Responding to the Modern World in Composing New Music
by Neil March
The link between the arts and the environment in which art is produced has been firmly established over many centuries. The starting point for my work as both a composer and a researcher is my contention that for composers to contribute to the evolutionary continuum of music as a living, breathing art, their work must resonate with and reflect the modern world in which it is conceived.
This notion was the main motivation for me in returning to the art music world after nearly decades in which I was embroiled in Pop-related culture. And it has occupied a central role in all my work, particularly since early 2008, the period from which I have been content for my compositions not to be retrospectively withdrawn.
It was in early 2008 that, in composing a piece entitled “Fugue and Fantasy (for Orchestra)”, I came up with the concept of “Soundbite Form”. I was concerned that music should reflect the way we communicate in today’s world where soundbite is now the prevalent culture. This is reflected in our increasing reliance on email, text messaging, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Myspace and so it goes on. Letters and telephone conversations are no longer our main means of communicating news, ideas and chat. Even the broadcasting and paper media have had to alter their style of programming to reflect this more impatient approach that results from the rapidly moving, time-pressured lifestyles emanating from Western Bourgeois-Democratic society (and spreading to other societies as they develop in a similar direction).
This poses a challenge for the progressive composer intent on exploring new ways of organizing pitch, harmony and texture to take music forward in the twenty-first century. For there is an obvious contradiction between our desire to pursue an intellectually robust and aesthetically challenging agenda whilst simultaneously responding to a soundbite culture which is the product of intense commercialization and populism.
My immediate response was to consider how composing music in relatively concise soundbites could offer the opportunity to present multiple progressive ideas and themes to the unfamiliar audience in a form they may be able to cope with whilst not in any way diluting the content of the music itself. My first attempt at a work reflecting these aims was another orchestral piece entitled “Twenty Four Hours”. It contained seven short sections (soundbites), the first five offering distinct and contrasting soundbites of material, the sixth attempting and then aborting a simultaneous recapitulation of the previous five and the seventh ordering key elements of the piece into a new hierarchy and new material.
In one sense I was pleased to be able to complete my first work in Soundbite form. However, in composing this work, I was frustrated by two particular issues which I knew I would have to face before I could move on with the development of this new concept.
One, which I will return to, was my desire to reflect the notion of “gradual transformation” both as an observation about numerous physical and theoretical cycles of transformation in modern society and as a representation of my long-term socio-political aims as a Democratic Socialist believing in the historic longevity of evolutionary change in the attitudes across societies just as I believe in evolutionary change within the arts.
The other more pressing concern was my inability to satisfactorily develop material presented in soundbite form to its proper potential because of the time and space limits I was imposing on myself in the construction of the work.
This led me to a solution which could take account of all my concerns. It consisted of a two-movement Soundbite form for use in larger scale works. The first would be a canter through multiple short soundbites presenting various contrasting types of progressive material in a form akin to a very detailed trailer. This movement would be entitled “Summary”.
The second, to continue with the movie analogy, would constitute a “Director’s Cut”, a longer movement in which each of the ideas presented in the Summary is developed more fully allowing for its potential to be realized and for transformation to play a more important role. This movement would be known as “Elaboration”.
Transitional material would also be deployed between some contrasting soundbites both for the purpose of following a more transformational approach and in order to avoid too many abrupt changes between sections of music.
Although I was able to apply some of these principles to compositions thereafter it would be nearly two years before I was able to complete work on a two-movement piece mainly thanks to a combination of commission works and coursework assignments for my masters degree. That work, simply entitled “Construction”, achieved the aims I set out with. The Summary lasted almost exactly ten minutes and offered up nine separate soundbites while the Elaboration lasted around twenty-one minutes, expanding on those soundbites and deploying transitional material to link them from one to the next.
However the issues of form and structure only tell part of the story. Of equal importance to my work has been the matter of composing music in a manner appropriate to my observations about the modern world and representative of my socio-political analysis and perspective in relation to them. To this end I had already begun deploying certain compositional principles such as the “democratic” distribution of the chromatic pitches, orbited by a more gradual distribution of the available quarter tones and the imposition of vertical harmonic principles on the process of horizontal pitch organization in a manner reflective of the hierarchies in modern society and how they implement laws, rules etc.
The real breakthrough arrived during the composing of a chamber work entitled “As the facts emerge” for a performance by the Nomos Project in 2009. Here I came up with a means by which I could represent two important elements of my observations on the effects of post-Globalization Bourgeois-Democracy on the behaviour both of the individual within modern society and on the multiple rates of change in various states to do with its various aspects.
In both cases this meant having more than one instrumental part in which there is no apparent reference to or interaction with the other instruments in an ensemble (other than the harmonic values imposed vertically on the overall arrangement of pitch). This process took on two distinct forms, one in which the parts progressed in their own silos apparently unaware or disinterested in what others were playing and one in which all parts continuously altered in character creating an audibly nebulous effect. I called the process “Polyfluidity”and the two categories Types I and II.
It is important to underline here the significant differences between Polyfluidity and Counterpoint. Indeed they are virtual opposites. Counterpoint implies an intimacy and interaction between instruments, responding to and imitating one another in a unified manner. Polyfluidity is, by definition, not at all intimate, completely non-interactive and non-referential. It is the embodiment of the alienation of the individual, pursuing his/her own isolated path through modern society and interacting only superficially and out of necessity with others.
In “As the facts emerge”, I had used Type II Polyfluidity in the final stretch of a piece which otherwise was not polyfluidic. But over the course of the next year I began to increasingly use polyfluidity as the basis for multiple soundbites within each work. There are polyfluidic passages in “Construction” and in most works from 2010.
However, as I have become more adept at organising music in a polyfluidic manner, it has emerged as the dominant feature of my music, both from a technical and a conceptual viewpoint. “Snapshots”, composed for the Nomos Project in early 2011, is full of polyfluidity and the more recent large chamber work “People come, people go” is polyfluidic throughout, deploying both types. Alongside this I have continued to develop my democratic distribution principle for pitch organization but the last section of “People come, people go” introduced a new, more free approach to this technique too, allowing for a reliance on intuitive pitch choices within a broader democratic framework. This speeded up the compositional process which had been very slow due to the complex and challenging system I had imposed on myself.
Along with the use of soundbite form, Types I and II Polyfluidity and Democratic Pitch Distribution, I have also introduced other techniques including my “Implied Tonalities” (whereby there is some suggestion of diatonic triads or cadences but these are obscured by the appearance of “foreign” pitches). These can be difficult to spot due to the fluid nature of the notation.
Finally this brings me to my harmonic language which sits atop the hierarchy and is imposed vertically as far as possible to retain order within complex compositional processes.
I do not follow a harmonic “system” but I do rely on certain preferences. One of these is “Compound Whole-Tone” harmony in which clearly audible/visible groups of pitches from both versions of the Whole-Tone mode are combined both chordally and lyrically in a manner that is quite distinct from straightforward 12-Tone harmony.
Another is my use of harmony derived from Jazz (and related genres of music) organized into various inversions and combinations to create an aurally striking effect.
12-Tone harmony and microtonality also play significant roles and there is a tendency in much of my music to move continuously between accord and discord, again reflective of the environment in which it is conceived.
I will conclude my making a few important points. Firstly, we all strive for our own ideas of beauty. However it is worth remembering, as some Minimalist composers discovered, that beauty only remains so when it is a temporary state. Attempts to create beauty as a permanent state invariably result in banality.
As with real life, there are moments when there is coincidental unity of purpose and moments where there is genuine unity of purpose (such as when people stand together on an issue of great importance or when people put differences aside to respond to disasters or support fund-raising activities). I try to reflect this by allowing short passages of unity within my compositions.
I am not claiming to offer solutions for composers to the challenges of the twenty-first century. But I hope that, by bringing together these matters of form, technique and language and striving both for originality and relevance to modern society, I may be able to make some small contribution to the evolutionary continuum of music as a living, breathing art and a force for change in today’s world.
NEIL MARCH
http://www.newmusiccomposition.com/neilmarch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_March
About the Author: Neil March is a British composer who returned to his classical roots in 2005 after two decades involved in the Pop industry where his successes included MSQ, Junction 8 and Kevin East. March has studied at Blackheath Conservatoire, Birkbeck University and Goldsmiths University. He has a masters degree in composition and is currently studying for a Doctorate. The past few years have seen him increasingly establish himself as an important new force in contemporary art music and his works have been performed across the UK, Europe, the Americas and the Middle East. He has also presented his ideas to students at several universities and is composer in residence for the Nomos Project.
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