-3 minutes. Of course, this is different from what my little works are doing since they are NOT excerpts of anything familiar. But they use enough familiar gestures that it's natural for a seasoned listener to hear how they could fit into larger narratives. I suppose if my goal is to write music that sounds like it fits into the core rep of an American orchestra, it's almost impossible to write music that sounds complete in such a short time because of the expectations that are implied.
I will confess as well that I was less interested in expressing some sort of "true inner voice" of myself as composer than I was in imitating in seconds what a concert presents in an hour-plus. Thus, each of these six sonic logos is a kind of pastiche. We'll call this set a "six-movement symphony," so here are descriptions, each of which will take you longer to read than it would take to listen to the music described. [By the way, I was amused to think that my blog post subtitle - "Sixty Second Symphony" - might sound like this was my 62nd symphony. And at this rate, that number would be conceivably achievable - but, no. Also, calling this six-song set a Serenade would probably make more sense than calling it a Symphony - but Symphony just sounds cooler.]
1. Fanfare - My first effort is the one most focused on brass, and also the most fully symphonic with prominent percussion, harp, plus woodwinds and sweeping strings. The fact that its ending is harmonically ambiguous makes it a good curtain-raiser.
2. Fugato - I tried writing a seven-second fugue, but the genre really requires more contrast between thematic exposition and episodic exploration than is practical in such a restricted time, so as mentioned above, it sounds like the end of fugue. You may hear it played in its in original piano context here. I then tried arranging it just for strings, but the limitations of NotePerformer show up more with fully exposed string sections, so I filled it out with winds, brass and some metrically ambiguous timpani.
3. Static - This might low-key be my favorite. My goal here was to think in terms of that wonderfully pretentious and yet descriptive Schoenberg word: Klangfarbenmelodie (tone-color melody). The idea is to use variation in timbre as its own kind of thematic device. This ten-second slow movement (so long!) features only one chord (and four pitches) throughout: a "D Minor Seventh Chord" of D-F-A-C. (I really love minor seventh chords.)
4. Silly - In this case, I was definitely thinking of the kind of wrong-note pastiche which Shostakovich enjoyed. "Classical" in tone, with little mischievous winks along the way. I think this arguably could be considered a complete piece.
5. Serial - As much as I'm skeptical of 12-tone serialism as a comprehensive creative framework, I've always been intrigued by how moments of passing, shimmering beauty can emerge when dissonance is treated delicately. I tilted things in my favor a bit by dividing the 12 tones into four 3-note sets of augmented triads. Augmented triads naturally avoid the most dissonant intervals (minor seconds, major sevenths, and tritones) even as their symmetry* also makes a tonal center seem elusive. And we do end with one quiet, widely spaced 12-tone chord.
6. Finale - This one is closest in concept to my first effort, though a little lighter in tone. It ends with what I referred to as the Super Mario Cadence** a few months ago. That cadence, while perhaps overused (though less so than the ubiquitous V-I cadence!), provides a sort of instant uplift which works well in this context.
A few strange things about letting these segments simmer in my brain all weekend. I listened many times through to a playlist which cycled through the six pieces above, followed by this three-year-old tiny piece I wrote based on the first six notes of "Happy Birthday." It was quite surprising how long and satisfying it felt to hear an expansive 20-plus seconds after multiple works less than half that length.
Naturally, this post about super-short music has become long-winded, but here are a few more stray thoughts. I've realized one of my first forays into musical logos came back in 2011 when I created a set of 24 "classical music" ringtones. You may sample the whole set here. Some work better than others, but all are experiments in how a tiny fragment of something much larger can still make its effect. This one (theme from the finale of Beethoven's 7th) has been my constant ringtone at least going back that far, and it never fails to please. There is a sense in which those six seconds (encompassing 49 notes) actually do call to mind the experience of that entire, glorious symphony; but that energetic thematic kernel is also pretty satisfying as a standalone.
This reminds me of what seems like the best sonic logo I've ever heard - and, perhaps not surprisingly, it's by J.S. Bach. Now, I won't discount the importance of regular exposure as making this seem well-suited to its task, but the theme from the finale of the Brandenburg Concerto No. 6*** - featured as the sonic logo for (the nationally prominent) Minnesota Public Radio for many years - just works so well. The theme is elegant, motivically unified, and actually ends with a perfect authentic cadence, and it is about seven seconds. Just look at the beautifully shaped sequential rise and fall. (The fact that Bach also spins a wonderful full movement out of this is just icing on the cake. Or is the logo usage the icing on the cake?)
(In fairness to Mason Bates and me and others who would try to write something as perfect for an orchestra, Bach only uses a small chamber ensemble without even needing violins, so this would not serve as logo for a modern symphony orchestra.)
On the other hand, this topic reminded me of the clumsy little theme for the clumsy (but charming) TV show, Mozart in the Jungle, a show which is all about a professional orchestra. The theme is about ten seconds long, but has an ending that seems tacked on and not related to the oddly serious way it begins (odd because the show is so lighthearted). This just seems half-baked, and even the amateurish use of italics in the title looks unfinished. I've watched all forty episodes of that show at least twice each, and yet that logo has never landed for me. (Probably my biggest complaint about Bates' Charlotte logo is that its ending is also too sudden and feels tacked on.)
* The outer pitches of an augmented triad are equidistant from the middle pitch (unlike the much more commonly used major and minor triads). So, for example, C-E-G# travels four half-steps from note to note, and that G# is also just four half-steps away from the next C. This is what makes the chord "symmetrical" and thus without an obvious tonal center. If you think about it, if one builds an augmented triad from a given pitch, say C, and then one builds successive augmented triads from the next three pitches before getting to E, it stands to reason that each of those triads would use three pitches not used by any of the other ones - which is how we end up with a 12-tone row. (Numerically, the row would look like this: 1-5-9 / 2-6-10 / 3-7-11 / 4-8-12.)
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