FRANK STEMPER, COMPOSER
Clarinet Piece (1985)
for clarinet in Bb with extended techniques [10 mins.]
Commissioned by clarinetist Eric Mandat
Premiered 7 March 1986 by Eric Mandat at the Society of Composers, Inc. (then ASUC) Twenty-first Annual Conference in Toronto, Canada.
20 subsequent performances across the United States;
Professionally recorded on Compact Disc by Advance Records.
Opus 15 — A.S.C.A.P. work I.D. 332876670
Premiered 7 March 1986 by Eric Mandat at the Society of Composers, Inc. (then ASUC) Twenty-first Annual Conference in Toronto, Canada.
20 subsequent performances across the United States;
Professionally recorded on Compact Disc by Advance Records.
Opus 15 — A.S.C.A.P. work I.D. 332876670
NOTES
CLARINET PIECE (1985) This music could only have been written for my 31-year colleague, Eric Mandat. He premiered it in Toronto at the joint Toronto International Music Festival and Society of Composers, Inc. As I began my relationship with Mandat, and as I began this piece, I had absolutely no interest in adding extended techniques to my musical palette. I thought their use was superficial and exploitive – at best. (Describing myself back then, the words arrogant and stupid come to mind!) I’ve of course since changed my “tune.”
However, that’s not what really bugged me — as I began working on CLARINET PIECE, I realized that as the timbre of the clarinet became more complex with multi-phonics and quarter tones, etc., my pallet of meaningful musical syntax quickly became very difficult to conceptualize because it was just too vast. My little world of 12 equal-tempered pitch classes had more than enough musical potential for my lifetime, but suddenly, the possibilities grew exponentially, and I was completely intimidated. I did my best to realize narrative statement, but it quickly got away from me. It was too complex for me to understand and control. I didn’t compose this piece – it composed me! As I began trying to manipulate the sounds, the sounds themselves sat me down and lectured me about music, about its possibilities, and whom did I think I was try to tell THEM what to do!
I’m neither a quitter nor a gracious loser, but somewhere during this piece, you can hear me crying for mercy.
•••
P.S. To make this conundrum a bit clearer, let me add some theory and history:
Pitches
(not pitch classes, as my early reference-point mentors, Schönberg, Babbitt, Boulez, etc., called these SOUNDS, which were originally based on the natural overtone phenomena but then bastardized around 1700 by J. S. Bach when he detuned this series of natural pitches in order to increase and thus advance the harmonic possibilities in music, which actually worked out quite well.)
Pitches
imply harmony and forward momentum through time — whether adhering to a single reference (a tonal center) or no reference at all. But the early atonal composers over-simplified how atonality behaved. They decided that a series could be used linearly and vertically, simultaneously — It does not. It cannot. — For example, they didn’t take in account the effect of separate registers on harmony – the ‘guys’ treated the entire sonic spectrum as a single register, even though the whole, via SOUNDS that work cohesively to both combine and separate, splits into many registral areas, each with the possibility of its own separate harmonic momentum, forward in time or backwards, whether working together or individually — just to point out one infraction.
(Even Webern, Mr. Strict, would take a note that he didn’t particularly like, and toss it way up in the highest register, where it wouldn’t affect the harmony in the lower register – banishing it in a way, or actually excluding it, but justifying the row because technically that pitch class was still in its proper spot.)
My early composer heroes undoubtedly understood this, but just ignored it, I imagine. To me, those early guys had to presume those things in order to create an explainable scheme (i.e. atonality, pantonality, 12-tone, serial, etc.) in order to push music into the future in a seemingly “legitimate” way. And the explainable scheme was something that they were in fact legitimizing to themselves, because merely composing freely, outside the lines of the past history of music, without the safety net of a repudiable theory as it were, was too impossible of a task. They were after all much closer to 1700 than I am. It was much harder for them to go against the grain of the music that they obviously loved.* (*Why else would anybody compose professionally) So they made some rules to “follow” (even though they didn’t follow them) and composed freely in spite of the bogus rules they had invented to make it all seem legitimate — both to themselves and the public — they were after all trying to make a living, too.
I hope that’s clear. And I spouted all of it to explain, not the history of music, but why I felt I had so little control composing CLARINET PIECE for Eric. All those sounds, mis-tuned re-tuned un-tuned pitches, quarter tones, squeeks, buzzes, glissandi, to mention only a few of the array of sounds, which is definitely a number greater than 12, making a boggling number of possibilities, too many for me to keep track of harmonic registers, harmonic motion, harmonic momentum, harmonic — oh well. As far as I could tell, my manipulation of harmony was more like the Keystone Cops in a China Shop!
Back to Serialism:
Boulez confessed, in a 1990s NY Times article about early serialism — serialism was a failure and all for naught.
As I just explained, poetically, I’d agree that the early schematic systems of atonality and serialism were theoretical failures, but it very definitely was NOT “all for naught.” I mean if you don’t like any of the music that grew out of the that time period by those composers, then it was certainly a failure for you. [Goodbye.]
But to me the world is a lot better with the music composed by those cats from the late 19th Century to now. The supposedly rigidly composed 12-tone music has its own charming appeal, as does the more severe, serially devised music of Babbitt and Boulez. It didn’t do what they thought it did, but that doesn’t matter — our ears can figure out the theory without having to verbalize it. Where would be without the Schönberg STRING TRIO, or Babbitt’s ALL SET, Webern’s QUARTET Op. 22, Boulez’s LE MARTEAU SANS MAîTRE, not to mention……..
BUT, and this is the important part, THE EXPLORER ATTITUDE OF THOSE EARLY ATONAL GUYS CARVED A PATH DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY FOR YOUNGER DUDES DURING THE SECOND HALF. With those icons paving the way, the younger dudes could do what they wanted to do more naturally. The toils of the old dudes allowed us to avoid all the rhetoric and just compose. In 1988 I was invited to a symposium of piano music at Michigan State U. When the keynote composer, Lukas Foss, briefly studied my score (FOUR PIANO PIECES) and then heard it, he presumed it was a 12-tone piece and said so. I told him no it wasn’t. That was right and wrong. At that time, I was writing 12-tone music, but I wasn’t writing it via a row, with strict rules. – I JUST COMPOSED IT BY EAR. I liked the way that stuff sounds, but composing it via a strict row didn’t let me get the sound that I wanted. In fact, I think composing serial music by ear gets a result that is closer to the ideal that the old dudes were looking for.
CLARINET PIECE (1985) This music could only have been written for my 31-year colleague, Eric Mandat. He premiered it in Toronto at the joint Toronto International Music Festival and Society of Composers, Inc. As I began my relationship with Mandat, and as I began this piece, I had absolutely no interest in adding extended techniques to my musical palette. I thought their use was superficial and exploitive – at best. (Describing myself back then, the words arrogant and stupid come to mind!) I’ve of course since changed my “tune.”
However, that’s not what really bugged me — as I began working on CLARINET PIECE, I realized that as the timbre of the clarinet became more complex with multi-phonics and quarter tones, etc., my pallet of meaningful musical syntax quickly became very difficult to conceptualize because it was just too vast. My little world of 12 equal-tempered pitch classes had more than enough musical potential for my lifetime, but suddenly, the possibilities grew exponentially, and I was completely intimidated. I did my best to realize narrative statement, but it quickly got away from me. It was too complex for me to understand and control. I didn’t compose this piece – it composed me! As I began trying to manipulate the sounds, the sounds themselves sat me down and lectured me about music, about its possibilities, and whom did I think I was try to tell THEM what to do!
I’m neither a quitter nor a gracious loser, but somewhere during this piece, you can hear me crying for mercy.
•••
P.S. To make this conundrum a bit clearer, let me add some theory and history:
Pitches
(not pitch classes, as my early reference-point mentors, Schönberg, Babbitt, Boulez, etc., called these SOUNDS, which were originally based on the natural overtone phenomena but then bastardized around 1700 by J. S. Bach when he detuned this series of natural pitches in order to increase and thus advance the harmonic possibilities in music, which actually worked out quite well.)
Pitches
imply harmony and forward momentum through time — whether adhering to a single reference (a tonal center) or no reference at all. But the early atonal composers over-simplified how atonality behaved. They decided that a series could be used linearly and vertically, simultaneously — It does not. It cannot. — For example, they didn’t take in account the effect of separate registers on harmony – the ‘guys’ treated the entire sonic spectrum as a single register, even though the whole, via SOUNDS that work cohesively to both combine and separate, splits into many registral areas, each with the possibility of its own separate harmonic momentum, forward in time or backwards, whether working together or individually — just to point out one infraction.
(Even Webern, Mr. Strict, would take a note that he didn’t particularly like, and toss it way up in the highest register, where it wouldn’t affect the harmony in the lower register – banishing it in a way, or actually excluding it, but justifying the row because technically that pitch class was still in its proper spot.)
My early composer heroes undoubtedly understood this, but just ignored it, I imagine. To me, those early guys had to presume those things in order to create an explainable scheme (i.e. atonality, pantonality, 12-tone, serial, etc.) in order to push music into the future in a seemingly “legitimate” way. And the explainable scheme was something that they were in fact legitimizing to themselves, because merely composing freely, outside the lines of the past history of music, without the safety net of a repudiable theory as it were, was too impossible of a task. They were after all much closer to 1700 than I am. It was much harder for them to go against the grain of the music that they obviously loved.* (*Why else would anybody compose professionally) So they made some rules to “follow” (even though they didn’t follow them) and composed freely in spite of the bogus rules they had invented to make it all seem legitimate — both to themselves and the public — they were after all trying to make a living, too.
I hope that’s clear. And I spouted all of it to explain, not the history of music, but why I felt I had so little control composing CLARINET PIECE for Eric. All those sounds, mis-tuned re-tuned un-tuned pitches, quarter tones, squeeks, buzzes, glissandi, to mention only a few of the array of sounds, which is definitely a number greater than 12, making a boggling number of possibilities, too many for me to keep track of harmonic registers, harmonic motion, harmonic momentum, harmonic — oh well. As far as I could tell, my manipulation of harmony was more like the Keystone Cops in a China Shop!
Back to Serialism:
Boulez confessed, in a 1990s NY Times article about early serialism — serialism was a failure and all for naught.
As I just explained, poetically, I’d agree that the early schematic systems of atonality and serialism were theoretical failures, but it very definitely was NOT “all for naught.” I mean if you don’t like any of the music that grew out of the that time period by those composers, then it was certainly a failure for you. [Goodbye.]
But to me the world is a lot better with the music composed by those cats from the late 19th Century to now. The supposedly rigidly composed 12-tone music has its own charming appeal, as does the more severe, serially devised music of Babbitt and Boulez. It didn’t do what they thought it did, but that doesn’t matter — our ears can figure out the theory without having to verbalize it. Where would be without the Schönberg STRING TRIO, or Babbitt’s ALL SET, Webern’s QUARTET Op. 22, Boulez’s LE MARTEAU SANS MAîTRE, not to mention……..
BUT, and this is the important part, THE EXPLORER ATTITUDE OF THOSE EARLY ATONAL GUYS CARVED A PATH DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY FOR YOUNGER DUDES DURING THE SECOND HALF. With those icons paving the way, the younger dudes could do what they wanted to do more naturally. The toils of the old dudes allowed us to avoid all the rhetoric and just compose. In 1988 I was invited to a symposium of piano music at Michigan State U. When the keynote composer, Lukas Foss, briefly studied my score (FOUR PIANO PIECES) and then heard it, he presumed it was a 12-tone piece and said so. I told him no it wasn’t. That was right and wrong. At that time, I was writing 12-tone music, but I wasn’t writing it via a row, with strict rules. – I JUST COMPOSED IT BY EAR. I liked the way that stuff sounds, but composing it via a strict row didn’t let me get the sound that I wanted. In fact, I think composing serial music by ear gets a result that is closer to the ideal that the old dudes were looking for.