Venezia - work in progress notes, 2011

Updated 22jan 2011

(For the first time I'm blogging while writing a new piece. We'll see how this works)

The wind orchestra is divided in two equal orchestras. That is, equal number of musicians.

Giovanni Gabrieli's Sonata Pian e Forte gave me some input, also the topography and architecture of the city of Venice.

There are a few main ideas:

The bridges

Inspired by Venice's bridges where slanted lines meet curved lines. This is not transferred by any mathematical means to music, but used as inspiration for creating "constructions" for one of the two orchestras. Sometimes, also for two orchestras mirroring eachother in a distorted way. The most basic version consists of series of short repeated stabs that form a construction - often mounting and descending. The most elaborate fill out the gaps between the (imaginary?) stabs with ornaments and movements.

The water level

This layer is connected to the statistics of world sea level from 1994 to 2010. One oscillation per year, plus a steady linear increase. The water is interpreted as a blurred line. Also, it brings garbage with it.

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The chord layer

The chords form an independent layer in the music. They stay in the middle register, as a sustained layer.  The harmony should be simple and open, so that it does not lose its character when elements are superimposed on it. The water level layer fx will be combined with it, mixed into it, the bridges layer is superimposed.

I am writing 3-part chords where one chord always is meant to overlap the next one. Not all 6 resulting parts need to be used all the time. One of the parts could be sustained as a drone through a series of chords.  The chords may be simplified and complexified. What chords? I am attracted to triads and to the combination of two triad-like chords. So that's why there are many fifths present.

The sequence of chords is always kept. Idea: The falling fifths, taken from Gabrieli's Sonata. There are 5 sections in the chords sequence: A, B, C, D and E.  Starting to work on this, I imagine that the 5 sections correspond to 5 parts of the whole composistion. Though, not necessarily border-to-border.

The sections are written with a built-in overlap: material from A is inserted into B, from B is inserted into C etc. A sequence of chords is like a row of houses. You come to a corner and peep into a new street (from A into B). Still you keep some orientation from A in your mind.

There is a rhytm, a pace as we walk slowly from chord to chord, or fall into next chord if you like, the character of this rhythm should be slightly different from section to section.

There's an idea of never bringing things to rest. No "cadences". Often the falling fifths sequence leans towards its end and through this the next sequence gets a flying start. A feeling of film editing, go on, go on.

I spent a lot of time on this layer trying out options before I made the final decisions and started composing. Each section will have its own texture: Originally my idea was to define textures as Glass, Sand, Brick, Wood and Dirt, and impose these textures on the music at any moment. Finally the choice was to lock this to the five sections of the piece (= the five versions of the chords layer). As for now, my plan is to let every section have its own texture (= a combination of playing techniques, motivic figures, dynamics) so that when chords from A are played in the B section, the texture will still belong to B.

The disaster layer

Not so much a description of a phenomenon of disaster but a collective reaction on something.