2020 Uhrenstellmusik I, 14`, for large ensemble
The compositions of the Time Regulation Music cycle are related to each other above all with regard to the method with which they were composed. This composition method involves constructing a highly detailed temporal chart for each work, which I name the timeline of signs, or, the timeline. The procedure with which I organise the “timeline” reflects both my experiences and objectives in musical composition and the “timelines“ I have prepared so far are comprehensive graphical representations of the technique of my compositions that make part of the Time Regulation Music series. Basically they are scores designed with the digital music notation editor Sibelius whereas extensive use is made of certain properties of the text tool.
The basic principle of the timeline is the juxtaposition of several abstract and non-identical duration series made up of many repetitions of several abstract and simple rhythms which are idiomatically somewhere between 10 and 60 seconds long. Each duration within these series is in turn presumed to be a singularity containing multiple elements, just as an orchestral timbre is a fusion of multiple sounds, but at the earliest phases of the procedure the contents of the duration are undefined. The real sense of the method is thinking internal differences as the substance of music, hence as a rule every duration must differ from its predecessor and successor to some extent. This rule reflects Bergson’s thought on a fundamental level, since his method of intuition is much more concerned with articulating the difference between things rather than things per se. In Bergson’s words, “movement and change are substantial,” and “substance is movement and change.” Every duration in the timeline must eventually cease being mathematical space and become immediate experience through internal differentiation, but this does not happen until the later phases of the work on a piece. The initial phases still involve constructing a stratified large scale structure of durations for the entirety of a piece, which I name the wireframe model. The significance of the “wireframe model” is that it sets all durations in proportional relations. As internal differentiation accumulates further meanings in them they also retain these mathematical properties, which in turn results in each one of them exhibiting a duality; this is a key concept of the method which I will clarify later. The constituent vertices of the “wireframe model” are represented in the “timeline” with conventional rhythmic notation on five staves. Once the “wireframe model” is fixed all of the durations between its vertices assume the meaning of a pause by default. Semantic and syntactic properties are then attributed to some of the durations according to certain strategies for generating musical patterns. Figure 5 demonstrates the second page of the “timeline“ for Time Regulation Music I, for large ensemble.
The duration sequences differ from each other in the quality, phase and length of the repeated rhythmic cells which they contain. In case the duration sequences contain rhythmic cells of different lengths, I tend to order them in an ascending manner so that the first duration sequence has the longest rhythmic cell and the last the shortest. The quantity of these duration sequences in the model is 6 by default since I have been conceiving my pieces for 6 meta-voices regardless of the available setup, although quite a few other natural numbers could be theoretically as convenient. In keeping with my ideal of a 6-voice polyphony where the lowest voice is particularly slow-paced, I distinguish one of the duration sequences by assigning markedly longer durations to it and naming it the fundamental superordinate duration sequence (habitually encoded in the timeline as SDS I). In the timeline the endpoints of the “fundamental superordinate durations“ are notated with thick bar lines, while their properties are represented denoted within a grey coloured box below the page. The objects of the „fundamental superordinate duration sequence” are named the fundamental superordinate durations (encoded as FD), whereas the 5 remaining duration sequences are named simply the superordinate duration sequences (encoded as SDS II-VI). The “superordinate duration sequences“ are represented with traditional rhythmic notation on staves with two lines that are 4,5 stave lines apart. These temporal constructs will always be referred to with their articles because the musical necessity of constructing longer phrases often leads to the extension ofthe „wireframe model” through juxtaposition of further duration sequences with larger durations, which in turn relativizes the hierarchical relations between any two duration sequences. I will refer to duration sequences with durations larger than those in the „fundamental superordinate duration sequence” as high-level duration sequences. These are not always designed according to the same principles with the subordinate duration sequences; a „high-level duration sequence” is most often formed by the aggregation of the objects of a duration sequence that is subordinate to it, hence the high-level duration sequence is comparable to the phenomenon of grouping phrase structures in traditional music. Unlike the other types, the “high-level duration sequences” are not represented graphically on the “timeline“ with conventional music notation elements but only encoded as SDSℤ(whereby ℤrefers to a natural number). During the composition of The Patron Saint of Liars, which is the longest and most complex piece of the project, I have not felt the need to work with more than 7 additional “superordinate duration sequences” such as SDS1, SDS2, and so on, in which case the SDS7 corresponded to the total duration of the piece. The notion of time as a multiplicity with many layers also plays an important role in Bergson’s thought as the very object of intuitive inquiry:
“…so the intuition of our duration, far from leaving us suspended in the void as pure analysis would do, puts us in contact with a whole continuity of durations which we should try to follow either downwardly or upwardly. In both cases we than dilate ourselves indefinitely by a more and more vigorous effort, in both cases transcend ourselves. In the first case, we advance toward a duration more and more scattered, whose palpitations, more rapid than ours, dividing our simple sensation, dilute its quality into quantity: at the limit would be the pure homogeneous, the pure repetition by which we shall define materiality. In advancing in the other direction, we go toward a duration which stretches, tightens, and becomes more and more intensified: at the limit would be eternity. This time is not only conceptual eternity, which is an eternity of death, but an eternity of life. It would be a living and consequently still moving eternity where our own duration would find itself like the vibrations in light, and which would be the concretion of all duration as materiality is its dispersion. Between these two extreme limits moves intuition, and this movement is metaphysics itself.”
If the objective of Bergson’s intuitive methodology is to obtain a totality of mind, which ultimately means freedom for Bergson, so it is the task of my method to express this free existence musically. However from the perspective of music theatre a free will is much more interesting to aspire for rather than to retain. The indifferent will is too abstract for theatre, incapable of relation to our world, incapable of reality. For a character to become real he or she must submit to external influences to some extent, as a matter of fact, if we assume that composing music theatre is not essentially different than composing orchestral music, we might even be compelled to adopt a hard determinist approach to the problem of the free will and justify the reduction of the characters to sensuous puppets who present but a minimal amount of resistance to forces that are exerted on them, both the forces and the resistances being definable in the composition’s own terms as operations within an organism. Then again, the character Hayri İrdal is defined by the conflict between libertarian and determinist views on the freedom of will. In order to realise him in music theatre, it is prerequisite that the method of composition is able to express both the free will and the mechanism, or rather, to express a perforated free will in the throes of dissolution into the mechanism that engulfs it, and express it gracefully. Perhaps the reader has noticed how the very name timeline presents a violation of the basic tenet of Bergson’s intuitive method of thinking in terms of duration, since to congeal duration into a still timeline that extends in space is exactly what it does not do. Here I intend to emphasise the dual nature of “the superordinate durations” which has been very useful for the composition of The Patron Saint of Liars. These durations, while being interpreted as immediate experiences, are at the same time organised in space mathematically; after all they are rhythms which are positioned according to certain proportions and which are meant to be perceived as they stride venerably behind the foreground. While Bergson himself would insist on distinguishing between “mathematical duration” in terms of space and “real duration” in terms of time, the demands of composing Hayri İrdal’s anxious mind allow our own musical bergsonism to say: “Space and time, time and space, this is as far as music can ever be defined“. Before concluding this chapter, let us briefly examine some further aspects of the method which generate causal relations between things through principles of repetition and, in the case of The Patron Saint of Liars, give rise to the determinist impression of a machinery running behind the desires of the characters. Figure 6 demonstrates an extract from the seventh page of the “timeline“ for Time Regulation Music II – Kolotushka Nochnogo Storozha for alto solo, Figure 7a and 7b
I will refer to each of the larger panels coloured in grey as a presets panel. Two of them are shownIn Figure 6, representing the 21st and 22nd objects in the “fundamental superordinate duration sequences”(corresponding to the mm.46-48 of the composition). They contain lists of inscriptions which I will refer to as propositions. The propositions contained in the panel fall into two main categories with regard to their truth values:
1) Tautologies that remain true all the way through between the borders of the „fundamental superordinate duration”. I will refer to them as the presets. “Presets” have grey background colour.
2) Possible propositions whose interpretation rely on additional temporal operators. I will refer to this kind of propositions as contingencies and to the temporal operators which determine when they are true or false as quantifiers. I have noticed that habitually assigning colours to matching panels and “quantifiers” facilitate working with the “timeline of signs,” therefore in the “timelines” I have prepared so far these consistently appear in one of 5 colours (black, red, green, brown or blue, as seen in Figure 6). In the “timeline” the “quantifiers” are shown as several coloured lane segments on the staves each of which is connecting two noteheads. The “quantifiers” relate to the “contingencies” similarly to the way grammatical tenses relate to verbs, in other words, they specify a temporal domain in which their statements are true. There is no strict logical procedure that governs which durations are going to be interpreted as “quantifiers”; that has often been settled by pure musical intuition. The fixation of the “quantifier” structure is a phase that will deeply influence the rest of the composition process and since it involves the author leaving the control of the steering wheel to some extent to the machine, it necessitates a certain foresightedness and time for critical experimentation. Once the “quantifier” structures begin to appear, much effort will be made to form patterns that are simple and persistent. As a matter of fact in Time Regulation Music I every “quantifier” was alternated with a pause all throughout the piece to compensate for the complexity of the ensemble idiom (see Figure 6a). Where the “quantifier” structure undergoes changes this corresponds to important structural events. Figure 8 shows the “quantifier” structure of a long term process of accumulation from the Patron Saint of Liars. This process corresponds to the evocation and arrival of a supernatural entity in the libretto.