{"id":430,"date":"2016-01-13T15:57:51","date_gmt":"2016-01-13T21:57:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/?page_id=430"},"modified":"2016-01-13T15:57:51","modified_gmt":"2016-01-13T21:57:51","slug":"ann-southam-soundings-for-a-new-piano-1986","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/ann-southam-soundings-for-a-new-piano-1986\/","title":{"rendered":"Ann Southam, “Soundings for a New Piano” (1986)"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n<\/a>Southam (1937-2010) was an interesting Canadian composer<\/a>\u00a0who wrote long intricate pieces for piano, as well as electronic music and pieces requiring improvisation. She cites Terry Riley’s\u00a0A Rainbow in Curved Air<\/em> and Steve Reich as initial minimalist influences, and some of the longer and more complex minimalist pieces remind me of early John Adams like\u00a0Phrygian Gates<\/em> or\u00a0China Gates.<\/em>\u00a0Her\u00a0Glass Houses,<\/em>\u00a0for example,\u00a0<\/em>is a long, sometimes difficult piece with an economical notation that makes it easy to read:<\/p>\n

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But Southam\u00a0began as a twelve-tone composer, and what interests me about her piano music is the work that attempts to mix twelve-tone technique with minimalist repetition.<\/p>\n

In an interview<\/a> she describes her piece\u00a0Rivers<\/em> this way:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a minimalist piece, a process piece…\u00a0The repeating pattern in the right hand really is just two notes, back and forth, alternating, and around it is being woven a 12-tone row. It\u2019s the same 12-tone row I\u2019ve been using for the past 20 years. I\u2019ve got this piece of paper which I keep getting out with this old row on it which I keep trying to rework, put to some use, beat some sort of tonal sense into it! So the process is to spin out the row one note at a time, adding a new note until the whole row is present. The two notes in the repeating right hand figure give a kind of tonal center around which the 12-tone row works. I like the intervals that are set up between the note of the row and the tonal center… Sometimes they suggest sort of a diatonic context, and you expect that\u2019s its going to go in a certain direction \u2014 and it doesn\u2019t. It all falls apart and goes off somewhere else. And this can be frustrating and you work to rationalize this.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Soundings for a New Piano\u00a0<\/em>is subtitled “Twelve Meditations on a Twelve-Tone Row,” and I suppose\u00a0it might even be the same row she mentions in this interview. When I first listened to Soundings for a New Piano\u00a0<\/em>I wasn’t aware of the presence of the row (the subtitle isn’t printed on\u00a0the title page). From a player’s or listener’s point of view, the piece induces\u00a0an awareness of a slow journey\u00a0through different tone points, which I assume is the effect of Southam working through the tone row with repeated notes interpolated.<\/p>\n

Here is the opening of the piece:<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/p>\n

In the opening measures\u00a0the notes c#, g#, b,<\/em> and d<\/em> repeat several times in different orders, with other notes added:<\/p>\n

c#g#bdg | g#bdc#g | bdc#g#ge | dc#g#bge | c#g#bdgea | g#bdc#a | bdc#g#eaf# |<\/p>\n

The first two measures have the drone notes\u00a0c#, g#, b,<\/em> and d,<\/em> with the addition of g<\/em> natural; the second two measures add e<\/em> natural; the fifth measure has all those notes and also a<\/em> natural, and so forth.<\/p>\n

I’m sure a listener with more interest in puzzles than I have can figure out the full system, if there is one. From a listener’s point of view, there is a slowly building complexity in these measures (that’s the contribution of the 12-tone row), but it is balanced against the repeated rhythm. And it’s a compelling rhythm, in paired measures with slight metrical differences. The rhythm changes in each of the twelve “meditations.” Here is the opening of Meditation no. 2:<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/p>\n

The brief “Interlude” (here reproduced in its entirety) serves to introduce a double-dotted rhythm, which is then available to the concluding five pieces:<\/p>\n

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And\u00a0Soundings<\/em> concludes with a kind of reprise of Meditation no. 1:<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/p>\n

There are several sources of minimalist iteration: the characteristic rhythms of each of the twelve meditations; the slight changes of meter within each piece; and the “drone notes” and their changing presence within each measure. They play against my imprecise awareness of the evolving chromaticism required by the 12-tone row, producing a much richer experience than in some\u00a0purely minimalist or purely serial music.<\/p>\n

Soundings<\/em> is easy to play, even in the manuscript version,\u00a0except for one faster meditation. Much of it can be sight-read.<\/p>\n

(This is an incomplete analysis, I recognize, and it should be augmented by a more accurate description of her 12-tone row and the principles of each of the twelve meditations. Perhaps someone can help out here. At the moment my concern is more what is available to the ear rather than the eye.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Southam (1937-2010) was an interesting Canadian composer\u00a0who wrote long intricate pieces for piano, as well as electronic music and pieces …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/430"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":431,"href":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/430\/revisions\/431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}